OTHER: AJ-PX 270 - VERY Grainy in all formats... and the LongG50 vibrates in FCPX

M

Mabou

Active member
Hi all,

I was doing some Scene file and gamma settings research with my 270. In my tests I was shooting a Sekonic grey card (black swatch, a bunch of gradually lighter grey swatches, and a white swatch).
I allowed the camera to set the exposure with an 18% grey card, and the camera was in full manual mode. The exposure ended up being f5.6, with moderate zoom, and shutter off. No gain, all camera settings at factory default.

Findings:
With formats ranging from AVC I200 down to LongG50, the footage is VERY grainy and surprisingly soft in focus. The softness is probably because of the grain. In addition to the grain, any horizontal lines in the image when shooting with the LongG50 is "jumpy"... looks more like it "vibrates". I realize this could be moire, but it looks different than any moire I've seen. And the horizontal lines are mostly low contrast. The same footage in any of the Intra formats did not jump (though was still too grainy).

Anyone else seeing this kind of thing?
 
Yeah, you really gotta play with the settings, especially sharpness. Stock settings were absolutely horrid on these cameras. I don't know how they allow them to leave the factory like that.
 
I did not have this experience at all. The PX270 has no noise in my experience, especially at 0db. No jumpy codec either. Maybe FCP is not working well with the long GOP codec or your camera has some issues. I see no reason to use AVC-Intra unless you need the ease of editing with an intra-frame codec because the long GOP codec is excellent even at 25mbps.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I did not have this experience at all. The PX270 has no noise in my experience, especially at 0db. No jumpy codec either. Maybe FCP is not working well with the long GOP codec or your camera has some issues. I see no reason to use AVC-Intra unless you need the ease of editing with an intra-frame codec because the long GOP codec is excellent even at 25mbps.
Click to expand...

What settings are you using and getting no noise?
 
Nothing crazy - Cine Gamma Matrix and Video-REC Gamma with custom color settings. Master Ped. at 11 with DRS On.
 
Last edited:
Hmmm.... I am trying to figure out if I have an issue with this camera... not exactly sure what my next step should be and I'm open to suggestions. If this was a "switch broken" or "Camera won't turn on" issue, that would be a lot easier than saying "image quality isn't quite good enough".

Bassman... any other settings you are using? I would like to try your setup and see if it nails the issues I am seeing. Your help would be immensely appreciated.
 
I don't know what the best way forward is outside of meeting another owner or dealer where you live and comparing. The PX270 is the lowest noise video camera I have ever used. Check out the HD Warrior review from last year to see how clean the camera is - https://vimeo.com/91880235
 
Maybe it's because I've been shooting Red past couple years and I expected Red Proxy quality 1080p coming out of this cam. Don't get me wrong, it's WAY WAY cleaner than my HVX-200s were, but still pretty damn grainy for my tastes. I will say that I find the noise less of a problem on a monitor or tv screen. It's when I get it to my computer that I really see how messy it is.
 
I don't know what is going on here, but I would not put messy and PX-270 in the same sentence. HVX-200, HPX-300, those could be messy. Jarek, have you seen the review posted above? He comes to the same conclusion. What codec are you using? I have only been using the long GOP codecs. Maybe your NLE is not handling the footage in the best way. I am seeing no noise in the blacks (where Panasonic cameras have always had noise) through Edius and a broadcast monitor.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I don't know what is going on here, but I would not put messy and PX-270 in the same sentence. HVX-200, HPX-300, those could be messy. Jarek, have you seen the review posted above? He comes to the same conclusion. What codec are you using? I have only been using the long GOP codecs. Maybe your NLE is not handling the footage in the best way. I am seeing no noise in the blacks (where Panasonic cameras have always had noise) through Edius and a broadcast monitor.
Click to expand...

I've only used Intra100/24p. Post in both FCP7 and Premiere/After Effects. I have two of these cameras and they both look the same.
 
Hi all... I have a new piece to the puzzle. Just finished another shoot, this time with LongG50 at 24P. Upon importing to FCPX, I noticed the footage looked terrible. With a bit of research, I noticed that FCPX considered the footage to be 1080i. Sure enough, the lack of resolution in the footage was related to interlacing artifacts with all diagonal lines looking stair-stepped. I imported the exact same footage into Premier and it looked fantastic. Premier recognized the footage as 1080P.

Hmmmm.... me thinks that Panasonics plug-in for FCPX has a bit of room for improvement.
 
Mabou said:
Hi all... I have a new piece to the puzzle. Just finished another shoot, this time with LongG50 at 24P. Upon importing to FCPX, I noticed the footage looked terrible. With a bit of research, I noticed that FCPX considered the footage to be 1080i. Sure enough, the lack of resolution in the footage was related to interlacing artifacts with all diagonal lines looking stair-stepped. I imported the exact same footage into Premier and it looked fantastic. Premier recognized the footage as 1080P.

Hmmmm.... me thinks that Panasonics plug-in for FCPX has a bit of room for improvement.
Click to expand...

Just edit in Premiere. It's better anyway. I actually edit more in GrassValley Edius and I've never had a problem with any of Panny's codecs. Nothing wrong with the codecs, it's your editing software,etc.
 
Hi Johnny, I like both premier and FCPX. I don't think the problem is the codec, I think the problem is the plug-in that Panasonic just released to use certain longG 50 inside of FCPX. It is a brand new plug-in that Panasonic released, and they are being very receptive toward fixing the issue.
 
OK... the problem in FCPX is absolutely related to the PN setting for LongG.

I just ran a series of tests by shooting with different system settings. Here are my results....

ALL LongG footage shot with PN show up as interlaced in FCPX.
All Intra footage shot at PN shows correctly as Progressive in FCPX.
LongG footage shot strictly as progressive (for example, LongG25 @ 60P) show up correctly as progressive.

In addition, I communicated with another 270 user who edits with FCPX. He was able to verify the problem with LongG50 PN showing up as interlaced in FCPX.

The same footage, imported into P2ViewerPlus and Adobe Premier show up properly as Progressive footage. This is a problem either with FCPX or (more likely) with the Panasonic driver support for FCPX.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top