Moving from the HVX200 to the HPX170?

[Noah Kadner]

Hi Dan-

Nice thorough article. It’s interesting to look back at the HVX200 as the bridge between DV and DVCPROHD.

Noah

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[Dan Brockett]

Hi Noah:

Thanks! Glad that you found it interesting. There really is an interesting lineage from the DVX100 to the HPX170.

Dan

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[Tim Ryan]

Hey Dan,
Thanks for writing the article. lt was very informative. In fact, it’s more of a book than article:)

I purchased my HPX170 last week and used it for a DVCPRO 50 30P shoot this weekend. Yesterday, I went to a post-house to have the footage printed to Digibeta for a local TV station. About 1/2 way through the digital transfer, the images starting showing randomly placed artifacts. The images looked beautiful until about 1/2 way through the transfer (so we did have the SDI enabled). We were using the SDI output from my camera into a Panasonic Digibeta deck (not sure about the model number).

Any thoughts on why we’re experienced the artifacting? Is it better to just use the camera’s Component Out port (I did not bring it with me to the studio)?

Thanks,

Tim

MacBook Pro
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4 GB DDr SDRAM
FCP 6.0
G-Raid 2 Tb external hard drive

[Dan Brockett]

Hi Tim:

That is strange. I have not heard of any random artifacts with the 170 before this. Do you have the SDI EDH turned on or off? I would try it with the EDH on and see if that improves it. Also make sure that you are using healthy SDI cables with no shorts or loose connections in them.

No, the whole reason the HPX has SDI is for doing what you are trying to do, I would not use the analog component, SDI is cleaner (unless you are on a time schedule and HAVE to have it done perfectly this second!) You definitely have the menu items all ticked correctly for outputting NTSC the way you need it (squeezed, pillar boxed or 4:3?)

You checked playback straight off of the cards in camera and no artifacts?

I would also just hook up the SDI output to an SDI monitor and see if you are still getting the artifacts. You need to narrow down the distortions to whether or not they are coming from the camera, the deck, the cable, EDH not being on, etc.

Let us know what you discover.

Dan

If none of these do it, you need to call Panasonic.

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[Tim Ryan]

Hey Dan,
I checked with the post-house on your questions. Here’s their response:
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We did try with EDH both on and off. All cables are confirmed good.

I am really baffled by this. It’s got to be some compatibility issue with dbeta in particular.

This is the strangest part:
When our Panasonic AJ1400HD deck is hooked up to the dbeta, it produces similar artifacts IF there is no reference signal present. We remedy this by plugging the composite out from the deck into the reference in of the dbeta… then everything looks great. This is not true for the HPX-170, even though we know the composite signal to be good even while outputting SDI.

Our DBeta is a Sony DVW-A500

———————–

MacBook Pro
Mac OSX version 10.4.11
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB DDr SDRAM
FCP 6.0
G-Raid 2 Tb external hard drive

[Dan Brockett]

Hi Tim:

Wow, that has me stumped. I do know that all Sony pro decks seem to be really picky about sync, my Beta SP deck is and all of the Dbeta decks I work with are as well.

Here is another test, can you dub out to the 1400 via SDI from the 170? Try dubbing some material from P2 to DVCProHD. If it works perfectly, without a glitch, I would say that your camera is fine. It may then be some arcane setting on the DBeta deck.

Does the glitch happen at regular intervals or is it random?

What happens if you run the 170’s SDI output straight to an SDI monitor? Do you see any glitches? If so, do they occur at the same spots as they do when dubbing to the DBeta deck?

You have to eliminate the variables here to figure out where the problem is. Then you can try to figure out WHAT the problem is.

Dan

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[Tim Ryan]

Response to your questions from the post-house:

The 1400 has HD and SD SDI out, but only has HD SDI in. This is SD footage we’re dealing with in this scenario so it won’t accept the signal, I tried it.

We have dubbed from P2 cameras to DVCPRO HD via HD SDI on the 1400 and it worked fine.

However, we digitized this particular SD footage from the HPX170 to one of our editing systems via SDI and it was flawless. That’s how we ultimately ended up making the dub to D-Beta.

Monitoring was also fine, even through the D-Beta deck. The artifacts only showed up on record.

MacBook Pro
Mac OSX version 10.4.11
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB DDr SDRAM
FCP 6.0
G-Raid 2 Tb external hard drive

[Dan Brockett]

Based upon what they are saying, it sounds as if the issue is with the DBeta deck or how the 170’s SDI protocol is handshaking with the DBetas SDI input.

There are only three settings on the 170 to adjust the SDI output, on/off, EDH and Metadata so there is nothing else to adjust on the 170. The fact that it is passing the signal through means that it is working. With digital, stuff usually either works or it doesn’t and it sounds as if the SDI out on the 170 is working.

Not sure where to advise you from here. Sounds like someone needs to experiment a bit with the menus and settings in the Dbeta deck.

Dan

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[Bjoern Adamski]

Is there maybe a hardware deinterlacer activated on output or can use choose between progressive or interlaced video output? Deinterlacing progressive footage causes this kind of quality decrease.

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