Still too noisy. Any clean setting?

I swear the noise threads are started by sony or canon fanboys hoping to somehow discredit panasonic or p2 cameras. They are the same people who want to record 20 hours continuously and couldn't possibly have 15 seconds to stop their camera to format a p2 card.

The HVX noise issue is a myth perpetrated by the competition. And they post it here time and time again in hopes of dissuading potential HVX buyers who look here. There I've said it. And No I don't own a tin foil hat. But I do wonder what an IP check of the posters of HVX Noise threads would show in common. I notice the majority of HVX Noise posters do so with fairly new and inactive forum profiles.
 
Kholi said:
Hey, I don't expect it to perform like a 300k camera, either. I've gotten over the whole noise thing. Just that hiding it with a good monitor isn't making it disappear.

The best you can do is light appropriately and learn your camera. If it makes you feel better, use a better monitor and ignore the noise altogether.

Otherwise, time to buy a new camera, yeah? (Not to Mark Harris but overall.)
Click to expand...

The problem is the contrast ratio of new LCD's. I don't know how to explain, but displays with poor contrast ratio do not favour the HVX at all. Set them to Dinamic mode, and its even worse, because its over saturating the picture and over sharpening it.

But the HVX noise issue is nowhere near close to the Noise issue of the DVX100a- Now that was noisy.

HVX200 is fantastic in low light for an 1/3 inch ccd camera. I've worked with it a lot in low light, And it looks great. Here's an example: (just broadcasted on CNN Asia, BBC Asia, TVB Hong-Kong)

http://www.macautourism.gov.mo/en/events/majoreventsdetail.php?rid=63

Click on the "Promotional Clip 2007" for a bigger video (still not that nicely compressed, though, sorry.

Entirely shot with the HVX, no additional Lights. (Street Lighting)

(Sorry about the quality of the web video :) )
 
MarcMalkowski said:
hmmm well I can't see too much noise either! Even with my 35mm adapter attached...

http://marcmalkowski.de/videos/M2_HVX_DV.mov
http://marcmalkowski.de/videos/M2_HVX_DV_2.mov


(no cc / just downscaled to the web size)
Click to expand...


Cool grips, is this a Zacuto setup?
I can see the noise on your footage, and it's not reconversion noise, it's the original HVX noise. You can see it in the greish part of your second clip, on the wall.

Arson , about Canon fanboys, you are wrong, i'm not one of them, i own an HVX and i love it.



.
 
Watch some 35mm shows and you'll see plenty of grain in the mids.

For the HVX, we light it, keep our ratio less then 8 stops from highlights to blacks and try to expose in the F4 - 5.6 range whenever possible.

Grab some full-res images for us and we'll have a look.

FWIW, RED is looking somewhat grainless. It's only a $30k jump to get into that one from the HVX.

e
 
You can look for noise and you will find it. Or you can accept the look and treat it like a filmstock. I shoot Super16 at school and every stock has a particular grain pattern. It's very noticable if you look for it, but I'm not looking for that. And if you light well your audience isn't going to care about that, unless you point it out to them. This camera loves light.

And yes, Red is looking pretty grainless.
 
Two places where noise gets grossly exaggerated: LCD monitors, and P2 Viewer.

The LCD monitors have their own self-noise, but any nonprofessional monitor is likely to have the sharpening turned way up. That's the way my Dell 2405 was, and it made the whole image look like a crawling noisefest. I turned the sharpening off, like it's supposed to be (who wants artificial sharpening on their monitor?) and it looked much better. Still looks absolutely horrible through the component inputs though -- computer monitors are *not* professional video monitors and should not be trusted as such!

Second, P2 Viewer's codec is probably responsible for much of the complaints about macroblocking and noise. It's NOT in the source footage, guys. P2 Viewer's codec is optimized for speed, not quality. If you play a clip back in P2 Viewer you will *not* be seeing your footage at its best! Raylight can demonstrate this -- Raylight is optimized for quality and produces notably better-looking footage than P2 Viewer does. P2 Viewer apparently uses hardware acceleration to speed up its decode process, but the hardware it's using is MPEG acceleration, and the MPEG coefficients are not the same as the DVCPRO-HD coefficients should be. They're 'close enough' that it gets away with it, but the difference causes noise and macroblocking in the shadows. So don't use P2 Viewer to gauge the quality of your footage, especially on a laptop screen! Use the camera itself playing the footage back to a proper HDTV.

Lastly, Cineform users who are using the P2 Viewer decoder are getting a less-than-optimal experience. There's a reason that Cineform allows you to substitute in the Raylight codec for the decoder. Yes Raylight is slower, but that's because it's working to deliver footage optimized for quality, whereas the P2 viewer codec (which is what Cineform uses by default) is optimized for speed and not quality.

So if you're complaining about noise, and you're watching your footage on P2 Viewer on a laptop screen that has the sharpening turned up, then your claim of "noise" has no validity. Watch the footage straight from the camera on a proper monitor that's not oversharpened to see what the footage really looks like. (Of course, you may do that and still think it's too noisy for your personal taste, but at least you'll be having a proper, representative look at it!)
 
5 EASY FIX TIPS FOR NOISE

5 Tips for Decreasing Noise on your HVX

(in my opinion...90% of noise problems happen when the operator forgets to do the 5 following things..)

* WHITE BALANCE (turn it to manual..and tap the AWB button on the front of the camera)

* BLACK BALANCE (press and hold down the AWB button on the front of the camera)

* IRIS (move the spinning knob on the front of the camera. Sometimes my Iris count (5.6-8.0) will re coordinate itself when the camera is turned off. Always move the iris around. For the most amount of light...shoot it as "open." (a no brainer for most people...but still worth mentioning.)

* ND Filters (I have turned it on...left it on...accidentally bumped it on....you name it. Nothing is worse than looking through a camera and seeing only 30% of the light that is actually there. If you think your camera isn't allowing enough light.. do the first 3 steps...then turn the ND filter to on...and then to off. Something I normally do in any day's worth of work where the ND filter was once needed.....remembering to turn it back off is the hardest part because the ND filters will stay on no matter how many times u unplug the battery and shut it off. THe ND filters are located on the front of the left side of the camera)

SHUTTER ON/OFF (Whenever you set up a scene...do the first four followed by a switch of shutters from on to off (no matter what number you are on.) Turning the shutter on and off will reveal a dramatic increase/decrease in light. (located on the left side of the camera where the LCD pops out from.)

You can make it easy on yourself by selecting everything to AUTO...but that can run into many many problems that weren't anticipated.

Any questions? hit me up. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I still learn something new everyday in this business.


computer monitors are *not* professional video monitors and should not be trusted as such!
Click to expand...
Barry Knows Best.....no doubt about it. I wish the people at the APPLE store would realize the same thing.
 
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Interesting Barry. That could account for a lot of the noise complaints. I'm not using P2 viewer or Cineform and I guess that explains why I'm not seeing the noise people are talking about. That post is worth a sticky, we should really take that post and create a proper workflow for optimal viewing of footage.
 
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yea that is what i am talking about ,proper monitoring is not masking the noise, its showing you whats really there. same thing with the "is the hvx a 1080 camera" if youve ever seen its footage on a 65" 1080p screen in 720p then 1080p you will say "ohhhh hey look at that, its way sharper "

make sure youre doing your footage justice is all i'm saying
 
TimurCivan said:
yea that is what i am talking about ,proper monitoring is not masking the noise, its showing you whats really there. same thing with the "is the hvx a 1080 camera" if youve ever seen its footage on a 65" 1080p screen in 720p then 1080p you will say "ohhhh hey look at that, its way sharper "

make sure youre doing your footage justice is all i'm saying
Click to expand...

Agreed! And being one of the early HVX PAL users in FCP (Yes, back in the days of FCP 4.5), I started to shoot for a long time in 1080p, and never went for 720p like most USA or NTSC users. Believe me, after the 720p workflow was "enabled", and having shot many months in 1080p, I can definetly say there's a very significant difference between the 720p and 1080p signal in terms of resolution and detail.
 
i use a decklink and a broadcast sd crt-monitor and better hdtv.
on the crt the noise of the hvx is very less, but on the hdtv
its horrible. and yess i can also see the difference of 720 vs 1080.
the hvx is responsible for the noise in my sitation and i had the situation,
that a client claimed it.

yes, i shoot with manual awb, but often in the preset of 5600k.
i ve forgot to do the blackbalance, is it the reason?

sometimes i think my camera is broken :-/
 
someday said:
Cool grips, is this a Zacuto setup?.
Click to expand...


thanks but no, it's a Cavision Setup. All I need now is a ENG Rig support rod... with suspension and a belt,... I mean.. the whole setup is fairly heavy and I can operate it for an hour or so but then my muscles start aching too much!

1152638534_b960612186_b.jpg
 
SPZ said:
The problem is the contrast ratio of new LCD's. I don't know how to explain, but displays with poor contrast ratio do not favour the HVX at all. Set them to Dinamic mode, and its even worse, because its over saturating the picture and over sharpening it.

But the HVX noise issue is nowhere near close to the Noise issue of the DVX100a- Now that was noisy.

HVX200 is fantastic in low light for an 1/3 inch ccd camera. I've worked with it a lot in low light, And it looks great. Here's an example: (just broadcasted on CNN Asia, BBC Asia, TVB Hong-Kong)

http://www.macautourism.gov.mo/en/events/majoreventsdetail.php?rid=63

Click on the "Promotional Clip 2007" for a bigger video (still not that nicely compressed, though, sorry.

Entirely shot with the HVX, no additional Lights. (Street Lighting)

(Sorry about the quality of the web video :) )
Click to expand...


I've used the camera in extreme low light before, will be doing it again in a couple of days and still doing it more. It looks pretty nice when output directly from camera to my LCD even @ 720p (not enough recording time for 1080 at concerts/shows). That's not to say, however, that I still don't see the noise.

Either way, OP (Original Poster) can try outputting directly from camera, adjusting settings appropriately and making sure there's light around to alleviate the "issue".

It's no longer an "issue" with me: It's not stopping me from making money, then it isn't an issue. =P
 
snpx said:
i use a decklink and a broadcast sd crt-monitor and better hdtv.
on the crt the noise of the hvx is very less, but on the hdtv
its horrible. and yess i can also see the difference of 720 vs 1080.
the hvx is responsible for the noise in my sitation and i had the situation,
that a client claimed it.

yes, i shoot with manual awb, but often in the preset of 5600k.
i ve forgot to do the blackbalance, is it the reason?

sometimes i think my camera is broken :-/
Click to expand...

maybe somebody could shoot a short testclip, 3-4 seconds would
be enough from a blue sky and put it online in native resolution,
either 720p or 1080i25p.

i really would like to clear up the mysterium.
the clips postet here in this thread are useless to see noise or not, sorry.

would be very nice, thank you in advance.

best regards
thomas
 
There were a few tests like that here, should still be up but dunno where to look.

To be honest, that horse has been dead for almost a year and once in a while someone comes with a stick to beat the stink out of it. The camera works, sure it has noise, but it works for now til one can upgrade or rent.

S'pretty much it. Better start learnin' those settings! =P
 
Kholi pretty much said it. A lot of it has to do with the settings. And, lighting properly.

My early footage (like a lot here I'm sure) was noisy, banding, and disconcerting... But, I don't really see any of that in my footage anymore.... For one, I don't shoot something that doesn't have adequate light. For two, I'm getting a lot better with tweaking the settings (but really have only just scratched the surface there) and knowing which ones to use in a particular situation to help me accomplish clean footage that lends itself towards the final look I am after.

There is a decent learning curve for this camera for folks who are less experienced (like myself). It can be overwhelming if you don't do your research. But, there is so much information out there... you just have to wade through it, and apply it... test it.... The learning curve doesn't have to be that big.
 
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