Anyone tried Cineform with HMC150 yet?

T

TheMusician

Well-known member
I just got my HMC150 two days ago. It is a very logically laid out camera and a very nice piece of equipment. Unforunately, I am not getting as clean of footage out of it as I have seen on vimeo and downloaded from Barry. I just ordered his book and am hoping that it will give me some good pointers for optimizing coring and detail levels, but I still feel that there is a lot more grain in my footage than there should be(yes, AGC is off). I am editing on Vegas, and not only am I seeing grain but also macroblocking on solid colors/gradients. I am not convinced that Vegas is up to snuff yet for AVCHD (it may be, I'm just not certain yet), so I was thinking about purchasing cineform to do some transcoding into a more editable format and to test this grain/macroblocking. SOOO, has anybody tried Cineforms products for converting AVCHD to AVI yet, and has it worked well for you? I already have it for converting HDV, so don't need general advice on cineform products, I am interested in specifically transcoding AVCHD using their tools. Thanks.
 
I actually played with the Cineform ProspectHD demo on a some footage I shot from a preproduction unit this morning. First experience with Cineform... and it looked pretty darn good. I would download the ProspectHD demo... it's a full demo for 15 days.

That said, when did Barry's book come out? I wasn't aware he had written one for the HMC yet.
 
Sorry Mike, Barry has not released an HMC150 book yet. But he has written a book for the HPX170 that you can buy and it basically covers everything that you need for the HMC150 as well. They both have most of the same features, menu layouts, exept the HPX170 has variable frame rates, and AVCHD is not covered. But still a very useable text for the HMC150. Thanks for the heads up on the the downloadable demos. I will give that a shot.

How is your footage looking? Is it as clean as has been eluded to everywhere?
 
I only got to play with the camera for a few minutes in a poorly lit room... but was still sufficiently impressed with the footage I shot under the circumstances. The transcode into the Cineform codec looked exactly the same as the source stuff... only easier on my CPU.

Just out of curiosity... have you tried playing the footage straight out of the camera onto a TV? Is the footage still grainy?
 
Yep. I played it back on a 40" Sony Bravia HD LCD. Oddly enough, 720p looked a lot better then 1080p. I am having a problem in both modes(both set at PH), but 1080 is a lot worse and shows a lot more macroblocking. Just a note to anybody reading, everyone has been giving this camera great reviews so please don't read too much into what I am saying, I may have just gotten a poor camera or I do not have something set up correctly. But I am having a problem and am trying to figure it out. As soon as I recieve Barry's book and have tried out the cineform demo, I will start posting frame grabs if I am not able to get it figured out.
 
What scene mode are you using? I'm using Sony Vegas 8.0c and I'm getting fantastic results. With the AVCHD codec, I'm surprised you are seeing macro-blocking. Are you seeing that on the preview window or in rendered output?

The codec you use to render out of Vegas will make a big difference. Try rendering a .mov using the Photo-JPEG codec at 90+ percent quality. Should give you a great image.

Personally, I don't think you need Cineform. I've rendered out of Vegas to intermediates using the Cineform codec that comes with Vegas and using Raylight with transcoded footage. I get the cleanest images using raw footage in Vegas.
 
TheMusician said:
I just got my HMC150 two days ago. It is a very logically laid out camera and a very nice piece of equipment. Unforunately, I am not getting as clean of footage out of it as I have seen on vimeo and downloaded from Barry. I just ordered his book and am hoping that it will give me some good pointers for optimizing coring and detail levels, but I still feel that there is a lot more grain in my footage than there should be(yes, AGC is off). I am editing on Vegas, and not only am I seeing grain but also macroblocking on solid colors/gradients. I am not convinced that Vegas is up to snuff yet for AVCHD (it may be, I'm just not certain yet), so I was thinking about purchasing cineform to do some transcoding into a more editable format and to test this grain/macroblocking. SOOO, has anybody tried Cineforms products for converting AVCHD to AVI yet, and has it worked well for you? I already have it for converting HDV, so don't need general advice on cineform products, I am interested in specifically transcoding AVCHD using their tools. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I have had my HMC150 for about two weeks now and use Vegas 8.0c on a Quad core machine. I have been getting excellent results from both the camera and Vegas 8.0c.

I have rendered to NTSC DV, NTSC DV widescreen, HDV (for HD-DVD discs) and Blu-Ray codecs all with excellent results. Remember to set the quality slider higher than the midpoint for Vegas renders.

You shouldn't be seeing any grain (noise) to speak of. List the settings you are shooting with including the factory scene mode or your custom scene mode settings. You don't somehow have the digital zoom on do you? That will kill the image quality.
 
Hey Jeff, what CPU are you using? Are you able to play back realtime okay? I ask because I'm on a Q6600 (2.4 quad), and am wondering if that will have enough horsepower to actually edit with. I haven't bought a camera yet, and am on Premiere CS3 which doesn't support native editing (hence the reason I was playing with the Cineform demo).
 
i edit on two dual core intel systems, a E6600 and a new T8400. Your quad core should have the power to handle this.
 
I think I found one of the biggest culprits in my noise problem. I was shooting everything in Cinelike D gamma, and when I switched to Cinelike V, a lot of the noise in the shadows cleared up. Does anyone have any suggestions or are there any threads on best situations to use certain gammas? I am planning on shooting a wedding in 3 weeks and wonder what the best gamma for that situation would be. Any info helpful - thanks.
 
hey kurtmo,

i know ur getting great results using the lagarith codec but whenever i export a clip using the codec, i get choppy/slowmo playback in windows media player. i'm using premiere pro. any suggestions on how i can make this work?

jon
 
if its the same as the HVX.. then the bpress gamma is awesome for low-noise. Use that exclusively on the HVX.
 
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