Sony HC1 Cineframe Rocks
 

I was goofing around with my hc1 the other day, and I turned the cineframe option on. I must say that I was suprised at how excellent the pictures behavior was. I would definately say it is in the in the same league as any of the prosumer 24p formats out there. Even though it is technically 24f, whatever that means. Anyhow. Overall other than the small size of the camera (which would be a selling point to many), and the bottom loading tape, I have to admit I am quite happy with my purchase. I tested a tape with footage gathered with a jvc hd100 in 720p hdv by playing it in the hc1 and it played back perfectly. Even downcoverts the hd footage to pristine DV. On the other hand the JVC would not playback the 1080i footage gathered with the hc1, fx1, or z1 cameras. This is the perfect camera for a 2nd unit camera to the z1, that can also be used as a playback deck. Definately will be sticking with Sony in the future. If other owners of the hc1 can try out the cineframe mode, and let me know your thoughts, I'd like to confirm that my observations are indeed not too good to be true.

I cant find that option in my camera Albert, its gotto be somewhere there !

Here's a link to Adam Wilt's article about how Cineframe works, in case you're interested: http://adamwilt.com/HDV/cineframe.html

you can access the cineframe feature under the effects touch panel. The effects option is not part of the default options, and would need to be added to the access menus. Use the intital menu screen to get to it. It's in there with a few of the less desirable cheese effects like sepia and mosaic. I think you will indeed find the cineframe most definately worth while to look at and use.

cineframe
 

Is that really officially cineframe? just curious, because I've seen dv cams, even D8 cams that also list a "cinema effect"

i believe it is. At least it is what it claims in the manual. On other forums the cineframe in the hc1 is also discussed. I haven't seen the cinema effect in too many other cameras myself. At least not one that works this well.

It is 30fps or "24"fps?

It is confusing, as there is no mode actually called "Cineframe" on the HC1. There is on it's A1 cousin.
The HC1 has an option called "Cinema effect". It's been reported that this is the same as Cineframe but I'm not sure. On the A1, the NTSC version has a choice of 24p or 30p, the PAL is 25p. I've seen reports that the HC1 Cinema effect is 24p on the NTSC model (and 25p on PAL).

I must admit I haven't tried it yet.

Mark

Cinema Effect vs. Cineframe??
 

I would like some confirmation of this too. I am under the impression the Cineframe 24p is different than this video effect in the HC1 called Cinema Effect. It looks interesting though but for post production in Vegas 6.0c I sure would like to know the details before shooting extensively in that only to find that I have created more of a problem then eliminating steps. tks

Cineframe Article
 

Here's a pretty good article about Cineframe and hwo to smooth your images out.

http://www.cineform.com/products/Son.../CineFrame.htm

What would the workflow be from Cineframe to DVD?
 

Also, are there any benefits in picture quality if DVD is my detination? Will the DVD be in a progressive format, if there is such a thing. Or will it be different than if I shot and edited in 60i?

Thanks. I hope these are stupid questions.

Cineframe 24p isn't that great unless you capture using the Cineform HDLink program using the special 24p pulldown removal capture mode. The Adam Wilt article was written before this was available I believe. In any case, Cineframe 24 captured with HDLink in the pulldown removal mode actually gives you pretty good 24p.

The footage in the cinema mode is equivelant is a default 30f cineframe setting. They don't call it cineframe, because the frame modes aren't adjustable. So officially it's not cineframe, but only one aspect of it. But not a bad one at that.

Albert, at least on my HC1, that is not the case! To verify this, try loading a clip into Virtualdub, select "deinterlace/fields-side-by-side" in the filter menu, and then step through the footage frame by frame - you will see there's a pattern of repeated and non-repeated fields.

It looks suspiciously like Cineframe24! ... I will try extracting it with the Cineform 24p option and report back on what I find.

Also, I notice that when cinema mode is selected the ability to adjust exposure becomes disabled. I don't know if this is how Cineframe works on the A1, but I thought that was rather disappointing.

Yep, it sure seems to be CF24!

Capturing "Cinema mode" footage from the HC1 using Cineform's HDLink, with "remove 3:2 pulldown" checked, produces smooth 23.976fps progressive footage.

Footage captured without that option checked stutters (verified in Vdub as described above).

WHAT?! stop the presses! 'real' 24p from CF24?! what are you guys smoking? raise the bs flag! j/k, ill check it out. thanks!

Heh heh! No smokin', sadly!

I have not been following the whole CF24 saga in past months because initially I didnt have a Sony, and then more recently I wasn't even aware that my HC1 had a cinema mode.

All I can tell you is that Cineform has added this "remove pulldown" feature to the recent versions of HDLink, and it sure seemed to do the business on the footage I shot today!

so i assume this is all being done as you capture in real time?
sucks that im on a mac (ironically, eh?), any mac solutions? i know dvfilm maker is there but it takes too stinkin long!

Interesting question - HDLink captures to a .m2t and then converts that to an AVI....I have it set to discard the .m2t automatically. I assume the .m2t transfer is just raw data so the pulldown removal will be during the conversion.

On my sad and puny 3.0GHz Pentium4, if I capture a 5-minute clip it takes an extra 2 minutes or so to at the end to finish the conversion to the 24p cineform avi. Certainly faster than Maker, which I checked out recently on this same machine (and which itself was much faster than the various After Effects plugin options).

I guess Virtualdub doesn't run on a Mac? - you could remove pulldown with that, or with avisynth.

HC1 'Cinema mode' resolution test
 

I have posted two enlarged sections of footage of a resolution chart, to give people an idea of the extent to which we will lose detail when shooting in 'cinema mode' on the Sony HC1.

Here's a down-rezzed snapshot of the full frames that were captured, just so that you can orient yourself:
http://home.att.net/~ghickling/res_chart.jpg

This is an cropped section of raw 1080i60 footage:
http://home.att.net/~ghickling/hc1_1080i60.tif (479KB)

And here is the equivalent section cropped from raw 'cinema mode' 1080p24 footage, demonstrating the resolution hit associated with this mode:
http://home.att.net/~ghickling/hc1_cinema_mode.tif (496KB)

Hmmm...what's the deal with shutter speed, then?
 

Given that Cinema mode disables the option of manually setting shutter speed, I wonder if it locks the speed itself? And if so at what?

(Pure speculation here, but .... if it doesn't fix the shutter that might help explain why some people have been happier with the mode than others. Shooting 24p at high shutter speeds caused by bright conditions would look very stroboscopic.)

FCP5 will do this for you. Check your capture presets.

-gb-

I just did, and i can only get the standard HDV settings. either native or intermediate and they cant be edited.

In an ideal world at 24fps it would lock the shutter at 1/50th second, but it may do 1/60th.

Does it prevent you from setting shutter-speed or -- as posted earlier -- prevent you from biasing the AE? These are two different things.

Both!

The shutter speed option in the menu system becomes greyed-out. In addition, the AE button on the side of the camera stops responding.

It also goes into an auto-iris mode, which you can't disable, which kills it, for me, using this function...

Maybe!

If it sets the shutter-speed at either 1/50th or 1/60th then there is inherently only one iris setting that delivers a "correct" exposure.

If the AE system is accurate -- as it is on the FX1 -- that is the iris you would want to set.

OK -- it might be nice to alter the exposure for creative reasons, but the low latitude of single chp camcorders does NOT really allow you to play with the exposure. Open the iris a bit and highlights bleach-out. Close the iris a bit and shadows go black.

The goal should be to bring optimally exposed -- as indicated by the histogram display -- back to your NLE where you can get creative.

The real disadvantage of not having iris control is that you can't lock the iris.

What's the advantage of Cineframe?
 

Just wondering, I've seen a lot of complaining about the loss in resolution in this format. So what's all the buzz about? Is it because it's 24fps progressive?
Wouldn't it just be better to deinterlace a 60fps picture? Does the 24fps rate help with low light?

Regards,

Mark

Could someone explain what HD Link is to me please? (Very new to all this).

Also, I would appreciate explanation about why high shutter speeds caused by bright conditions, shooting at 24p would cause strobe-like effects?

In fact, speaking of shutter speeds, could someone just explain the whole concept of shutter speed to me? Thanks.

HDLink is a slim little standalone application that 'captures' HDV footage off your camera onto your computer via firewire. You can specify the resulting file to be a raw .m2t transport stream, a Cineform-codec transcoded avi file, or both.

It will also write .mts files back to your camera.

With AspectHD installed, 'capture' and 'write to tape' functions in Premiere do essentially the same thing, but with a greater pull on system resources.

Regarding the strobing effect: all video cameras break reality up into stationary moments flashed back at you at 24 frames per second, or 60 fields per second, or whatever. Each of those moments is like a still photo - if an object is moving while the photo is taken it will be blurred. The blur is controlled by how long the "shutter" is open. A 1/1000sec exposure of a man waving his arm will be crisp shot of the arm at one point in space. A 1/24th second will be a blurred arc of the arm travelling several inches through space.

If you play a series of 1/1000 shots of a waving arm at 24fps it "strobes": in other words the arm jumps robotically from fixed position to fixed position, with no visual information in each intervening space.

If you play a series of 1/24 exposures at 24fps the blur in each frame links to the blur in the next ... and so the overall effect is smoothly blurred motion, much like the human eye perceives.

2 questions:
1. where can you download or find the program HDLink?
2. Is there any way to set the cinema effect as a default so the camera doesn't reset when you turn it off and turn it back on?

It looks like Sony wanted the A1 effect to seem different (better) that the same effect on the HC1 so it could justify charging more for the A1.

David, HDLink comes as part of Cineform's ConnectHD and AspectHD packages.

I have the AspectHD version of HDLink, which includes the 24P functionality discussed above. I am not sure if the ConnectHD version is identical or not (ConnectHD is the cheaper of the two packages)..

Look here: www.cineform.com

Is Aspect HD a better or easier program than Adobe Premiere? I tried using Sony's Vegas 6 to copy hd video, and it didn't work. Adobe did, but i was hoping to find something easier to use. Thanks

AspectHD essentially works as a plugin within Premiere, providing a high-def codec and extra functionality. So you need BOTH programs.

However, when you install AspectHD, HDLink then also gets installed as a small separate program that can be run independently of Premiere to provide tape read and write fucntions. (Its essentially the original way that Cineform implemented read and write to and from the camera ... functionality that later got built into Premiere itself.)

Were you using a full version of Vegas, or the trial version? Most of the trial versions of Vegas, Premiere, etc don't include full HD functions (which is a poor decision if you ask me, since HD-functions may be precisely what people are wanting to evaluate!).

They were the full version of the program. Thanks again.
Does anyone have an answer to my second question?
2. Is there any way to set the cinema effect as a default so the camera doesn't reset when you turn it off and turn it back on??

Try this
 

I use DV Film Maker to deinterlace my footage which works really well. Here's the link - http://www.dvfilm.com/maker/index.htm

It does batch processing, so you can leave it for a few hours and it will deinterlace a whole bunch of clips. It's an adaptive deinterlacer, so you don't lose any vertical resolution, as would be the case with most standard deinterlacers that just duplicate one of the fields. Because of how well this works, I've never used Cineframe and never will. The shutter speed issue is just one reason.

Another thing, shooting with Cineframe you would never have the option of interpolating the fields for a slow motion look.

CineFrame + Connect HD vs. DV Film Maker
 

I used DV Film Maker to convert to 24p and compared this to 24p footage created by using Cineform's codec with CineFrame 24 enabled. A frame-by-frame comparison showed that the frames created with the CineFrame/Cineform combination appeared much more natural than those from DV Film Maker. However, there is clearly a reduction in resolution in using CineFrame/Cineform, so DV Film Maker would be the better choice for maintaining sharpness. As an aside, the best conversion that I have seen was accomplished with Adobe After Effects using the Magic Bullet frame rate conversion plug-in. Those excellent results only require you to wait a few days while your system renders ;)

Yes, Magic Bullet is nice from the tests I've seen, but I've heard it's quite slow and within After Effects wouldn't be ideal for converting a whole bunch of clips. In DV Film I set the 'Blur horizontal lines' parameter to 3 which will smooth things out a bit more.

Does anyone know if you can set the cinema mode to default so it doesn't have to be selected every time you turn on the camera?