e no bs D90 mjpeg compression assessment

I agree that the D90 image is over compressed. The image is also "broken" i.e. stair-stepping. But Matts masterful talents have help everyones images. Thank you Matt! But never the less its a broken image and I wonder why Nikon put this camera out in this condition. Comparing the stills with a frame grab from the video is a real stomach turner but I imagine it's about the same as comparing a 35mm film still to super8 or 16mm film.

There is still something special about the image, something "pleasing" about it and primes with perfect focus are even better. So my personal struggle with this camera is what kind of story can I tell with the cameras imperfections and use them to an advantage.

I'm not trying to pull off a feature like you guys are doing. A good short is my current goal.
 
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hepabst said:
Comparing the stills with a frame grab from the video is a real stomach turner but I imagine it's about the same as comparing a 35mm film still to super8 or 16mm film
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exactly, and there's nothing wrong with those two. i've shot 90% of everything i've made on them. :-)

/matt
 
i too have wondered that.

Could anyone please post a high/full resolution Grab with sharp focus so i can see how soft the images is an assess the compression quality? I would greatly appreciate this. Need to see where the shortcomings of this camera are set.
 
The reason is simple. How could the D90 have such a good still and a video still that is so screwed up and be a Nikon. It's about what we are all looking for, a great, clean, video(filmish) image and at a great price.

I for one, am looking forward to the day that they get it right. I got a lot of Nikon glass.
 
I've been looking at the D90 SDK and recently got a frame from the D90's Live View. It's a good example of my question"What was Nikon thinking when they designed this camera?" The frame is 640 x 426 900kb but the compression is set to "Basic". It looks like a 20kb thumbnail upscaled with a useless 95% JPEG compression applied hence the 900kb file size. Each LiveView Frame has a seperate header file (.dat 128Bytes) with the image info( in HEX). The shutter speed for every frame is there. But I'm not sure if it's the camera's shutter setting or the shutter speed that LiveView is actually using.

The Live View settings, frame size and compression can not be changed via the SDK.
 
That's an unrelated issue. Why would anyone want to grab heavily compressed low res images via usb unless you're trying to build the world's most expensive webcam?
 
"Why would anyone want to grab heavily compressed low res images via usb unless you're trying to build the world's most expensive webcam?"

A D90 still (small) with compression setting of "Normal" is about 750kb. If the LiveView stream settings could be changed to these settings it would be streaming a 2k+ stream with less overhead than the current crap stream. That was my reason for looking at the SDK.

The camera has the potential but I don't think Nikon will give it away cheap.

Nevertheless I will be eventually coming up with a short. People here like you Matt and others have inspired me to see what I can do with my D90.
 
The D90 video is just an "experiment" from Nikon. That's all. If you want to look for a quality image were there isn't any, it is ok, knock yourself over. At some point though people will have to realize that the 720p quality of the D90 is to put it bluntly: crap. The sharpness is not there consistently and to compound the problem the focusing is way too difficult and inconsistent also. It is a good way to practice for what the future will bring, though.
 
yeah, you've made it very clear that you need a lot of practice. i just don't think it's fair to blame your lack of talent and experience on the camera. :-)

/matt
 
and if you happen to shoot a feature while you practice it's all good

focus? focusing is fine. have you got bad eyesight John?
 
I love my D90! I've made a lot of money with it. I am at this moment shooting with it product shots of a jewerly collection for a catalog, a line of organic herbs to be sold at major markets in NYC, a line of cosmetics that are on their way to Macy's, all stills. Would I shoot video with it for these products, hell no! It would destroy the quality of my work. If I am going to shoot video I use my HVX 200. Beautiful footage from a great camera. Noise you might say from it in low light, then of course I will use enough light. Again, the D90 in video is a total experiment, nothing more. If you are planning for best quality video forget about it. To recommend the D90 for video would be a total diservice to the person asking for advice.
 
any advice is good if it's from the right person and thus comes balanced and explained correctly. why someone should ever take advice from you i don't know. i find it very hard to imagine you "planning for best quality video" if you can't even focus a manual lens.

/matt
 
The thing for me is if I look at it, the D90, using my "tech head" I see a bunch of problems with the video. But it's my "Arts head" that sees the sweet side of the D90 video. I love the colors and how my primes look. So...

TechHead - crap means bad.
ArtsHead - crap means good.

John, have you done anything non-commercial, artsy, for fun etc... with your D90 video? If you have I'd love to see it.
 
the tech side of my head is constantly battling the art side over the D90. It's time for a lobotomy
 
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