V1 25p issues (combined threads)

[Peter Sieben]

Hi everybody,

I just uploaded 4 new pictures to http://www.orphicfilm.nl/html/v125p.html
They were made with the same V1 camera, yesterday. The owner Jan used the V1 in Green Auto Mode and turned on the 25P function. Below Jan his comments with the four screenshots:

"...Possible some settings were wrong. In my opinion nothing is the matter with this camera. Its indeed just the settings which are very important. IMHO V1E 25P looks great! Have a look at these four shots. Were taken in Green auto mode with 25P Scan on! Later on we will experiment with other settings.

Pictures from VEGAS Snapshots in Best Full resolution without any tricks.
Photo 1 Seagles on square in front of flat
Photo 2 Seagle 20x zoom same spot as photo 1
Photo 3 Cyclist: filmed without tripod
Photo 4 Jans irish in macro with Century Achromatic Diopter 7x and
Macro LED Ringlamp round the 62mm lens on the V1E (more info on these accessories at: www.global-dvc.nl)..."

My first impression of these pictures:
- they look way better than the previous shots I made myself;
- the noise is gone;
- the oil paint artifact still remains: checkout the unsharp parts of the square or the brick wall behind the close up of the bird.

Feel free to give your own comments on the new results.

[Mikko Lopponen]

Originally Posted by Peter Sieben

"...Possible some settings were wrong. In my opinion nothing is the matter with this camera. Its indeed just the settings which are very important. IMHO V1E 25P looks great! Have a look at these four shots.

They still show that oilpaint effect. Looks horrible. I can do that with a virtualdub filter called smart smoother, but I don't want the camera doing that without me.

[Philip Williams]

Originally Posted by Peter Sieben

<snip>
Feel free to give your own comments on the new results.

It's terrible. The entire cement area in the lower half of that apartment shot looks like something created with a Photoshop paint/mosaic filter. And the seagull's feather details are totally washed away. By all technical specifications, this Sony *should* have more progressive mode resolution than the Canon XH A1. I shot some footage of Penguins at our local aquarium with my A1 and, trust me, you should be able to count the individual feathers on that bird.

No disrespect meant to anyone, but if someone feels those images are acceptable from their fairly expensive HD camera, then there is some sort of denial issue. I think Tony has already confirmed that this is a real problem, and I'm sure Sony will provide a fix. This can almost certainly be fixed with a firmware update.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Peter Sieben

Hi everybody,

I just uploaded 4 new pictures to http://www.orphicfilm.nl/html/v125p.html
They were made with the same V1 camera, yesterday. The owner Jan used the V1 in Green Auto Mode and turned on the 25P function. Below Jan his comments with the four screenshots:

"...Possible some settings were wrong. In my opinion nothing is the matter with this camera. Its indeed just the settings which are very important. IMHO V1E 25P looks great! Have a look at these four shots. Were taken in Green auto mode with 25P Scan on! Later on we will experiment with other settings.

Pictures from VEGAS Snapshots in Best Full resolution without any tricks.
Photo 1 Seagles on square in front of flat
Photo 2 Seagle 20x zoom same spot as photo 1
Photo 3 Cyclist: filmed without tripod
Photo 4 Jans irish in macro with Century Achromatic Diopter 7x and
Macro LED Ringlamp round the 62mm lens on the V1E (more info on these accessories at: www.global-dvc.nl)..."

My first impression of these pictures:
- they look way better than the previous shots I made myself;
- the noise is gone;
- the oil paint artifact still remains: checkout the unsharp parts of the square or the brick wall behind the close up of the bird.

Feel free to give your own comments on the new results.

I think somebody needs some new glasses. That is about as far away from a natural looking image as you can get. HD is supposed to be a window into the natural world and this looks nothing like that. The effect may be reduced for whatever reason but it is still there. Besides even if it was the way the camera was setup, have any of us ever heard of a camera that would be this hard to use for progressive shooting? There shouldn't have to be any settings to adjust to get a good image since everything comes off the CMOS chips and DSP as progressive anyway. No other progressive camera I have ever seen in my life would cause this sort of effect with a badly setup camera. This is clearly a problem with the 25p from the camera. We have yet to see if 30p will show the same issue.

[Philip Williams]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

<snip>This is clearly a problem with the 25p from the camera. We have yet to see if 30p will show the same issue.

If the V1 30P or 24P screenshots that will inevitably be posted this week look like that 25P stuff... I think Canon's video unit will throw some sort of party.

[Tony Tremble]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

I think somebody needs some new glasses. That is about as far away from a natural looking image as you can get. HD is supposed to be a window into the natural world and this looks nothing like that. The effect may be reduced for whatever reason but it is still there. Besides even if it was the way the camera was setup, have any of us ever heard of a camera that would be this hard to use for progressive shooting? There shouldn't have to be any settings to adjust to get a good image since everything comes off the CMOS chips and DSP as progressive anyway. No other progressive camera I have ever seen in my life would cause this sort of effect with a badly setup camera. This is clearly a problem with the 25p from the camera. We have yet to see if 30p will show the same issue.

There are some people who think it is fine! In fact on another forum I was described as throwing my toys out the pram and had unrealistically high expectations!! Go work that one out...

Anyway, shot some stuff (50i) this afternoon and this camera continues to impress unfortunately the weather doesn't so my enjoyment was curtailed.

If anyone can show me better colour rendition and a less video-ey image then I'd love to see it.

This camera simply rocks....

[Zsolt Gordos]

Originally Posted by Tony Tremble

Anyway, shot some stuff (50i) this afternoon and this camera continues to impress unfortunately the weather doesn't so my enjoyment was curtailed.

If anyone can show me better colour rendition and a less video-ey image then I'd love to see it.

This camera simply rocks....

Tony,

please help us, excited (worried) people here with posting comparison shots of the same scene taken with 50i vs 25p.
That would help a lot. Until that the "less video-ey" image would only mean the impressionistic paint look we know from all the users who have received their V1E so far.

Thanks!
Zsolt

[Robert Ducon]

TT and others, sorry you're going through this, but thanks for being great sports.

We know the V1E has this problem - what of the V1U? 24P? 30P?

It's likely it does...

[Tony Tremble]

Originally Posted by Zsolt Gordos

Tony,

please help us, excited (worried) people here with posting comparison shots of the same scene taken with 50i vs 25p.
That would help a lot. Until that the "less video-ey" image would only mean the impressionistic paint look we know from all the users who have received their V1E so far.

Thanks!
Zsolt

I already have posted comparison shots. Check out the Rapidshare thread.

Even from the quick snap shots you can see the colours of the V1e image. Amazing!

TT

[Tony Tremble]

Robert

....NOT.

24P/A from the pre-production V1U was as tack sharp. The unknown is 30P.

But both DSE and Steve Mullen have not reported issues with the pre-production V1U.

So I have a feeling you'll fair better.

TT

[Boyd Ostroff]

All: we had 3 separate threads on this topic and the discussion was getting fragmented between them, so I've merged them together into this common thread.

[Robert Ducon]

I'm pretty sure there was a drop in resolution. Not oil-paint, but there was something akin to line-doubling going on (which would be odd for a apparently "true-progressive" CMOS) unit. But if you say they're fine...

[Philip Williams]

Originally Posted by Tony Tremble

<snip>
24P/A from the pre-production V1U was as tack sharp. The unknown is 30P.

But both DSE and Steve Mullen have not reported issues with the pre-production V1U.

So I have a feeling you'll fair better.

TT

I'm not 100% up to speed on this, but wasn't the first 25P footage from a trade show really nice? I think it was a bar tender at a booth and it looked very sharp; certainly didn't look like the crayon drawings we're seeing from the production units. If Sony tweaked some sort of progressive scan settings between those pre-production units and the production models, there would be a chance that the same settings were compiled into the NTSC model's firmware.

Guess we'll found out VERY soon!

[Tony Tremble]

The bartender clip has a much more video-ey look about it but without the oil-paint effect. Colours have been tuned and render pretty much as my eyes do. Definitely the window on the world effect. We know the camera can do it!!!

What happened to produce the 25P noted by Simon Wyndham on a pre-production model that plagues us now is anybody's guess. We'll never know.

Sony are just not having a great year, batteries returned, PS3 delays now the V1e.

TT

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Robert Ducon

TT and others, sorry you're going through this, but thanks for being great sports.

We know the V1E has this problem - what of the V1U? 24P? 30P?

It's likely it does...

It's likely it doesn't.
30p footage in various flavors and settings have been posted, I've shot several commercial projects at 30p starting clear back in early September. Steve shot several bits in 30p. While minor points of improvement were discovered early on in pre-production models as the cams made their way around Hollywood and major networks (all of which were dealt with long before the camera shipped), this 50i/25p European edition issue was not one of them.