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

Barry_Green said:
You can make the AF100 practically noiseless at 3200 ISO if you use those recommendations.

Of course, there is no free lunch, what you gain in no-noise performance, you may sacrifice in a little image sharpness and seeing more visible 8-bit banding. Adding a little bit of detail level overcomes both issues.
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The noise we are speaking of now is not the same as when this thread was started. Back then we observed some strange kind of perhaps pre-production noise that hasn't popped its ugly head up again.

The real question at this point is what is the best noise compromise to mask 8bit banding? And, that is not such a bad compromise to make. I recently went to the movies and spent much of my time just focusing on big screen film grain. It was plentiful and it also varied from one scene to another in an edited scene. Nobody (except I who was looking for it) seemed to notice or care.

Now, 8bit banding on the other hand...
 
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Hey everyone,

Thanks so much for all your input. Rick and Barry, your settings were the trick. Just playing now. Typically, follow the same as if you were using the HVX. Acts the same to a certain extent. Cine matrix is a noisy pig, same with cine D. Cool. I can sell this to my clients!!! Thanks again Guys. As usual this site rocks. BTW, did not know if you don't visit in a while, you get erased. I was a member since 2003. Oh well, no biggie.

Steve
 
I'm also not seeing any of the noise we saw way back, specifically Leo's shoot. I think that was an anomaly of some sort, whether it was because it was a pre-production camera or something else. The noise I see now is not bad. In fact, it's less than I was expecting to have to deal with. Actually, I don't really feel like I have to deal with it.
 
I agree that the noise has never been as bad as what I saw on that candlelit scene, that said, I still think the default settings out of the camera produce more luma dependent noise than my liking. And that noise has similar characteristics as the Leo piece. I even got the opportunity to look at the Leo footage running off of Jan's AF100 at a trade show in Winston-Salem, NC a few weeks ago on a Panasonic monitor and sure enough, I saw the same noise I saw on my own equipment. I then looked at the live view through the camera at the default settings and saw the same noise as I was seeing in my setup pointing the camera at particular levels of light in the room, just to make sure I wasn't seeing something different. Granted, part of the issue for me had been the combination of using Clipwrap and QT/FCP, however pushing that detail up generates some strange noise for me that looks very different than what I expect from sensor noise. A lot of people have seen the same thing as they freak out and come here asking questions, and of course, we can provide settings to clean all that up.

I know we all have a different view of what we consider "acceptable" noise, and mine was my 7D. I thought the noise signature in the 7D was really good, and very film grain like. That is NOT what the noise looks like to me at the default settings. Mainly, because it isn't consistent throughout the image. A medium gray would look absolutely clean whereas a darker gray would be dancing out of the screen. Luckily, all can be tamed and tuned to your liking for the most part. What I believe firmly is that it isn't the H.264 decompression.
 
By the way, small update from Divergent Media (Clip Wrap). They've been able to reproduce the results I was getting on rewrapped footage and seeing the differences I was seeing in FCP, with the clips I provided them. They are talking to Panasonic to get to the bottom of the issue. From a technical level, it seems like there might be a colorspace question going on here and how the clips are being tagged out of the AF100 and what they should be interpreted as. Will keep everyone posted.

For now, I repeat, do NOT use clipwrap rewrap, use clipwrap transcode to ProRes (whatever flavor you like) and it works great.
 
That's huge. You should get something for doing QA for them :)

Rick Burnett said:
By the way, small update from Divergent Media (Clip Wrap). They've been able to reproduce the results I was getting on rewrapped footage and seeing the differences I was seeing in FCP, with the clips I provided them. They are talking to Panasonic to get to the bottom of the issue. From a technical level, it seems like there might be a colorspace question going on here and how the clips are being tagged out of the AF100 and what they should be interpreted as. Will keep everyone posted.

For now, I repeat, do NOT use clipwrap rewrap, use clipwrap transcode to ProRes (whatever flavor you like) and it works great.
Click to expand...
 
Rick Burnett said:
By the way, small update from Divergent Media (Clip Wrap). They've been able to reproduce the results I was getting on rewrapped footage and seeing the differences I was seeing in FCP, with the clips I provided them. They are talking to Panasonic to get to the bottom of the issue. From a technical level, it seems like there might be a colorspace question going on here and how the clips are being tagged out of the AF100 and what they should be interpreted as. Will keep everyone posted.

For now, I repeat, do NOT use clipwrap rewrap, use clipwrap transcode to ProRes (whatever flavor you like) and it works great.
Click to expand...

Did you notice any benefit to transcoding to ProRes with Clipwrap vs FCP L&T? I like doing it in FCP L&T so I can label/name the shots before the transcode starts.
 
Didn't notice a difference between either transcode. I do want to ask Clipwrap to give us the ability to transcode into a directory with prefix info and directories, thanks for reminding me! :)
 
I Agree. After getting great advise about cam settings, I imported footage into final cut pro without any real complaints. Yes, it's H264 so I expect compression stuff but nothing to objectionable. My complaint all along was the live view noise, which like I said before, was drastically reduced after the tweaks. I'm ready to push those 7 and 5D's out the door!!!!!
 
This should be a sticky because I just received 2x AF-100's and they are very noisy in all colours and light levels, right out of the box.
 
as i havent read to bulk of this thread, sorry if i am overlapping, but i would like to share my experience. the af100 IS clean clean clean and very sharp. i was ready to boot it out of my room last week, but it all changed with the viewing on a proper HD broadcast sony LCD (as expressed by many users). though i do not own one, got into the school HD suite and viewed some clips. all i could say is wow. i couldnt believe the gap from my normal system to this, and that is what i have been missing; the gap from a proper HD post workflow. i am only dvi to hdmi out of my macbook pro to a HDTV, which now i have seen is not a proper way to view HD content out of a computer.

for me, the footage was about 50% cleaner from noise levels and much sharper. my settings are-

detail -7
v detail -7
coring +2
m ped -2
chroma level -2
gamma high
matirx norm 2
DRS 1

so far i like the soft, yet sharp flat image with a lot of dynamic range for post colour adjustments. the DRS adds the slightest grain which helps for a film look in my eyes. i just wanted to share my experience for anyone still not convinced. i couldnt imagine shooting 720 60P at a motorcycle race track or football game; the camera is here to stay for me.

my next step, if anyone has suggestions, what kind of converter would i be looking for to get a true 1080p signal out of my computer to my HDTV. i have been looking at black magic, but this is new territory for me.
 
Well I have the intensity pro and I am not happy with the output quality to an HD monitor. I couldn't get the HDMI to work, and the component is REALLY red. What I did was calibrate my Apple Cinema Displays (i have 2 30s) with a device that you actually put on the monitor and it runs a bunch of tests. Once I did that, it looked much better.

The problem is, the mac out of the box has a gamma of 1.8. Go into the calibration and change it to 2.2 for your display out. It will be MIUCH better.
 
danielc said:
as i havent read to bulk of this thread, sorry if i am overlapping, but i would like to share my experience. the af100 IS clean clean clean and very sharp. i was ready to boot it out of my room last week, but it all changed with the viewing on a proper HD broadcast sony LCD (as expressed by many users). though i do not own one, got into the school HD suite and viewed some clips. all i could say is wow. i couldnt believe the gap from my normal system to this, and that is what i have been missing; the gap from a proper HD post workflow. i am only dvi to hdmi out of my macbook pro to a HDTV, which now i have seen is not a proper way to view HD content out of a computer.
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The problem is that it's clean for you only on a broadcast monitor. How many people are going to watch what we're shooting with the AF100 on broadcast monitors? That's the point of this thread. It does none of us any good if what we shoot, and then give to the average person with an average TV, is going to look noisy on an average TV. I'm not going to go make a movie with this camera and expect everyone I want to watch it to have a broadcast monitor at their disposal. A vast majority will watch it on a consumer TV and some may watch it on their computers. It needs to be fairly clean (or acceptable) in all normal situations. I don't see how there can be any exceptions to that. That said, I've been pleased with what I've seen from my camera thus far. The only thing that stood out as too much noise was that one video.
 
Yes of course, and that was my original issue with what everyone was considering the problem. I dont have a blu ray burner, but a mpeg4 out usb on my blu ray looked great and it was compressed for iphone at 720.

What i am getting at with my experience is the gap between viewing on external hd screens from my computer before the proper hd output is done, say blu ray for example. Once an hd output is done, like the 720 iphone version, it looks great on an hdtv. So for me it has been what i am viewing out of fcp to hdtv that doesnt seem to be correct, which is where the proper hd monitor comes into play for editing. But thats not to say my dvi to hdmi is aweful, it is acceptable but you do notice a difference. The blu ray burn will be a good test for me for proper viewing output.
 
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?240486-af100-night-shoots&p=2265778&viewfull=1#post2265778

CLICK ABOVE FOR SCREEN SHOTS.

Here is my experience with the grain. Barry mentions Coring in his book on the AF100. There he says, "...higher levels can lead to your picture looking a little softer and even blotchy"

..exactly! That is what I am getting. It looks like aliasing. Bad. Is +3 coring too much? I am also getting some nasty blocthing on a hd monitor in the blues, greys and blacks. I black balanced and white balanced prior to shooting. This was a test shoot. It looks better on a HD monitor. However, I cant present something like what I saw on that sony laptop today. If a client was watching that on a laptop he would fire me on the spot. Anyone I work with will usually view a rough or some sort on a computer monitor on vimeo. I have had tests where footage looked better than this shoot. Can you guys see what I see in these pictures??? Again, I am not knocking the cam. I still need more play time, more tests...its a new ballgame with the AF and will take a lot of tweaking to find that right setting...I defintely didnt hit it on this shoot....at all.
 
I wrote this in the other thread, but your detail settings are WAY TOO HIGH. Even at 0 I find the noise too much that gets edge enhanced. I run at -5 for both detail and vdetail, and use coring -1 and chroma -3 (just checked on camera). This has produced the best results for me. I am also using Cinelike-V and Norm2 which obviously affect my settings as well.
 
Anyone try hooking up their cam to a shitty monitor...then taming the noise from there. In my first test I hooked up my cam via hdmi to a led computer monitor...not the worst monitor, but obviously not the best. At first I saw a lot of noise and I got to a point where I was able to tame the noise to acceptable levels on a bad monitor. Playing these back on a HD monitor I got really nice results. (so acceptable noise on a computer and pristine picture on a HD monitor)Anyone ever try this technique to get the best settings out of this cam? If it looks good on a crap monitor then the rule of thumb for this cam would be that it will look fantastic on a HD monitor. This is not taking color into account...this would be just a initial run for scene file purposes.
 
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