Noise Solution Testing

Cinelike-D - beware...!

Cinelike-D - beware...!

thefilmaddict said:
Also, my current camera settings are:

Detail Level -2
Detail Coring +6
Chroma Level 0
Master Ped -1
Gamma Cinelike D
Matrix Norm

Should I change any settings for this test???
Click to expand...

YES you should! According to Barry Green, Cinelike D has the MOST noise of all the Gamma settings...
This is a quote from Barry:
Okay, finished testing gamma curves for luma noise. Evin was spot-on. I'd rank them in this order, from cleanest to noisiest:
B.PRESS
CINELIKE-V
LOW
HD NORM
SD NORM
NEWS
HIGH
CINELIKE-D

I can't find the original thread since the site has gone to the new server.
But I copied his quote off the original thread, which I had saved as a pdf.

If you've been using Cinelike-D as your gamma setting, that would explain
all the noise you've been getting.

Hope this helps,
Richard

______________________________________________________
www.richard-gale.com
 
I am not completely disagreeing with Barry on this one - but in my experience while cine-d might be the noisiest, it also apperas to have the leastt apparant noise. At least to my eye.

to explain, its the wider latitude that seems to make the noise more engrained in the image instead of dancing above it.

Its certainly very subjective but that is what my eye sees.
 
smelni, could you elaborate?
I'm unclear on what you mean. What's the difference between"noise"
vs. "apparent noise?" Can you give an example...

Also unclear about noise "engrained in the image" vs. noise
appearing to "dance above" the image.
I know this area is difficult to put into words, but can you clarify?

And what's your opinion of b.press and cinelike V, which Barry says are the
least noisy settings? Have you had a chance to experiment with them?

Thanks.
 
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R Gale said:
YES you should! According to Barry Green, Cinelike D has the MOST noise of all the Gamma settings...
This is a quote from Barry:
Okay, finished testing gamma curves for luma noise. Evin was spot-on. I'd rank them in this order, from cleanest to noisiest:
B.PRESS
CINELIKE-V
LOW
HD NORM
SD NORM
NEWS
HIGH
CINELIKE-D

I can't find the original thread since the site has gone to the new server.
Click to expand...
It's not the original one but its content that anyone can follow@this_link:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=43477
 
IN regards to overexposing- Just in case my earlier explaination didn't make sense let me try and make it better.

First thing I did was light the shot the way I wanted it to look. Light fallling into the dark etc.

Happy with light placement and over all look I closed the iris by 4 stops. Now the image was almost black.

Next I increased the lighting until it looked the same as the wide open shot.

So now I had the same shot but the iris was 4 stops closed. The shadows still had lots of noise just like in the first shot ( this is important to note). Also realize that I had to add some lights to fill the dark areas a bit more. So I brought all shadow areaas I wanted to keep up to at least 30 candles on my light meter. No shadow area with detail was below that.

Next I opened the iris by 3 stops. Most of the image looked over exposed now. The Highlight/hotspots were 1 stop over clipping. ( now remember this was in the set up I used so you will have to adjust lights and f stops per your lighting setup this is not a rule it's a technique).

Having seen the set up with the iris 4 stops closed I sort of knew how the lighting would look when I pulled down the exposure in post. You can see how the ratios between bright and dark will expose.

Remember! To the naked eye the scene looks too bright and it's hard to tell exactly how much light to use in the shadows etc. This is why I closed the iris. It gave me an idea of where I needed more light in the shadows and if i needed more ratio between lights to get the look I wanted. 300w for key 100w for background etc.

So the CCD's are getting pounded with enough light to keep the noise to a minimum and to keep the REZ to a maximum. DO NOT SHOOT THE SCENE WITH THE IRIS CLOSED DOWN 4 STOPS.

Now you may have to experiment to keep your highlights from clipping in the key part of the ratio. For me I went up 4 then down 3 and it worked. I should also note that the wall was white that I based the highlight ration on.

It should be noted that if you may need to use more fill on dark subjects to bring up the levels above the noise level. It's reflected light that comes back to the camera and hits the CCD's so a person wearing a dark shirt may have noise showing up on the shirt even though there was enough light on lighter objects. To make this work the best try and keep any area you want to keep above bright enough to expose out the noise. If that means you need more fill then add it.

Once you take this into post and bring down the levels to match the 4 stop over levels it will not introduce any noise. SO you will have the same look (roughly some subtle transitions may be lost) but not as much noise at all. Nothing that will be distracting that is for sure.

I hope I gave a better idea of the technique this time. I am not a classically trained DP so my terms may be off. And like I said in my earlier post you can skip the iris trick and use a meter. It's just the iris trick let me see what I was getting and the meter just tells me what I am getting. I would imagine the meter in the hands of a pro would be more accurate.

Good luck and let me know if you guys can get this to work. Oh yeah I used the stock V-Cine setting I didn't change anything which is nice since you don't have to lower details or coring to make it work.
 
Good tips, hold it! Can you post some samples? Clips if possible because stills it isn't the better way to evaluate the results. Thanks!
 
I will try and put some stuff on my site in the next day or so. I want to crop into some areas to keep it full rez if I get ambitious enough. Kind of like the focus assist does.
 
Just to let you guys know, I still haven't posted the footage. The last free site I looked into, they didn't take .tif files. It's kind of sad that posting files for free is such a pain in the neck.

I purchased a domain name today and I am in the process of building a site so that I can post HVX footage whenever and however I want to. Before doing this, I signed up for a site that won't let you post a link to the files, you have to e-mail each person you want to see the footage and they have to sign up for the service (AOL owns it). That was a big waste of time.
 
smelni said:
Does anyone know if its true that the CCD cannot resolve fully above 5.6 - if this is true then overlighting and closing down isnt a reasonable solution
Click to expand...
It's not the CCD, it's a principle of modern optical design. Most lenses perform sharpest at one to two stops down from wide open. As you stop down further, the resolving power is reduced, and its acutance is at its worst when the lens is stopped down to its smallest aperture (highest numerical f-number, e.g., f/22).

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot all about the "diffraction limited" issues with CCDs (see link in post below from cinephil). NEVERMIND!
 
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holditnowfilms said:
So now I had the same shot but the iris was 4 stops closed. The shadows still had lots of noise just like in the first shot ( this is important to note). Also realize that I had to add some lights to fill the dark areas a bit more. So I brought all shadow areaas I wanted to keep up to at least 30 candles on my light meter. No shadow area with detail was below that.

I DON'T HAVE A LIGHT METER, BUT I CAN USE THE AUTO IRIS IN THE CAMERA. YOU MENTION 30 CANDLES. FOR THOSE OF US WITHOUT A LIGHT METER, COULD YOU TELL US WITH AN EXAMPLE F-STOP THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT LIGHT LEVELS IN YOUR SHOT?

FOR EXAMPLE, YOU COULD SAY THAT YOU SHOT THE SCENE AT 5.6. THE SUBJECT WAS AT 8. THE DARK AREAS WITH DETAIL WERE AT 4 AND THE AREAS THAT YOU WANTED TO GO COMPLETELY BLACK WERE AT 2. IS THAT POSSIBLE?

ALSO, IF YOU ARE USING FINAL CUT PRO, WHAT DID YOU BRING DOWN TO MAKE THE IMAGE LOOK LESS NOISY (BLACKS VS MIDS VS WHITES).

THANKS!
Click to expand...
 
To be honest I only used the light meter to find out the point in which shadows would go "noisey". I closed the iris to previz the exposure I would get in POST CC . Based on that I would turn up or down the light ratios all by eye on the monitor. Once happy I would open the iris up and record the over exposed shot. Not reallly sure how to use the auto iris to get the numbers you want.

I will post the un-adusted vs. the adjusted so you will be able to check visually what the difference was.

I will also put the numbers from FCP CC I used. Remember the footage I recorded was overexposed and had little to no noise as a result. I only used FCP to bring down the exposure not remove noise.
 
cinephil said:
take a look at this :
http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/Masked-Engineer/f_mario_orazio-08.17.05.shtml
Click to expand...

Although that refers to 1/3in HD CCDs. The HVX effectively uses 1/3in SD CCDs (with the DSP extrapolating HD from the pixel shift). So the CCD elements are larger, which means the CCDs (but perhaps not the lens) on the HVX have more chance of accurately resolving chroma detail than cameras that use "HD" CCDs.

By my reckoning the radius of the CCD elements is going to be around 5.37 µm. I don't know how to do the maths to find out what that equates to in terms of lightwavelength diffraction at different apperatures, but extrapolating from what Mario Orazio has written, f8 or wider should be fine for the CCDs to resolve. As was mentioned earlier, whether the lens gets soft before then is another matter entirely!
 
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i have been trying to keep it below 5.6 but if we can safely go higher without loss of rez that would be very helpful indeed.

Barry? - any ideas on this?
 
As far as luma resolution you can safely go to 9.6. Avoid 11 in high-def though. F/11's okay for standard-def but not okay for high-def.

Still have to conduct some color testing; the 5.6 recommendation was based on the red wavelength being too long and not resolving through the smaller aperture properly. Green (which comprises something like 70% of the luma detail) is a smaller wavelength so it's less of a problem.

I'd say that f/8 is totally safe for most purposes, although the HVX lens was designed around the same philosophy as the Zeiss DigiPrimes: both are optimized to perform at their best when wide open. Panasonic did that on purpose because they recognize the desire for shallower DOF whenever possible. So keep the lens open and use NDs when you can, but you can use the full range from open to f/8 without much concern at all, and I've seen good results at 9.6 as well.
 
slightly OT, but

slightly OT, but

...have you guys seen the trailer for the new Johnny Depp flick? (Diving Bell and the Butterfly?) Massive amounts of low-light NOISE. And it was shot in 35mm

See? Noise is "in". Isn't Panny smart? ;-)
 
www.morrisbrothersfilms.net

I put together a website yesterday. It's simple and rough. Don't laugh to death when you see it. I posted a bunch of HVX200 clips on it and stills from my first noise test.

At the bottom of the page is a text file or .doc file (I forget) of my noise test notes.

Some of the video files are very big. Please don't try to stream the video clips. Download them by right clicking and choosing SAVE TARGET AS for PC users OR CONTROL click and choosing DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE for MAC users.

It will be interesting to see how many people can download from a $7 a month website. I hope that all the links work. let me know if you have any problems.

The first two minute clip is compressed for the web, but I tried to keep it as high in quality as possible, so it's still a big file. It was shot in 720 24p. I would start with this clip if you are looking for footage. Below it (on the web page) are uncompressed .mov files of some of the same shots in the two minute clip (in case you are looking for uncompressed files to bring into your NLE). The video has not been color corrected.

WARNING: These files will take a long time to download. Don't try them if you are looking for quick satisfaction. I personally don't mind downloading big clips if I can do it in the background while working on other things.
 
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Ernest_Acosta said:
Barry when do you estimate your dvd/book being release?
Click to expand...
This infomercial for Prudential Americana is throwing a bit of a wrench in the works -- four days in Hawaii will do that! :) So right now I'm aiming for last week of March.
 
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