Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
Changing your blackmagic software affected your 30" cinema display?
Getting to the bottom of the noise complaints - is it h.264 uncompression software?
- Thread starter Barry_Green
- Start date
Changing your blackmagic software affected your 30" cinema display?
Barry_Green
Moderator
Hopefully he'll respond, but if the blackmagic decoder was awful, and by default it was being used to decode the h.264 footage, then yes it should easily have affected both the 30" display and the output monitor, right?
Steve Kahn
Well-known member
If Barry's theory proves right, and it's looking more and more that way, I really hope Panasonic steps up and offers a free transcoding program to some intermediate wavelet or intra editing codec. If poor interpretation of AVCHD degrades footage there will be a lot of people who will have no idea it is because of the failing of their systems and will instead wrongly blame the camera.
Right or wrong, that kind of information wont help sales.
Right or wrong, that kind of information wont help sales.
Barry_Green
Moderator
We definitely would be best served by identifying what tool converts the footage best, or works with the footage best.
Here's the sad thing -- back in 2005 when the HVX was first catching on, I was telling people about how glorious the new future would be when we didn't have to worry about various formats anymore, and whether or not any particular post house had the right kind of tape deck, or all that stuff... I thought things would get easier! Sigh, it seems like it's headed the same way as the "paperless office".
But whether Panasonic offers some sort of utility or not, I think there's definitely a business opportunity for some enterprising entrepreneur (Raylight maybe?) to offer an extremely-high-quality standalone h.264 decoder.
Here's the sad thing -- back in 2005 when the HVX was first catching on, I was telling people about how glorious the new future would be when we didn't have to worry about various formats anymore, and whether or not any particular post house had the right kind of tape deck, or all that stuff... I thought things would get easier! Sigh, it seems like it's headed the same way as the "paperless office".
But whether Panasonic offers some sort of utility or not, I think there's definitely a business opportunity for some enterprising entrepreneur (Raylight maybe?) to offer an extremely-high-quality standalone h.264 decoder.
Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
I read this off of Wikipedia pertaining to H.264 and OSX "The decoder supports Constrained Baseline and most of Main Profile", which I also see in other references that there are things that the H.264 decoder doesn't support (on OSX). I cannot for the life of me figure out how to determine which H.264 codec is used at any given time. Inside FCP/Premiere Pro I can select which one I want which is not a problem, but else wise in QT I am not sure.
I've studied the files from Barry pretty extensively on my system and I can definitely not rule out that maybe there is a decoder issue that is amplifying noise on systems with lower gamma. I say this because the Nano footage I have seen is really clean and the noise in the AVCHD footage is so different than the noise in the Nano footage, it's just strange. it doesn't look like excessive sensor noise to me.
I've studied the files from Barry pretty extensively on my system and I can definitely not rule out that maybe there is a decoder issue that is amplifying noise on systems with lower gamma. I say this because the Nano footage I have seen is really clean and the noise in the AVCHD footage is so different than the noise in the Nano footage, it's just strange. it doesn't look like excessive sensor noise to me.
So you come to the same conclusion which Barry stated elsewhere before opening this thread: its a decoding issue. But maybe panny is using an encoding method which varies from the standard? And the communication with Jeve Stobs has been known to be difficile at times....so OSX can not yet decode properly unless panny is allowed to whisper into somebodys ear? It has happened before...;-)
take2visualmedia
Well-known member
To clarify no, the 30" cinema display still shows noise. The software update did help the output which is to be expected.
Are others transcoding their footage to ProRes LT per the white paper?
Are others transcoding their footage to ProRes LT per the white paper?
Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
Okay, just wanted to clarify what you were seeing as we track this down.
What are you driving the 30 inch with? Nvidia or ATI? (Or other). The reason I ask is I just remembered that H.264 is DEFINITELY decoded on OSX now with hardware acceleration support. Most of the noise complainers (myself included) have been using macs with Nvidia cards. Wondering if there is something up with the acceleration? Trying to see if I can shut off the hardware acceleration.
Zak Forsman
Major Contributor
interesting. my Mac Pro with Kona 3 that sends to a calibrated broadcast monitor and shows the same footage cleanly has an ATI Radeon X1900 XT card in it. my iMacs all have NVIDIA cards.
Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
All 4 of my macs have nvidia so I cannot test otherwise myself.
Benjamin Eckstein
Well-known member
And you only saw excessive noise on your iMacs right, Zak?
Zak Forsman
Major Contributor
yes.
John Foundas
Well-known member
Can someone dumb down this info for the laymen in the thread?
I have a new i5 iMac. w/fcp. I don't have a big external monitor etc...
I just use what's available to me on the 27inch iMac for viewing.
What am I in store for when this cam arrives?
I'm getting a bit nervous now. Cam or not, I don't like the idea of the workflow being corrupted right from the word go.
I'm not a tech guy. I'm a shooter and an editor and I don't have the time or brains to deal with this when the cam comes.
Hoping this gets resolved quickly. Why wasn't this seen months ago with all the footage pouring in from around the globe?
Thanks for the stream of info...ever bit helps.
John
I have a new i5 iMac. w/fcp. I don't have a big external monitor etc...
I just use what's available to me on the 27inch iMac for viewing.
What am I in store for when this cam arrives?
I'm getting a bit nervous now. Cam or not, I don't like the idea of the workflow being corrupted right from the word go.
I'm not a tech guy. I'm a shooter and an editor and I don't have the time or brains to deal with this when the cam comes.
Hoping this gets resolved quickly. Why wasn't this seen months ago with all the footage pouring in from around the globe?
Thanks for the stream of info...ever bit helps.
John
Duke M.
Veteran
@johnf
Its like an intermittent short in something electrical. Its impossible to test if you don't see it. The people with the pro monitors and equipment weren't seeing it.
Once the cause is isolated the solution will quickly become apparent. In some cases that will be as simple as installing the latest drivers for your video card and determining which version of the codec (coder, decoder) you have installed.
Its like an intermittent short in something electrical. Its impossible to test if you don't see it. The people with the pro monitors and equipment weren't seeing it.
Once the cause is isolated the solution will quickly become apparent. In some cases that will be as simple as installing the latest drivers for your video card and determining which version of the codec (coder, decoder) you have installed.
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I have a MacBook Pro 17" (mid-2010) with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M. The ONLY thing I've seen noise in is Leo's video. You guys are hunting around for things in the computers and software and decoders. What you're forgetting is that the same computers are showing noise only in some videos. That means it's NOT a playback issue. It's a camera issue or a post-production encoding issue. If it was a playback issue the noise would be in almost every video you put through it. The noise is in more than just the blacks. It's in the mid-lower grays as well.
Timur probably had it right when he said you need to black balance the camera properly.
The problem is going be found out as being one of the following:
1. Camera settings (which could include black balance)
2. Post encoding
3. Defective camera
As far as the same video displaying noise on some systems and not others, consider a couple things. Some people set their displays too bright or too dark when not calibrated. A brighter display will show more noise. Some displays have built-in noise reduction (and there's different types of noise, mosquito noise, etc.) that sometimes you can't turn off. Noise being excessive can be subjective. Some may see the noise, but think it's fine while others will think it's too much.
There's been really one video that was criticized as having too much noise: Leo's video. That was shot with a pre-production camera. The other was a new camera owner and there's no video, just still frame grabs as far as I've seen. If I missed the video feel free to point me to it. Otherwise, I really don't see any issue with noise unless it continues to show up in new videos. Filippo Chiesa just posted a video from a production AF100 and everyone is commenting how clean it is.
Timur probably had it right when he said you need to black balance the camera properly.
The problem is going be found out as being one of the following:
1. Camera settings (which could include black balance)
2. Post encoding
3. Defective camera
As far as the same video displaying noise on some systems and not others, consider a couple things. Some people set their displays too bright or too dark when not calibrated. A brighter display will show more noise. Some displays have built-in noise reduction (and there's different types of noise, mosquito noise, etc.) that sometimes you can't turn off. Noise being excessive can be subjective. Some may see the noise, but think it's fine while others will think it's too much.
There's been really one video that was criticized as having too much noise: Leo's video. That was shot with a pre-production camera. The other was a new camera owner and there's no video, just still frame grabs as far as I've seen. If I missed the video feel free to point me to it. Otherwise, I really don't see any issue with noise unless it continues to show up in new videos. Filippo Chiesa just posted a video from a production AF100 and everyone is commenting how clean it is.
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Barry, didn't you mention somewhere that the camera used for Leo's shoot and the camera used for "A Verse...." were the same exact camera? If so, Timur said when he started using it he saw a lot of noise. He thought he black balanced it, then realized he didn't do it right. And after going through the tricky process of black balancing it properly the noise went away.
Barry_Green
Moderator
That same camera is one that was used on Verse, yes. And it was black-balanced, and the settings were different on Verse. But what people are ignoring is -- the Leo footage was clean as hell. It looks great. It's not 100% noise-free, of course, but it looks really good. It only looks "really noisy" to some folks. Many of us were extremely pleased at just how good it looked.
So it's those folks I'm trying to get to evaluate other footage and see if they still have complaints. And if so, to find out what's different about their viewing environment.
Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
It's not that we are hunting around aimlessly, part of the process of determining whether something is an issue or not is reducing the set of variables in narrowing something down. Many people with mac computers see a lot more noise, and many people with PCs aren't seeing a lot of noise. I've spent a lot of time with footage from different settings internal to the camera, and footage from a Nano attached to the camera as we try to determine why many macs are seeing more noise. I definitely thing the majority of the problem is gamma from the mac side that started all this. That said, the biggest issue with the gamma setting difference between my mac and a pc is that I do actually see noise on my system after I calibrate it with certain setting in the AF100 that I don't think are very pleasing and they stand out. What I can say (with the help of Barry) is this:
1) Footage interpreted on my machine through the H.264 decoder matches material decoded on a PC out to an image sequence and viewed as a movie sequence on the mac. This means that the H.264 decoders are at least consistent with each other.
2) VLC appears to be applying gamma differently that quicktime. I am not sure which one is actually doing it, but if I adjust the system gamma I can get them both to match. When comparing them in the noisiest to exaggerate noise, the noise signature in both looks the same.
3) Changing the setting in the AF100 of detail to -4 and coring to +2 eliminates the strange noise I see in the footage. Running with the default settings produces the very noisy grays I see.
To me I feel the problem is that Panasonic tuned the AF100 algorithms for detail with proper display in mind. Which makes perfect sense. They probably pushed it to look the absolute best. What we have here is a situation where a playback mechanism is NOT tuned properly and we just happen to have artifacts from the noise that in this situation get amped up in a way that is not pleasing. My solution will be simple, I will run my AF100 with -4/+2 or less because the footage looks awesome.
I also believe that since the codec in the AF100 is so much more detailed, that the noise that then goes through sharpening from the detail setting gets noiser BECAUSE noise is detail and the camera keeps more of it. DSLR footage gets a lot of detail smoothed out of them which hides the noise more.
What I have not done yet is look at the same footage from AVCHD with the default camera settings and then out of the NANO. In theory, two things will happen. The footage will be just as noisy to the same mac users because of the detail sharpening OR it will be less and we'll know that the H.264 codec along with the sharpening is exacerbating the issue further. I personally think it will look mostly the same.
After spending a few days on this with Barry (who is awesome by the way to be someone who doesn't see the problem and work with someone who does) I feel that it's the detail setting that is playing the most havoc. I am not sure the default setting, probably 0, but "Verse" was shot with -7. I have viewed now footage from 0, -4 and -7 and I can say, the lower that value, the less the noise. I looked at the prores sample from "Verse" and it was noise clean for me EVERYWHERE. It was actually still the best thing I have seen shot with the AF100.
However, I am not sure the contribution of the coring setting, or what Timur used for the coring setting, isn't helping/hurting either.
DO NOT misread what I have written here. I am not saying that Panasonic has done anything wrong with the settings in the AF100 or that the codec or algorithms are faulty. They are giving you the opportunity to push your footage really hard and far in a variety of give/take scenarios to best fit your needs. What you want/need in your footage will be determined by your requirements. My involvement in all this is because our videos for some of our projects are mostly web only series as youtube partners. I KNOW that people will be running with default computer settings (which I test my footage at as well) so I want the best possible experience for both PC and Mac users. I now know how to get what I want
1) Footage interpreted on my machine through the H.264 decoder matches material decoded on a PC out to an image sequence and viewed as a movie sequence on the mac. This means that the H.264 decoders are at least consistent with each other.
2) VLC appears to be applying gamma differently that quicktime. I am not sure which one is actually doing it, but if I adjust the system gamma I can get them both to match. When comparing them in the noisiest to exaggerate noise, the noise signature in both looks the same.
3) Changing the setting in the AF100 of detail to -4 and coring to +2 eliminates the strange noise I see in the footage. Running with the default settings produces the very noisy grays I see.
To me I feel the problem is that Panasonic tuned the AF100 algorithms for detail with proper display in mind. Which makes perfect sense. They probably pushed it to look the absolute best. What we have here is a situation where a playback mechanism is NOT tuned properly and we just happen to have artifacts from the noise that in this situation get amped up in a way that is not pleasing. My solution will be simple, I will run my AF100 with -4/+2 or less because the footage looks awesome.
I also believe that since the codec in the AF100 is so much more detailed, that the noise that then goes through sharpening from the detail setting gets noiser BECAUSE noise is detail and the camera keeps more of it. DSLR footage gets a lot of detail smoothed out of them which hides the noise more.
What I have not done yet is look at the same footage from AVCHD with the default camera settings and then out of the NANO. In theory, two things will happen. The footage will be just as noisy to the same mac users because of the detail sharpening OR it will be less and we'll know that the H.264 codec along with the sharpening is exacerbating the issue further. I personally think it will look mostly the same.
After spending a few days on this with Barry (who is awesome by the way to be someone who doesn't see the problem and work with someone who does) I feel that it's the detail setting that is playing the most havoc. I am not sure the default setting, probably 0, but "Verse" was shot with -7. I have viewed now footage from 0, -4 and -7 and I can say, the lower that value, the less the noise. I looked at the prores sample from "Verse" and it was noise clean for me EVERYWHERE. It was actually still the best thing I have seen shot with the AF100.
However, I am not sure the contribution of the coring setting, or what Timur used for the coring setting, isn't helping/hurting either.
DO NOT misread what I have written here. I am not saying that Panasonic has done anything wrong with the settings in the AF100 or that the codec or algorithms are faulty. They are giving you the opportunity to push your footage really hard and far in a variety of give/take scenarios to best fit your needs. What you want/need in your footage will be determined by your requirements. My involvement in all this is because our videos for some of our projects are mostly web only series as youtube partners. I KNOW that people will be running with default computer settings (which I test my footage at as well) so I want the best possible experience for both PC and Mac users. I now know how to get what I want
Without quoting your long post (thanks for the detail btw), I can understand what you're doing. And it jives with exactly what I've been saying all along: it's going to end up being camera settings or black balance. Post encoding is possible, but personally I've never seen that kind of noise get added without actually wanting it there. So in this case it's camera settings, which is why I posted what I did because it didn't make sense for so many people to by all appearances be focusing on playback issues. But with what you said, your theory of the detail setting in the camera seems to be right on. Personally I'd say case solved unless someone shoots something at Detail -7 that shows too much noise on someone's display.