Attn.: Jan C. – AJ-SPC700 Questions

[Guy]

I’m told that the “best” SD camera around is the SDX900.

I think the SPX800 is a little bit higher quality, 14-bit DSP vs 12-bit on the 900.

[Toke]

[Graeme Nattress] “if it’s DV, you have to remove the pulldown frames, which means, in 3:2 doing a bit of reconstruction work, which implies a decompression and a recompression of those frames. “

Really?
Dv is field compressed, so I don’t see any reason to touch those fields when some of them are being replaced.

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Peter said: “Meanwhile, I just got a bit of good news. My client — the one who has been the primary motivation for my investigating a better-quality video cam (compared to my Sony DSR-250) and who actually needs 24p and the optical characteristics of 2/3” lenses & CCDs, genlock & TC I/O and so forth — informs me their editing system is an uncompressed SD FCP system.

However removal of the 24P will cause some quality loss.

AA BB BC CD DD method of pulldown, standard 2:3
12 12 12 12 12 Odd and even frames, look at how this cadence stacks up against the pull down. The C frame, once you remove the B and D fields is in the wrong order. it is 21.

To remove the B and D Field and field reverse the C fields will be the challenge, and last I knew, in Cinema Tools, which is the Software inside of FCP that would do this, needs to be told where the A frame is on the beginning of every clip. A painstaking task. Probably easier to just edit in 60i and not remove the frames.

>So, at least in regards to this client (who accounts for a good percentage of my income), the Sony DSR-450WS with its funky 24p standard 2:3 pulldown feature may be OK. If I understand what Graeme & Jan have indicated in this thread, Sony’s dumb*ss method of handling 24p doesn’t result in quality loss in an uncompressed editing environment.

That isn’t totally true, there is a bump, but perhaps not as great as starting in compressed, then moving to uncompressed and going back to compressed. Of course the storage requirement also escalates when working in uncompressed. I mean this standard 2:3 has been used for years when offlining films.

>Of course, this bit of news doesn’t address the somewhat diminished usefulness of 24p tapes I might shoot with this Sony cam for _other_ clients, depending on their post path. Grrrr … 🙁

Actually since the majority of the 24P NLEs now get the 2:3:3:2 removal on the fly, you may get looks that are analogous to having two heads. Like, what do you mean this camera doesn’t do 24PA? that is dumb. Even Sony’s Vegas does 2:3:3:2 removal.

>The AJ-SPC700 is much less expensive than the $18K Sony DSR-450WS, and I’d primarily record the AJ-SPC700’s output via Firewire to a Sony GV-D1000 “DV walkman” portable recorder.

But you would be relegating the camera to DVCAM level? it is a DVCPRO50 camcorder, why do 4:1:1 when it can do 4:2:2? Also I noticed that the DSR-450 camera doesn’t seem to have any built-in cine gammas and the adjusments on the gamma, looks rudimentary at best, low, low-mid, high-mid, and high. And the gamma curve represented in the brochure is odd indeed. I am sure it would have to make better pictures than what this curve would indicate but it doesn’t seem to take the highlights out past what I would call a standard video white clip level.

You should take a few minutes and down load the operations manual on the SPX or even the SDX to see the sorts of adjustments that you can get. Take a look a the SDX900 website and spend a few minutes looking at the downloadable scene file area. All of the scene files there were created in camera, and are recreatable with a download, save to SD card and load into your SDX900. You could probably get closer to your price on a demo SDX900. And then there is the Goodman’s Guide to the SDX900, which by far is the best book written on working with the digital cameras, well next to the Goodnman’s Guide to the VariCam.

Anyhow I do suggest that you try the cameras out before you purchase.

Best regards,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Luis Caffesse]

[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “Take a look a the SDX900 website and spend a few minutes looking at the downloadable scene file area. All of the scene files there were created in camera, and are recreatable with a download, save to SD card and load into your SDX900”

Jan, if I’m not mistaken, the HVX will also have a memory card slot which will allow for loading up scene files, is that right? If that’s the case, can we expect to see a downloadable scene file area on Panasonic’s website for the HVX200 once it’s available?

Obviously I wouldn’t expect the same level of control that we get on the SDX, but just curious.

Thanks.

Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas

[Graeme Nattress]

Due to the DV codec, the 24pA will look ever so very slightly better on one frame out of 5. I doubt you’ll see it, but it’s nice to know that it’s there 🙂

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Yes, the codec is aware of fields, but you can’t ask the codec to give you a field – you’ve got to ask for a frame, and it gives you two fields – at least I know of no way to extract a field’s data without decompressing and recompressing.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Cinema Tools does indeed do a good job of pulldown removal, and deals with the field ordering on the C frame correctly but…. It is not smart, and if you don’t know where the A frame is, you have to tell it. I wrote a little helper plugin for FCP that helps you find the frame the pulldown starts on and I used it to restore some animations back to 24p from Quad video tape and make 24p DVDs from them. It’s in the free section of my website if anyone is interested. However if you have a cadence break in the video, you have to split it at that point and send it seperately to CT or it will pull out the wrong frames.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Jeremiah Black]

I’ve found after effects very good in this regard. Whether it’s a standard WWSSW pulldown or a SWWWS pulldown, I’ve found After Effects removes it pretty well. I’ve also never been disapointed by DVFilm Maker. There’s no options to select, but somehow it gets it right. Maybe there’s an internal “guess pulldown” function. Dunno, but it’s worked for me.

jeremiah black
dual 2 gig G5
2.5 gigs of RAM
Decklink Extreme capture card

[Jeremiah Black]

[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “However removal of the 24P will cause some quality loss.”

Yeah, this is technically true. But, the real question is “can I notice it?”. And on uncompressed footage the answer I’ve found is “I can’t really notice it.” Whereas on dv footage the answer is “I really, really notice it.”

jeremiah black
dual 2 gig G5
2.5 gigs of RAM
Decklink Extreme capture card

[Graeme Nattress]

I think it would be hard to notice, but I really think that the 24pA advantage is the ease of use – no guessing where the A frame is and it being fully automatic.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP