F3: 444 vs. 422 Anyone had experience comparing the two?

So I'm assuming that once you start going past 4:2:2 10-bit, the returns are not as great as jumping from 4:2:0 8-Bit?

So is the jump from 4:2:0 8-bit to 4:2:2 10-bit really that big?
 
I don't know about 444 but there is no question that 10 bit 422 in S-Log is much better to grade than 8 bit 420. S-Log requires you to stretch out the waveform and I have recorded in both (internal and with Samurai) and find the color information much more robust in the 10 bit 422. In the hypergammas or exposing more like the final product, it does not make nearly as much difference.
 
gene_can_sing said:
So I'm assuming that once you start going past 4:2:2 10-bit, the returns are not as great as jumping from 4:2:0 8-Bit?

So is the jump from 4:2:0 8-bit to 4:2:2 10-bit really that big?
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Exactly. 4:2:2 subsampling retains significantly more colour information (and as a result has far less colour artifacting) than 4:2:0. And at 10-bit you have 1024 distinct gradients for each of your three colours - red, green and blue. That's four times as many gradients as you get in an 8-bit image (which possesses only 256 distinct gradients for each colour). So that's four times as much colour information - it gives you a LOT more room to tweak and adjust the colours of the image you capture.

At 12-bit, your colour information quadruples again to a whopping 4096 distinct gradients of each red, green and blue! But whilst it's fantastic to have 12-bit colour depth, you can do so much with 10-bit, that you notice far less of a relative improvement than when comparing 8-bit to 10-bit.

So it's essentially a point of diminishing returns. In my opinion, where video is concerned, 10-bit 4:2:2 is that point of diminishing returns - it offers you so much quality and flexibility, that the benefits of higher quality recording above and beyond 10-bit 4:2:2 make far less of a relative difference.

Of course if you really want to push an image around, something like 16-bit linear raw is on a whole other level, but for probably 95% of shooting scenarios that level of flexibility simply isn't required or tapped into - which is why 10-bit 4:2:2 makes for a good standard of "good enough" for professional production.
 
gene_can_sing said:
So I'm assuming that once you start going past 4:2:2 10-bit, the returns are not as great as jumping from 4:2:0 8-Bit? So is the jump from 4:2:0 8-bit to 4:2:2 10-bit really that big?
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I will always find a way to say yes and no to that question:

420
If you light good, expose good, and really watch your overall scene contrast and in the end don't need to push a grade too much 8-bit 420 with hypergamma or slog can produce fantastic results! (go see Osslund's example in post #18 of this thread). But this shooting like this in my opinion requires meticulous care about everything, takes time and detail.

slog
slog can get tricky too! ie. When many people here on DVX first started playing with slog, two things that made it hard to figure out if it was even good or not was 1.) knowing how to expose for it to maximize the point of slog to begin with, 2.) grading out the slog curve to produce the best results. I shot some slog on the F3 and always over-exposed it too much, and never used the best tools for grading. Only now am I finally getting the hang of slog but that is after moving to Davinci Resolve for cc and grading.

bit depth
Yes, more bits are always better. Not only for grading but just to avoid any posterization or banding in your image on very subtle tone changes that might appear along a lit wall, or perhaps the blue sky. More bits will smoothen this out in-camera and when moving around tones in a grade.

422
422 vs 420, well... I dunno. I always managed to crank my saturation a little bit later when shooting 420 and didn't see the big deal about 422. But, for green screen work 422 is much better simply because for pulling a key the resolution for each color being sampled is higher.

Speaking of color space, here's a link comparing 422 vs 420 where you won't see alot of difference in color or saturation but instead on the edges of an object: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-xf-series-hd-camcorders/502540-xf100-422-vs-420-chroma-key.html Many people hail 422 for having "better color" but I'd say its more about resolution than anything due to the sampling characteristics.

Here is Sound Devices with their blurb about color sampling differences: http://www.sounddevices.com/notes/pix/444-vs-422-color-sampling/
 
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Shoots56 said:
I'm trying to decide what recorder would be best going to an F3. S-log, 10 bit out to a 422 system, or is it worth the trouble and expense to go 444 dual link? (this is assuming the F3 has the paid Slog update)

I know it's more of an issue when doing FX or keying, but what I'm wondering is, is there any "mojo" in the 444 files that aren't there in single sdi 422 setup? Can you really tell any difference when moderately grading either?

This isn't really a technical question so its harder to ask I guess.
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So shoots56 what the heck have you decided?
 
I feel like a good 10bit 422 system is fine for 99% of scenarios I would encounter. If someone wants more for some reason, I can rent a 444 system but I would suspect at that point I would realistically be renting a more expensive camera instead and the comments about the F3's sensor not being a 444 capable sensor would push that for sure. The F35 would be my ideal camera but the prices and shorter, paying gigs make it impractical. I haven't had the chance to play with Slog out of an F3 before so I will have to play around a lot even when I dont have a good system to do so.. Im not a post guy at all. If anyone has done a write up on tips concerning working with F3 log, I'd love to see it. The slog tests I have seen show a clear, rather massive increase in what I perceive as professional level color rendition, skin tones being the main concern, and dynamic range.
 
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Shoots56 said:
I feel like a good 10bit 422 system is fine for 99% of scenarios I would encounter. If someone wants more for some reason, I can rent a 444 system but I would suspect at that point I would realistically be renting a more expensive camera instead and the comments about the F3's sensor not being a 444 capable sensor would push that for sure. The F35 would be my ideal camera but the prices and shorter, paying gigs make it impractical. I haven't had the chance to play with Slog out of an F3 before so I will have to play around a lot even when I dont have a good system to do so.. Im not a post guy at all. If anyone has done a write up on tips concerning working with F3 log, I'd love to see it. The slog tests I have seen show a clear, rather massive increase in what I perceive as professional level color rendition, skin tones being the main concern, and dynamic range.
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Honestly, I think the key to getting great results out of the F3's SLOG all comes down to spending time in Davinci Resolve and developing custom LUTs that bring the contrast and colour throughout the tonal range up to a level you like. It requires an investment of time, but once you know how to wrangle the footage properly, the results you can get are spectacular.
 
But how do you handle that when you have to dump files off, very often to an unknown editor and color path? Would recording your LUT out of the SDI be a safer bet in that case? Or is it better to just stick with the HG when this occurs?
 
You have a couple options;

Once you create a nice baseline LUT using Davinci you can reuse it when ever necessary and run all your footage through it and then give that footage to the editor. It can be time consuming depending on how much footage you have to transcode.

Another option if you are really confident with your LUT, is you can give the LUT to your editor and have them apply it to the original footage in their editing software. Here's some info by Abelcine on getting your LUT into FCP, Premiere, and Avid: http://blog.abelcine.com/2012/06/21/applying-luts-to-log-footage-in-fcp-premiere-avid-and-resolve/ However if you do this, it could be possible that some additional tweaking might be necessary to the clips just to match exposure levels, or other small variances in the different shots.

Lastly, you can just shoot with a hypergamma and try to get your final look all in-camera. There is also a wide range of custom picture profiles you can search for and load into your camera for a wide variety of in-camera looks and in essence do away with slog all together. Doug Jensen from Vortexmedia is a huge proponent of this and I have to be honest and say I've seen some of his footage using custom profiles and its like a whole other camera all together.
 
Shoots56 said:
But how do you handle that when you have to dump files off, very often to an unknown editor and color path? Would recording your LUT out of the SDI be a safer bet in that case? Or is it better to just stick with the HG when this occurs?
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I suppose you'd have to check with the producer whether their post chain involves a formal colour-grade or not. If not, then I suppose transferring your LUTs to the camera and recording it baked-in is probably the only thing you can do (though personally I'd be extremely uncomfortable doing things that way).
 
Just note however that loading a LUT into the F3 is limited to a 1D LUT only. A 1D LUT can control R G B values separately but this limits the extent of color correction that can be done. A 1D LUT would be somewhat equivalent to what RGB curves can do in Photoshop which is still powerful, but limited for complex color corrections.

A 3D LUT allows additional control of saturation, hue, etc.. which allows for complex color correction but it can not be loaded into the camera. You could use something like the BlackMagicDesign HD Link which can apply a 3D LUT in realtime to SDI signal and then feed it to a recorder - but this is getting overly complex and as Grug put it, I wouldn't be too comfortable with that either.
 
One producer has different editors that footage goes to and I have no practical way to be able to control what goes on with it. I will just stick to the HG options for that stuff.

On a related note, are there problems with bringing in the slog footage into something like Color? I have worked with log footage before without LUTs with good results. I know it's not the most efficient path, but I can save a profile in Color and apply to related shots. I can't afford to buy some new program on top of everything else so if I happen to handle footage I have to run it through my already outdated FCP Color set up I guess.
 
Shoots56 said:
One producer has different editors that footage goes to and I have no practical way to be able to control what goes on with it. I will just stick to the HG options for that stuff.

On a related note, are there problems with bringing in the slog footage into something like Color? I have worked with log footage before without LUTs with good results. I know it's not the most efficient path, but I can save a profile in Color and apply to related shots. I can't afford to buy some new program on top of everything else so if I happen to handle footage I have to run it through my already outdated FCP Color set up I guess.
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Resolve is free. Just download the 'Lite' version from the Blackmagic Design website - it gives you everything for HD footage except noise reduction and 3D capabilities. Brilliant piece of software - I now find it hard to imagine how I was ever satisfied with the finished results I got before I moved to Resolve for my grading. It makes it very easy to finess your footage into something special.
 
Regarding 420 and 422 and grading... as Denis said: 422 will improve edges and that's it. What matters is: 1. compression, 2. bitdepth, 3. noise and 4. colour resolution. Try grading a 100Mbs 420 8 bit footage and compare it to 100Mbs 422 8 bit footage. Preferably try grading the same shot. You wont see much diference.

Grading slog without a lut can be tricky. The hardest thing for me is getting contrast in the mids. Getting the blacks and the whites is easy, getting a good picture is hard:):):)
 
Oh thanks, I didn't know the lite version was free. I will miss being able to "Send to Color" though.

Yes I don't use 8bit for anything if I can help it. A good example why- I worked a big project recently with 3 camera teams and all the footage was 8bit on another camera. To make it short, I heard some time later that there were lots of issues trying to use the footage for broadcast and it was finally rejected. It was all used for a web version of the material but it didn't translate to higher standards. I know there are endless exeptions but I am not going there again.
 
Probably not the most professional solution, but I find that if I properly white balance the shots, get exposure right, use S-Log recorded 10 bit 422, and then process the footage in Magic Bullet Looks that I can get a very nice image especially for skin tones. I shoot raw photos at the same time and color match my video to the photos using 2 screens on the computer. Again, I find that the biggest problem is that the image degrades more in transfer to Vimeo, Youtube, or later compression than what looks great even as an h.264 compressed movie on my 27" Apple computer. I have saved a variety of "looks" and use these as starting points.
 
I totally forgot about this, but I created a basic 1D LUT to de-slog footage from the F3 if anyone is interested in trying it. It does not do anything to color and you can load it into most NLE's using a LUT plugin, which you can get for free if you search. The 1D LUT moves the F3 slog middle grey back up to 50% with some de-emphasis on the super hyper gamma curve of slog. The point of it was to use as a starting base before grading.

Caution: I created it near the time I sold my F3 and never got around to really testing it much with actual footage. So I can not guarantee how great it is, but I'd love to get any feedback if anyone is willing to try it out.

You can download the Sony F3 de-slog LUT here: http://www.hingsberg.com/index.php/2013/03/f3-slog-luts/

On the same link is also a custom picture profile for the F3 I created which let's you toggle back and fourth from the slog picture profile to the one I've built which simulates de-logging in camera. This could be useful if you want to see what your scene might look like before you flip the switch to shoot in slog. Again, not thoughroughly tested.
 
Grug said:
Brilliant piece of software - I now find it hard to imagine how I was ever satisfied with the finished results I got before I moved to Resolve for my grading. It makes it very easy to finess your footage into something special.
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Exactly! That pretty much sums up my opinion, too.
 
starcentral said:
Sidenote: The only sensors which can do 100% "real" 444 are RGB stripe sensors such as the ones found on the F35, F9000, and Genesis.
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The limitation on color resolution in video encoding has more to do with the processing between the sensor and the video output than the filter pattern of a single sensor. The F3 and other single sensor large format Sony's are oversampling for 1080 HD and theoretically capable of 4:4:4 full REC709 gamut output over dual link or 3G SDI if the camera' s internal processing supports it. The S-log F3 firmware does apparently support 4:4:4 encoding over dual link.
 
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