A-1 for sports?

Atwinator

Atwinator

Active member
I do sports videography for a local university and I have been using a Panasonic GS400 for this over the past year. The results have been great and the university was very pleased with the footage at the end of the year athletic banquet. They want me to do it next year again and I am seriously considering getting the A1 for the task. Has anybody used the A-1 for high motion action sports? If so how were the results? Any motion artifacts? If anybody has any A-1 sports footage that they could show that would be amazing. Thanks in advance for any info.

Ed
 
Thanks Russ it would be great if you could post some boxing footage. If the A-1's HDV can handle flying fists it should be fine for any sports I'd imagine. I have been told the HVX might be better suited to this application but the problem is that quite often it takes an hour or more of shooting to get that great 10 second shot so I guess it would be considered long form video. I think I would bankrupt myself very quickly P2'ing my way through that. Either that or I would miss the good action while offloading! Anybody having experience with a high motion scene (sports or not), a sample clip would be greatly appreciated.
Russ, what mode do you plan to shoot the boxing in?

Ed
 
50i with a fast shutter speed I think maybe 1/250 lighting should be pretty good aswell, what do you think?

Russ
 
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Sounds good to me. Really a matter of trial and error from my experience. I remember early on reading that 60i (50ifor you) was best because it provided more information on a frame by frame basis which would make for the best results in things like slow motion. So after I read that I did everything in 60i and it looked fine. I tried a 30 progessive frame mode that my camera has once too just to compare and it looked fine as well. However I didn't want to mix footages on the timeline so other than experimentation kept it all 60i. One thing I always do for hockey games and gymnasium stuff like volleyball and basketball is to turn the backlight compensation on. This made a huge improvement. I actually went to each location early and played with different settings to see what would work the best and viewed it back on the laptop rather than the camera lcd because what I saw on the lcd was always much brighter than reality. As far as shutter speeds, I would increase it to as high as 1/250 but only when there was plenty of light. Indoors I found that was much too high and usually just kept it at the default 1/60. Have you already done boxing footage with other cameras? What settings did you use before?

Ed
 
Actually now that I'm thinking about it more I have also read many times that progressive modes translate motion smoother than interlaced ones. Could anyone make a suggestion about that? I'm on a break now from this stuff until late August so if I change the way I do it, camera I use etc. I basically have until then to get it right.

Ed
 
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hiya yeah I was thinkin about doing 25f but didnt want a film look per say ,Im interested to hear other views on that too , I was shooting boxing before on a DVX pretty standard settings shutter1/50/60 always had good results even in slo mo,I'll look into the back light settings, one good thing about about the boxing plenty of light on the ring:) I'm still going to film the next gig on the DVX but use the A1 for some tests with diffrent settings should be intresting to see cus I've heard some negative things about fast motion and HDV but I can say with out doubt now what I've filmed so far with the A1 look's better than I could have imagined
Russ
 
You just hit the nail right on the head. The fast motion artifacts in HDV are exactly my concern. Canon recently put up this footage: http://usa.canon.com/app/html/See_T...e/hd_3ccd.shtml . Check out the 1080p file. This is the one that concerns me. The 720p and 480 p ones look fine in comparison as far as motion artifacts go. The scenes with the horses and the bull show it the most. But, are these interlaced artifacts? Or is it even possible to have these in a 1080 p(progressive) file? Unless someone has an expert explanation for it, footage like the stuff you'll get with the boxing will be the only way to know if this is a serious issue. I really hope not because I want badly to get this cam as I am extremely impressed with every other aspect of it.

Ed
 
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1176416125.jpg





This is a grab of what I'm talking about from the 1080p file.
 
as a quick reply I'd say that looks like an interlace issue, I noticed when I shot my first test with the A1 I had what looked like a ghosting effect but this was on a fast train and aircraft footage with more or less straight out the box settings, hope to clear up this soon tho with some hard core tests
Russ
 
I would have said interlace artifact as well if it weren't labelled as a 1080p (progressive) file. Maybe it's an error and really a 1080i file. Maybe it's a software deinterlacing or h.264 artifact?? Anyway can't wait to see your footage. Anyone else have any high motion footage or any idea about this issue or if it even really is one? The thing that gets me is the 720p and 480p files both looked fine on my screen. Just the normal motion blur.

Ed
 
Well, that's odd. If it's from an XHA1 or XHG1, you'd think they'd have called it 1080/24F, and there should be no interlacing whatsoever, ever.

If it's 1080/24P, it should have been from the HV20, and yes interlacing would be part of the whole package.

Regardless, you're definitely seeing the results of interlacing in that frame. So if it was sourced from an XHA1 or XHG1, they either captured it through the analog or HD-SDI ports, or they incorporated the footage into a 1080/60i timeline which would add 3:2 pulldown. There's plenty of image degradation in there otherwise anyway, but the big thing you're seeing there is interlacing.
 
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Barry, have you seen the clip posted on Canon's website? It's pretty underwhelming, and amateur-ish compared to what we've seen here, isn't it? (And that's me, the amateur talking).
 
I have not seen it, no. But the camcorders are capable of fantastic results, so I wouldn't blame the camera if a shooter got underwhelming results with 'em.

That said, there are certainly some instances where the camera itself can be a limiting factor, and sports with HDV may be pushing it; depends on the sport. I would think horse racing would be one of the hardest things for HDV to handle.

I put that clip in PhotoShop and tried to de-interlace it, figuring that that would settle the interlace question once and for all. But it didn't; I am guessing that when they resized the clip, it broke the every-other-line interlace cadence so a simple de-interlace won't fix it. But I'd still bet that it's interlacing added by an editing system, and not the fault of the original footage.
 
Okay, I downloaded it and played about 1/3 of it, until I got through the horses.

First, there's interlacing because all the footage is interlaced. At least in the section I watched, there's nothing 24P or 24F about it. So you're seeing interlaced lines because they posted interlaced footage. Every shot is interlaced; look at the waving pennants in the early stuff and freeze-frame it: it's interlaced. So the interlacing is not an HDV artifact, it's just interlacing.

Second, the horse footage is just terrible -- it exactly exemplifies the kind of mush that HDV turns to when it's taxed too far. I'm really surprised they even put that footage in there.
 
It's amazing how much the footage undersells the XHA1. And what's with all the 'living' stills? It only conveys the message that you need to hold the camera very still. Also, it seems that the operator has never heard of the phrase DOF. Oh well, glad we have ample examples from real professionals here.
 
I cover about 40 different sports (largest university sport program in Canada) including very high motion ones such as football, rugby, and lacrosse. I guess some of those would have as much or more motion than the horse scene at times.

Barry, do you think the 24 f mode would work for my needs? Or does the camera have any other F modes? Also I downloaded all three of the clips from the site and the 720p and 480p ones are much better as far as the interlacing goes. Any idea why?

I'm hoping they just accidentally assigned the production of the clips to the janitor because I really want this camera!

Ed
 
24F/24P would be totally the wrong choice for sports. People are used to seeing sports broadcast as "live".

It's not "motion" so much that gives HDV fits, it's unpredictable motion and the overall level of detail. Sports reacts because you usually play on fine-bladed grass and you have stadiums full of people's heads in the distance, and all that detail crops up, and then you throw motion on top of it. But something like horse racing is far worse for HDV (and broadcast HD) because the dust and flying dirt plays havoc with the compression system's ability to predict where the motion is going.

I wouldn't recommend a long-GOP system for recording sporting events.
 
Im takin my camera out tomorrow to film some cricket practice sessions in the nets gonna try 50i with diffrent shutters anything else you think I should try? Russ
 
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