AF-100 Another DSLR $9,000 4:2:0 is a solution?

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Please do some research before you post numbers like this.

Codec makes a big difference in the grand scheme of things. 24mbps avchd is superior to 50mbps mpeg.

Nick Navaro said:
Check this >>

http://www.abelcine.com/store/Panasonic-AG-AF100-Micro-Four-Thirds-Professional-HD-Camcorder/#tabs
AG-AF100 Recording ModesPH:
1920 x 1080 / 1280 x 720
21Mbps (average), 24Mbps (max)
LPCM/2ch or Dolby Digital/2ch
HA:
1920 x 1080
17Mbps (average)
Dolby Digital/2ch
HE:
1440 x 1080
6Mbps (average)
Dolby Digital/2ch



So the AF100 only records at an average of 21mb/sec??


TV in the UK, i.e., the BBC requires a minimum of 50mb/sec. Hell, a Sony Z1 records at 15Mb/sec and the artefacts that gets are nasty. Imagine 24mb/sec quality in post production...?? Seems like a scary prospect.


I'm really disappointed as I really like this camera, but the overall quality and depth of the picture is severely compromised. You think Panny just rushed this out for the marketing aspect. Surely seems so....


Jan > Make it record at least 50mbs in it's highest quality. I'm sure you'd sell WAY more units...
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The end video quality is a product of codec, encoder, and bitrate. Simply looking at bitrate is like looking only at mhz of a processor in a computer to determine its speed. Canon DSLR's shoot at over 40mb/s, which is over 5 mb/s more then the EX1 in a more efficient codec (.h264 is more efficient then mpeg2, which is why AVCHD uses .h264) but the EX1 encoded footage is way, way better because the DSLR's don't have the processing power to encode well (and why would they). I think we can safely assume the AF100 will have a good encoder.
 
Agreed. I read the whole thread.

My point is 50mb/sec would be better overall. Simple as that really. Apologies for confusing the issue with my poor example earlier.

NEED 50mbs!!!!
 
Please understand that AVCHD is a standard and going above 24mbps would break it. You don't "NEED" 50mbps, you want it.
 
Sure 50mbs would be better. But 100 would be better. For that matter, I bet 200 would really do the job! I won't stand for anything less then 1000!

What's your application that needs 50mbs? And if you really need that, why not get the 4:2:2 color space of the HD-SDI out and some sort of solid state recorder? I don't think most uses of this camera REQUIRE or NEED 50mbs. A properly implemented AVCHD @ 24mbs is going to be amazing in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.
 
awelgraven said:
Sure 50mbs would be better. But 100 would be better. For that matter, I bet 200 would really do the job! I won't stand for anything less then 1000!
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ha ha ...hey Ive been cranking spots for over a year with my GH-1...just making awesome images...at the end of the day, clients just want to see a good concept executed with pretty pictures...it doesn't get much simpler than that IMHO...
 
Nick Navaro said:
So the AF100 only records at an average of 21mb/sec??
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Yes. 21-24mbps of h.264, the most advanced video codec in existence.

Hell, a Sony Z1 records at 15Mb/sec and the artefacts that gets are nasty.
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Yes, but that's HDV MPEG-2. Nothing whatsoever like h.264.

Let's put it this way -- Sony says that if you want to match the quality of 25mb/s HDV, you'd use 9 (NINE) megabits of h.264 AVCHD. Nine. So if you can match HDV with 9 megabits, can you imagine how much better 24mbps of h.264 will look? A LOT.

Imagine 24mb/sec quality in post production...?? Seems like a scary prospect.
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Only if you don't know what those megabits mean.

It's like asking "Behind door #1 is a pound of food. Behind door #2 is a pound of food. Which would you rather have?" Obviously any rational person would ask "what KIND of food are we talking about here?" You might find that behind one door is a pound of pig snouts (HDV). And behind the other door is a pound of prime steak (h.264). It does make a difference.

In fact, which would you rather have - 25 pounds of pig snouts? Or 9 pounds of steak? See, it all depends on what KIND of megabits we're talking about here.

but the overall quality and depth of the picture is severely compromised.
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The footage would disagree with your assertion. In fact, one of the guys who just posted footage, Joe Lawry of crews.tv in New Zealand, recorded AVC-Intra and on-board AVCHD at the same time from an AF100. And he said that yes, the AVC-Intra is better, but "not 76 megabits better!" He said the AVCHD held up VERY well, and that he and the DP were extremely pleased with what they got from the AVCHD files.

I've tested 21mbps of h.264 AVCCAM footage against 35mbps of MPEG-2, and the 21mbps of h.264 was substantially more resilient to compression artifacts. I would put it as probably on par with about 45 megabits of MPEG-2.

I think people are hung up on numbers, instead of actual results. Look at the results before passing judgement.
 
In fact, read the review from crews.tv
http://crews.tv/blog/2010/10/12/af100-storm-gathers/

Especially the part where they said that on the edit suite monitor, the difference between 24mbps AVCHD and 100mbps AVC-Intra was "hard to spot". Granted if you do heavy grading, the more-robust 10-bit codec is going to show advantages, obviously. But the standard codec is not crippled in any way; it's a pretty darn good codec built-in.
 
Barry_Green said:
Granted if you do heavy grading, the more-robust 10-bit codec is going to show advantages, obviously.
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Not to me but then I don't know that much about color grading...

Am I mistaken to think that recording HD-sdi out to the HGP20 for 100MB/s ACV-intra still means we are at 8bit color? Sure the file is 10bit but the 2 extra bits are just and will always be 00 (double zero) placeholders. I don't understand how the robust codec facilitates color grading...

For successive generations in editing does AVC-intra (and intra codecs) hold up better than AVCHD? If so wouldn't it be best to immediately render AVCHD to say jpeg2000 as the first part of an editing workflow?
 
Yes you're correct that the initial recording over to Intra would be at 8-bit. But if you push and pull in post, all those operations would then be done at 10-bit depth, and the Intra codec is more resilient when it comes to re-compression, so if your workflow involves a lot of rendering down and exporting and re-importing, then AVC-Intra (or JPEG2000 or CineForm or something like that) would have advantages in post.
 
Barry_Green said:
I think people are hung up on numbers, instead of actual results. Look at the results before passing judgement.
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You go tell that to the BBC then. My stuff is broadcast on satellite and cable channels around the world including MTV dance. Amazingly, they are not fussy and will play HDV stuff. However, I want to take my stuff to bigger channels so NEED those numbers as that's how they work.

I recently shot with a HPX2700 to AVCIntra 100, the images were stunning. However, the camera is horrible! Too heavy, too big, rubbish controls. I got a good shoot and great images, but I just don't like the cam and it's not practical for me.

I need those images in the AF100 body! What do you say Panasonic?? Huh? Help a brother out! lol
 
Well the BBC hasn't said bupkiss about footage from the AF-100 as it isn't yet a shipping camera, so you are jumpong the gun a bit. And as far as the 2700's controls being "rubbish", that is just laughable as any professional camera person EXPECTS those kind of controls on a camera at that level.
 
mcgeedigital said:
Well the BBC hasn't said bupkiss about footage from the AF-100 as it isn't yet a shipping camera, so you are jumpong the gun a bit. And as far as the 2700's controls being "rubbish", that is just laughable as any professional camera person EXPECTS those kind of controls on a camera at that level.
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But it doesn't fall into their current parameters, so no guarantees.

Yes, having them is fine. But the viewfinder and LCD leave a LOT to be desired. The very ergonomics of weight distribution is not good. Especially with a heavy HJ22 zoom lens. I just don't like it. It's archaic.
 
Nick Navaro said:
But it doesn't fall into their current parameters, so no guarantees.

Yes, having them is fine. But the viewfinder and LCD leave a LOT to be desired. The very ergonomics of weight distribution is not good. Especially with a heavy HJ22 zoom lens. I just don't like it. It's archaic.
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That's OK, if you don't like it, no one is putting a gun to your head making you buy it, right?

If you don't like it, don't buy it, life is so simple. ... on the other hand, there are others here who understand the trade-offs that are made in cameras and are interested in the AF100.


Good luck finding a 4/3" camera for $4,995 that records that 50Mbps! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)



Bob Diaz
 
I presume the AF-100 will probably get put through its paces by the BBC as soon as reasonably possible. Until they have a go at it and decide what will and will not pass the muster, it's all just speculation.
 
Sure, but least you not forget that the AF-100 has the ability to output via HD-SDI. Thus there are numerous recording solutions with extremely high res capabilities such as the AJA Ki-Pro or Panasonic P2 AVC-Intra 100 recorder for example. To which, attempting to compare the colour information captured and processed on a DSLR such as the 5D MKII to that of the AF-100 is pointless.
 
I can't believe I read the entire thread... on the very day I plunked down my 50% pre-order deposit for the 4th of 6 AF100s being delivered to my area. I had been waffling until I saw the test footage, and said to myself that at some point, you simply just have to jump in! You can wait on vaporware or you can get a tool that works for you. As Jim Jennard was quoted in a previous thread... "the clock is ticking"... how prophetic. Well, he won't be getting my "$3K for 3K".........!

The thread reminds me of the early computer days when the ultimate question was "What do you intend to use it for?". I doubt if I will ever need to output to 35mm film, and as for color space, I have been using one of the first DVX100s for years and years for commercials, corporate, and museum films and not once has a client ever asked what color space I was working with... with Panasonic's ability to adjust the gamma etc... my stuff looks better than the 16mm film I used to shoot in the mid-late '70s.

The thread also calls to mind conversations between recording engineers and producer/mixers... one set uses meters and the others use their EARS. As my old friend, the late Cosimo Matassa (R&B hit producer from New Orleans) used to say... "if you have magic going on IN FRONT of the microphone... it doesn't matter too much what you have connected behind it" (content is paramount).

I love the steak and pig snout analogy. We are in a subjective business. Clients and audiences are either moved emotionally or they aren't. Here's looking forward to a giant leap in my production arsenal... and the work that this will enable my colleagues to produce. It's sort of like when the DVX first came out... I personally think it will be a watershed event. We live in exciting times!
Best Regards and thanks to this forum for providing a wealth of info and thoughtful insight... it has helped a lot.
 
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Barry_Green said:
In fact, which would you rather have - 25 pounds of pig snouts? Or 9 pounds of steak? See, it all depends on what KIND of megabits we're talking about here.
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But Barry, do you know what wondrous things I could cook with 25 pounds of pig snouts? Soup so silky with a mouthfeel you've never before experienced...

You are correct though - lots of people here with little to no understanding of what the numbers mean, or how they relate to one another, or that how many mb/s (or Mb/s) is just one part of a more complex equation. In the end it's what the footage looks like / holds up in post once the camera is finished and tested - even film (remember that stuff) falls apart in post if you didn't expose properly.

A little bit of noise in the blacks, or some jello on an ill conceived whip pan won't make a lick of difference if your story isn't rock solid, or your art direction sucks... Not one person will leave the cinema (or your Youtube channel) thinking "I bet that sucked because it was only 24 Mb/s...
 
Nick Navaro said:
You go tell that to the BBC then. My stuff is broadcast on satellite and cable channels around the world including MTV dance. Amazingly, they are not fussy and will play HDV stuff. However, I want to take my stuff to bigger channels so NEED those numbers as that's how they work.

I need those images in the AF100 body! What do you say Panasonic?? Huh? Help a brother out! lol
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Nick, I think you are being totally premature in dissing what willor will not be accepted by the BBC. I think you have not seen the codec in its record state from the AF100 and neither has the rest of the world. Obviously there are a group of individuals here that have had experience with the AVCCAM implementation and can hardly wait to see how good it will look with the AF100 feeding it. Guys like Bob Diaz who works with it every day is one of them. The hardest thing that I see we need to overcome is the fact that people have sen weak implementations of AVCHD and they think that they are all the same. Frankly throwing bits at a weak implementation is not a cure, in fact it doesn't help. There are products out there that prove this. But take a look at the interviews that Bob did of me and yest they have been stepped on again to get them on the web, but they look good. The probably looked even better.

People like to judge using numbers as everyone understands the 50 is more than 24. But unless you are a compressionist, you may not understand that that isn't necessarily true. So wait until the camera delivers, demo it and then see what you think. I was looking at a recording yesterday that our engineer was scrutinizing and man it looked beautiful. We were both point at areas where DVCPRO HD would have packed up and gone home. This codec is AVC-Intra's little brother. They share some very strong similarities.

And if the BBC accepts HDV, there is not reason they wouldn't accept this footage. Images make you money, codecs only help you get there, if the images are compelling broadcasters and other channels will buy them. This is just a given. Many people don't know this but in my 34 years in this business, it has been proven to me over and over and over.


Best,

Jan
 
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