Good news about AF100 firmware

imdjay said:
please quit that 'broadcast' nonsense. it has almost no relevance these days. and yes manesqueeze, if used correctly the af100 has more than enough quality for TV/film, just as almost any of the cameras on this forum
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I would actually say more than most other cameras on this forum... from panasonic, only cameras in the 5-digit price bracket have much on it image quality wise, and those are 2/3 cams on the panasonic side. In other large sensor "own-able" cameras, we have the RED and F3 in the 5-digit price range, both of which slightly beat it in IQ as they should at their prices, the HD-DSLRs, of which we all know their inherent problems, and the FS-100 which has yet to be released. It is really hard to fairly compare it to anything else people are shooting on right now as it is still kind of a unique camera at its price point, but quality wise, with all the little bulls**t nitpicking aside, as imdjay said, there is nothing wrong with the camera quality wise. In the right hands, it will put out footage that is perfectly acceptable by any audiences standards (and with an external recorder, any networks standards). I think what we heard from the reactions of people who saw the ASC tests prove that.
 
imdjay said:
please quit that 'broadcast' nonsense. it has almost no relevance these days. and yes manesqueeze, if used correctly the af100 has more than enough quality for TV/film, just as almost any of the cameras on this forum
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The broadcast standard has more to do with the robustness of the codec than the actual quality of the image. 50 422 can go through more post and coding/decodings without showing up artifacts. Footage can go through a lot that degrades the quality before it ends up on your TV. I have used the AF for broadcast this winter, but it won´t be shown until 2012. I have to say I´m a bit worried about how the codec will hold up, but I think it will look good.
 
The issue is that 50mb is not a measurement of quality but of quantity of data. Not all compression algorithms are created equal and I think that is the biggest hangup. When someone hears 50mb, what does that actually mean? There needs to be a context associated with it for quality. From what I have been seeing online, it seems like that is slowly happening. I agree that they are just trying to set a bar for quality, I just don't agree with them that rating an image based on data rate is sufficient enough.
 
it stems from a lack of proper knowledge. either film schools just don't teach anything(confirmed), and/or people are just damn lazy and don't do proper research before diving in.

Yoak, i would say your concerns are based on a lack of differentiation between codec types. the AF100 shoots a strictly aquasition level codec, and while it can be edited, it can be archived, it simply isn't built for that. It's built to be the most convinient to aquire in shooting, and then frankly ditched for better alternatives. Granted it does depend on preference and what you are doing, and i myself find that the af100 codec holds up fine for my purposes, but then again, my purposes are rarely 'broadcast'. if my needs were broadcast, i would take all aquired footage and transcode them into an editable format, such as dvcpro, or prores, because those were built for editing. the looser bitrate and additional color information are what keep the codec from breaking down in editing/grading, and that's what makes the difference between an aquasition format and an edit format. yes there are codecs that can do it all, but the af100 was made for aquasition. after that, transcode the beast and it'll stay a beauty.

ps.. i did start to make some tutorials to remedy the lack of knowledge problem, and i did touch on the basics of codecs...

 
As far as I know, transcoding for editing only matters for speed...i.e. it's faster to edit less compressed footage. Any color work done on the footage is going to happen post decompression regardless if you're working on the original footage or a transcode. I.e. the process in the program is like footage->decode->grade not footage ->grade->decode.

Also, uncompressed and raw are describing two very different things...uncompressed is referring only to the amount of compression on the data, while raw is referring to sensor data that has not being put in a color matrix. So uncompressed RGB is not raw...uncompressed raw is raw. Compressed raw is raw. This is important to understand because you cannot get back all the information of a raw image once it has been converted to RGB, even if it's uncompressed RGB.

I try to avoid converting footage if I can help it, even if I'm using uncompressed files (quantization could still throw data away if you're not careful).
 
The issue is this lossy codec -> decode -> grade -> lossy codec. You want to avoid that. After acquiring your footage, many people come in and out of many different programs multiple times before a final project. To pass those images back and forth between programs, you've got to write out to a file. This is where it is critical to use a codec that maintains as much original information as possible and does not compress or quantize the data.

Sure, if you stay within the same program and NEVER go to an intermediate file at any time, most internal processing probably happening at the float level anyways. However, in my experience, this is not the case.
 
I do most of my own work within the Adobe sphere, but if I'm doing some AE work for someone with Final Cut I try to have them give me an XML so I can work on the original files...ideally the only intermediate file that I output is from AE, and it's uncompressed. Obviously this depends greatly on what the particular workflow needs.

And just to clarify, my little -> thing was in reply to a misconception some people have that there is a better visual result from grading transcoded files as opposed to grading the original files.
 
Ahhh. Yes, I agree. I don't have a problem starting with the original material, especially for small things. That said, I will generally use the most efficient CPU wise when doing a lot of VFX just so I don't have to wait a long time to have frames be generated in AE.
 
imdjay said:
please quit that 'broadcast' nonsense. it has almost no relevance these days. and yes manesqueeze, if used correctly the af100 has more than enough quality for TV/film, just as almost any of the cameras on this forum
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why 'quit with that broadcast nonsense'?
it has plenty relevance for those of us who work in the broadcast industry. and a huge amount of relevance for those of us who do work for broadcasters with a minimum spec for transmission.

this forum is intended for discussion so please let people have that.
 
it is nonsense because image quality out of the vast majority of anything prosumer and above would be considered "broadcast quality" by at least a chunk of networks, that is the whole point of TestFest this tuesday, there will be everything from a GH2 to a RED, and while there are significant differences, if you gave unnamed clips to the major networks, i would bet anything that every single clip would be approved by at least 1 network.

what would be the opposite of nonsense is comparing between cameras and what industries they are tailored for, i took my EX1 on a doc shoot instead of my af100 or 5D, because of how it's built. i'm not out to kill discussion, i just get aggravated by dead end discussions, and thats exactly what a 'broadcast quality' discussion is. and yes i can prove that, it's called the BCC, which many people use as their line between broadcast and not, and take a look at one particular writeup they did: the 5D2. it's one of their shortest writeups, and it's wrought with negativity and determinations that it is not of sufficient quality and thus is not on their approved list. but then again... it's been used in hollywood.... broadcast TV.... nearly everywhere else.

So that's my question to you: if the 5D has been deemed NOT broadcast quality by one of the largest networks on the planet, but that same camera gets used on almost every other network, how would you say that broadcast quality has any real baseline meaning anymore?

my 4 cents
 
"strictly aquasition level codec"
Hi Imdjay,
Engels is not my language; Iam Dutch, so I guess you mean: Acquisition and not "Aquasition"????
 
I would love higher bitrat on my Af101, not sure I would dear to hack it though. I would maybe try my GH2.
I rent out my AF101 a lot (with out me) and I can´t risk having an unstable camera for this reason alone

imdjay, I shoot mainly for the main broadcasters here in Norway and they specify in their contracts that if you are to broadcast HD, it should be shot on 50bit 422 (at least)
They do let lesser formats being used, due to the form factor of certain programs though.
We did a 7 series TV series last year, that had a lot of extreme sport in it, so we used GoPro and small HD cams for point of view. We shot the rest of the action on Sony EX camera. The interviews were shot on 5D´s and 7D´s. Stock shots were shot on XDCAM HD 422 and 5D.
We did all the post,except for the grading, in house and were allowed (in the end) to deliver to NRK1 (BBC1 equivalent here in Norway) Prores on a hard drive. This allowed us to by pass a tape out and 2 generation loss right there.

I also noticed that the 5D and the AF101 are at their best when used for CU and MCU of people IMHO. All interviews I´ve shot on the AF101 looks great.

So a 5D can look great on TV (House), but it is much more prone to end up showing artifacts in the end. It´s a way of safe guarding their quality for the broadcasters.
Most of the footage looked really well, but I have seen other productions shot on 5D´s that has suffered alot from going through the broadcast chain (EX cameras as well)

I finished a 10 series documentary, shot on my AF101, for TV2 here in Norway. It will air later so I haven´t seen any of it broadcast yet. I have no control over post on this production so I´m very curious to have it will hold up in the end
 
no - Vitaliy is busy enough with the GH2 hack - apart from saying it's theoretically possible I don't think he's done anything on the Af100
 
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