It is not the codec, it is the onboard computer!

[Barry_Green]

Second, the problem which seems to generally affect AVCHD, namely foliage ceasing to be textured but becoming a kind of green blotch - and that can be seen without any movement being involved.

I would disagree here -- that's not an AVCHD issue, it seems to be more of either a CMOS issue (and no, I can't explain why) or a big-sensor-still-camera-converting-to-video issue. I've done extensive testing of the GH1 vs. the HMC150, both of them AVCHD cameras, and while the GH1 shows dramatically more detail overall, it gets splotchy in the darker foliage and the HMC150 retains detail in that foliage much, much better. One of the test pix from the 7D showed the same blotching in the foliage that the GH1 has, although (again) that pic was recompressed for the web, so I will have to look at original source footage before being sure whether the 7D has the same issue.

 

[David Saraceno]

That's what I meant. "rolling shutter issues" == gotchas.

A "gotcha" is:
- a feature or function which works as advertised, but not as expected;
- a strange quirk, but not exactly a bug.

Flash band compensation looks like a fix to a well-known bug

you lost me around Shaniko

 

[Cranky]

you lost me around Shaniko

Why did not you quote the whole sentence? "Flash band compensation looks like a fix to a well-known bug -- or should I say gotcha? -- to me." This is getting silly. Ok, you win.

 

[ydgmdlu]

> The GH1's designers most likely decided to embed 24p within 60i
> because that's just the way that it's done for consumer camcorders.

You call this an explanation?

You call that a rebuttal? You don't seem to be aware of context.

> That's the way that Canon's HV-series does it

Not the HV40.

And it took four generations and a few years to get to this point. The GH1 is a first generation product. We don't know whether or not Panasonic will implement 24pN in future generations. So how is your comparison fair?

> even the prosumer Sony HDV camcorders do it that way

Sony has always dragged its feet implementing progressive. Sony had been an avid proponent of interlaced scanning because they had the technology from long ago. Even with pro models Sony was two years late after Canon implementing native progressive in HDV cams.

Again, you call that a rebuttal? You don't even attempt an explanation for Sony, just a fairly meaningless claim about "dragging its feet."

As for Canon... I'd hardly put the 24-frame mode in its prosumer HDV camcorders in the same category as your regular "native 24p." It might 24 frames, and might not need pulldown removal, but it's still a fake 24p mode that's unreadable in non-Canon HDV decks and not universally supported by NLEs. And it was implemented in the prosumer/professional products, not the consumer products.

What about DVD players adding pulldown in realtime to 24p-mastered DVDs? What about Sony and Canon cameras adding pulldown in realtime when feeding 24p through HD-SDI or component?

Perhaps the Panasonic engineers got lazy and instead of going through the trouble of implementing real-time pulldown, they decided just to do pulldown in the encoding process. Or how about the fact that some TVs and A/V devices can accept SD cards, so maybe the engineers were anticipating that?

It would be easier to understand if Panasonic had not produced consumer AVCHD models with native 24p in the past.

I was unaware of this. I'd say, "Touche," but I'd like to know some 24pN AVCHD camcorder models from Panasonic first.

 

[ydgmdlu]

Tim said that the hardware in the 5D is not designed for video. The video feature in the 5D Mark II was never intended to go any further than webcasts. He admits that the hardware that does the scaling is in no way optimized for full-res HD video, and that in future (more-expensive) products they'll have much better hardware in there. The aliasing is coming primarily from the lousy downconverter. He said that the hardware that's in there now, was adequate to the market that they build the 5DMKII for: photojournalists who are going to post footage to the web. He said that's why there's no 25P in there for the EU users either -- because on the web, it doesn't matter, 30fps is okay. And that's also why it's not 29.97, it's 30.00 -- because for the web, it doesn't matter. Now, don't take this wrong -- I am NOT saying that the 5DMkII is only capable of delivering webcam-caliber video! Obviously it's infinitely better than that. But what I am saying is: the issues that we observe are there, they're caused by inadequate hardware, and it's because the camera was never designed to compete in that arena. The fact that it does is a happy accident.

And that's yet another good reason/explanation for why neither the 5D nor the 7D implement file spanning in HD mode to overcome the ~12-minute recording limit. YouTube, by far the most popular video sharing site, doesn't normally allow clips over 11 minutes long. The vast majority of streaming video clips are intended to be short, not half an hour or more in length.

 

[Cranky]

As for Canon... I'd hardly put the 24-frame mode in its prosumer HDV camcorders in the same category as your regular "native 24p." It might 24 frames, and might not need pulldown removal, but it's still a fake 24p mode that's unreadable in non-Canon HDV decks and not universally supported by NLEs. And it was implemented in the prosumer/professional products, not the consumer products.

It is not fake. I don't care what tricks does Canon pull to obtain progressive video out of interlaced sensors, but the result is progressive video with resolution clearly higher than resolution of a single field and is on par with resolution of any pixel-shifted Panasonic camera (200/170/150). So to me it is true progressive. It is recorded as native progressive onto tape. Newer Sony decks support this format. Newer Sony cams support this format, heck, they shoot in this format, Sony calls is "native progressive mode". Sony uses progressive-scan sensors, but what is recorded onto tape is the same as Canon's "F" format. The HV40 uses native progressive sensor too, so its "F" mode can be as well called "native progressive recording" mode, but I suspect that Sony has trademarked this term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV#HDV_1080p

I'd like to know some 24pN AVCHD camcorder models from Panasonic first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD#1080p

 

[Martti Ekstrand]

Aloha pineapple lovers - while you've been bickering in here I today delivered for broadcast my first commercial shot entirely with GH1. Colleagues of my client were oh and ah over the image quality and look. Not quite what they expected to see from a low-budget gig. I'll see if I get permission to upload it to Vimeo, there are music rights concerns but here's a sample image after post. Shoot at ISO 500, 1/50 shutter, f/2.0-2.8 in the dead dark of night and lit with two Falcon-Eye 60-DV battery powered LED lights. Set-up time roughly six and a half minutes give or take a few seconds for a sip of coffee. Team consisted of me, myself and I. Just for kicks I posted the entire spot at 1080p despite finally delivery was standard definition PAL. It passed station QC with flying colours.

Have a nice weekend.

 

[Cranky]

Aloha pineapple lovers - while you've been bickering in here I today delivered for broadcast my first commercial shot entirely with GH1.

This is a gorgeous frame grab, but it can steer the discussion from "how to prevent the Corvair from spinning and rolling over" into "How to drive the Corvair fast and avoid accidents".

 

[Barry_Green]

Aloha pineapple lovers - while you've been bickering in here I today delivered for broadcast my first commercial shot entirely with GH1. Colleagues of my client were oh and ah over the image quality and look. Not quite what they expected to see from a low-budget gig. I'll see if I get permission to upload it to Vimeo, there are music rights concerns but here's a sample image after post. Shoot at ISO 500, 1/50 shutter, f/2.0-2.8 in the dead dark of night and lit with two Falcon-Eye 60-DV battery powered LED lights. Set-up time roughly six and a half minutes give or take a few seconds for a sip of coffee. Team consisted of me, myself and I. Just for kicks I posted the entire spot at 1080p despite finally delivery was standard definition PAL. It passed station QC with flying colours.

Have a nice weekend.

Bless you, Martti.

 

[sam rides a mtb]

Nice job, Martti! Hope we get to see the video.

 

[David Saraceno]

Why did not you quote the whole sentence? "Flash band compensation looks like a fix to a well-known bug -- or should I say gotcha? -- to me." This is getting silly. Ok, you win.

win what?

I'm trying to learn.

So, if you perceived some competition, I would like to call it off and try to contribute and learn.

This is a gorgeous frame grab, but it can steer the discussion from "how to prevent the Corvair from spinning and rolling over" into "How to drive the Corvair fast and avoid accidents".

Can we move away from this type of response?

 

[ydgmdlu]

It is not fake. I don't care what tricks does Canon pull to obtain progressive video out of interlaced sensors, It is recorded as native progressive onto tape.

That's the definition of "fake progressive."

but the result is progressive video with resolution clearly higher than resolution of a single field and is on par with resolution of any pixel-shifted Panasonic camera (200/170/150). So to me it is true progressive.

Do you have any idea how Canon achieves its progressive frames? It seems to take only one set of fields (odd or even), throws away the other, and then uses interpolation to stretch the 540p image to 1080p, which makes up slightly for the loss of resolution. Finally, it presumably uses sharpening and other image enhancement algorithms to improve the illusion of higher resolution.

Although Canon has not confirmed or denied that hypothesis, one reviewer of the XH-A1 wanted to figure out the method, so he took a 1080 still, reduced it to 540, and then rescaled it back to 1080. He reported that the result was "95%" the same as the image from the 24F mode. He believed that the remaining "5%" was due to additional image enhancement tricks.

It's not much different than the up-scaling that DVD players do. So according to your logic, because the end result is an HD-sized image with observably higher resolution than a standard DVD, the DVD is "native HD," not "fake HD," because you're not going to care about what tricks the DVD player has to do to get the end result.

And you know what? You don't even have to expect your interlaced camcorder to do the fake-progressive conversion for you. You can do it entirely in post and get the same result. There's even an application called "InstantHD" that'll do it painlessly for you. Do you call that "native progressive" as well? As long as a camera is resorting to tricks in order get progressive footage out of an interlaced signal, then the footage is "fake progressive."

You should know that prior to owning a 5D, I owned an XH-A1 for almost a year. I was a big fan of it and always thought that it was a superior camcorder to the HVX200. So it's not like I'm blasting what Canon did because I'm a hater. I'm just trying to be honest and precise.

Newer Sony decks support this format.

Good to know. Now I don't have to worry about my 24F HDV tapes being useless now that I don't have easy access to an XH-A1 to play them.

Newer Sony cams support this format, heck, they shoot in this format, Sony calls is "native progressive mode".

But that's because in "native progressive mode," the camcorders' sensors are using progressive scan. So it's truly "native progressive" in every sense. Not like Canon's method.

Sony uses progressive-scan sensors, but what is recorded onto tape is the same as Canon's "F" format.

Blu-ray players decode a 1080p stream, but what is sent to the HDTV via HDMI is the same as up-scaling DVD players.

The HV40 uses native progressive sensor too, so its "F" mode can be as well called "native progressive recording" mode, but I suspect that Sony has trademarked this term.

If I'm not mistaken, Sony's prosumer camcorders (such as the HVR-A1U/A1E, which I owned prior to the XH-A1) were the first to do a fake progressive mode called "24F."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD#1080p

All right, touche. But here's what the article also says (that's food for thought):

Of the consumer models, 60 Hz versions of the HDC-SD9/HDC-SD9 and HDC-HS100/HDC-SD100 models are capable of recording native 1080p24 video.

Neither Canon nor Sony AVCHD camcorders record native progressive video. Canon AVCHD camcorders record either native 1080i video, or progressive-scan 24-frame/s, 25-frame/s and 30-frame/s video, encapsulated within 1080i stream. Sony AVCHD camcorders capture and record interlaced video only. With the release of the HDC-HS300/HDC-TM300, Panasonic switched from native 24p recording to the same approach that is used in Canon camcorders, encapsulating 24-frame/s progressive video in 1080i stream.

 

[commanderspike]

Aloha pineapple lovers - while you've been bickering in here I today delivered for broadcast my first commercial shot entirely with GH1. Colleagues of my client were oh and ah over the image quality and look. Not quite what they expected to see from a low-budget gig. I'll see if I get permission to upload it to Vimeo, there are music rights concerns but here's a sample image after post. Shoot at ISO 500, 1/50 shutter, f/2.0-2.8 in the dead dark of night and lit with two Falcon-Eye 60-DV battery powered LED lights. Set-up time roughly six and a half minutes give or take a few seconds for a sip of coffee. Team consisted of me, myself and I. Just for kicks I posted the entire spot at 1080p despite finally delivery was standard definition PAL. It passed station QC with flying colours.

Have a nice weekend.

I am really looking forward to seeing this.

 

[Cranky]

Do you have any idea how Canon achieves its progressive frames? It seems to take only one set of fields (odd or even), throws away the other, and then uses interpolation to stretch the 540p image to 1080p, which makes up slightly for the loss of resolution.

No, Canon uses both fields to make one frame. There is a nice article written, I believe, by Steve Mullen, explaining how it works. It works, and it works fine.

It's not much different than the up-scaling that DVD players do. So according to your logic, because the end result is an HD-sized image with observably higher resolution than a standard DVD, the DVD is "native HD," not "fake HD," because you're not going to care about what tricks the DVD player has to do to get the end result.

I did not say anything about DVD upscaling.

As long as a camera is resorting to tricks in order get progressive footage out of an interlaced signal, then the footage is "fake progressive."

Following your approach, as long as a camera is resorting to tricks in order get high definition footage out of low res sensors, then the footage is "fake high definition."

If I'm not mistaken, Sony's prosumer camcorders (such as the HVR-A1U/A1E, which I owned prior to the XH-A1) were the first to do a fake progressive mode called "24F."

Cineframe. It is crap. Frame blending and juggling in case of CF24, or discarding of fields in case of CF25 and CF30. Nothing you cannot do in an editing application. Nothing like "F" modes.

All right, touche. But here's what the article also says (that's food for thought)

Waht exactly are you pointing to? That the TM300/HS300 records 24p over 60i? I know that. So?

 

[Nitsuj]

This is an example of the rubbish which pops up every time there is a 'mud' discussion on these forums and I really kinda sick of it.

Oh trust me this is right back at you my friend. Like I said before why not just sell your GH1 and be done with it because you are on every "informative" thread adding great negativity to the table. i told the OP that he is speculating something he does not have. There are plenty of people on these boards that believe in the GH1's capabilities so why not jump on board instead of being the guy throwing water in?

Now if you will excuse me I will be visiting more informative threads instead of another lynching thread that seems to have a leader.

 

[Ian-T]

... and while the GH1 shows dramatically more detail overall, it gets splotchy in the darker foliage ......

The weird thing is that it does not happen all of the time. Some GH-1 shots don't show this at all while others do.

 

[Park Edwards]

it's like a soap opera in here

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

B frames.

 

[Park Edwards]

sorry Jack, this is a fact only thread. keep it factual.

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Sorry. The lack of B frames is a fact.
The very title of the thread and it's premise is a theory.
And that's a fact.

The thread is comprised virtually exclusively of conjecture and theory. There's nothing wrong with that, but a "fact" thread it ain't.

It's much easier to prove the non existence of B frames than it is to prove whether the computer is over taxed or not.

Saying, as the OP does in the first post, that it must be the computer because other 13 bit implementations of AVCHD fair better than this 17 bit implementation, is a theory, not a fact. A theory that ignores the non-existence of B frames. Whether the lack of B frames is responsibly partly or solely is conjecture. Whether they exist or not is a fact. Whether or not the computer is the reason for the mud vs. lack of B frames is a THEORY.

We KNOW the codec lacks B frames. We don't KNOW that the computer is insufficient for the task. It very well could be. But we KNOW, as a FACT, that one thing is missing / not up to snuff for the way AVCHD is usually implemented, and that's the fact that it was put in place without B frames.

POSSIBLY, this was done, one can HYPOTHESIZE, to make things easier on the computer as AVCHD is computer intensive to encode (another fact). Perhaps this even supports the THEORETICAL premise of this thread - that the computer can't handle it - in that they were perhaps trying to make the codec less encoding intensive by eliminating the B frames in order to make it easier on the insufficient computer.

To quote the OP

....
If this is true then ... .

(my emphasis)

Which is the TEXT BOOK definition of a hypothesis. Not a Fact.