hmc150 uncompressed

A

arrestthisman

Well-known member
Hi there,

Quick or not so quick question(s)...

I currently own an hmc150 and love it dearly. However, my "dream cam," I think is the Ikonoskop dII.

I'd like to know two things. 1. How much benefit does raw REALLY give you? If I were to record HDMI uncompressed 4:2:2 10-bit, would that get me pretty damn close for color correction?

The reason I ask is because I did a side by side with my DSLR, Jpeg versus Raw, in Aperture (mac). Raw gave me extra options for sharpening and such, but when it came to color correction, they held up pretty much the same, much to my surprise. I was also thinking about film scans, and wondering if the scan is "baked in" with the film stock, or if there is an equivalent RAW workflow for film.

It seems to me like compression is much more important than RAW or "baked." But I wanted to get some consensus before settling on what is likely.

2. Noise... I know that all things are rarely equal, but would a single 2/3" chip likely output less noise than three 1/3" chips in most cases? I know there is more surface area on the 2/3". But a while ago, a video guru I knew told me that 3-chip cameras generally have much less noise than 1-chip. Obviously between two three chip cameras, a 2/3" cam would be less noisy. But, would the single 2/3" be comparable to the three 1/3" chips, or would it still noticeably outperform it?

I know this is speculation, and implementation would likely have more to do with it, but I'm curious, and would like to have my facts as straight as possible, and I couldn't find any info relevant to these questions.

Thank you for any help anyone can provide!
 
arrestthisman said:
1. How much benefit does raw REALLY give you? If I were to record HDMI uncompressed 4:2:2 10-bit, would that get me pretty damn close for color correction?
Click to expand...

From a purely visual perspective, I doubt that you will see any difference between the video that the HMC150 is recording to the SDHC card versus capturing the HDMI output as uncompressed 4:2:2. The video from the side by side comparisons between the HMC150 and the HPX170 looks virtually identical between both cameras, despite the HPX170 recording in 4:2:2 mode. Green-screen appears to be one of the few areas where having 4:2:2 video will make a difference.

arrestthisman said:
2. Noise... I know that all things are rarely equal, but would a single 2/3" chip likely output less noise than three 1/3" chips in most cases?
Click to expand...

Chip size is just one variable that effects the amount of noise in the recorded video. If the cameras have the same imager design, backed up by the same quality of optics and electronics, then yes a larger imager chip will produce less noise. But everything depends on the actual implementation by the camera manufacturer, so there is no easy answer to this question.

Personally, I think too many people obsess about HD video noise, forgetting that grain has always been part of film based cinematography. Noise is only a problem if it interferes with the impact of your final video product, which is rarely ever the case. More often than not it's the case of another videographer obsessing about video noise, when they should be obsessing about other aspects of video production. ( i.e. sound, lighting, storytelling, performance, direction, etc... )
 
arrestthisman said:
Hi there,

Quick or not so quick question(s)...

I currently own an hmc150 and love it dearly. However, my "dream cam," I think is the Ikonoskop dII.

I'd like to know two things. 1. How much benefit does raw REALLY give you? If I were to record HDMI uncompressed 4:2:2 10-bit, would that get me pretty damn close for color correction?

The reason I ask is because I did a side by side with my DSLR, Jpeg versus Raw, in Aperture (mac). Raw gave me extra options for sharpening and such, but when it came to color correction, they held up pretty much the same, much to my surprise. I was also thinking about film scans, and wondering if the scan is "baked in" with the film stock, or if there is an equivalent RAW workflow for film.

It seems to me like compression is much more important than RAW or "baked." But I wanted to get some consensus before settling on what is likely.
Click to expand...

One of the main advantages of RAW in the stills world is the ability to rescue blown highlights. This is also dependent on the dynamic range of the chip. All things being equal, RAW would be great for video, but all things aren't equal, the storage problems would be huge for many users.
2. Noise... I know that all things are rarely equal, but would a single 2/3" chip likely output less noise than three 1/3" chips in most cases? I know there is more surface area on the 2/3". But a while ago, a video guru I knew told me that 3-chip cameras generally have much less noise than 1-chip. Obviously between two three chip cameras, a 2/3" cam would be less noisy. But, would the single 2/3" be comparable to the three 1/3" chips, or would it still noticeably outperform it?

I know this is speculation, and implementation would likely have more to do with it, but I'm curious, and would like to have my facts as straight as possible, and I couldn't find any info relevant to these questions.

Thank you for any help anyone can provide!
Click to expand...

A 2/3 chip requires a different lens system than a 1/3 chip (or 3 x 1/3 chips). It is impractical at this price point to incorperate a lens with the same zoom range and aperture that the HMC has for a 2/3 camera. In other words, a 2/3 camera would have a lens with a smaller maximum aperture (letting in less light). This would negate much if not all of the advantage of having the larger chip.
 
Thanks for the input.

I'm not really obsessing about the noise; I'm trying to judge whether the Ikonoskop would really be a step-up and worth the storage real-estate of 80gigs for 12 minutes of footage. I do I lot of compositing and effects work so noise is an honest problem for me. Personally I like the luma noise in the hmc150 output, it's not filmic necessarily, but it's cinematic. Kinda like Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The grain was clearly not film, but it was "movie grain."

For me, green screen is not much of an issue. I mostly do luma keys, and for some reason 4:2:2 really wasn't a benefit there when I owned the hvx200. 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 work just fine. Also, being that they used 3:1:1 for Star Wars 2, if it's good enough for George Lucas, it's WAY too good for me.

The 10-bit issue, I'm starting to think is not much of an issue unless there is no color correction. 8-bit rounded to a 10-bit color space, finessed doesn't seem to exhibit banding in the tests I've done. I won't be surprised if I run into it at some point, but I doubt people would notice even on a big screen.

I saw a private showing of a movie recently that was shot on a f900. It was not quite a cinema sized screen, but pretty close. It was digitally projected. It looked great. I asked the filmmaker afterwards what the delivery format was, and much to my astonishment she said, "oh we just used a DVD for this."

The projectors seem to make a lot of difference. I also saw a MiniDV shot film (not 24p) at the Cinerama in Seattle. A gigantic screen, and I couldn't believe how good it looked. There was aliasing for sure, but I was mainly surprised by how sharp it was. They showed a 35mm Israeli film afterward (Jewish Film Festival), and it looked soft by comparison in many shots.

I seemed to have gone off on a little tangent here. Oops.

I think the point is, though, that we're plenty good enough. I follow the cameras more for fun than anything. Being honest. I use my HMC150 for a lot of work, but I also do like to know what the next step will be, mostly for financial purposes.

I don't think there's anything wrong with having a plan to save a certain amount of money to make an upgrade X months in the future. Knowing how much to save is based on the time until upgrade, and how much you can feasibly spend at that point. Once there, you look at your options and what you Want, and for me it's likely either the Ikonoskop, or whatever comes after the 7d. (An HDSLR eos would be great because of all of the lenses I have for my still camera.)

I'm just trying to get even a slight idea. Once again, thanks for the input. It's very much appreciated guys.
 
The projectors seem to make a lot of difference. I also saw a MiniDV shot film (not 24p) at the Cinerama in Seattle. A gigantic screen, and I couldn't believe how good it looked. There was aliasing for sure, but I was mainly surprised by how sharp it was. They showed a 35mm Israeli film afterward (Jewish Film Festival), and it looked soft by comparison in many shots.
Click to expand...

I do think this is a point worth repeating. I remember seeing the Blair Witch Project on the big screen, and the color scenes were shot with a two or three hundred dollar analog camcorder. They blew up pretty fine on 35MM (not as well as the 16MM B&W scenes, of course). I think people frequently exaggerate how bad standard def content and stuff shot on relatively low end equipment looks on the big screen. If it is properly shot, and shown on a good screen and good equipment, it is usually pretty watchable. I saw the dogme film The Celebration (shot on a consumer grade miniDV camera) projected from a DVD onto a very large screen, and it looked fine.
 
One last comment on video noise...

There is a great noise reduction plug-in made by NeatVideo ( www.neatvideo.com ) that can remove most of the noise from your shots while maintaining the full integrity of the original video. It's the best $100 you'll ever spend.

To test it out, there's a demo plug-in that you can download from the NeatVideo website.
 
we have projected 2 DVX100 movies on very large screens from dvd and they looked great. i was totally surprised at how well they held up but its definitely in the projector for the most part.
 
TheDingo:

Dude, you are so right. I just bought it, and for the HMC150, any profile with a quality rating of 75% or better; reduction applied in advanced mode, the preset for low frequency noise seems to not only get rid of macroblocks but also high frequency noise as well. Confusing as to why, but heck I'll take it.

I have some underexposed footage, processed with neatvideo from my 1080 24p PH mode HMC150 that looks similar to the uncompressed "watch" video from the ikonoskop dII.

It really is amazing.
 
Mike Harvey said:
Wow, I kind of impressed a miniDV, non 24p film looked good at the Cinerama. That screen is HUGE.
Click to expand...

I know isn't that insane! I couldn't believe it until I saw it. The projectionist was very matter of fact about it.

I know it's apples to oranges, but it made me think of Pi, which I saw on VHS, and you could SO clearly see huge amounts of film grain. Yes it was reversal (some of it), but still 16mm exhibiting film grain in a space of 200ish lines of resolution, versus miniDV on a screen comparable to imax. Kind of blows my mind.

Also, leaving las vegas, which I thought looked great, had visible grain on progressive DVD.

Again, I wouldn't believe it if it weren't for my own eyes. And, as I said, there WAS aliasing, but that was about it, it was cleaner than I ever thought possible. Cleaner than Comedian (which I saw projected at the Metro, and it looked good, but had excessive edge detailing. I do remember thinking, though, "you could easily spend more time on photography and make a great narrative with the same equipment.").
 
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