Jan Crittenden livingston
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Peter,
Just contact me of line, let me know where you are geographically, and we will go from there.
Best,
jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Peter said: “Meanwhile, I just got a bit of good news. My client — the one who has been the primary motivation for my investigating a better-quality video cam (compared to my Sony DSR-250) and who actually needs 24p and the optical characteristics of 2/3” lenses & CCDs, genlock & TC I/O and so forth — informs me their editing system is an uncompressed SD FCP system.
However removal of the 24P will cause some quality loss.
AA BB BC CD DD method of pulldown, standard 2:3
12 12 12 12 12 Odd and even frames, look at how this cadence stacks up against the pull down. The C frame, once you remove the B and D fields is in the wrong order. it is 21.To remove the B and D Field and field reverse the C fields will be the challenge, and last I knew, in Cinema Tools, which is the Software inside of FCP that would do this, needs to be told where the A frame is on the beginning of every clip. A painstaking task. Probably easier to just edit in 60i and not remove the frames.
>So, at least in regards to this client (who accounts for a good percentage of my income), the Sony DSR-450WS with its funky 24p standard 2:3 pulldown feature may be OK. If I understand what Graeme & Jan have indicated in this thread, Sony’s dumb*ss method of handling 24p doesn’t result in quality loss in an uncompressed editing environment.
That isn’t totally true, there is a bump, but perhaps not as great as starting in compressed, then moving to uncompressed and going back to compressed. Of course the storage requirement also escalates when working in uncompressed. I mean this standard 2:3 has been used for years when offlining films.
>Of course, this bit of news doesn’t address the somewhat diminished usefulness of 24p tapes I might shoot with this Sony cam for _other_ clients, depending on their post path. Grrrr … 🙁
Actually since the majority of the 24P NLEs now get the 2:3:3:2 removal on the fly, you may get looks that are analogous to having two heads. Like, what do you mean this camera doesn’t do 24PA? that is dumb. Even Sony’s Vegas does 2:3:3:2 removal.
>The AJ-SPC700 is much less expensive than the $18K Sony DSR-450WS, and I’d primarily record the AJ-SPC700’s output via Firewire to a Sony GV-D1000 “DV walkman” portable recorder.
But you would be relegating the camera to DVCAM level? it is a DVCPRO50 camcorder, why do 4:1:1 when it can do 4:2:2? Also I noticed that the DSR-450 camera doesn’t seem to have any built-in cine gammas and the adjusments on the gamma, looks rudimentary at best, low, low-mid, high-mid, and high. And the gamma curve represented in the brochure is odd indeed. I am sure it would have to make better pictures than what this curve would indicate but it doesn’t seem to take the highlights out past what I would call a standard video white clip level.
You should take a few minutes and down load the operations manual on the SPX or even the SDX to see the sorts of adjustments that you can get. Take a look a the SDX900 website and spend a few minutes looking at the downloadable scene file area. All of the scene files there were created in camera, and are recreatable with a download, save to SD card and load into your SDX900. You could probably get closer to your price on a demo SDX900. And then there is the Goodman’s Guide to the SDX900, which by far is the best book written on working with the digital cameras, well next to the Goodnman’s Guide to the VariCam.
Anyhow I do suggest that you try the cameras out before you purchase.
Best regards,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Keep in mind that the transfer rate on the SD cards in the P2 is 60X and that there is a Zero Defect Tolerance. Anything less, is less and should not be expected to work flawlessly, and that is our expectation from P2. And if dropped can withstand a G force of 15Gs.
Best,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
When it comes down to an image, it starts with the lens, and then the chip set. The chip set is an analog device. The signal coming off of them is an analog signal. The next thing that happens is turning that signal into a digital one, and that is doen by sampling. How often it is sampled is probably as important as the size of the chip set. From a higher sampling frequency we can expect a more accurate repesentation of the image in front of the camera. Then the sample is quantized into the DSP. The DSP is responsible for the gradations of color, tones and edges. The greater the Bit Depth the better the ability to control the picture and present it to the recording section of the camera.
The size of the pixel can actually work against the picture if it is too small, it can add noise to the picture and fight the latitude and low light performance. Too large and you don’t have resolution. I have also seen discussion on these boards that pixel shift technology is a bad thing. Well, we call it spatial offset and maybe Sony does too, but without it, all of the cameras would have stipes going down the pictures. You can prove to yourself that your camera does it by capping the camera, and boosting the gain to 18dB, no stripes, your camera is utilizing some sort of spatial offset. What it does is to cover the non-photosensitive areas of the chip set and give resolution back, by offsetting the red and the blue chip by half a pixel. Then depending on the manufacturer the green signal is either simply gated or put through a delay to wait for the the red and blue signals. It then moves onto that sampling frequency after another process that defines the shading of the camera. White shading and black shading is how the camera determines what white and black are in all parts of the screen. In the Panasonic cameras the shading is done in the analog domain but monitored in the digital domain, any fluctuation and it is corrected digitally. This way we can match cameras with identical setups.
Another piece of this puzzle is how the chips are held to the prizm block. When we patented our solution some 15 years ago, we discovered that if you attach the chips to the prizm with the same material that the prizm is made of that as the camera gets warm, the chips don’t shift at a different rate than the prizm itself. In digital cameras, it does get warm. If this stuff was easy, anybody could do it; it really seems like rocket science to me when you consider all of the pitfalls that the signal could hit and be ruined. And all of it contributes to the image quality of the camera. Pixel size is not everything, it is portion of the overall picture. High pixel density without some of these other considerations could result in signals that look inferior.
Anyhow, I hope that adds to the discussion.
Best,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Our current techology is 14 Bit DSP.
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Hey Peter,
It looks as thought that realy cool feature in the workflow called 2:3:3:2 or 24PA is not available on this camera, so you will have to render out all of the 24 frames. Can this realy be?
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Michael,
I have now read this post on two forums and if I go to DVInfo I will probably find it there as well. I am not sure of your motivation, but in all honesty, I find that these sorts of posts make the waters even more confusing. Frankly the DVCPRO HD codec is fit for post production. I have seen a good number of films that were shot with the Varicam, and shot with the DVCPRO50 camera, the SDX900, all blown up to film and the DCT did not get in the way. I have seen the SDX900 footage blown up to a 35′ screen without even going to HD upconvert and it was gorgeous.
Please note that virtually all of the digital formats use DCT, including HDCAM and by your reasoning it too would be unsuitable. There are those that would move to another codec for certain processes but as a standard rule, they would not. If it were me and I had graphic work to do, I would probably just go to an uncompressed domain for such work.
Thanks,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
[Peter DeCrescenzo] Of course the DSR-450WS is “only” DVCAM (not DVCPRO & DVCPRO-50), but it includes 24p & 30p as a standard feature, and has a reasonably-priced SDI option available for “live” 10-bit 4:2:2 output. “
So how does the Sony lay the 24P to tape? And is it a true progressive capture? I kept meaning to get over there but couldn’t break away.
Personally I would price them both out and look at real performance before I made a decision.
Thanks,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Peter DeCrescenzo wrote:Jan Crittendon:
That is Crittenden. 😉>I’m wondering if you have answers for the following questions concerning the new AJ-SPC700 2/3″ 16:9 shoulder-mount P2 SD camcorder:
1. Might “24p” be available as a field (or Panasonic service depot) upgrade for this camera?
No, that would be the AJ-SPX800.
2. Can the camera output a “live” DVCPRO-50 datastream out its Firewire port? For example, not first stored on P2, but output directly via the FW port into Final Cut Pro?
Of course, the 1394 port is an option but it is possible.
Best regards,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
[Graeme Nattress] “Am I on the right track here Jan?? I know that if I was developing a new cost effective camera I’d try to re-use rather than re-invent as much as possible, “
Hi Graeme,
You are right on the money. Oddly enough though once past the compresion engine, it stil has to be proven at every frame rate, so while the engineers have their work finished on the front end, they have to make it all work on the back end.
Best,
jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems