[Chris Wiggles]

[gary adcock] ”
Like you are not attacking my credibility?
By your own admission you are a newbie, both here on the Cow and as a video user?”

Sir,

This is silly. I asked you for a specific workflow and specific methodology that you used to test this camera, and what you found.

You have yet to provide anything but a link to generic testing methods, and throw around some gear to which you have access.

You accuse me of being a newbie, a newcomer to video, or otherwise not understanding anything. Sir, you do not know me, my experience or my background. I have been involved with digital video and imaging for years. Your accusatory tone is a weak argumentative tactic, and in any case I am entirely uninterested in engaging in such ad-hominem arguments. I simply wish to clarify for the original poster of this thread the facts surrounding a specific capability of this camera.

Correct- why would I take an unknown entity such as a first time poster and admitted newbie and trust my livelyhood on your word?
Better yet why would I trust anyone else’s random files posted on the internet?
Where are YOUR files?
Where are YOUR Test results?

That’s why I linked you to several examples from multiple sources, and suggest you research on your own. This eliminates entirely whatever questions you may have of my credibility, which are anyway entirely misplaced.

You obviously ignored my link to the Tektronix signal testing link I posted last time.

That is absolutely correct. That explains absolutely nothing about what YOU tested, and how YOU tested it. We can play the generic google link game, or you can simply answer a straightforward question of WHAT and HOW you ascertained that Panasonic (and everyone else) is lying about this camera.

I test all signal path processing using industry standard diagnostic and analytic HARDWARE from both Leader Instruments (LV 5800, LV 5750 and a Phabix signal tester on loan) and various Tektronix units based on SMPTE specs for baseband video. I also used Aja’s Hi53G and HA53G converters to handle the HDMI x HDSDI conversion process, so that I was able to pass the baseband video signal out of the camera, just like I would with any other camera being tested for signal analysis.

You’re getting slightly warmer. Care to explain exactly what you did? Care to describe the exact chain, and what you looked at specifically, and how you even got the camera to shoot in 1080p60 mode and play back in that mode?

ROTFLMAO
so a camera newbie also? https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/camera-and-lens-roundup

Sir, I do not see the Panasonic TM700 in that article at all. Not relevant. I also don’t see any camera testing occurring here. I see an industry professional at a trade show sharing informational statements from manufacturers in a summary article of new products.

Ironic that you would forward manufacturer information in a trusted way in this article, yet here you accuse Panasonic of lying about a camera without being able to provide an iota of evidence.

Your naiveté regarding how and why real cameras do what they do does little belay the fact that I am happy that this camera worked for you.

Sir, I have made absolutely no statements whatever about your so-called “real” cameras. How you reached this conclusion is beyond me. I do not appreciate the continued ad-hominem distraction.

This camera did not pass what I required of it, but please be my guest to continue to call me a liar when you have naught to show, nor much if experience with this camera or for that matter any other camera that might actually be able to shoot 1080p60 as the specification is defined and I will assume that the over $1000 per day rental on the professional level cameras that shoot 60p are beyond your budget.

And a nice swipe at another’s presumed economic status as an indicator of their trustworthiness, to top it all off.

All I’ve really done is question how you ascertained that this camera doesn’t do what it says it does. It’s an entirely legitimate question. There are MANY products that don’t do what they claim, and professionals ascertain this via testing and examination and measurement.

You can’t even tell me what you tested, let alone how you tested it or what you found.

Instead, your “proof” that this camera does not shoot 1080p60 despite many references to the contrary essentially amounts to:
1) I am new to this forum
2) I am a newbie to video
3) I don’t understand ‘what the signal was engineered to do’ whatever that means
4) I’m poor
5) that you’ve worked with lots of other cameras, therefore that means you understand this one

I’m sorry sir, but that simply doesn’t get off the ground as being any kind of scientific evidence with any rigor at all. I’ve encountered many silly things in this industry over the years, but the “you don’t know what you’re talking about because you’re poor” is a new one. Kudos.

Why don’t you spend half as much time just addressing the substance of the question rather than attacking me personally, an individual with whom you have no experience at all and who you do not know.

I mean, no reader can even ascertain what exactly your claim IS! I can’t even tell if you think it’s really 1080i60, or line doubled 1080i60 to 1080p60, or scaled 1080i60, or 1080p30 as PsF at ‘i60.’

Unless you wish to substantiate your claim with legitimate evidence rather than unrelated generalities, misinformed silliness about HDMI, and ad-hominem attacks, I will not pursue this any further. Other readers are free to read and will draw their own conclusions from your behavior, their own research, and the multiple links already posted.

I hope you learn to utilize a more collegial attitude and an intellectually honest willingness to provide open access and explanations to your testing methods in the future for your peers. Otherwise you foster distrust, negativity, and unproductive airs of secretive and inaccessible ‘expertise.’

I wish you a better day on the morrow.

Regards,
Chris

[Chris Wiggles]

[gary adcock] ”
as I stated here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1095041
if you do not understand the nature of what the signal was engineered to do, how can you expect to understand the whether what you are working with is correct or not?”

Sir:

Now you are simply attacking my credibility, and entirely ignoring the camera specifications, framegrabs, and example clips that I referenced for you and for anyone else to test and examine entirely on their own without my (or your) credibility at all relevant.

I fully understand the nature of 1080p60 video, and have been intimately involved with video for many years. Your accusations here as to my lack of understanding of video formats is grossly misplaced. And anyway, it is irrelevant to the discussion of directly testable fact.

Yes I understand that and even given such a low price point, I still tested the camera using industry standard tools for testing and analysis.

By what methods? Using what tools? This was asked of you before. You continue to reiterate ‘SDI’-based SMPTE standards which are of no relevance to anything here. What that has anything to say about whether the video is native 1080p60 or scaled 1080p60 from some other quality of source is entirely beyond me. You could have entirely compliant HD-SDI or 3G signals at 1080p60 that derived previously from 480i60, or anything. What does that have to do with anything at all?

You did not describe your workflow. At this point, I’m not certain you even understood how to operate the camera and extract 1080p60 content, as it is not straightforward with this camera. You have stated nothing about how you ascertained that the camera is somehow doing something other than what is stated explicitly in specifications which have been challenged by no video professionals anywhere except for yourself.

I am rightly skeptical of many claims by manufacturers just as you are, but I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe (and have seen absolutely no evidence at all to support) a claim that Panasonic is lying about this camera’s capabilities which have been quite openly tested by many individuals around the world. I linked you to just a couple examples, feel free to web-search on your own because there are many more.

You, by your own admission, tell us that you are new to the video world, I on the other hand am not.

Sir, this is not a fair statement at all, nor accurate. You immediately questioned my credibility because of my new registration at this forum, which is a tired tactic. I explained, accurately, that I have been deeply involved with video for many years, but am new to the production side of things, hence I am new to this particular forum in my desire to learn new aspects of video and learn to create my own content. I read Poynton’s tome many years ago(among others) and have been re-reading it ever since. Nobody knows everything there is to know about video, and I find your arrogance and secrecy here unpleasant and unfortunate. Everyone here is here to learn and to share knowledge. Parroting misinformed facts about something as inocuous as a camera’s objective recording format and capabilities is unproductive behavior.

I have never said that this camera did not take acceptable images- I stated that my testing showed that the camera was not outputting what SMPTE decides is a proper 60p signal, and that the signal i tested on an early camera model was a 60i signal that was line doubled- a common occurrence with the earlier HDMI consumer specifications, not the later 1.3a and 1.4 HDMI specs.

By what method did you ascertain this? Did you record in 1080p60 mode? Did you know how to accomplish this with this camera? Were you able to extract the 1080p60 content natively and not a re-process from inside the camera of a 1080i60 output? All of these things are entirely reasonable mistakes that anyone could make with this particular camera, and which are not obviously apparent. I still have no idea by what method you claim to have ascertained that the content was 1080i60, or with what tools. Your earlier statements about SMPTE standards with reference HD-SDI and 3G seem to imply that maybe you fed these signals to a compatible scope or other comparable device perhaps? But the number of steps to attain such an output format requires a number of steps far removed from the camera itself that are fraught with peril and susceptibility to user error. It is entirely unclear what it is that you did, since you refuse to elucidate that.

And yet again you continue to forward the strange claim that somehow early iterations of HDMI did not support 1080i60, or otherwise there was some common difficulty of 1080i60 in/out on HDMI devices which would require the camera not only to scale to 1080p60, but to record that scaled version and waste twice the storage capacity on the camera for this unheard of invented limitation of the HDMI interface which is not accurate. I would be happy to direct you to the HDMI specification, but it appears likely you would ignore that reference as well. I’m sure HDMI is wrong about their own specification, just as Panasonic is wrong about their own camera…

I did not trust my eyes, apples antiquated quicktime player or even FCP to handle that footage, just like I doctor I ran tests understanding what the baseline is, using tools designed to provide critical analysis of baseband video.

Since I have worked with virtually all of the current professional camera systems that can properly produce a recording at 1080 60p, my knowledge and client base force me to be more critical than others. I do not rely on ANY camera mfg’s specs for anything more than an assumption that it is correct, but I also know that specs written for a camera that sells for $1000 are not exactly written or even proofed by engineers, but more likely by some marketing intern.

I test a great many cameras and lenses, this camera did not meet my criteria in producing a proper signal that could be recorded according to the 1080p60 specifications for the work that I do, and as I told the last poster here- I am glad that this camera works for you and your needs, it is not up to my standards and expectations for what 1080p60 is supposed to be.

Well sir, quite frankly, given your complete inability to answer what you tested, how, and with what, I cannot say that I trust you at all given the fact that the web is filled with 1080p60 videos shot with this very camera, and I have shot small amounts of 1080p60 with it myself.

If you tell me that the sky is bright pink, and continue to reiterate that you performed rigorous tests using tools designed for critical analysis but can’t say what those tools were, how you did such a test, and what you found, then your claims are hardly worthy of any deference. I hope you understand that the scientific process involves some rigor and openness, and if you performed some unknown test that according to you clearly contradicts what has been claimed openly by Panasonic (unchallenged by no one save for yourself), and what has been tested by scores of individuals, then that is a fairly serious result. Such a finding is worthy of examination, and is very important for others to know who may intend to deploy this camera because of its 1080p60 capability. If that capability is a lie, then that should be known, and I encourage you to go forward with that claim. But not simply based on your word about some mysterious test using unknown equipment, with unknown persons who may or may not have had any idea what they were doing, using an entirely unknown workflow with zero openness or disclosure for review by one’s peers.

Regards,
-Chris

[Chris Wiggles]

I also forgot this link with a large variety of original files in very short clips obviously due to size, that you can download which are shot at 60p (and 50p) as well:

https://hdcam.web-pda.info/

Regards,
-Chris

[Chris Wiggles]

[gary adcock] “Mr Wiggles,

please tell us all how you determined this? I tested the camera’s output based on SMPTE standards and found that it did not match the SMPTE specifications (both 372M and 425M) for 1080p60.”

Mr Adcock:

You stated previously that you had ‘tested’ this camera’s output, and that 1080p60 “required” HD-SDI or 3G. I’m not sure why you would state the latter, since SDI-based interfaces are simply one way of dealing with video, and surely not the only way of transmitting HD formats including 1080p60 specifically. Further, I fail to see the relevance of 372M or 425M which define HD-SDI & 3G. This camera has no SDI capabilities whatsoever, so the relevance of SDI standards evades me. Its digital output is limited to USB file transfer from internal or card-based memory, or via HDMI video output on playback. I entirely fail to understand why you keep bringing up SDI standards which are not applicable here.

Further, you did not state what you tested, or your methodology. Many users of this camera have been shooting and playing back in 1080p60, and editing 1080p60 files via their NLEs. I have primarily been shooting in 1080i60 mode for entirely non-critical work and web distribution. However 1080p60 worked just fine as well, but is a more difficult workflow because you cannot log and transfer right off the camera as you can with the complaint AVCHD 1080i60 content.

In addition, you can examine the Panasonic specifications directly on the Panasonic website, and the distinctions are extremely clear:

RECORDING & PLAYBACK
Signal System 1080 / 60p, 1080 / 60i

Video Recording Format
1080 / 60p : MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (original format)
HA / HG / HX / HE : MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
(AVCHD standard compliant)

Recording Mode
1080 / 60p (28Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HA (17Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HG (13Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HX (9Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HE (5Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)

Playback Mode 1080 / 60p (28Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HA (17Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HG (13Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HX (9Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)
HE (5Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)

As you can see in the specifications above, when the camera is placed explicitly into the 1080p60 capture mode, it uses a proprietary compression mode which is why FCP can’t handle that content directly as it can with the 1080i60 modes all of which are AVCHD compliant (at various bitrates as desired). And as one would expect of course, when you record at 1080p60, your available record time is about half as much as at 1080i60, because obviously you’re using roughly twice the data rate.

You can see frame-grabs of both modes here if you wish:

https://www.genkosha.com/vs/images/pana_river_p.html
https://www.genkosha.com/vs/images/pana_river_i.html

https://www.genkosha.com/vs/images/pana_waraji.html
https://www.genkosha.com/vs/images/pana_waraji_i.jpg

The first image is progressive the latter is interlaced, respectively in each pair, as you can see on motion. The interlaced is a simple weaved-frame, which is not temporally accurate of course, but is for illustration. The images come from here:

https://www.genkosha.com/vs/report/entry/tm700108060p.html

Web playback is obviously not really indicative of actual video performance of course, but here is an entire group dedicated to various 1080p60 capable consumer cameras. You can download the raw files on several of these clips to examine them yourself and see that they are indeed 1080p60:

https://vimeo.com/groups/native1920x108060pclips

With only 3 posts here on the Cow (all within a few hours) and 2 of them attacking my posts on one subject, please why not tell us who you are and about your knowledge base so that we can better ascertain and judge your information.

Sir, I apologize if my posts appeared to be attacking, that was not my intention in any way. However, your claim that consumer cameras simply inherently cannot support 1080p60 is bizarre, particularly given that such cameras do exist and are readily purchasable. The Panasonic TM700 is one such camera which unequivocally supports 1080p60 capture and output, and not with any funny business.

Now, as I’m sure you know, the quality of a camera, including its *real* effective resolution as determined more thoroughly by MTF may be very different from the sort of pixel-counting resolution claim of the sensor, the record format, or the manufacturer. Clearly not all 1080 cameras have the same real-world resolution, and this changes too based on any changing optics as you well recognize. I don’t disagree with your criticisms of this camera that you made above in terms of its performance issues, but keep in mind it is simply a ~$1K consumer camcorder. We may agree or disagree about subjective concerns as to the look or usability of the camera, etc, but there are many objective facts that are not really up for debate. And one objective-reality observation is that this camera does in fact capture and record video natively at 1920x1080p60. I fail to see why you would argue otherwise, or what you have to gain by maintaining that opinion when it is readily answered by consulting the camera specifications or any number of articles or discussions written about this particular camera. There are indeed far cheaper cameras still that record 1080p60. Yes, it is mindboggling that so much horsepower can fit in such a small device, but imagine just five or ten years ago we would all laugh at the idea of a 1080i60 camera costing so little and being widely available to consumers, and it’s not a small stretch to get to 1080p60, particularly given the entry-level Canon T1i DSLR (out a year ago, for just several hundred dollars) shoots 1080p20 and it’s not even a video camera!

As for myself, I am rather new to video production, and I have followed the Cow for a short while in my attempt to learn more about techniques on the production side of things. But I have been involved in video engineering and color science for quite some time, and am very familiar with various video formats. It is not an enormously obscure thing to ascertain in which formats a camera actually captures and records. And in this case, it is very straightforward. It’s even a 3-chip camera, so there is no fudging of say total sensor resolution before being de-bayered as you find with RED specifications for instance. But again, as you well know, the record ‘resolution’ has no bearing on anything but that particular figure, it doesn’t really say much about the quality of the camera itself. Simply because it records at what is ostensibly a more-capable format than a 1080i60 camera has no bearing at all on the quality of that recording, particularly given the absence of any feasible 1080p60 distribution method.

But there are scores of discussions and examples online comparing the 1080p60 mode versus the 1080i60 mode of this camera. Not all, of course, are trustworthy but many are. If you have some revolutionary claim as to some other nefarious tactic deployed by Panasonic to create a fake 1080p60 format wasting twice as much space simply as a marketing ploy, I’m curious to hear it, but the claim that the camera simply doesn’t shoot 1080p60 just because you don’t believe that it can is an untenable statement absent any rigorous evidence.

Regards,
-Chris

[Chris Wiggles]

[gary adcock] ”
For the record most of the consumer HDMI specifications include line doubling to allow for the HDMI’s need for true progressive output when the incoming signal to the device is interlace, which is the case for all 1080 broadcast signal.”

Sir, I do not know what on earth you mean here.

HDMI is a single specification defined by HDMI, that changes only with generations of HDMI versions.

HDMI has no need for progressive output, and fully supports a large variety of interlaced formats. I am not sure if you are confusing pixel-repetition for 480i over HDMI with line doubling. The two operations are unrelated, and quite distinct. HDMI has a minimum bandwidth, and video formats with rates below a certain threshold do pixel-repeat to reach the minimum bandwidth for HDMI operation. This has no impact on video quality, as the sink device (the destination, presumably a display, etc) simply discards the repeated data.

All modern digital displays will generally scale incoming signals to a progressive format as none but CRTs are capable of actual interlaced display. This has absolutely nothing to do with the HDMI specification. HDMI fully supports interlaced signal transmission. And if you have an HDMI-equipped CRT display you absolutely can output and receive un-altered 1080i60 broadcast content, and display that natively at 1080i60 on the CRT. In fact, I count SEVEN different 1080i rates supported by HDMI 1.3, which to my knowledge is not changed in 1.4, and has remained stable since 1.0. Only additional higher resolution formats such as 4K have been added in subsequent specifications, no removal of existing supported resolutions/rates. That many displays will process a 1080i signal, as they do all incoming signals to generally a 1080p60 rate for display has nothing whatsoever to do with the HDMI interface or HDMI specifications which thoroughly support 1080i at various rates. And 1080i is widely an acceptable input format via HDMI, in fact I believe it is required on all HDTVs by the FCC(I may be mistaken about this for input signals, but I have installed hundreds upon hundreds of TVs, and every single HDTV has supported 1080i via an HDMI input if an HDMI input was available. Quite a few older sets did not support 720p60, however.

This is something of an aside, but I fear you’re are getting fairly confused in this discussion.

Bottom line: the panasonic TM700 camera DOES affirmatively capture, store, and output 1080p60. And there is no external reason why it couldn’t that would have anything to do with HDMI, or that it would need to ‘pad’ 1080i60 content to 1080p60 simply for spec-compliance with HDMI. That is a vastly erroneous understanding of HDMI.

[Chris Wiggles]

[gary adcock] ”
I am sorry that you do not seem understand that we are in totally different worlds.
I am glad the tool fits your needs, that was not my experience with the camera.

I keep referring to professional standards and the needs for mainstream, you bring up codecs and rolling shutter to obfuscate the issue I keep repeating.

You have never worked in a “Real” version of 60p by your own admission, so you assume what you are seeing is accurate, even though you have no accurate frame of reference to learn from.

it is as simple as you do not want to understand or accept that 1080 60p is PsF not P or that by you own admission your “60p” content will not correctly import into FCP ?

What the camera’s imager does is a wholly separate issue from how that content is captured or delivered to a display device.”

I’m sorry, but you are mistaken about this entirely.

This panasonic camera affirmatively DOES capture, record, AND output native 1080p60 content.

Additionally, it also captures, records, AND outputs 1080i60, and 1080p24 within a 2:3 60i wrapper (not native 24p frames in a 24p format, but functionally equivalent if properly IVT’d).

The 1080p60 mode of this camera is 1080p60. Period. It is not PsF, it is not line-doubled 60i, it is not scaled 60i, it is not some kind of “fake” 1080p60 as opposed to your insinuations about “real” 1080p60 or some other format altered to a 60p container. It is native 1080p60, from capture to output format.

FCP does not recognize the non-standard AVCHD compression method that panasonic is using internally to the camera for 60p. For this reason, Panasonic includes software for windows (only windows) to convert this to other editable formats, etc. If you’re on a mac, you have to find your own workaround, which is where clipwrap and other workflows come into play to create a proper 60p ProRes editable video file which you can then edit in 60p within FCP without any issue. And it most certainly is 1080p60. FCP isn’t confused, the file isn’t mis-tagged, or otherwise screwed up. It is 60p. Period.

The filesizes and bitrates used for 1080p60 capture in the camera are ~twice larger than 1080i60, again due to inherently twice the data rate of 1080p60 versus 1080i60.

Your claim that this camera simply doesn’t shoot 60p and that panasonic (and dozens of camera reviewers and users) is lying about that is absolutely false. Whether you had the camera properly in 60p mode and playback mode I do not know.

It is true that this is not a broadcast quality production camera. It has many many artifacts, and many obstacles if one wanted to use this in professional production. However, that is entirely unrelated to the question of whether it does, in fact: capture, record, AND output 1080p60 content, natively. It does do this, as a matter of objective, verifiable fact.

Your claims that it is simply line-doubled 60i, or 30PsF, or otherwise is not 60p is simply erroneous.

To the original poster:
“I was assuming Panasonic’s claim was correct because in the FCP browser the rewrapped footage is listed as 1080, 60fps and progressive. I must say this is all very confusing. Should I “convert” the files to what Final Cut knows to be 60i ?”

Panasonic and FCP and clipwrap and quicktime are all correct. The re-wrapped file *is* 1080p60 and should be left like that in FCP unless you need some other output format, in which case it would probably be better to leave that to compressor on output to say 1080p30 for vimeo or youtube or whatnot, or 1080i60 for a distributable format via BD, etc.

Mr. Dennis Couzin is correct in his statements on these topics.