OTHER: HPX300(Couldn't find thread for it) Grainy and not looking HD

R

Robertofish

Active member
Just got 2xHPX300s, and I use them with the Atomos Samurai Blade, it should be noted that I use HDDs instead of SSDs but I dunno how much of a difference that makes, anyway, I record to the hq quality setting off of the sdi out, and it looks like CRAP, I have seen 300$ cameras that look better then this, and I paid a lot for these, they are grainy and pixelated, is there some setting I should be using or something like that, or whats the deal, I am using Final Cut Pro for my video editing, do I need p2 cards? I'm very frustrated as the quality is not up to par as it should be.
 
Yes, clearly you're doing something, perhaps many things, wrong. The HPX300 should be delivering a pristine HD image. I can't tell you everything that may or may not be being done right, but here are a few things to look at.

1. Set the gain to 0dB
2. Perform a proper white balance and a black balance.
3. Use the factory-initialized F1 scene file.
4. Never, ever, under any circumstances, ever let the iris close down to f/5.6 or smaller. Keep it in the range of f/1.4 to f/5.6.

And if you can use a P2 card to verify the recordings, you should; it would help to narrow down whether the issue is from the camera or from the Samurai.
 
Thank you so much, I will try these things, are you sure not -3db will that help if it doesn't take light away from the image, cause I am shooting in daylight and getting grain, now for white balance and black balance do you mean in camera or in post? How would I go about doing that in camera, I am unfamiliar with this particular camera. But I am glad to hear that it does deliver good image quality because, I just spent a bunch on them, so thats good to hear.

Also I tried turning the detail level to -7, I think I had it a +7 that was probably an issue but now it looks almost out of focus or not sharp at all, maybe try 0?
 
I mean white-balance and black balance in-camera, most definitely. -3dB will help, yes; I was saying don't use anything in the "+" range. And definitely detail level +7 will accentuate all the grain, you should probably be somewhere in the range of 0 to -4 depending on what gamma curve you're using.
 
I'm curious - why do you record to Samurais, when the HPX300 has an excellent internal codec? That's one reason why I chose the 300, because of its 10-bit, 4:2:2 codec.
You should be able to get a pair of P2 cards for the price of a Samurai.
And I can vouch for the very sharp, beautiful images the 300 can produce. The only downside to the camera is its small 1/3" imagers. They can be noisy in low light settings, typical of all 1/3" cameras. That's why I'm wanting the HPX600.
 
Well, i need fast turn around times, and need to shoot a lot of footage at once, like 10+ hours for some things, so I dont really want to buy that many p2 cards, and have to deal with uploading that many of them, however my question is, in terms of quality, I noticed that when I looked at the settings on the camera, the SDI out had 1080i only and no setting for 1080p, is this standard? Because as I understand it the camera is a 1080p camera, and if I were to record to a p2 card(s), would that make the quality better, my only concern with that is that I am using FCP 7 currently, does it have support for the avc intra codec yet? Because if I were to use log and transfer in FCP 7 would that not basically make the quality the same as recording to a samurai?

I ask because there are a lot of things I could shoot in under 2 hours per day of footage, so I can utilize p2 cards if they are better quality and i would defiently enjoy having that capability, because I dont have to attach anything or any of that, however from what I understand the Samurai records at a higher bitrate, but I don't know if that is relevant if it is 1080i anyway, so I am a little confused on this to be honest
 
Robertofish, FCP7 can handle AVC-Intra natively, (Log and Transfer preference settings) and will rewrap the footage upon ingest thru Log and Transfer, however editing will take place in a ProRes timeline.
If you are adding multiple effects and color correction, the hit you will take will be in timeline rendering.
Alternately you can also choose to transcode to ProRes on ingest, but this will require more time. Transcoding to ProRes from the camera native files (AVC-Intra)
will not affect the image quality as ProRes is a 422 - 10bit codec.
I noticed that you also asked if FCP7 will have support for this yet. FCP7 is an application that has reached the end of it's road, no more development is happening with it.
FCPX has taken it's place.
 
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