Will EX-1 be leaps and bounds better than HVX?

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ncje,
You could venture over to reduser.net and find out about the RED.
As far as the EX1 is concerned, at the end of this month we will be putting it through the paces.
 
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I did sir and found a thread that had been locked and since then there has been no discussion. So I am still very curious. Of course I dont want to get the rumour mill working over time. It would be nice to know some cold hard facts though.
 
ncje said:
What worries me is the phenomenon of rolling shutter wobble. Ive seen it on a HV20 myself and some footage posted here. Can these companies physically employ a better or improved system to remove it?
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Yes, if they went with a global shutter, but nobody does. Thomson actually tries to control it by running at double the frame rate (so internally it's running at 120fps when they're recording 60p, apparently). At least, that's what the guy at the Thomson booth said.

I tested the Thomson Infinity for rolling shutter, and yes it happens, although milder than I've seen on any other system. The Red seems to exhibit rolling shutter to about the same degree as the Infinity.

Sorry I am just not fully understanding it. I mean what is the likelyhood that it may effect someone while usint the cam for proffessional purposes?
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It happens in many circumstances and it'll happen in professional circumstances as well as amateur. There's really not anything you can do about it -- it's endemic to the sensor design. I've seen evidence of it in the Red, the V1U, the Infinity, and the HV20. I have no doubt whatsoever that it will affect any rolling-shutter camcorder.

It's not just wobble, it's the partial exposure thing too. Sooner or later someone's going to shoot a food commercial where they want to employ strobe lighting to make crystal-clear water droplets in poured drinks, for example, and they're going to find out that such a shot is simply impossible on any rolling-shutter system. Someone else is going to shoot a lightning storm and find their footage is unusable. Someone else is going to shoot footage under older office fluorescents and find that their footage is full of pulsing flickering lines. Someone else may run into a problem with pulsing/flickering with an HMI light (or any other discontinuous light source). And on and on.

Either the companies will ditch rolling shutter and go with global, or we as shooters will have to learn all sorts of new rules to the video game.

Then Im on the next question. I saw mention that RED was rolling shutter, can the RED be effected by the same thing?
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Of course. It definitely has a rolling shutter, and can be affected by rolling shutter artifacts. I've seen some.

going back, have they employed a better system to prevent it?
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From my understanding they have taken steps to minimize the effect, they pushed it as far as they can and it has definitely helped, but they can't eliminate it.

My point is RED (and maybe this is best suited to another thread ) is going to be used on higher $ productions where a rolling shutter wobble event could cost much more to reshoot. Surely its been addressed here by Sony and RED right?
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It can't be. It's endemic to the sensor technology. If it uses CMOS and it has a rolling shutter, it's going to exhibit rolling shutter artifacts. Thomson and Red have taken steps to minimize it, but it still happens. I don't know the degree that Sony may have taken to minimize it; I was supposed to see one today but Sony bailed out on the DMF exhibition here in Sydney.

Rolling shutter can cause problems with compositing and match-moving; the guy who makes Syntheyes recommends everyone stay away from rolling-shutter camcorders. Many of the early Red buyers are apparently VFX artists who want/need their own camera, so it'll be most interesting to see how those guys get along. If anyone's gotten it under control it's likely Red, because they know who their product is aimed at and how their product is going to be used. I know they say it's much better since the "Crossing The Line" days.
 
Barry,
I may get a chance to compare the HVX to an EX-1 next week . Can you suggest practical tests to look for some of the possible problems you've mentioned with EX-1.

i.e what kind of test might show up wobble, partial exposure, etc.
I guess we could look for a room with older flourescents somewhere for one.

- Lenny Levy
 
You know until now Barry, I've never even thought about the rolling shutter effect in relation to Crossing The Line, but that might explain the weirdness that was happening on the white lettering on the tail of the plane during the dogfight.

When I brought it up on REDuse,r after seeing it at NAB, I got stiffed a bit by saying that I saw something weird during that part of the scene. Some just figured I was crazy and got angry at the mention of it. Even RED people got offensive. Almost turned me off the camera just because of the inability to admit that it was possible.

That said, it will be interesting to see if Rolling Shutter is much of a limitation in Red productions. Things sure are looking good in that camp lately.

Anyway, I've been hearing a lot about rolling shutter for some time and never put two and two together until reading your always informative posts.

thanks,

Jason
 
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Lenilenapi said:
Barry,
I may get a chance to compare the HVX to an EX-1 next week . Can you suggest practical tests to look for some of the possible problems you've mentioned with EX-1.

i.e what kind of test might show up wobble, partial exposure, etc.
I guess we could look for a room with older flourescents somewhere for one.

- Lenny Levy
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Easiest way to test if it exists at all is to put the cam in a slower frame rate (like 24p) and just pan back and forth rapidly past vertical objects. Put the cam on a tripod and swing it back and forth, if vertical objects remain vertical at all speeds then they've tamed the beast. If they lean diagonally, then you've confirmed that the issue exists. May not have confirmed the degree to which it exists yet (that depends on how far it leans and how fast you had to move to get it to lean) but at least you know it's there. On the Infinity, even though they've optimized for it, I could get objects leaning and wobbling if I pushed it to a pretty good pace. Not saying that's a practical shooting scenario, of course, but it's a way to see if they've solved the issue or not.

Another thing to do is to lock them both down on tripods, with monitors, side by side, then tap the tripod handle to introduce a little bit of bounce. The CCD or a global-shutter camera should respond normally with a bit of bump in the video, the rolling-shutter cam will stretch and wobble during such an excercise.

If you can take it handheld, just walk around on wide angle with both, then split-screen the footage. Rolling shutter footage will look like Norbert's.

Take 'em in a reasonably low-lit room, and set off a flash or two. The rolling shutter cam should show big dark bars in it.

Under older fluos, especially flickering fluos, you'll see pulsing in the CCD/global shutter cam, but in the rolling shutter you may see black flickering lines, or banding (it'll look a lot like shooting a computer monitor without clearscan or syncro scan).

If you can get it under strobelights (a disco or dance event, perhaps a wedding) or a place where there's lots of flashbulbs going off (a boxing match, a red carpet premiere event, etc) or big changes in brightness (shooting a rainstorm with lightning strikes) then that should be a rough test of how it can handle some real-world scenarios that people are likely to put it in.

The worst would probably be to mount it to a car or a mountain bike, especially a mountain bike. Rapid vibration should expose the worst of any extant rolling shutter issues. Try it with and without OIS, and with normal or super-high shutter speeds. Higher shutter speeds don't bring out more rolling shutter effects, the effect is always the same, but a higher shutter speed lets you see it more clearly because it removes the blur that might otherwise mask it some. (which, I guess, means that yes a higher shutter makes the effect worse, but not really -- the amount of wobble or lean is the same at slower or higher shutter speeds, it's just that the slower shutter speeds introduce motion blur that masks some of the obviousness of how much wobble or lean is actually there.)
 
Thanks once again Barry,

One of these days I need to buy you a drink.
Let me know if you get up to Marin anytime soon.
Scotch or Margaritas - whatever you like.

Stevet,
I think we know what the low light comparison will be already.

By teh way - Barry

Ona completely different topic. A number of times I have wanted to post images on this site and when I go to the "member upload center" it says I don't have priviliges for that. is that normal? Do I need to have some other website to post pictures that pertain to issues here.

- Lenny levy
 
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Steve - go peddle your wares somewhere else. If the EX is good, I'll buy one. Or five. I just don't care too much for a dogmatic defense of a camera that isn't released. Let it speak for itself.
 
taormina said:
Let it speak for itself.
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That's been my point. I absolutely amazed how "other" cameras get trashed on even though they have not been released. You are right though, this is an HVX forum section on this forum, but the thread, which I did not start, cleary states the topic.
 
Stevet said:
That's been my point. I absolutely amazed how "other" cameras get trashed on even though they have not been released. You are right though, this is an HVX forum section on this forum, but the thread, which I did not start, cleary states the topic.
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As a camera user about to buy a Sony EX1 or HVX, my question and comments were posed to, but not limited to, HVX users that had more experience with the HVX than me. Since the EX1 isn't released and no one has one, the assumption was that on paper it appeared the EX1 had some attributes that were better than the HVX, but not leaps and bounds better. ANd from a feature standpoint the HVX still seemed to be the better choice.

It was not meant to be a EX1 discussion. It was a disussion comparing a well entrenched HVX and a not yet released, looks good on paper camera.

I believe it was in the proper place.
 
Morpheus, assuming you dont have $$$$ projects now, just wait until you see real world user reviews of the EX, and then you can make educated comparison with the HVX.
 
it's great having manufacturers coming out w/ newer(hopefully better) cameras. can't wait to see what panny comes up w/ in it's next update...hvx200a...hvx250?

to add fuel to the fire, here's a quote from a doug jensen article w/ first hand experience w/ the ex-1:


"P2 was built on outdated technology before the cameras even came out on the market, but there wasn’t a viable alternative at the time. Today, P2 is really showing its age and it’s only going to fall further behind. SxS cards, on the other hand, offer tremendous performance improvements."

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/find/newsLetter/Sony-PVW-EX1.jsp
 
boo said:
"P2 was built on outdated technology before the cameras even came out on the market, but there wasn’t a viable alternative at the time. Today, P2 is really showing its age and it’s only going to fall further behind. SxS cards, on the other hand, offer tremendous performance improvements.
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Panasonic would only need to made a P2 "adapter" card to take advantage of, lets say, an SxS card or something similar to end that argument.. call it a P3 card ..lol
That way it stays backwards and forward compatible.
Load your SxS card into the adapter, insert into camera like a normal P2 card, shoot, remove SxS from adapter, then take advantage of the higher bandwidth of the SxS card to transfer/offload footage.

May be a pipe dream, but the future is wide open, and I doubt Panasonic is about to kill off P2, leaving tons of users stranded.
 
boo said:
"P2 was built on outdated technology before the cameras even came out on the market, but there wasn’t a viable alternative at the time. Today, P2 is really showing its age and it’s only going to fall further behind. SxS cards, on the other hand, offer tremendous performance improvements."
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A load of crap, bordering on trolling. 60,000 units sold, and 80% of broadcasters buying HD are going P2, so how is it "falling behind" at all?
 
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