New DVX100A, possible problems? help (samples)

C

Chasen

Member
Hi, I just got my DVX100A two weeks ago. For some reason when I set up or customize my settings (such as detail level or master ped) I cannot seem to get them to stay. I shut the camera off, turn it back on and they are all set back to 0. This is annoying, if I am trying to conserve battery.

Something else I am very disturbed about is the way some of the raw footage is looking. I captured in Premiere pro 1.5 on the pc and everything seems to be ok. There is a little artifacting on the edges of houses and whatnot, but I don't think it's entirely unnormal.

FCP 4.5 HD on the other hand is producing some horrible "uncompressed" video. I did a straight capture using all the right settings (I believe). I set the capture to the pulldown setting, 23.93 or whatever it is, and the "raw" footage looks compressed. Below is the AVI from the PC and the MOV from the Powerbook.

Please tell me if you notice any artifacting in the AVI (look on the right hand side, the leaf on the ground is making some strange artifacting and it's not even moving) Also, noise in the darker areas is also a pain. Will lowering the detail and chroma levels help this? (then again I will need to do it every time since my camera doesn't hold it's settings)

One last thing is that during a few capturing sessions, I will get a few black bars accross the footage, the camera seems to lock up and not want to rewind or play. I shut the camera off, start it again and those black horizontal bars are still there with the video playing in the backround. I unhooked everything, restarted FCP and it was all back to normal. This happened 2 times tonight... sound normal to you? Me neither.

http://www.avisordesigns.com/fall.avi
http://www.avisordesigns.com/mike_falls.mov
 
Re: New DVX100A, possible problems? help (samples)

>>Hi, I just got my DVX100A two weeks ago. For some reason when I set up or customize my settings (such as detail level or master ped) I cannot seem to get them to stay. I shut the camera off, turn it back on and they are all set back to 0. This is annoying, if I am trying to conserve battery.  <<

Are you saving the scene file before exiting?

>>Something else I am very disturbed about is the way some of the raw footage is looking. I captured in Premiere pro 1.5 on the pc and everything seems to be ok. There is a little artifacting on the edges of houses and whatnot, but I don't think it's entirely unnormal. <<

You might be referring to moire which is common for thin lines and/or diagonal lines with digital video.  Changing settings in detail levels can help.

>>FCP 4.5 HD on the other hand is producing some horrible "uncompressed" video. I did a straight capture using all the right settings (I believe). I set the capture to the pulldown setting, 29.83 or whatever it is, and the "raw" footage looks compressed. Below is the AVI from the PC and the MOV from the Powerbook. <<

What mode are you shooting in?  That makes a significant difference in how you capture. Out of the box, F1-F4/60i and F5/24P (Standard) works in a standard 29.97 timeline within FCP.  F6- 24PA (Advanced) works on a 23.98 timeline and source footage must have 2:3:3:2 pulldown removed.  Also, after analyzing your QTime movie, I noticed the frame rate of the encode is 23.94.  That is a very odd frame rate (albeit, slightly off from standard 23.98 )  That just flagged me as a possible culprit.

>>Please tell me if you notice any artifacting in the AVI (look on the right hand side, the leaf on the ground is making some strange artifacting and it's not even moving) Also, noise in the darker areas is also a pain. Will lowering the detail and chroma levels help this? (then again I will need to do it every time since my camera doesn't hold it's settings) <<

Once captured to your computer , you should not have to be rendering any of the straight captured footage.  If so, you have a setting in FCP incorrect.  This can degrade the image and if indeed it is set incorrect, it will more than likely be rendering incorrectly.  Does it look like this in the LCD while shooting?  For the record, I cannot tell what leaf you're talking about.  I do see what appears to be ants crawling on the ground though.

>>One last thing is that during a few capturing sessions, I will get a few black bars accross the footage, the camera seems to lock up and not want to rewind or play. I shut the camera off, start it again and those black horizontal bars are still there with the video playing in the backround. I unhooked everything, restarted  FCP and it was all back to normal. This happened 2 times tonight... sound normal to you? Me neither.  <<

Not sure what that might be...horizontal bars many times can be a head clog.  However, solid black bars may be a different problem.  For the heck of it, change your firewire cable.  You may have an issue there and also use batch capturing rather than "capture now" from within FCP.  I have seen problems with capture now.  Batch capturing seems to solve the problem every time.

Hope some of this helps.

Good luck!

Andrew
Crystal Clear Media
 
Re: New DVX100A, possible problems? help (samples)



>>>>>Are you saving the scene file before exiting?

I Just realized I was not saving it.. duh, sorry.

>>>>>What mode are you shooting in?  That makes a significant difference in how you capture. Out of the box, F1-F4/60i and F5/24P (Standard) works in a standard 29.97 timeline within FCP.  F6- 24PA (Advanced) works on a 23.98 timeline and source footage must have 2:3:3:2 pulldown removed.  Also, after analyzing your QTime movie, I noticed the frame rate of the encode is 23.94.  That is a very odd frame rate (albeit, slightly off from standard 23.98 )  That just flagged me as a possible culprit.

I have the Timeline and the capture set to both 23.98.. why in the world would it be 23.94? I can understand that that may cause some jaggedness, but look how blurry, and terrible the colors are on that Mov clip I provided. I captured, didnt even pull it into the timeline, and viewed it from the "capture scratch" folder. It should be fine.


>>>>>>Once captured to your computer , you should not have to be rendering any of the straight captured footage.  If so, you have a setting in FCP incorrect.  This can degrade the image and if indeed it is set incorrect, it will more than likely be rendering incorrectly.  Does it look like this in the LCD while shooting?  For the record, I cannot tell what leaf you're talking about.  I do see what appears to be ants crawling on the ground though.

Nope I am not rendering any of the footage.. I am simply capturing and viewing the raw footage in Quicktime. It did not look like that in the LCD, it looks how the AVI files does. The default file that FCP spits out is a MOV file correct? AVI is a Windows file, I wouldn't think it would be anything else other than .MOV, but it could be I guess? I'm still at a loss with this.
 
Re: New DVX100A, possible problems? help (samples)

Oh and thanks again for your help I really appriciate it
 
Re: New DVX100A, possible problems? help (samples)

If you are expecting better image quality than the .mov has, you're shooting in the wrong format.  You'll need to go to high definition or film for more resolution.  To me it looks as crisp as I could imagine you'd want it to look. The XL2 in 16:9 mode will also offer slightly more resolution, btw.

Your problem is either that your expectations are insanely high or that you don't have "high quality" enabled.  To save processor use, .movs in the DV format play back at low quality in quicktime player (and SOMETIMES in final cut pro), and you need to turn high quality on to see the full quality (you need quicktime pro to do this).  In quicktime player, press the command key and "j" and select "quality" under "video."  Make sure "high quality" and nothing else is checked.  Don't save the movie after doing this, though; FCP knows about high quality and everything and messing with the .mov file in quicktime player only confuses it. When you export to a non-dv quicktime movie or export to camera, you'll get full quality back, btw.

Here are some images in "high quality mode" taken directly from your .mov file.  They look fine to me, but if you want more resolution, you'll need to shoot in a different format.

mike_falls.jpg

mike_falls2.jpg


Btw, dv is compressed, and pretty heavily (by a factor of 5.)  There are uncompressed options, but they're pretty hard to work with and require more hardware.  I wouldn't bother.

The fact is that dv is an imperfect format and heavily compressed and this lends it limitations.  There's nothing at all wrong with your camera or your computer, you're just working with the inherent issues with digital video and the quirks of both the camera and the computer.  The more you use both, the more you'lll get used to them and realize these "problems" are actually features which, while confusing, are more beneficial than anything.
 
Re: New DVX100A, possible problems? help (samples)

Policar you probably just solved my problem then! The image quality is great, but it looked terrible on the mac in Quicktime. I guess the quality in Quicktime was my problem. I guess I'm an idiot, thanks for your help!!
 
Re: New DVX100A, possible problems? help (samples)

Chasen,

1) to improve Quicktime playback quality:
go to synthetic-ap.com, download HiQual plugin, it is free and it will tell your Quicktime Pro to play clips in high quality ! GREAT !
Then once you captured the clip, simply drag it over the HiQual icon, and after that, it will always play in high quality.

2) to reduce the chroma noise...
   Use the Cinelike gamma setting, NOT the cinelike D !
   A lot of noise will dissapear.
   Cinelike D uses a artificial gain to raise the dark objects and thus,
   it increases noise. It gives the illusion of a broader dynamic range.

   You can also use the normal color matrix setting, instead of cinelike
   then increase color level to +4 and phase to +2 to compensate.
   It will lower the noise a little, but not that much.
 

3) to add some sharpness:
   first, thin mode looks a bit soft to begin with, it has been designed  for transfer to film... use thin mode with detail +4 or +5, it will increase detail WITHOUT adding any visible edge enhancement.
Or, you can use "MID" setting combined with detail level 0.
"MID" adds a little edge enhacement though, but you'll keep the full 480 vert lines of res.
AVOID "thick" setting, you'll lose 30% of vertical res.

hope it helps
good luck
 
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