4:1:1 vs. 4:2:2
 

Can anyone tell the difference between a video footage shot on a 4:1:1 format camera and a camera with a higher color sampling ratio?

Yes. If your eyes are trained and you know what you're looking for, you can see it. It shows up clearly in certain situations where sharp color shifts are needed.

It shows up worst in chrom keying, of course, but there are now good solutions for that.

The average eye will not be able to see the difference, but there are post processing situations that will accentuate the problems.

The term 4:2:2 refers to the ratio between the number of samples of the luminance channel (4 samples) and the chrominance channels (2 samples each). So for every 4 luminance samples each color channel is sampled twice. 4:2:2 would have twice the color bandwidth or detail as 4:1:1

Thanks for taking the time!

I think the difference you will see will actually come from the fact that any camera that output 4:2:2 is of much higher quality than a standard consumer dv camera. So yes everything jumps in quality.

Zac

You can answer this one for yourself, if you get a chance to demo the Panasonic SDX900. It's switchable between 4:1:1 and 4:2:2, so you can see the exact same camera/lens combo used to record both formats, and then judge whether you think there's a difference...

Thank you for taking the time to help me out!