Midtone noise in HPX170

W

warnich

New member
I just upgraded from an old HVX to the new HPX170.
One thing I noticed is that the blacks are really clean compared to the old HVX, but it is as if the grain just moved to the midtones. Are any of you experiencing that too?
And if so, is there any way to get around it?

You can see the grain in Kholi Hicks video here: http://www.vimeo.com/2009884
It is noticable on the walls and on the defocused girl at 0:22

Any thoughts?

Casper
 
Howzabout some raw footage? - no adapters, nothing. Just bare lens and full rez if possible. Shoot some different situations. I love Vimeo but it's too hard to be critical on a file that size.

Mine won't be here until next monday or I'd do the testing myself.

cheno
 
I shot a time lapse of a church steeple Sunday. The exterior white painted wood was noisy playing out of the camera in HD SDI. The whites were underexposed due to bright sky and paint is old, so whites were off-white, around 50 ire. I saw this also from the P2 transfer.

The noise was more than luma noise, it had chroma noise as well. I was using Cine D gamma. I'll have to try different gammas and detail settings, but it didn't look like noise from a detail circuit.
 
Hey Dino,

What were your settings - would help to know what people are shooting setting-wise to see this noise. Kholi's earlier post didn't bother me although I would have preferred a larger rez file to scrutinize.

Are you seeing different / more noise than past cams?
 
I haven't seen any noise in my midtones but I've been shooting with CineV

Cine D gives the midtones more tonal range allowing for more noise. It's like that on every camera

A gamma curve allowing more dynamic range will always produce more noise
 
I think you guys are running into the same thing that I did when I recieved my HMC150. The different gamma curves and color matrices have different effects on noise. Initially, I was shooting everything in Cinelike-D because it offers the most latitude, but came to find out that Cinelike-D is the noisiest of all the gammas. So it is a trade-off. Try shooting in Black Press, Cinelike-V, HD Norm, you will see the noise improve considerably. Kholi is a very talented DP, so I imagine that he was using Cinelike-D for dynamic range and that is why you are seeing more noise.
 
It's funny


I find that CineD on the HPX has as much noise as B.Press on the HVX!


now THAT'S an improvement.
 
Dino said:
I shot a time lapse of a church steeple Sunday. The exterior white painted wood was noisy playing out of the camera in HD SDI. The whites were underexposed due to bright sky and paint is old, so whites were off-white, around 50 ire. I saw this also from the P2 transfer.

The noise was more than luma noise, it had chroma noise as well. I was using Cine D gamma. I'll have to try different gammas and detail settings, but it didn't look like noise from a detail circuit.
Click to expand...

The 200A seemed to be ALL Luma Noise which was fine in my book! It made everything look so much cleaner. HPX170 seems to bring back the Chroma Noise which makes things look yuck. =(

my Camera is out right now, as soon as it comes back or as soon as I can get my hands on someone elses I'll be right back at it.
 
warnich said:
I just upgraded from an old HVX to the new HPX170.
One thing I noticed is that the blacks are really clean compared to the old HVX, but it is as if the grain just moved to the midtones. Are any of you experiencing that too?
And if so, is there any way to get around it?

You can see the grain in Kholi Hicks video here: http://www.vimeo.com/2009884
It is noticable on the walls and on the defocused girl at 0:22

Any thoughts?

Casper
Click to expand...

You are not alone. If you check the Vimeo link here: http://www.vimeo.com/1093520

The 200A doesnt' display this and there are a lot of MidTones. To add to that, even the way the camera handles darker areas seems to be a bit better than the 170 but it could just be my eyes.

The guys over at EVS said I could come and play with the cameras. I think I'm going to go and do that soon.
 
Kholi,

I agree with you. Some luma noise is okay, but chroma noise just gives the look of a cheap video camera. I don't consider my HDX900 to be all that quiet either, but I always shoot at -3db and what noise I see is luma noise primarily.

I'm going to get a 200A in here to A-B, both using component out. I'm going to try different gamma settings and turn off detail as well. I can't help but think that because the lens diameter is smaller than the 200A, the sensitivity is reduced, which caused Panasonic engineers to goose the preamps--but this is normally seen in the blacks first, then 20-24 ire, but not 50 ire and higher.

The fun continues.
 
Mine displays non of this chroma noise you supposedly see.

I downloaded your footy and it looks clean on my Samsung monitor.

My 170 is great. Haven't had a problem..


though the component out sucks with some LCD's...blocky colors watery ect
 
Yeah - A/B will be the tell all. Until then, I still think it's a bit hard to tell.

Great work on that Zumba Fitness ad, Kholi!
 
Thanks Cheno, greatly appreciated.

I know it's going to be really hard to tell, especially on the net. Hopefully one of us can get to the bottom of what's going on and have an answer for you guys. I am hoping that it's just my eyes and the 200A and 170 are exactly alike...
 
From what I could tell with my eyes they are

(just playing around with both in shop)

But only time will tell.

Get some tests done man,
and grea work
 
My only thought would be interior / lower light (having to light artificially) as opposed to a bit more daylight like you do in the Zumba footage. Colors look richer than the 170 footage. My guess is that each camera needs to be dialed in a bit differently, quite possibly due to the lens. Other native stuff like the spider / best buy footage looked really clean. But yes, Vimeo isn't the best place to do critical judging.

I will say that I think some of the best footage I've seen out of the Letus Extreme / Ultimate has come from the HVX / HPX cams though.
 
Hey guys, i just came back from an event like nab in my local areas and had an opportunity to see both cams with my own eyes, and the 200a did seem cleaner. now I think I may just settle on the 200a and forego the hpx170. it just seems like I'd be moving backwards in the noise department.

On a side note, I got a chance to play with the ex1. the image was breathtaking in terms of no video noise and shrpness, but in 24p it was far from filmic in the motion department and even with the gama and colors being tweaked it just looked like reality tv, but broadcast quality. Also can anyone tell me why the whites on this camera seem to stick out so much on this cam and not on the hvx/hpx?
 
CineD All the Way. One thing that I said when the 200A Came out was that Panasonic gave us the full extent of the Camera's Dynamic Range because CIneD was SO MUCH MORE CLEANER. I wasn't afraid to use it by any means.

If my memory serves me right, my settings were:

Detail -2
VDetail -2
Coring +2 (or -2)
Chroma -2 (always in the negative for me)
Master Ped -7 ( Blacks = 0 IRE with a Lens Cap on)
Iris Level -4
Skin Tone DTL OFF
CineD
Cine-Like

720p Resolution Samples here:
www.kholi.net/200AClean.mov (9mb H.264)
www.kholi.net/200AClean2.mov (45mb H.264)

And the original DVCProHD file still looks better than the higher res H.264.
 
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