HMC150 questions answered...

sure enough, I just caught your post #157. Maybe that quote from the Vegas 8.0b release notes is wrong... Maybe the "official" word is its not supported, but that "under the table" it works

with Vegas support (official or otherwise) and some clean conversions from TMPG, I am becomming more comfortable with a potential purchase this October....

exciting :)
 
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I tried one of the files in Vegas 8.0b and Vegas hung. Did you import or drag and drop?

As I noted above, I converted DVCProHD and tried Raylight and that worked well. I'll give Vegas another try with the original files. That would be cool. Can you edit the files?

Barry, I saw earlier that the Panny (Mainconcept) converter created 960x720 instead of 1280x720. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that the files I got out of the process were 1280. I'll go back and double check that too?
 
psts said:
Bob, I used Voltaic to convert the files which took an awfully long time on a g5 quad. But besides that, did you notice any artifacts - especially in the sky ?(by the beach footage)
I'm seeing alot of artifacts there and I'm wondering if it's the transcoding program (voltaic) or my monitor or the avchd.
Click to expand...

A lot of factors come into play here:

(1) Most people are going to watch the footage on an HDTV at a typical viewing distance of 9 feet. In order to get the same viewing angle on a computer monitor, you'll have to move back about 3.5 to 5 feet. If you are sitting 2 feet from your computer monitor, you are the equivalent of sitting 3 to 5 feet from your big screen HDTV. It's easier to see the compression noise the closer you are to the screen.

(2) Some LCD monitors have a limited color range and will make a video look worse. My son's 15" LCD has only 6 bits per color and generates a lot of banding artifacts. When I show the same video on my iMac's display , it looks a lot better. An ideal display would be a CRT.

(3) In some cases, compression noise is hidden when the video is playing, but if you pause the video, the noise is easier to see. In fact, moving the video frame by frame will make the noise stand out. Still shots can be helpful, but they also make the compression noise stand out.

(4) The VoltaicHD program may be adding some noise to the video. Right now, it's the only way I have of looking at the footage, so I can't be sure of how much noise it's adding or not...


I've been looking at the VideoMaker videos and Barry's videos and have come to the following conclusions:


1080/60i: (VideoMaker: Park shots ...) If you sit back around 3.5 to 5 feet from your computer monitor, this mode looks OK. For those who sit 2 feet from the monitor, you can see the compression noise as the video is playing. Part of the problem is that the interlaced video is burning up critical bandwidth that would have been used to give us a better image.

1080/24p: (Barry: 00002.MTS, 00004.MTS) There's a major reduction in the image noise by going to progressive and a lower frame rate. If you look closely at medium solid colored objects you will catch a hint of the compression noise. (If you're not looking for it, you won't see it.) Pause the video of the harbor shot and look at the side of the boat to see some of the compression noise. Also, moving slowly frame by frame will help show it. From this mode to all other modes that follow, I'm having to work to see the noise. On an HDTV at normal viewing distances, no one is going to see any compression noise.

720/60p: (Barry: 00013.MTS, 00015.MTS, 00019.MTS, 00087.MTS, 00095.MTS) I can't be sure if this mode has more of less image noise than the 1080/24p mode. If I have the same shot of the same thing, I could tell, but I'm looking at different shots. So, if you look close, yes there is a slight amount of compression noise, BUT for normal viewing on an HDTV, you'll never see it.

720/24p: (Barry: 00025.MTS, 00032.MTS, 00074.MTS) WOW!!! It's getting VERY hard to see any noise and I have to do weird things to see it; like set the image size to 2x normal, pause the video and move frame by frame. Any video compression will have some compression noise, but there is so little compression noise here, that it's hard to find.


While I don't have any 720/30p footage to look at, I'm willing to bet that it should be about as good as the 720/24p footage.


Bob Diaz
 
Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9.0a running on XP32- they all open fine, they play slowly... but they all open without hanging.

If Sony can get thier consumer apps to work with it, then Vegas Pro 8 should have no issue- maybe they are waiting for Pro 9??
 
kurtmo said:
I tried one of the files in Vegas 8.0b and Vegas hung. Did you import or drag and drop?
Click to expand...
I have to confess, Vegas hung on me once. I tried two times more, it worked. But it also hangs on my Vista machine with other footage, so this is not directly related to the HMC150. Other programs hang occasionally as well, even Firefox. I cannot blame Vegas until I find out why it hangs up.

kurtmo said:
I'll give Vegas another try with the original files. That would be cool. Can you edit the files?
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I watched clips and browsed forward and back over timeline, but did not try to do any editing. I can edit other AVC video, including 17Mbps HF100 video.

BobDiaz said:
Some LCD monitors have a limited color range and will make a video look worse. My son's 15" LCD has only 6 bits per color and generates a lot of banding artifacts. When I show the same video on my iMac's display , it looks a lot better.
Click to expand...
Correct. DOn't watch and especially don't edit on a TN craptomonitor. Most of them (all?) are 6-bit and they have horrible viewing angles, especially from below. Get anything but TN, like IPS or PVA or MVA. These panels are more expensive and (I did not know that until I got one) use lots of power. Sitting in front of my 24-inch MVA monitor is like sitting near a fireplace :)
 
OK. Vegas 8.0b crashes for me with 150 footage in XP -- I wonder if it's a Vista driver issue or something like that. Will investigate further . . .
 
David Jimerson said:
OK. Vegas 8.0b crashes for me with 150 footage in XP -- I wonder if it's a Vista driver issue or something like that. Will investigate further . . .
Click to expand...
Does it crash every time? As I said, it hung once, but worked fine two other times. I have no access to my Vegas machine at this time so I cannot retry right now. Which file was that?
 
No, I mean Vista may have drivers XP doesn't, to allow Vegas to access the AVCHD.

Anyone else with Vista wanting to try?
 
Thanks for your willingness to help Barry!

My question is about the audio of the HMC-150.

The idea of starting with compressed audio then post processing seems troublesome.

Do you have any opinions about how far one can bend or work with the HMC-150 audio comapred to PCM audio?

This is the only really big prosumer-ish attribute imho.

Thanks
 
Cranky said:
Oops, I thought that it has two slots. It's a pity, but not a dealbreaker with 32MB cards around the corner.
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32GB cards aren't "around the corner", they're available today. :)

Again, I might get used to oversharpened video, would be great to see what it looks like when you turn sharpening up.
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I'll try some +7/+7 stuff and see if I can find anything that looks good...

2.5 f-stops over the HV20, this is huge! With such great sensitivity one can forgive low-res sensors.
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The HV20 is very slow. Any perceived sensitivity from that cam is all from electronic gain. The HV20, with no gain, clocks in at about 80 ISO. It can crank up its gain to +27dB (which makes for nasty grainy images). The HMC150 is 500 ISO, 2.5 stops faster. It can then go up to +18dB of gain. +6 is okay, +9 is not bad, +18 gets pretty gnarly.
 
Cranky said:
Icons? From a BD-player perspective, you need index.bdm and movieobj.bdm in BDMV directory and clipinf and playlist files for the whole boondogle to work. But it is hugely unreasonable from an NLE to require full directory structure. I am really surprised that you cannot load individual files.
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Yes, the file icons are different colors.

The hierarchy is identical and the ones I identified are placed properly.

It took a while to reconstruct the hierarchy because I used the VideoMaker hierarchy as a template for Barry's.
 
My original test of Vegas 8.0B was with Vista 32bit. I don't generally have problems with apps crashing. No access to my video laptop at the moment. I'll try soon with both XP and Vista.
 
Edweirdo said:
that would be sweet if Vegas opens 1920x1080 PH mode Panasonic AVCHD, I didnt try it since this is what it says at Sony...

"Added support for reading 1920x1080 AVCHD video. 1920x1080 AVCHD files created by Panasonic camcorders are not currently supported. "
Click to expand...
8.0B crashes pretty hard on me. I wonder if it works for others because of Vista vs. XP? Any XP/Vegas users able to read the files?


cranky- did all of barry's clips load in vegas, and were any of them PH mode?
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All my clips will always be in PH mode unless I find some compelling reason to shoot 1080/60i in some other mode. PH is the only way to get 720P and 1080P and it's just better...
 
kurtmo said:
Barry, I saw earlier that the Panny (Mainconcept) converter created 960x720 instead of 1280x720. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that the files I got out of the process were 1280. I'll go back and double check that too?
Click to expand...
Actually I think the Panasonic tool doesn't support 720p at all. It converts to 1080 DVCPRO-HD, which is 1280x1080.
 
Bassman2003 said:
Thanks for your willingness to help Barry!

My question is about the audio of the HMC-150.

The idea of starting with compressed audio then post processing seems troublesome.

Do you have any opinions about how far one can bend or work with the HMC-150 audio comapred to PCM audio?

This is the only really big prosumer-ish attribute imho.

Thanks
Click to expand...
Still have to run audio tests. I'm no fan of compressed audio either, I'd much rather have PCM. But at least it's AC-3 compression instead of MPEG-1 Layer II...
 
Cranky said:
Right, the spec says that AC3 is possible with rates of 64 to 640 kbit/s. Is it possible to manually select audio bitrate?
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No controls for that. It's perhaps set based on what video recording mode you're using (i.e., I wouldn't expect 640kbit/sec with 6mbps video, that'd be 10% of the data stream! But maybe with 24mbps mode it's using the full 640? I don't know).

Maybe someone can demux the stream and see what it reports for the audio stream?
 
Barry_Green said:
Actually I think the Panasonic tool doesn't support 720p at all. It converts to 1080 DVCPRO-HD, which is 1280x1080.
Click to expand...

Just Checked the 720p mxf files that I converted. They are 1280x720 with square pixel ratio. The mainconcept tool seems to have left all the files in the native pixel ratio of the original avchd. I haven't seen any 1440x1080, 1280x1080, or 960x720.
 
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