MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

There's nothing silly at all about what you're asking! And the only reason you can consider yourself "uninformed" is because you're new, like we all were/are. But welcome to the community!
 
Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Thanks Barry for all the info...
I do have a question for you if your lurking around. Did you have any problems (i.e..police) while shooting inside Grand Central?? I've found it diffucult to get stock shots inside any
NY train station without someone coming up to me saying you can't shoot here. Thanks again for all the work!
 
Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

We had permission from the GCT's management. Yes the police came to check us out several times, but we had asked for and received permission and had insurance and everything, so it all went smoothly.
 
Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

How about downconversion with the AJA Kona2 Card? According to AJA's rep, you would get broadcast quality downconversion!

What difference does something like that make?

By the way, you guys at DVXuser, are awesome; great source of info! ::)
 
Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

I don't have access to that hardware, so I couldn't comment. I believe Jarred has more HD gear than I do, perhaps he has it and could run the test?
 
Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD qualit

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD qualit

thanks a lot for that test barry and jarred!
this thread reminds me a bit of the pc vs. mac ones ;)
in my opinion its nice to have this hdv camcorders... like its nice to have hdv screens... i dont know how large the hd market is in the us.. but here in europe there´s still none...
the question is: who needs this?
i think the market for the fx1 is the private user who´s got a 42" plasma on his wall and wants his private videos to look better than with his dv cam...
for shure there are a lot of gadgetlovers who just need to have this thing, cause of its superiority by numbers... and there are the low budged film and video producers who want just the best quality/price/timeneed relation... if you need just sd output quality then why invest money in a hd system? there´s no need for an additional 5% sharpness... the content should be so interesting, that the ordinary viewer does not say: that picture quality is not the best that was possible... if they just invested some thousands of dollars and some more time, this would be graet... so its just usual...
for me there is no need for hd recording until there are enough hd screens for the playback... and then there will be good consumer hd cams.... hopefully with flash-storage

just my thoughts..

cheers
 
Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD qualit

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD qualit

[quote author=ivan link=board=sony;num=1103104690;start=105#105 date=12/25/04 at 14:33:52]thanks a lot for that test barry and jarred!
this thread reminds me a bit of the pc vs. mac ones ;)
in my opinion its nice to have this hdv camcorders... like its nice to have hdv screens... i dont know how large the hd market is in the us.. but here in europe there´s still none...
the question is: who needs this?
i think the market for the fx1 is the private user who´s got a 42" plasma on his wall and wants his private videos to look better than with his dv cam...
for shure there are a lot of gadgetlovers who just need to have this thing, cause of its superiority by numbers... and there are the low budged film and video producers who want just the best quality/price/timeneed relation... if you need just sd output quality then why invest money in a hd system? there´s no need for an additional 5% sharpness... the content should be so interesting, that the ordinary viewer does not say: that picture quality is not the best that was possible... if they just invested some thousands of dollars and some more time, this would be graet... so its just usual...
for me there is no need for hd recording until there are enough hd screens for the playback... and then there will be good consumer hd cams.... hopefully with flash-storage

just my thoughts..

cheers[/quote]

That's why the images that are displayed for the sony and the discussion of this thread are output to DVD. We have a practical comparison in a format everyone will use.
 
Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

Re: MPEG2 HD v.s.  DV SD and Final DVD quality

I can speak from the experience of one who has made the transition from doing wide screen 35mm slide shows through 16mm... Betacam... Hi Def and finally to DV...
and probably most relevantly, for years of preparing graphics for both video and print. It's all about pixels... and interpolation.
If you start with film, you have, (as Carl Sagen would say).. "billions and billions of" pixels, so you can pick just which 720 wide you want from which section of the film image.
This is why I still like to scan "to exact pixels required" from film as opposed to working from digital stills.
When you are in the digital realm and change the size or format of the image you are going to "throw away" pixels... So, whether it is every fifth pixel or every third pixel that gets discarded when you resize there is still info and "smootheness" being taken away. Most importantly, you have no control over how the program interpolates re-sizing the image data... some are better than others but if I'm scanning an image from film and it is appearing 4 1/2 inches wide in a print piece that is going to press at 300 dpi, you better believe I am going to scan it to exactly 1350 pixels wide to retain 1:1 sharpness in the final print material.
Therefore with a DVD project... it makes sense to shoot at 30 frames progressive scan if that's where it is going to live.
Happy New Year everyone... cheers
Dale
 
Barry_Green said:
For HD interlaced production it's no contest, the FX1 delivers the goods. *But for DVD release... I'm not seeing any advantage to the FX1 (other than a lower-noise signal), and I'd hate to give up real manual lens control, 7 gamma curves, 4 color matrices, real audio support, true 24P, true SMPTE time code, and all the other things the DVX does, just to get... what, a more expensive camera with worse low-light performance and lower latitude?
Click to expand...
Hey, I know this is an old thread, but I'm rethinking some things here . . . LOWER NOISE is the ONLY reason I'm thinking of buying the FX right now as my low-cost, native-16:9, interim camera until the 1/2" Sony XDCAM-HD camera ships next year. IF I'm okay CF24 and its compromises, is the FX the camera for my current requirements (over the HD100)? The biggest reason I DON'T want to shoot anything with my DVX100 anymore is that it's just too damn noisy!
 
Okay, I'm an FX1 user - I'm just going to point out what the real advantages of the FX1 are for DVD down-conversion, and de-bunk a few of the arguments.

The biggest advantage for FX1 down-conversion is the superior colour sampling. The argument that it's "4:2:0 MPEG-2 to 4:2:0 MPEG-2" is rather silly... It's really: 1440x1080 4:2:0 MPEG-2 to 720x480 4:2:0 MPEG-2. There is more than enough resolution for that 1440x1080 4:2:0 to yield 4:4:4 720x480 footage. If you do an uncompressed down-convert of FX1 material to SD, and play back that uncompressed file, you will be VERY impressed by the sharpness of it. Compressing 4:4:4 SD to 4:2:0 SD will yield an optimal 4:2:0 image. In comparison, the DV 4:1:1 signal is basically compressed to 4:1:0 - fully HALF the colour information that could be available is missing.

Secondly, with respect to Barry's checkerboard picture and the discussion of rounding errors. While this is true in a sense, these errors can be taken care of by applying a simple sharpening filter. For any down-conversion you have to take into account that the bicubic down-conversion isn't a perfectly correct algorithm. Using a sharpening filter is the same as using sharpening on an analog LCD monitor to line up the pixels "exactly". The net effect is a nearly perfectly correct signal. Here's an illustration using the files Barry posted. The top of the image is the original, the bottom is an "optimally" sharpened down-conversion.
http://s94963366.onlinehome.us/sharp-downconv.png
If you can, imagine this applied to all the chroma channels, and you can see how 4:4:4 SD from HDV is not so much a fantasy as you'd think.

I've got nothing for lattitude and gamma complaints - these are real limitations of the camera - but NOT the HDV format. 8-bit colour is 8-bit colour. HDV won't reduce the lattitude in any way. Also, you've got an extra 16 shades or so in the super-white and super black to play with if you process the colour space correctly.

-Spiff
 
Barry, Nate and others.

After alot of testing and fudging it has finally come apparent to me and I must now make it clear...


I concede, Barry IS correct NO RESOLUTION advantage can be gained from downresing (AND I was the most biggest opponent of this, i.e always held the view that downresing would give a better picture)

However after all the testing I have come to two conclusion (exlcuding the above)

(1) Downresing quality depends heavily on the hardware/software used to do it, ITS EXACTLY the reason the BBC use an expensive Snell & Wilcox UKON to do the downconversion because in their tests the Z1 in camera downconversion did not yeild any better results.

My methods are (if using Vegas) then applying a Sharping filter (i do this becasue its acts like a filter to perserve some detail with out being averaged off, I heard that the pro's call it low pass filter) OR another method is this;

Play back your m2t (@ 1024*768, or as close to the native res as possible) using your TV card and redcord that SD signal either in DV (via passthrough) or some other capture equipment, I dont now why but my hunch is that the scaler in the TV card (mines anyway, is really good, I did a A/B of a DVD and looked so much sharper {eyeball test no actuall measure})

(2) As Spiff_2 has mentioned earlier colour sampling, hes probaly exaplined it better than me, (after all my previous ranting at least I found I was not alone)

The benefits are, Keying, and CC, not do mention DVD encoding.


OK hope that helps

Barry You where right after all :laugh: , but I'm glad I found the hard way because some good come out of it !! :happy:

Anhar
 
Cool, just re-read your post (Spiff_2), I knew I wasn't mad ! your doing the "pre-Sharping" trick too, thats what I keep saying it acts like a low pass filter
 
Well - technically that was a "post-sharpening" example - but it doesn't really matter if you do it before or after the down-conversion.

Cheers!
-Spiff
 
Hey Anhar, thanks for going through the efforts and putting it to the test. If I'm wrong I like to know about it -- I care more about getting the facts right than I do about "being right"...
 
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