Graeme Nattress
Forum Replies Created
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The lens is the first limiting factor the light meets as it enters the camera. It’s vitally important that it passes exactly the right level of detail too – not too little (or it’ll be blurry) or too much (aliassing artifacts). So the resolution of the chips, their type and if anything like PixelShift is being used are all factors in how much detail the lens needs to pass.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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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
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The DVCproHD codec is done using 4 DVCpro codec chips, and DVCpro50 is done using 2 DVCpro codec chips. DVCpro just uses one of them :-).
There is a specific data rate that each chip can handle. Therefore resolution of image is limited. 720p is double the pixels of DV, and 1080i is double the pixels of 720p in DVCproHD format.
These 4 chips are not user-reprogamable, so don’t expect “upgrades” to them.
As for capturing the “full” resolution – I think you’re expecting too much here. Every camera has a resolution filter on the front of it – the lens. Lenses that let more detail through are more expensive. I thoroughly expect that even if you could rig up the camera to capture the full raster, although you’d get more resolution, I severely doubt you’d get more actual real detail. It’s detail that counts, not resolution. You can take VHS and blow it up to HD size, and now it has 1920×1080 pixels, but it has no more DETAIL than which it started with.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Because Jan, the Panasonic rep said that when it 720p24, say, that it doesn’t put the dupe frames to P2, whereas it would put the dupe frames to tape on the Varicam, say, to keep the tape speed constant.
Also, being “old” in a codec sense is advantageous – it has wide support and is proven in the field.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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All the HD deliver formats are not full raster. Broadcast HD is not full raster. If you’re doing film work on HD, you’re doing it totally uncompressed, so no need for an intermediate codec there.
Cineform’s quality white paper is heavily biassed, and because of their workflow, they repeatedly squash and stretch the image from 1280×1080 to 1920×1080 then back again as well as apply the DVCproHD compression – of course it’s going to look soft if you do that to it. But if you’re editing DVCproHD, then this does not happen. If you dub DVCproHD from one deck to another you do it over firewire and loose no generational loss at all.
Again, why are we talking about an intermediate codec designed for HDV use (because HDV as MPEG2 is painful to edit) when you can quite easily edit DVCproHD without converting to another codec? I really don’t see the point here. As for DVCproHD not being online quality – it’s no worse a codec than the HDCAM one, and any HDCAM workflow, even editing uncompressed isn’t going to produce better results really, and both HDCAM and DVCproHD are more than good enough to wow the viewers at home and keep the broadcasters happy. As I say, if you’re going for a more exacting environment, like for digital cinema, you’ll be going totally uncompressed anyway.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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My thoughts exactly. Intermediate codecs are for when you’re shooting with a distribution codec. DVCproHD is more than suitable for both acquisition and editing. Then you convert to a delivery codec, or render out uncompressed for D5 or HDCAM SR. No intermediate codec needed at any point here.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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At that point, surely, you edit uncompressed and have the advantage of faster renders due to much less processor overhead.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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So how is converting DVCproHD to an intermediate compressed codec going to improve matters? This is just the same as people who edit DV uncompressed thinking they’re getting a better picture out at the end – they don’t! Even if you’re mastering to D5 or HDCAM SR, you’re still going to edit your DVCproHD footage as DVCproHD, flip your codec settings to uncompressed when you’re finished, do a final render then out to tape. Where does an intermediate compressed codec help you here?? If you’re plugging in a deck worthy of rendering uncompressed, you’ve certainly got the money for the RAID and HD card to handle it.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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But the whole idea of DVCproHD is that it’s edit friends. No sensible edit workflow would go down more than one DVCproHD generation anyway. If you need to export to a compositing app to do something funky, you can export either very lightly compressed, or totally uncompressed, or even as is. As long as you ensure there’s only ever one decompression and recompression to DVCproHD you’ll not suffer any real issues.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP