AVCIntra Codec – No Firewire – No FS100?

[Barry Green]

There’s probably no technical limitation against it, but it’d involve having to create a new SMPTE standard for transport of AVC-Intra. Might happen someday, probably not soon.

Even so, there’s not a lot of impetus to do it; by the time the AVC-Intra card is out, 32gb cards will be out too (or shortly thereafter). You could have five 32GB cards, and the ability to store 1.6x as much footage as the FireStore could. I think the FireStore’s window of relevance is closing soon.

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[Shawn Alyasiri]

Thanks Barry. Yes, I would agree, however, I’ve definitely come to enjoy the backup/foreup capabilities of having a 2nd recorder/drive like the FS100 around.

Can you comment on the frame size of the soon-to-come Intra images – I thought I saw at NAB that there were 1440×1080 images being played back (rather than the DVCPROHD 1280×1080). Likewise, is 1920×1080 a 1080 recording option with Intra100 (even in a camera like the 2000), or 1280×720 if you’re in 720 modes?

I’ve been having a heck of a time getting current 1080 (1280×1080) clips from the 2000 to downconvert in Edius without significant tearing/warbling on the edges. It was recently described to me that it’s a scaling/pixel aspect issue and that 1440 (in theory) could lead to less of that. Downconverting Z1/H1 (1440) footage is certainly less ‘tempermental’. It’s been quite frustrating, however, perhaps the Intra options could ‘smooth’ that out compared to the DVCPROHD files?

Thanks again very much.

[Barry Green]

AVC-Intra at 50 megabits is 1440×1080, or 1280 x 720; at 100 megabits it’s 1920 x 1080, or 1280 x 720.

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[Shawn Alyasiri]

Thanks again Barry – truly.

Can I ask your opinion if a 1440×1080 or 1920×1080 native Intra file may or would downconvert in a ‘smoother’ fashion than what we may be seeing trying to downconvert DVCPROHD files (either 1280×1080 or 960×720)? Is there truth to the recent explanation I received about the mathematics of pixel scaling, etc? I’ve got 1440 HDV files that seem far more resistant to the tearing that I’m seeing on DVCPROHD downconverts (tearing, moire, pan/tilt warble, etc).

Can you comment if the HPX2000 will be able to record both 50mb 1440 or 1920 100mb 1080 files – and the 50/100 1280×720 720p files, or is that only with the 3000?

The HD images from my HPX2000 are incredible – trying to downconvert them has been a real bear (upconvert to 1920×1080 in Edius also looks great) – it almost looks like I’ll have to do do any SD downconvert work via hardware downconversion via AJA boxes from the Edius system and bring back as DVCAM/DV – That’s definitely a lossy process though.

Any advice/wisdom you can give is enormously appreciated. I’ll be far more apt to try the Intra options once they’re available from Panny and Edius if it could grant that downconversion benefit as well as the other obvious ones…

Thanks again for your wisdom and generosity with your time and advice.

[Barry Green]

The success of downconverting has little to do with the frame dimensions, and more to do with the algorithms you’re using. You should be able to make absolutely fantastic downconverts off of your existing HPX2000 footage.

AFAIK, the HPX2000 will support both AVC-Intra modes, 50-megabit and 100-megabit. But I don’t know that I’d say that either of them is going to make for a noticeably better downconvert than you’d get from DVCPRO-HD already; it just depends on what you’re using to do the conversion.

For example, FCP 4 used to have a really weak scaler, upconverting in FCP looked like dog breath. I could upconvert in Vegas and get something that looked fantastic, but upconverting the same file in FCP was nothing but disappointing. And Premiere 6.5 was just as bad or worse.

Here’s a 10-second Sorensen 3 Quicktime I rendered out from Vegas 6. This was DVCPRO-HD 1080/24p source footage, downconverted and aspect-ratio-changed to 853×480 to make a 16:9 standard-def-res file.

https://www.fiftv.com/HVX200/Guitar.mov

How does this look compared to the kind of results you’ve been getting?

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[Shawn Alyasiri]

Thanks again for your note Barry.

The clip you’ve attached looks incredible…

I’ve had the 2000 for a short time, and was hoping to shoot 1080 60i or 720 60p initially for ‘hyper’ feel and latitude in slowing things down etc. Again – working, editing and viewing in HD looks great. Looking forward to 1080 24/30p & 720 24/30p as well – short tests, similar results.

I’ve been using Edius SP for a number of years now. So I’ve been placing the 2000 footage into the Edius timelines DVCPROHD 108060i or FullHD 1920x1080i. Looks incredible in HD.

If I change the project settings to DV 720×480 or D1 720×486 16×9/4:3, the footage really warbles, edges tear and come alive, moire and pattern dancing, etc. I’ve tried exporting to ProCoder 2 from the timeline, I’ve burned master 1920x1080HQ files and put it in ProCoder that way – etc. Pretty much the same situation.

I also tried some conversions in After Effects 7 – didn’t work that well. I do have Vegas 7 and PremPro2 – haven’t worked with them on this. If Vegas presents solutions/options that you’d recommend, I’d do it.

Actually – any recommendations that you have – I’d take it – believe me. I’ve done dozens of tests (upper field, lower field, etc) trying to make this all happen.

Ultimately, I’d like to edit in Edius SP – make a 1920×1080 Canopus HQ master, and send that into some transcoding mechanism for the best possible SD file I can for SD DVD authoring.

The closest I can get to an SD file that doesn’t tear is feeding the HD YUV output from the breakout box (Canopus doesn’t have HDSDI) into some AJA boxes to downconvert to SD YUV and go to DVCAM. It’s close, but it adds setup to the video, it’s lossy and recompressed, and adds a frame of latency to the stream. Plus – it’s a pretty goofy workflow. There’s something going on in the hardware downconversion that smooths everything out (including the camera’s downconversion output) that I can’t mimic with a software workflow.

Sorry for the length here… Thanks again for your time – anything you can add or assist in resolving will be helping me immensely. I want to shoot as much as I can this year in HD, but be very confident in the ability to provide solid SD DVD’s from that footage as well.

[Barry Green]

All I did was import the MXF to a Vegas 1080/24p timeline using Raylight, and then export (using “best” video quality) to an 853×480 24p Quicktime, using the Sorensen 3 codec. No special processing or anything, just a straight export.

If you’ve got Vegas, try doing the same thing. Download the trial/evaluation copy of Raylight, be sure to run it on “blue” quality, and export. Let’s make sure that the process works for you from your footage in *anything*; if it doesn’t work from Vegas then I’d probably have to see your original source footage to see what the problem is.

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[Christopher Wright]

“32gb cards will be out too (or shortly thereafter). You could have five 32GB cards, and the ability to store 1.6x as much footage as the FireStore could. I think the FireStore’s window of relevance is closing soon.”
I beg to differ. Most of the FS-100 users will be/are HVX-200 customers who only have access to two P2 slots. Until Panasonic makes 64 GB cards for around $500.00 each, using the Firestore is a no brainer. Also (5) 32 GB cards will set you back financially quite a bit more than a single FS-100 will.

[Shawn Alyasiri]

Thanks for your suggestions Barry. I gave this a try, and I’m still having some difficulties. Perhaps I missed a setting somewhere.

I used a P2 folder created by an Edius timeline of some DVCPRO 1080 60i clips (short clips dissolved together). I sent that into Raylight demo, and imported in a Vegas 7 1920×1080 timeline (didn’t see any mention of DVCPROHD). So, I’m essentially placing a 1280×1080 Raylight file into a 1920×1080 Vegas timeline.

I exported with Video Rendering Quality: Best
Frame Size – custom 853×480
Frame Rate: 29.970
Field Order: Upper First
Pixel Aspect – tried 1.0 & 1.212
Video Format: Sorenson 3
Compressed depth: 24 bpp color
Quality: High
Data rate: unconstrained
Keyframe every 30 frames
Audio: Uncompressed, 48k, 16bit, stereo

I tried playing this file back in an Edius SD timeline and I still get a significant amount of tearing. These files are importing into Edius as 854×480 (not 853) & progressive – I don’t see much difference if I change the fields, etc.

I’m not sure if you had intended this for square pixel computer playback, or for exporting to SD DVD (my hope).

I had sent some to Grass Valley, and they had confirmed my findings – without suggestions for resolution. I’d love to get some footage to you as you had mentioned. How may I do that? Will you be at the HD expo in Chicago next week? I plan to go to the expo. Otherwise, perhaps I could mail a DVD of P2 data?

Thanks again for your time and expertise.

[Barry Green]

For DVD you’d want 720×480, with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2 for high-def.

You shouldn’t need to go through Vegas to get good results, I would assume ProCoder could do it well too but I’m only vaguely familiar with that program…

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