Getting to the bottom of the noise complaints - is it h.264 uncompression software?

grimepoch said:
We can yell about Apple and their 1.8 gamma setting all day, but it is NOT going to change the fact that people have it and use it that way. I'm not willing to shoot with greater than -4 (as far as I can tell, camera gets here Monday) because I want every user to get THE BEST experience from my footage. I love the footage at -7 honestly so I have no complaints. I don't see the benefit at the zero setting from comparing the footage.
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Apple finally woke up with the release of Snow Leopard and made the standard Mac gamma 2.2 instead of the 1.8 they had always used in the past. So anyone running Snow Leopard will be viewing AF100 clips at 2.2 gamma by default.
 
We're talking about the Quicktime gamma. It's two separate things. It's easy to change the gamma of the OS, but Quicktime changes the gamma of video regardless of what the computer or the original video is set at.
 
Mike@AF said:
We're talking about the Quicktime gamma. It's two separate things. It's easy to change the gamma of the OS, but Quicktime changes the gamma of video regardless of what the computer or the original video is set at.
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True, but it is a compounding issue. Setting the machine gamma at 1.8 or 2.2 and running quicktime on either snow leopard or leopard does change what QT sees, as it doesn't compensate for changes in the machine gamma differently, as I tested this.
 
I tend to think of the majority of users as those who will be viewing on the Web. Maybe that's being myopic. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not talking about QT gamma if someone is watching a Vimeo or YouTube clip. Realize that's only one aspect, but I thought that was one of the concerns that prompted this whole discussion.
 
grimepoch said:
Agreed, I see no noise as well. User shot at -7 detail. Although he says when he views the original clips (before vimeo) on a broadcast monitor he sees more noise than expected, but on the vimeo clip he sees none.
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Yes, some noise appears to be present in various shots when I view it straight out of FCP timeline. But I need to shoot some more stuff (sunset/night time, interior B-Roll, lit interviews) and play with the settings before I can say for sure what is going on.
 
EidolonFilms said:
Yes, some noise appears to be present in various shots when I view it straight out of FCP timeline. But I need to shoot some more stuff (sunset/night time, interior B-Roll, lit interviews) and play with the settings before I can say for sure what is going on.
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If you want to drop me an MTS file of an example clip, I can take a look at it on this system avoiding vimeo and tell you what I see from this end. I downloaded the "Verse" ProRes sample clips they provided to view on here and saw NO noise at all. Watched it MANY times to look at different areas and it was all clean.
 
tflak said:
I tend to think of the majority of users as those who will be viewing on the Web. Maybe that's being myopic. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not talking about QT gamma if someone is watching a Vimeo or YouTube clip. Realize that's only one aspect, but I thought that was one of the concerns that prompted this whole discussion.
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Actually, it is in issue in that case. When you export from FCP for example (because it uses Quicktime) the gamma gets shifted. If you then encode for a Vimeo upload your gamma is already shifted and the video doesn't play back at the proper gamma.
 
EidolonFilms said:
Yes, some noise appears to be present in various shots when I view it straight out of FCP timeline. But I need to shoot some more stuff (sunset/night time, interior B-Roll, lit interviews) and play with the settings before I can say for sure what is going on.
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grimepoch said:
If you want to drop me an MTS file of an example clip, I can take a look at it on this system avoiding vimeo and tell you what I see from this end. I downloaded the "Verse" ProRes sample clips they provided to view on here and saw NO noise at all. Watched it MANY times to look at different areas and it was all clean.
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Don't forget to take into account the ISO that is being shot at in these videos. Noise could also be attributed to higher ISO's or certain ISO's like 320 and 640 (400 is said to be cleaner than 640 for example), and not just the Detail setting.
 
Well I wouldn't consider 640 high! :) But yes, that is important as well. What amazes me about the AF100 and GH2 footage is that ISO3200 footage is so much cleaner than I ever expected. It's pretty amazing for that much gain.
 
grimepoch said:
Well I wouldn't consider 640 high! :) But yes, that is important as well. What amazes me about the AF100 and GH2 footage is that ISO3200 footage is so much cleaner than I ever expected. It's pretty amazing for that much gain.
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Yeah I was just using it as an example. :)
 
With all this talk about VLC, I gave up using VLC to play my GH1 files a long time ago due to poor quality playback and now use Splash which comes in a Lite and Pro version. Anyone else using this player and what do you think about the playback quality of it compared to VLC?

http://mirillis.com/en/products/splash.html

Randy
 
Mike@AF said:
We're talking about the Quicktime gamma. It's two separate things. It's easy to change the gamma of the OS, but Quicktime changes the gamma of video regardless of what the computer or the original video is set at.
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I guess you know this already, but to be sure, there's also 2 separate things IN quicktime gamma.
If mac has better gpu, that is supported by quartz, there can be gamma correction in qt, if gpu does not have quartz support, qt will show the clip without correction.
 
Barry_Green said:
No no no no no! Panasonic shouldn't be changing the video, to chase after some buggy gamma-shifting post-production error. That's exactly the wrong way to go about it. Panasonic should be making footage that looks fantastic -- and on a genuine proper calibrated production monitor, it does. The uncompression/NLE/computer guys should be trying to make their products able to accurately reproduce what the footage looks like -- and right now, that's not what's happening. That's where the error is. Whether it's entirely the "gamma shift" bug, or it's also a case of different uncompressors uncompressing differently, that's the part that needs to be fixed.
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What panny could do , is that they could offer their own codec to reassure that footage is shown right.
And encoding with that, you could avoid qt gamma bug.

Barry_Green said:
Apple should fix their gamma bug -- not just for the AF100, but for every product on the market that gets affected by it. I bet 90% of the noise complaints would go away if that happened. And then for the rest, we have to look into things like the QT7 vs QT10 issues, or the VLC issues, that have been reported.
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I've known about these qt gamma bugs over 5 years now.
They are widely known.
Every once in a while it seems that something is happening:
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1055319#1055319
Then there were hope that qtX fixes the problems.
Apple has to have certain motivation on not fixing this issue.
Just like not fixing the ac3-output bug.
Maybe they just want to give 3rd party sellers a change to cash in with hardware bug fixes.
 
Personally, apple is just stubborn. Insert diatribe on 3 button mouse (here). :) I did also test the videos with both internal cards, 9600M GT and 9400 (Nvidia) and to be honest, I could not discern a difference between the two. This means possibly the LCD response itself could be a culprit.
 
Forgive me if this link has already been posted, but I think this test by David Carstens is very telling. http://vimeo.com/18359615

I'm out of the studio today, but looking at this on my Air and iMac, both calibrated, the iMac with Coloreyes Display Pro, show no discernible noise except at high ASA & DRS.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
I watched that video yesterday, however, the one issue I have is that video shot with the default settings typically has clean blacks, it's the grays just above black that start dancing with noise, on this system. (And I agree, same results)
 
toke lahti said:
I guess you know this already, but to be sure, there's also 2 separate things IN quicktime gamma.
If mac has better gpu, that is supported by quartz, there can be gamma correction in qt, if gpu does not have quartz support, qt will show the clip without correction.
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That's not true. There's a gamma shift in the video regardless of Quartz. In Quicktime 7 there's an option in preferences for FCP compatibility. If it's off then it will show the gamma shift. If it's on then it doesn't show the gamma shift. All Macs running OS X have the Quartz system now so it's nothing to do with Quartz.
 
toke lahti said:
What panny could do , is that they could offer their own codec to reassure that footage is shown right.
And encoding with that, you could avoid qt gamma bug.
Click to expand...

That wouldn't solve the problem. DVCProHD is essentially a Panasonic codec and you still have to use Quicktime to edit with it on a Mac. And with FCP you have to use Quicktime to edit. There's no other option. Apple just needs to fix the gamma shift bug. If they don't then I'll seriously be looking at other options myself. We'll see what happens with the next version later this year.

EDIT: Some news about the new version of FC Studio. Sounds like the gamma shift bug could end up being fixed in OS X Lion at best, but it also sounds like Apple isn't making that many changes and it may not really be focused on pros. I'll have to take a closer look at Adobe now.
 
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