1080p 2/3" PL & C mount Lenses - NAB just got NAB-ier

You are being unfair. The camera is a great concept at a great price, and the images are very promising. I wouldn't be so eager to bash a camera due to small web hosted WMVs... The latitude is amazing, and the codec seems to be very cool. It's a solid workflow choice, and I can see plenty of potential costumers for such a product (isn't that what NBC shooter kept asking for for over a year now? :D ).

If it's better than RED, we'll have to wait for NAB to see, but I can honestly say, I'm very excited about this camera too!
 
Interesting.

Technically, the specs blow me away. A 2/3 chip with HD recording. It looks to easily top the XL H1, the HVX200, and the HD100U specs wise.

That said, the footage appears to be quite a different story however. While I'm very impressed with the sharpness and the lattitude, the actual image just doesn't impress me as much as I'd hope. The colors and the gamma curve simply don't look nearly as filmic and pleasing to the eye as the HVX200.

I know I'm going to sound like a broken record but it still amazes me how well Panasonic appears to know image quality. It's hard to really articulate but their colors and their gamma curve simply look far better than anyone elses and it amazes me how much more important that ends up being, to my eye at least, that resolution. In fact, it's the one thing that kind of has me worried about RED. I can't help but fear that it'll end up offering amazing specs at a great price but, in my gut, I'll feel that the HVX200 still produces a nicer image even if it's softer.
 
DavidBeier said:
That said, the footage appears to be quite a different story however. While I'm very impressed with the sharpness and the lattitude, the actual image just doesn't impress me as much as I'd hope. The colors and the gamma curve simply don't look nearly as filmic and pleasing to the eye as the HVX200.
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I have been making WMV HD files from my HVX shoots.
I can play them on my Buffalo player on my 52" DLP.
I downloaded one of the clips from the website. It was grainy, much more so than my HVX. The gamma curves were off, I don't know if ot was the DP's lighting or the video editors lack of CC?? But I will stack up my HVX output to this concept camera anytime anywhere.
Lay it down, baby!!
 
I think the footage is amazingly filmlike. There is some strange green hue there but absolutely less video looking than most of the footage I've seen in this forum. I've spent the last few weeks trying to decide between the hd100 and hvx, but now I'll wait till I find out more on this camera.
 
Scrappy said:
I think the footage is amazingly filmlike. There is some strange green hue there but absolutely less video looking than most of the footage I've seen in this forum. I've spent the last few weeks trying to decide between the hd100 and hvx, but now I'll wait till I find out more on this camera.
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Next week I will have a new website with plenty of space and I will post some comps of my HVX footage. This company has an interesting concept and I will keep my ear to the ground but I feel that Panasonic will still have a few tricks left as well to unveil at NAB.
 
taubkin said:
You are being unfair.
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I don't think I'm being unfair. I said that the camera itself seems nice, and I'm ecstatic to see a new option come to market. I don't, however, like their recording methodology of using CineForm & a Windows PC - especially when they claim an Open PC system in their specs.

Also, the reason that I said "announced specification" is that by the time it ships, they may have a variety of other options, etc.., but the announced specifictation behind their recording system is quite disappointing to me. Hopefully that will change, or at least become truly "open".

All that being said, the footage they chose to place on their site to showcase the camera is awful. I'm sure the camera is capable of much more, but the footage their showing really isn't 'complimentary' to their camera system. The reason Panasonic withheld footage of the HVX was to keep people from judging the system until the spec was finalized and good footage was established - I'd highly advise Silicon Imaging to do the same thing.

ciao,


My apologies in advance for any inaccuracies/poor grammar/spelling errors as it's been "beer thirty" for about 8 hours now. ;)
 
A couple months ago, I emailed SI asking for more information about this camera, and was given an opportunity to see full-rez footage, all of which was from this same production. The 1080 stuff looks as good as this, if not better. Judge for yourselves whether you like the image, I guess - personally I think there's no trace of 'video' to be found here, and that's very compelling. In the stuff I saw, there was a clip of actors walking from a sunny exterior into a doctor's waiting room lit only with what looked like available office fluorescents (maybe a little added fill). It was shot from the inside looking out, through these big glass doors. The outside was over-exposed, but nothing was blown-out. If I remember, the sky was still blue. Fingerprints could still be seen on the glass.

There's definitely a grain issue, but you can tell from these clips that the movie isn't very 'robustly' lit. It's hard to tell where the limitations of the camera stop and those of the shooter begin.

Plus, the image from a commercial camera goes through all kinds of electronic manipulation before you ever see it. For instance, one thing you're starting to see from the Andromeda, hiding beneath the compression there's more than a little noise in the raw DVX image as well.

With this camera, none of the image-fixing is automatic. The color-correction, balancing, sharpening, etc., is all left up to our own clumsy selves. It's flying without a net, for sure.
 
Scrappy said:
I think the footage is amazingly filmlike. There is some strange green hue there but absolutely less video looking than most of the footage I've seen in this forum. I've spent the last few weeks trying to decide between the hd100 and hvx, but now I'll wait till I find out more on this camera.
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I felt the same way ... I wasn't blown away by the image or anything but it looked (to me) like a telecine from film - (especially because of the greenish hue and grain ...)
 
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Andrew M said:
I felt the same way ... I wasn't blown away by the image or anything but it looked (to me) like a telecine from film - (especially because of the greenish hue and grain ...)
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As I've seen some the originals for this project as can tell you these aren't color corrected images. They do have a simple color matrix applied (not the default for this sensor), but as that is part the CineForm RAW metadata the color matrix can be turned off or tweaked in post before any color correction begins. So the base look maybe a directors choice, before any primary or secondary color correction. Remember this camera allows much of the base camera look to be processed in post, color matrices are not "cooked-in" to the compressed image.

ColorMatrixExample.jpg


When I turn the color matrix off you can see the image doesn't have a green hint, and is flatter and less saturated. All sensors natively produce this flatter image, which are much more suitable for obtaining the highest dynamic range of the image. Prosumer HD cameras pump up the image to make it look cool straight out of the box, this limits the dynamic range the degree the image can be corrected in post. Raw senor image data, like that of Viper Filmstream or even Reel-Streems Andromeda also use this knownledge to create more filmic looking images.
 
harlan said:
I don't think I'm being unfair. I said that the camera itself seems nice, and I'm ecstatic to see a new option come to market. I don't, however, like their recording methodology of using CineForm & a Windows PC - especially when they claim an Open PC system in their specs.

Also, the reason that I said "announced specification" is that by the time it ships, they may have a variety of other options, etc.., but the announced specifictation behind their recording system is quite disappointing to me. Hopefully that will change, or at least become truly "open".

All that being said, the footage they chose to place on their site to showcase the camera is awful. I'm sure the camera is capable of much more, but the footage their showing really isn't 'complimentary' to their camera system. The reason Panasonic withheld footage of the HVX was to keep people from judging the system until the spec was finalized and good footage was established - I'd highly advise Silicon Imaging to do the same thing.

ciao,


My apologies in advance for any inaccuracies/poor grammar/spelling errors as it's been "beer thirty" for about 8 hours now. ;)
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Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that directly to you. All I'm saying is that "we need more data" (quote from "short circuit"!) before trashing the thing. The concept, and just the fact that tey have a working portotype, are very cool news!

And Cheers! :beer:
 
Yeah, we need to see a lot more stuff but, at the end of the day, the image doesn't lie. It'd be great to start seeing some much better stuff coming out but, right now, the image really doesn't impress me.

As better in camera vs. better CC later, a low budget filmmaker like me has to go for better in camera. I can't afford to use things like Davinci. I still do a lot of CC work but nothing, from what I've seen, can equal getting it mostly right the first time in the camera.
 
Hi,

The Greenish hue is a creative decision from the director . . . this is the look he was after.

But as David shows, you can almost unlimited capabilities in manipulating the footage because you're working with RAW files . . . it's a similiar processo to "developing" a negative. The RAW data is a digital version of the latent image found in a film negative, and as such can be "developed" in a multitude of ways. What you see is just one variation of the possibilities that can be produced from the same footage files.

Thanks,

Jason Rodriguez
Silicon Imaging
 
DavidBeier said:
Yeah, we need to see a lot more stuff but, at the end of the day, the image doesn't lie. It'd be great to start seeing some much better stuff coming out but, right now, the image really doesn't impress me.

As better in camera vs. better CC later, a low budget filmmaker like me has to go for better in camera. I can't afford to use things like Davinci. I still do a lot of CC work but nothing, from what I've seen, can equal getting it mostly right the first time in the camera.
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This is only because you've never had the opportunity to work with the direct RAW data from the sensor.

With most video cameras on the market (well, all really except for film-stream mode in the Viper and the Dalsa), "getting it right" is required because you are irreparably manipulating the data with in-camera color matricies, sharpening, noise-reduction, pre-filtering, and compression.

With the Cineform RAW approach, you now have the opportunity to shot, and like a negative on film, post-manipulate to your heart's content. Additionally if you use our "none" white-balance mode, you can white-balance in post (so make the white-balance whatever you want), apply any color matrix transform you want, and with the 1024 levels provided by the 10-bit encoding of the footage, re-manipulate the gamma curves without banding. None of that is possible on a system like the HVX, or any other 8-bit YUV camera system. With the Cineform RAW approach of the SI-1920HDVR, you are basically getting every bit that the camera head's A/D converter produced delivered to you in post to manipulate and change-and this is especially true with Cineform's compression system which is extremely efficient and robust, what we term "visually lossless". In a RAW workflow, you become the camera's post-processing unit.

Again, think of this system like truely shooting digital film, only CineForm RAW gives you the tools to easily maniuplate the RAW data in post, with real-time effecst, play-out to tape via HD-SDI, etc., rather than trying to convert all your footage up-front to another format for editing and post, which is very time-consuming and clumsy since it removes the capability of manipulating the RAW data all the way from the camera head to delivery-you have to do it at the start and that's it. Or, like with the HVX or any other camera system on the market, get it "right" on-set since there's not much information left after the camera processing is done with the signal to really change the image in post.

Thanks,

Jason Rodriguez
Silicon Imaging
 
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We do intend to post quite a bit more video from our camera. On our forum we have an area dedicated to projects by our customers. We are also paticipating in the CML party at NAB so there should be some pros handling our camera.

As has been pointed out, this camera is more of an incremental step for us. We have been selling camera link and gigabit versions of the head for about a year. Also, we are an established camera maker, just not in this market. So, please keep an open mind and wait until we have more footage posted after NAB. I realize that in this industry people get very skeptical about all the hype. This is not a spec sheet, this is a camera.
 
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