arrestthisman
Well-known member
Hey all, I just spend a couple of days with my camera hooked up to a 50" plasma, and a gamma corrected 17" LCD.
I had been pixel peeping with the camera recently, and through it produces a wonderful picture at a proper viewing distance... It's a bit of an obsession, I like my footage to look as good as it can with my nose to the monitor.
So the following are my observations in case it helps anyone else! If not, this post will get buried, but I found some odd things out, so I felt it would be wrong not to at least put the findings out there for people to try (if they haven't already). Remember to keep in mind that these are MY findings, with my eye. You may not see the same results, and none of this is purported as fact, only what I saw.
First off, I was unhappy with compression noise, and didn't find 720p to be much better. This was for locked down shots, no movement. And I find 1080p to be distinctly more detailed than 720p. On the plasma, I noticed excessive sharpening (and many artifacts as a result) via uncompressed HDMI. When I turned sharpening down on the TV, it helped, but not greatly. I went back to cable HDTV (the Dark Knight was playing on HBO), and it was MUCH cleaner even though cable is heavilty compressed. So I switched to "movie" mode on the TV to compare like for like; cable HD movies versus HDMI footage off of the camera.
Since so many of our audences will be watching our footage on their TVs I wanted to get it right for the "end game," so to speak.
Long story short, I found that turning Detail to -7, Coring to -7 (just to be safe... it shouldn't be doing anything with sharpening off anyway, but just to be safe), and V Detail to +7. I found this gave me the best picture with plenty of detail, even up close, and virtually noise free. Note that I tried every single permutation of Detail and Coring, even with coring very high, Detail at -6 produced just little UGLY noise, and the coring made it splotchy and unattractive to my eye. I found the settings mentioned above, -7+7-7, had a wonderful organic gorgeous picture.
Now keep in mind this was uncompressed, so did not account for 4:2:0 color, and compression. Imagine all that ugly high frequency sharpening after being compressed!
During this I was also experimenting with ALL of the Gamma settings. There was no gamma that made any amount of detail look good enough for me to leave detail on.
But after I had settled on sharpening off, I went through the Gammas once again. Cinelike D was definitely noisier, but not bad enough I wouldn't use it. It pushes the ISO down, and this is clearly visible. Knowing that I shoot a lot in low light, but also enjoying a cinematic curve, I tried Cinelike V. To my surprise, it was almost as noisy as Cinelike D! This runs contrary to what is generally agreed upon, with Cinelike V being second quietest, and B.Press as quietest.
I found Low to give me a great cinematic look, and it was very quiet. The most startling thing, though is I found every single non-Cinelike Gamma to have a similar noise profile. HD Norm wasn't very noisy, and all of them looked great depending on the look you're going for.
What I took away was that Cinelike V is the most useless setting. I found B.Press to look very similar, with WAY less noise. Cinelike D is still worth the noise if you want the look, or more room in post, but I found HIGH to behave similar, but with much less noise.
I could see using any of the gammas depending on the shoot and planned post, or the look I liked for any given project... except Cinelike V and SD Norm (because I don't need to match to DVX footage for the near future).
I tried 720p versus 1080p. NO QUESTION. 1080p carries more detail. And with Detail off, it's important to get as much resolution as possible. But I found the best looking footage to be 1080p recorded on the camera, resized to 720p in Pro Res 422, even if your delivery is resized to 1080p again. There is clearly more color information, and high chroma edges and gradients look WAY better. Simply put 1080p resized properly to 720p looks like 4:2:2 footage. Good stuff. You do lose a little detail resizing back and fourth, but not much. Compared to native 720p footage it's still more detailed. I also could not break the codec in 1080p, lots of bad handheld just could not do it. Going frame by frame, I did find one single frame that was a little extra blurry than it should have been with a few macroblocks in specific places, but I had my nose to the screen. Playing the footage it'd be almost impossible to see, and even a few inches away from the screen, you couldn't see the macroblocks.
So if you're like me, you'll get addicted to turning the detail TOTALLY off. Looks great on TV, and even the computer. However, on the computer, I found the lack of edge enhancement a little more noticeable. What to do?
Well, I've just found first hand that sharpening in post looks almost exactly the same, and sometimes better than done in-cam. I tried both Genarts Sapphire sharpening, and Neat Video. Sapphire sharpening looks almost exactly the same as the kind of sharpening in-cam. You can make it look just like it was shot at 0 detail or 4 or anything on the scale, it's eerie how similar it is. And yes, it brings back those creepy crawly luma noise artifacts, so you don't win anything by sharpening in post, except for the fact that you have much more control. You can leave detail off for TVs, and for a web video or an HD download meant for computers, add the detail.
But Neat video is.... Neat! It adds the perception of detail without crapping up the picture. It makes a big difference, and doesn't add noise. No real artifacts, except for some very light pixelation on certain edges; not very noticeable at all. This is with no noise reduction in the plug-in at all. Lastly, though, it is not as powerful as the detail from Sapphire. There seems to be a ceiling in Neat Video, whereas in Sapphire you can make it look like Detail +7 and Coring -7. Neat Video can only get as far as what Detail +2 Coring +4 looks like.
After all this I've fallen in love with the camera again.
I hope this helps anyone out there who's interested. Take care, and happy shooting!!!
I had been pixel peeping with the camera recently, and through it produces a wonderful picture at a proper viewing distance... It's a bit of an obsession, I like my footage to look as good as it can with my nose to the monitor.
So the following are my observations in case it helps anyone else! If not, this post will get buried, but I found some odd things out, so I felt it would be wrong not to at least put the findings out there for people to try (if they haven't already). Remember to keep in mind that these are MY findings, with my eye. You may not see the same results, and none of this is purported as fact, only what I saw.
First off, I was unhappy with compression noise, and didn't find 720p to be much better. This was for locked down shots, no movement. And I find 1080p to be distinctly more detailed than 720p. On the plasma, I noticed excessive sharpening (and many artifacts as a result) via uncompressed HDMI. When I turned sharpening down on the TV, it helped, but not greatly. I went back to cable HDTV (the Dark Knight was playing on HBO), and it was MUCH cleaner even though cable is heavilty compressed. So I switched to "movie" mode on the TV to compare like for like; cable HD movies versus HDMI footage off of the camera.
Since so many of our audences will be watching our footage on their TVs I wanted to get it right for the "end game," so to speak.
Long story short, I found that turning Detail to -7, Coring to -7 (just to be safe... it shouldn't be doing anything with sharpening off anyway, but just to be safe), and V Detail to +7. I found this gave me the best picture with plenty of detail, even up close, and virtually noise free. Note that I tried every single permutation of Detail and Coring, even with coring very high, Detail at -6 produced just little UGLY noise, and the coring made it splotchy and unattractive to my eye. I found the settings mentioned above, -7+7-7, had a wonderful organic gorgeous picture.
Now keep in mind this was uncompressed, so did not account for 4:2:0 color, and compression. Imagine all that ugly high frequency sharpening after being compressed!
During this I was also experimenting with ALL of the Gamma settings. There was no gamma that made any amount of detail look good enough for me to leave detail on.
But after I had settled on sharpening off, I went through the Gammas once again. Cinelike D was definitely noisier, but not bad enough I wouldn't use it. It pushes the ISO down, and this is clearly visible. Knowing that I shoot a lot in low light, but also enjoying a cinematic curve, I tried Cinelike V. To my surprise, it was almost as noisy as Cinelike D! This runs contrary to what is generally agreed upon, with Cinelike V being second quietest, and B.Press as quietest.
I found Low to give me a great cinematic look, and it was very quiet. The most startling thing, though is I found every single non-Cinelike Gamma to have a similar noise profile. HD Norm wasn't very noisy, and all of them looked great depending on the look you're going for.
What I took away was that Cinelike V is the most useless setting. I found B.Press to look very similar, with WAY less noise. Cinelike D is still worth the noise if you want the look, or more room in post, but I found HIGH to behave similar, but with much less noise.
I could see using any of the gammas depending on the shoot and planned post, or the look I liked for any given project... except Cinelike V and SD Norm (because I don't need to match to DVX footage for the near future).
I tried 720p versus 1080p. NO QUESTION. 1080p carries more detail. And with Detail off, it's important to get as much resolution as possible. But I found the best looking footage to be 1080p recorded on the camera, resized to 720p in Pro Res 422, even if your delivery is resized to 1080p again. There is clearly more color information, and high chroma edges and gradients look WAY better. Simply put 1080p resized properly to 720p looks like 4:2:2 footage. Good stuff. You do lose a little detail resizing back and fourth, but not much. Compared to native 720p footage it's still more detailed. I also could not break the codec in 1080p, lots of bad handheld just could not do it. Going frame by frame, I did find one single frame that was a little extra blurry than it should have been with a few macroblocks in specific places, but I had my nose to the screen. Playing the footage it'd be almost impossible to see, and even a few inches away from the screen, you couldn't see the macroblocks.
So if you're like me, you'll get addicted to turning the detail TOTALLY off. Looks great on TV, and even the computer. However, on the computer, I found the lack of edge enhancement a little more noticeable. What to do?
Well, I've just found first hand that sharpening in post looks almost exactly the same, and sometimes better than done in-cam. I tried both Genarts Sapphire sharpening, and Neat Video. Sapphire sharpening looks almost exactly the same as the kind of sharpening in-cam. You can make it look just like it was shot at 0 detail or 4 or anything on the scale, it's eerie how similar it is. And yes, it brings back those creepy crawly luma noise artifacts, so you don't win anything by sharpening in post, except for the fact that you have much more control. You can leave detail off for TVs, and for a web video or an HD download meant for computers, add the detail.
But Neat video is.... Neat! It adds the perception of detail without crapping up the picture. It makes a big difference, and doesn't add noise. No real artifacts, except for some very light pixelation on certain edges; not very noticeable at all. This is with no noise reduction in the plug-in at all. Lastly, though, it is not as powerful as the detail from Sapphire. There seems to be a ceiling in Neat Video, whereas in Sapphire you can make it look like Detail +7 and Coring -7. Neat Video can only get as far as what Detail +2 Coring +4 looks like.
After all this I've fallen in love with the camera again.
I hope this helps anyone out there who's interested. Take care, and happy shooting!!!
