P2 Viewer Software - Terrible Quality?

[bobhope]

So, when playing some mxf's with the panny provided P2 Viewer software I just downloaded, I noticed, at full screen on my 23" monitor, they look awful!

When I hook up my camera via component out straight into the same monitor images look a lot better. Still noisy though, but thats another issue.

So...is the P2 Viewer not meant for real-world use? Does it compress things? It also plays back the files very choppily on my AMD 3200+. And MOST IMPORTANT, my mxf files are actually much better quality right?

 

[Barry_Green]

Two things -- first, by default, the P2 Viewer is set to display high-def at half resolution. Change that and you'll notice a huge increase in quality.

Second, the P2 Viewer display seems to be super-mega-noisy. Nothing like what the footage actually looks like. It may be a skimped-on codec trading quality for speed, I don't know. But the footage in the NLE looks substantially better than it does from the P2 Viewer. I use the viewer for previewing clips, but not for critical quality evaluation!

 

[Paul Llewellyn]

I'm getting a little confused over the whole noise thing now. Being in PAL land and shooting 25pn I've not yet put anything directly into an NLE. I play back what I've shot using either the P2 Viewer or a SONY 17" HD TV/MONITOR using component from the camera.

Whats confusing me now is that the P2 viewer is far less noisy than the SONY image. The imagine from the SONY when showing low light shot stuff is pretty horrible.

I'd be delighted if what I've shot is actually better than what I'm seeing with the viewer as I'm quite happy with that.

Is component out really not good at all or is it just the admittedly weak SONY monitor?

 

[Barry_Green]

It's the monitor most likely. Go into the monitor's menus and look for "sharpening" or something like that; on my Sony TV it was turned up to absolute maximum by default and it made the picture look horrible (on everything, not just HVX footage). Crank that down to something reasonable (or OFF) and you should see a dramatic improvement in how everything looks.