How is 24f?

[disjecta]

I am seriously considering this camera because of it's beautiful image. I'm concerned, however, that it does not have a filmic look with the 24f setting and/or the resolution is dramatically compromised to be no better than the HVX200.

Anyone care to comment on this? Anyone, aside from Michael at PappasArts have any footage shot at this frame rate?

Also, Michael, if you are reading this, would you please give me details of your framerate settings on your Canon footage...

Thanks

 

[Jarred Land]

hey disjecta.. you should really pay close attention to www.hdforindies.com right now, they are doing a texas shootout with all the cameras, you should be able to get the entire jist of whats going on.

 

[Elton]

HDforIndies seemed to confirm what is becoming fairly clear now.

The HVX has great color and contrast right out of the box. Res is it's weaker point.

The H1 has better resolution and detail, in general, and most likely makes a better film-out. It doesn't handle highlights quite as well as the HVX, but is better in low light.

As far as motion goes, 24F is indistinguishable from 24P. Many haven't seen 24F material with pulldown frames properly extracted from the m2t source. Programs like HDVxDV can capture 24F via Firewire, but for some reason they don't read the progressive sequence and just capture 29.97 clips regardless. It takes a utility program like Cinema Tools to get at the actual progressive sequence via inverse telecine. Hopefully FCP6 will change this for Mac/H1 users, but on the pc side of the fence there are options like Cineform that support the camera within Premiere Pro and allow native 24p capture from 24F mode.

 

[Kenn_Christenson]

HDforIndies seemed to confirm what is becoming fairly clear now.

The HVX has great color and contrast right out of the box. Res is it's weaker point.

The H1 has better resolution and detail, in general, and most likely makes a better film-out. It doesn't handle highlights quite as well as the HVX, but is better in low light.

As far as motion goes, 24F is indistinguishable from 24P. Many haven't seen 24F material with pulldown frames properly extracted from the m2t source. Programs like HDVxDV can capture 24F via Firewire, but for some reason they don't read the progressive sequence and just capture 29.97 clips regardless. It takes a utility program like Cinema Tools to get at the actual progressive sequence via inverse telecine. Hopefully FCP6 will change this for Mac/H1 users, but on the pc side of the fence there are options like Cineform that support the camera within Premiere Pro and allow native 24p capture from 24F mode.

I understand that 24F is, essentially, interpolated (albiet a well done interpolation) that does reduce resolution. My concern with a film-out would be the temporal artifacts which are notorious in an interlaced video to film conversion.

I don't know if it was part of the Texas Shootout plan, but since they are in Texas it would be cool to see how each of the cameras would fare in a film transfer from DV Film.

 

[Elton]

KCFilms,

That is the very interesting thing about 24F mode. I still have not seen any temporal artifacts due to the interpolation. I believe it's doing something that would be hard to better in software. It most likely is some seriously sophisticated form of 48i deinterlacing, but I think it's doing something highly accurate in the processing before it's encoded to MPEG2.

In all of my pulldown extractions of 24F, I have yet to see any tell-tale signs of deinterlace issues. And that's with plenty of ridiculous whip pans and bursts of motion...pretty much anything you can throw at it.

24F does reduce resolution to a small degree, but when all's said and done, it's still the most detailed 1080p image in its' class.

 

[J.R. Hudson]

The HVX has great color and contrast right out of the box. Res is it's weaker point.

Again, with it's out of the box as if it it was a negative. Or is it simply inherent to the camera ?

The H1 has better resolution and detail, in general, and most likely makes a better film-out. It doesn't handle highlights quite as well as the HVX, but is better in low light.

I think what you chaps may be missing is that 'resolution and detail' do not a better filmout make (all things being equal).

-

I am sold on the HVX officially. All of these cameras seem to rock but in the end I'm running with the HVX; check Bob's iPod Boogie or the Snow footage, or the Seagulls or the dude playing in the snow with the blue cars .......

I have yet to see any footage that comes close to that stuff in terms of the:

Palette

That's right. I just cannot think of a better word than that.

-


I really really really don't think 'resolution and detail' are the E Ticket rides to a better filmout. I'll take the color rendition, the contrast, the gamma or the palette any day over that.

M Pappas recent submissions of tests that showcase skin detail is just too much, isn't it ? This clarity of detail feels to much like 60i even in a 24fps environment.

I think part of films magic is the lack of crystal clear perfection in the film stock and the pains cameramen go to to soften their images.

I like the grain and no, I'm not referring to 1970's Filmstock. Go now to the movies and the grain is there, the softness is there.

I'll post some grabs tonight; but think the opening shot in 28 Days Later of the dudes eyes when he is lying in the hospital...

It's just too much crystal in the shot.

It is a perfect example of VIDEOYLOOK

-

Professoinal Cinematographers go out of their way using soft fx filters, grads, pols -- I mean, they stack the shi*e out of the lens elements to get the image they want. Vilmos the masta of blasta himself purposefully uses silks and filters and viel as a diffusion in his lenses to soften the lens sharpness

" I was only able to get one set of PRIMO zooms, so I also used Type C lenses. I actually prefer them in some situations. They are more forgiving when you are filming people's faces, especially in close-ups, and that eliminates the need for diffusion. It's subtle, like using a Tiffen Soft Effects half, at the most. "

I read this quote for The Ghost and the Darkness.

-

I guess my point (And question) is

I think this obsession with pixel counts and resolution (No, I am not talking about the difference between SD and HD) is going about it the wrong way. Is it important ? Yes ! But I think the gamma and color rendition and ...

Oh hell ...

The Palette!

Is more important.

I'll say it here


The HVX looks TONS more filmic than anything I've seen from the other options.

-

 

[David Jimerson]

There shouldn't be any temporal artifiacts in 24F, because the time base isn't being changed. It's not a case of converting from 60i to 24p, where you might see motion artifiacts; the CCDs are read 48 times per second, but only every other read is kept, so only 24 moments per second are in play. The motion should be identical to 24p -- but it only allows for shutter speeds no lower than 1/48.

Any way you slice, it, though, for the 24 fields per second which are kept, you're constructing an entire frame out of a field. There's no way there can't be resolution loss.

 

[Kenn_Christenson]

There shouldn't be any temporal artifiacts in 24F, because the time base isn't being changed. It's not a case of converting from 60i to 24p, where you might see motion artifiacts; the CCDs are read 48 times per second, but only every other read is kept, so only 24 moments per second are in play. The motion should be identical to 24p -- but it only allows for shutter speeds no lower than 1/48.

Any way you slice, it, though, for the 24 fields per second which are kept, you're constructing an entire frame out of a field. There's no way there can't be resolution loss.

My point is that this camera would not necessarily be the right camera for a film out, if your goal was to maintain resolution while also keeping the motion signature of motion picture film shot with a 180º shutter @24fps. Maintaining the 24fps motion signature, the camera inherintly loses resolution (by shooting in 24F,) conversely, if you were to originate in 60i to maintain resolution, you still have to go through some sort of deinterlace process which also loses resolution and the 24fps motion signature.

 

[J.R. Hudson]

Isnt 24F 60i anyway ?

 

[Barry_Green]

No, it's basically a 48i version of frame mode. It's proper 24fps cadence, with one pure field and one synthesized field.

 

[J.R. Hudson]

What would be the point of deinterlacing ? Or is that the point ? It shoots at 48i and you deinterlace...

Oops. Just answered me self.

 

[Jarred Land]

Yes, its like taking real 24p footage and running a rake through it.

 

[Jarred Land]

well not quite John but close.. cause half of it is deinterlaced.

 

[Emanuel]

There shouldn't be any temporal artifiacts in 24F, because the time base isn't being changed. It's not a case of converting from 60i to 24p, where you might see motion artifiacts; the CCDs are read 48 times per second, but only every other read is kept, so only 24 moments per second are in play. The motion should be identical to 24p -- but it only allows for shutter speeds no lower than 1/48.

Any way you slice, it, though, for the 24 fields per second which are kept, you're constructing an entire frame out of a field. There's no way there can't be resolution loss.

Excellent & an unbiased enlightenment.

:dankk2: and Congrats David! [EDIT -- As well, to all of the other contributions]

 

[Elton]

The motion should be identical to 24p -- but it only allows for shutter speeds no lower than 1/48.

Any way you slice, it, though, for the 24 fields per second which are kept, you're constructing an entire frame out of a field. There's no way there can't be resolution loss.

A couple of problems with your assertions:

1) The H1 allows for shutter speeds as low as 1/3 in 24F mode.

2) It isn't like Cineframe modes on the Sony. What I believe is going on is motion adaptive deinterlacing of a sort, but in reality no one exactly knows what Canon's doing. Unlike the Sony, it doesn't lose half the vertical res in 24F mode. On a purely subjective level, I find the loss to be somewhere around 20%, but it's still a finely detailed 1080 image.

The bottom line is 24F is a frame mode done right this time. Yeah, it's a virtual 24P, but it works. I wouldn't have bought the camera if the resolution and motion didn't look right.

Again, with it's out of the box as if it it was a negative. Or is it simply inherent to the camera ?

I like the look the camera gets. No question. But I also think it commits you to a certain look in-camera, which isn't necessarily bad, but it can be a bit limiting.

I actually agree with Fuji film vs. Kodachrome analogy...to some extent. Panny went for the heightened look (which is cool) and Canon went for accuracy. Doesn't mean you can't get a stylized look with the Canon, it just requires more tweakage, and also, in reality, these cameras just plain see the world differently and that's fine. What surprised me about the Panny is how the image, especially in 720, can be on the edge of falling apart in color correction.(specifically cc'ing in DVCProHD. This adds a pass of compression--uncompressed holds up fine) It has artifacts that don't exist in the H1 and when you push the image for an extreme look, the Panny shows it's blockies real quick. This surprised me because I've played with Varicam 720 footage and the artifacts were harder to bring out, so my expectations of all the "DVCProHD goodness" the HVX was supposed to bring to the table were a bit deflated. But then I realized that 40 mbits for 720 24p is actually not a huge amount of bandwidth for an Intra-frame codec at that frame size and then when I found out about the lower res chip it sorta made sense. Please don't misunderstand, I am not saying it's "NOT HD", obviously it is, but I AM saying it had more artifacts than I expected, given the hype about the codec/format and whatnot. I found the H1 had finer noise and less macroblocks, ironically even from HDV.

I understand the seductive look the HVX achieves...it's nice and unique, no doubt, but the tradeoffs both in resolution and the cost of P2 relative to recording times weren't my cup of tea. I really dig the camera, but the H1's more HDCAM-like performace really sold me. And unlike a lot of folks that think 24P is the end-all-be-all, I actually really like the hyper-real 1080i look too. Not everything has to be "filmic" for me. Docs in 1080i can be pretty amazing too.

I think what you chaps may be missing is that 'resolution and detail' do not a better filmout make (all things being equal).

But resolution and detail help A LOT (all things being equal). Of course, you don't see them as equal because you feel the Panasonic gives you a richer pallette. When talking strictly about in-camera color reproduction, I agree, there is something unique going on with the HVX. It's a heightened, Fuji-like look, (when shot well) but it's just one look. I happen to like the H1's look a lot, especially when pushing it in post. And knowing I can acquire even more color information via SDI is nice too.

I happen to like the rich tapestry of looks all 3 of the "contenders" bring to the table. (If Sony hadn't dropped the ball with Cineframe 24, I would add it to the list.)

I don't subscribe to this clique-ish notion of one camera being cooler than another. I really enjoy seeing people do cool things with what they've got. The choice between these cameras comes down to some minor differences (in the big picture).

They're just tools and each one has their strengths and failings. The nice thing is they all have brought an embarrassingly good image to the table and now there's no NTSC mush to fight through on the big screen.

I look forward to Sundance next year. I imagine there will be an interesting shift to HD for so many films because of these cameras.

 

[J.R. Hudson]

That's a great post Elton and I can't argue one bit. You make some great solid points

 

[Emanuel]

That's a great post Elton and I can't argue one bit. You make some great solid points

Yup indeed. A great dvxuser.com poster, Barlow is also a good human being.

 

[Elton]

Thanks guys.

Wouldn't you agree that these "shootouts" and debates are just purely academic now? I'm to the point where the novelty and euphoria of good, affordable HD has worn off and sobered up into focusing on what has always been the only real thing that matters--content.

HD will soon be the new DV, but now it won't be a badge of honor or some novel point of interest to be shooting in HD...it will just be the norm. Technique and storytelling ability will be all that differentiates anyone.

 

[Barry_Green]

2) Unlike the Sony, it doesn't lose half the vertical res in 24F mode. On a purely subjective level, I find the loss to be somewhere around 20%, but it's still a finely detailed 1080 image.

Actually, I'm pretty certain that it is very much like the Sony. The Sony doesn't lose half the res either. It goes from about 750 lines down to about 540. The XLH1 in 24F also resolves about 540 to 600, depending on who's doing the measuring and where they're calling the limit.

Sony's CF30 and CF25 aren't bad modes at all. CF24 is, but CF30 and CF25 work pretty well. I think 24F is pretty much the same thing, except that Canon did go one better by reclocking the CCD to 48hz instead of 50/60.

 

[Emanuel]

Actually, I'm pretty certain that it is very much like the Sony. The Sony doesn't lose half the res either. It goes from about 750 lines down to about 540. The XLH1 in 24F also resolves about 540 to 600, depending on who's doing the measuring and where they're calling the limit.

Sony's CF30 and CF25 aren't bad modes at all. CF24 is, but CF30 and CF25 work pretty well. I think 24F is pretty much the same thing, except that Canon did go one better by reclocking the CCD to 48hz instead of 50/60.

And to the 25F? Is it 48hz too? Or 50hz? And if so, why should it be better than Sony's CF25?