AF-100 shoot with Nano

[mkfotos.com]

Now THAT ought to sell some Nanos. Thing is, with a number of experts reporting that AVCHD looks nearly/indistinguishable from the Nano, under what circumstances will this make a real-world difference? Mind you, I'd love to have a Nano, but it'd have to give me some serious bang for my buck.

 

[J Michael]

Did you ever resolve the communication problem? Cabling?

 

[PaPa]

Here are 2 comparisons of AF100 CF versus NanoFlash Footage:

The second one is CF on the left and NanoFlash on the right, this one the NF is 100mb/sec long gop.

Both shots are blown up, so we are pixel peeping here but there is a big difference.

man, this is soo key. Wish there was a less expensive alternative to removing posterization.

 

[olof]

Did you ever resolve the communication problem? Cabling?

I have had bad HDMI cable on a few occasions using NF with EX1R, this was the output from NF to monitors.

I once had a problem with an EX3 and a NF it was a bad BNC cable, it got bent too sharp. I always have spare BNC cables and Power cables for the NF in my run bag.

 

[ASG]

the difference here looks much more dramatic than what you posted here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...in-the-AF100&p=2231187&viewfull=1#post2231187

you would think the nanoflash eliminates banding from your last comparison but that does not appear to be the case in this video:

http://vimeo.com/18734699

 

[Clyde G]

Dan or anyone that might know,

When going hdsdi into the Nano, is the Hdmi out active? In other words, can you use it like a hdsdi-hdmi converter since the hdmi is deactivated on the af100 when set to 24psf?

 

[bhdfield]

I am in Dallas this week shooting for a major pro football league's player's association, using Nano and the AF100. There are some great things about using the Nano, and some problems nobody else wants to talk about it seems. First, the good. The Nano, and the AF, both performed flawlessly in really brutally cold conditions in temperatures around the upper teens to low twenties for several hours yesterday here. Very little power consumption frome either, even I those temps.
But..Nanoflash mxf, when you have many clips, many at more than 2gb, does NOT work properly with Avid AMA, versions 5.02 or 5.037. Large clips are truncated, missing, time codes screwed up, and some will report an Avid error or crash the system. This is verified on two separate systems. Clips must be imported, which is equal to the time to copy files, so its not transcoding. But there are further limiktations. You cannot do a QT reference export from the timeline with Nanoflash media unless you buy a special third party pluggin so QT can decode it. This partially defeats my primary reason for buying the Nano-so that I can have immediate access to AF100 media without dealing with the greater than 2X transcode time of Panny AVCHD. Deadlines are critical with my work, and that's a problem.
Also problematic, and equally dismissed or unkown to many here, is the fact that at this time Nano will NOT properly detect pulldown from the AF100 720/24p signal. So with work I do for web delivery, where 720/24 is an ideal resolution/frame rate, it's just not an option for me, and I must do 1080p for compatible frame rates to project, client archive.
These are limitations potential buyers need to know. I do feel that the Nano media, encoded further in the workflow, holds up better to compression. I don't understand people's obsession with how the AVC vs Nano looks first generation. Where you should be comparing is how it looks against the other after executing the various kinds of encoding your project will require in the resulting delivery codec.

 

[Andrew Stone]

Bhdfield, have you made contact with Dan at Convergent Design? He generally responds to email with an hour or two.

I am not an AF-100 owner but I use a nanoFlash. I have never heard of issues with AVID. Does your AF100 do 720/30p? if so I would use that for capture for web delivery. I have heard of quite a few reports over the past few days here with people having issues with locking 720/24 to the nanoFlash, so why continue to use it until a fix is found.

I agree with you about making a determination about the usefulness of footage after all of the yanking that will be done in post, however, Olof's screengrabs particularly the one that shows both detail and bokeh in the same frame puts to rest the notion that unprocessed AVCHD codec footage is as robust as the higher bitrate nanoFlash footage. This goes way beyond overly fussy pixelpeeping. The differences are dramatic and unequivocal.

 

[Bassman2003]

Dan or anyone that might know,

When going hdsdi into the Nano, is the Hdmi out active? In other words, can you use it like a hdsdi-hdmi converter since the hdmi is deactivated on the af100 when set to 24psf?

I do this with the Nano. HDSDI from the camera to the Nano. HDMI from the Nano to my monitor.

 

[PDR]

man, this is soo key. Wish there was a less expensive alternative to removing posterization.

One option is to dither in post to help improve it . This has been discussed in other threads.

e.g.

Of course, the nano confers many other benefits - The macroblocking and compression artifacts (as demonstrated in that foliage shot) are more difficult to handle in post without extensive blurring and deterioration of whatever details remain

the difference here looks much more dramatic than what you posted here:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...in-the-AF100&p=2231187&viewfull=1#post2231187

As mentioned above, the shots in this thread were "zoomed in" . Also , that other thread was a static shot. Olof didn't say, but that shot with leaves & foliage may have had some movement - enough detail & complexity to show some of the other advantages of using the nano

you would think the nanoflash eliminates banding from your last comparison but that does not appear to be the case in this video:
http://vimeo.com/18734699

Actually no you wouldn't - vimeo compression ruins the natural dither . You need a higher bitrate or more efficient compression to retain the "noise"

 

[bhdfield]

Bhdfield, have you made contact with Dan at Convergent Design? He generally responds to email with an hour or two.

I am not an AF-100 owner but I use a nanoFlash. I have never heard of issues with AVID. Does your AF100 do 720/30p? if so I would use that for capture for web delivery. I have heard of quite a few reports over the past few days here with people having issues with locking 720/24 to the nanoFlash, so why continue to use it until a fix is found.

I agree with you about making a determination about the usefulness of footage after all of the yanking that will be done in post, however, Olof's screengrabs particularly the one that shows both detail and bokeh in the same frame puts to rest the notion that unprocessed AVCHD codec footage is as robust as the higher bitrate nanoFlash footage. This goes way beyond overly fussy pixelpeeping. The differences are dramatic and unequivocal.

Andrew, I have indeed spoken to Dan, as well as an engineer, about the 720/24p issue. There is no solution at this time. Additionally, your suggestion to use 30p is not a solution. I need 24p for various reasons, as I indicated in my post, compatibility with other footage is just one of those reasons. So for now I must shoot 1080 if I want 24. I consider a viable solution having the Nanoflash function in a fully compatible way, not changing to a frame rate which does not match anything else we have shot.

And for AMA, if I only have a few clips, and they are fairly short, then AMA functions fine. When I have linked to AMA files from Nano, in a folder with 40gb worth of MXfs, and many of the clips long, both my system and an associate's, both using the most recent version of 5.03, with the .07 patch, have experienced the same issues. I would like to know if there is a solution, or if we are doing something wrong, but I've been unable to see what that would be. The media is I-Frame 100mb/s mxf. I have communicated with a Convergent engineer, and I have not received any solution at this time.