variable speed playback/slo-mo HVX?

[Graeme Nattress]

Thanks Jan, but I’m sure you made some of your cryptic (not let the cat out of the bag) comments on it too. Anyway, I guess it’s just a little over a week now. When do you put the press release out – Sunday, or Monday morning? Either way we’ll come and visit and get the details Monday morning, and no doubt have a good chat about it all.

This new camera certainly has got a lot of buzz going for it, and I know you’re really biting your lip to stop you telling us more about it. I’m looking forwards to some interesting discussions as soon as we get back from NAB.

Graeme

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

[Toke]

I’m sorry, if I have understood duping frames to p2 incorrectly.
I thought that was “verified info” somewhere in these chats…

[Barry Green]

[toke lahti] “Barry, dvcproHD-codec is just 4 dvcpro-chips in a same board, just like dvcpro was 2 of those. [/quote]
Well, DVCPRO is one DV codec; DVCPRO50 is two of them. But by ganging them together you can reduce compression and increase color sampling. That qualifies as kind of “new”, doesn’t it?

Especially when the alternative is MPEG-2, which has been around for over 12 years, and which is itself only a modest extension of the original MPEG-1, which has been around since 1988.

There are more modern codecs, yes. But have you seen VariCam footage? What exactly needs to be improved there? It’s absolutely fantastic. And, as Graeme said, by keeping the codec the same, they gain cross-compatibility with all the other DVCPRO-HD products, of which there are at least four, plus decks, etc; all the installed base of all the DVCPRO-HD hardware (plus, of course, FCP-HD and Avid Express HD) all give you existing, off the shelf, functionality. Compare that with HDV, where no editor has a fully integrated system yet, although Apple and Avid are supposed to both announce HDV compatibility soon.

I know it’s incendiary to say, but I’d go with the tried, tested, proven, and installed system that delivers fantastic results, vs. a brand-new implementation with no installed base, no proven edit/delivery system, and that delivers half the color and its own bag of compression artifacts and variable-resolution motion artifacts, etc.

[quote]Can you come up a logical explanation, why this new p2-cam does not throw away repeated
frames to better use of it’s very short recording time?[/quote]
I would go on record and declare that there is no reason, and that it will in fact throw away the repeated frames. That may or may not have been confirmed by Jan, but — come on… it would be asinine not to. The Panasonic engineers appear to be pretty bright, don’t they? I cannot fathom how they would do something as stupid as to record duplicate frames when there’s no need to. I was a programmer for 15 years, I know a little of how these things work, and I will GUARANTEE* that there won’t be duplicate frames stored on the P2 media.

Now, if there’s firewire streaming, I would expect that the duplicate frames will be streamed. That only makes sense, to keep the camera’s data stream compatible with the AJ-1200HD firewire DVCPRO-HD deck.

But for storing on P2? I’ll bet a hundred bucks, cash money, that in 720p mode it will *NOT* store repeated frames. Now, as far as 1080/24p, I’d guess that’d be stored in the same 2:3 or 2:3:3:2 pulldown system as employed on the DVX. DVCPRO-HD has no provision for recording 1080p, so they’ll probably have to do a similar recording style as they employ on the DVX. And if that’s the case, then yes, there’s the prospect that a “duplicate” frame may be stored in that case. I don’t see why it’d be necessary, but frankly I’m not arguing — it’d only amount to 20% wasted space, vs. the 2.5x longer recording time we’ll get in 720/24p. And I’m not arguing because — hey, we’re getting 1080/24p! Some filmmakers’d sell their left kidney for that. (and, yes, I can hear the anti-P2 crowd saying that some filmakers may *have* to… har har).

*guarantee details: if the HVX200 wastes P2 space by storing duplicate frames on the P2 card when shooting 720/24p or 720/30p, I’ll hand out $100 cash money to the first person (and only the first person) on the NAB floor who proves it to me.

[Graeme Nattress]

Well said Barry! I think your money is safe.

Graeme

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

[Toke]

Barry:”Especially when the alternative is MPEG-2, which has been around for over 12 years…”

What’s wrong with this industry if we would have to choose from two codecs both more than decade old?
How about mp4 (good enough for hdcam-sr), cineform, DNxHD, sheervideo, etc.?
I don’t see anything “wrong” with dv-codec, other than it has been implemented only with 8 bits of color,
but I would assume that compression research has developed a bit in last decade so that newer codec might
be a little bit more efficient.

Barry:”But have you seen VariCam footage? What exactly needs to be improved there? It’s absolutely fantastic.”

Can you tell what exactly is so fantastic in it? Do you still say that HDV is also fantastic?
Color grading HDV is quite impossible and it isn’t fabulous even with hdcam. Neither it is with dvcproHD.
8 bits are just not enough for acquisition. Everybody in still photography or motion film knows this.
Using same color depth for acquisition than for distribution leaves very little space for changes, which
leads very careful lightning on the set and that costs more time, which costs more money.
If you want to have top quality pictures.
Other thing is that when you can’t change the look at post, you’ll have to make more work before the
shooting for testing different looks.

Barry:[P2]”will in fact throw away the repeated frames.”

If so, that’s good. Even if it will record 1080p24 with pull-down, that’s only 20% wasted space.
I’m just wondering what really are the constraints of dvcpro codec?
With p2 it isn’t datarate any more? It isn’t the pixelrate either?
Is it just fixed compression rate of pixels*?
If these are not constraints any more why even pull-down?
Little expansion of the “format” every couple of years wouldn’t harm too much.
That’s what JVC is doing to HDV by implementing 24p.

With tape dvcproHD has had this magical boundary that everything has to be recorded 60p/100Mbps.
At the same time sony’s hdcam has been able to record with 5 different datarates.
Why the difference?

I think that main problem with these cameras are that they are still made for “full auto”-ENG use.
If professional still photographers have been able to shoot RAW for years, when it’s time for
us in the moving image to do the same? When do we get first high quality RAW-compression, where you
can make all gamma and color corrections in the post with high color bit depth?

With these new cameras, where last constraints of tape recording have gone away, wouldn’t it be nice
that user could choose the level of quality vs. capasity?
In still cameras you can select the level of jpg.

Compression could be fixed (like dv codec), but user could choose resolution
(480i, 480p, 576i, 756p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p), framerate (23.976 – 60), color depth (8 – 12 bits) and
color resolution (RGB, 422, 420).

Depending on a subject user could choose to record from 1 min of highest quality to 1 hour of the lowest
one to same amount of mass memory.
So far dvcproHD chips can handle 4 or 5 different compression rates. How about if user could choose which
one of them to use?
With progressive picture 4:2:0 is as good as 4:2:2 with interlaced picture, so that would be important
choise also.

So if I would need absolutely best quality for a one take commercial that will be heavily FX’d,
I could choose 1080p, 422, 12b, 48fps and 3.3x compression.
This would lead to 480Mbps, but it would be in boundaries of p2 and could also transferred
live through fw800 to computer. 15 second take would be less than 1GB, so if transfer rates
aren’t fast enough to p2 or hard disk this amount of data could be easily stored in-camera
memory buffer or computer’s RAM.

Another example would be long document shooting, which wouldn’t need any effecting and not even
consistent color timing. There I would choose 720p, 420, 10b, 24fps and 5x compression.
This would lead to 50Mbps.

Third case: consert multicamera shooting for live projection on big screen. Band also would like to
have the gig recorded only for viewing purposes and budget is extremely limited. Because of small
cameras handheld on stage 30fps is chosen for a bit clearer picture. So:
1080p, 420, 8b, 30fps, 6.6x compression.
This would lead to 75Mbps.

Lastly the kids birthday party for cd-r: 480p, 420, 8b, 24fps, 6.6x = 15Mbps (6 mins on one cd-r).

Cameras with bigger ccd/cmos chips might also have full resolution as an option.

How does all this sound?
I’d like to hear also other professionals (Barry, yours are of course always welcome) opinions from
different fields of shooting.

I may have given a bit over critic impression towards Panasonic (Jan), I have to say that if one
compares Panny to Sony, Panny has always been more user friendly than Sony which gives whatever it
likes from their ivory towers. Haven’t seen any sony’s camera compression codecs in sofware versions
(like digibeta & hdcam for FCP)…

So for 2nd gen tapeless cameras, all I am asking is totally user selectable combination of
resolution, color depth, frame rate and compression amount. All these options already exist in
the camera except option for choosing color resolution (422, 420 and maybe 411 if somebody still
believes the need for interlaced picture.)

3rd gen cameras might then have RAW-compressed option and 4th gen propably RAW-uncompressed (or losless).
(After a decade that might be economical…)

Very important feature would also be getting the identical data out of camera than recorded signal.
That’s needed when recording times exceed internal mass memory or its more convenient to use external
recording (eg. multicamera shooting, timelapse or highest quality).
With dvcproHD there could also be “legacy mode” that makes frame padded and pull-down signal for
old tape decks.

One thing I’m missing now with HD is 1/2″ cameras. One decade ago we had Canon EX1/2 (less than $5k then).
Now we would need that sensitivity to HD’s pixel sizes again.

Just my maybe a bit more than 2 cents…,
toke

*Quick calculation:
ntsc dvcpro: ((720*480+2*180*480)*8bit*30fps)/25Mbps=4.97664
pal dvcpro: ((720*576+2*180*576)*8bit*25fps)/25Mbps=4.97664
ntsc dvcpro50: ((720*480+2*360*480)*8bit*30fps)/50Mbps=3.31776
pal dvcpro50: ((720*576+2*360*576)*8bit*25fps)/50Mbps=3.31776
720p60 dvcproHD: ((960*720+2*480*720)*8bit*60fps)/100Mbps=6.63552
1080i60 dvcproHD: ((1280*1080+2*640*1080)*8bit*30fps)/100Mbps=6.63552

(1080i50 dvcproHD: ((1440*1080+2*720*1080)*8bit*25fps)/100Mbps=6.2208 ???
or: ((1280*1080+2*640*1080)*8bit*25fps)/100Mbps=5.5296 ???
720p50 dvcproHD: ((960*720+2*480*720)*8bit*50fps)/100Mbps=5.5296 ???)

[Graeme Nattress]

Video has, traditionally, all been about the “format”. As you point out, the move of video into computing, the tapeless revolution and all allows us to, technically at least, move away from “the format”.

But you understand this, and hence your post. But average camerperson does not. You can here them asking now – “What format does it shoot”, and you reply – “What format do you want?” and they say “??????” in utter bemusement!

So yes, I guess there is nothing stopping a camera from being able to shoot multiple compression / frame rates etc. I guess it would thereform be “Varicam Squared” or some such cute name.

But with the first memory chip cameras with solid state recording, it isn’t going to happen. The chips that handle the compression are set in stone for cost reasons and cannot be altered. This will change, but not yet. However, within 10 years, I can see a lot of what you want happening.

And yes,shooting raw would be nice, but there’s neither the workflow tools nor the affordable cameras for it yet for people to learn how to make it work for them. This will come, however.

Thanks for your vision of the future, and I think it’s a great one!

Graeme

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

[Toke]

Graeme:”But with the first memory chip cameras with solid state recording, it isn’t going to happen.
The chips that handle the compression are set in stone for cost reasons and cannot be altered.”

They wouldn’t have to be altered much.
HVX200 will already have at least six different pipes:
pro25, pro50, proHDp24, p30, p60, i60.

So internal logistics would just have to be altered in a way that user could choose what pipe to
use at what stage.

1.frame rate (adjusting analog hardware (ccd readout)) ->
2.color depth (ad converter) ->
3.resolution (digital scaling) ->
4.color sampling (dropping some digital info away) ->
5. compression

So instead of having six straight pipes, there would have to be some matrixes between the stages.
Of course more complex, but hey, digital evlotion is growing at a scale of Moore.
Fpga’s are coming very fast.

And these things are happening with most expensive cameras already (Dalsa, Arri, Viper+Venom),
I’m just waiting for indie prices, that you cold own your tools and so use them more freely.

In still cameras you can shoot RAW with less than $500 (Canon G6)!

[Graeme Nattress]

You’re preaching to the converted!

Yes, we know it wouldn’t be too hard to do, but these big corporations are often like snails when it comes to jumping on an idea and taking a product to a whole new level.

Graeme

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

[Toke]

Yep, absolutely.
And then there is this protecting 5 year old very expensive camera design not to be outdated.
Even if the digital evolution has jumped 3 generations after that and tech world is totally
different now.

I wonder which one of these manufacturers first figures out that when they make a real camera
for digital age and it costs 1/20 of the equal quality with those old dinosaur cameras,
they will sell million of them and there is no point in protecting the sail of one thousand
dinosaurs a year. It’s like Apple would have introduced iPod 5 years ago with price of $5k
and still try to sell it with that price. Well, they chose the other way…

Right now it seems that Panny is at a top of this new wave!
Jumping over one generation of storage tech (disk based) seems a bit scary though…

Who would be the first to sell 1/2″ hd camera with 1920×1080 sensor and non changeable manual lens?
With user changeable image specs and internal/external storage. Anybody interested?
Sony is quite close with HDC-X310… (but almost everything should be changed with that box…:-)