Philip Bloom FS700 / Odyssey7Q Resolution Comparison Test

M

Mitch Gross

Veteran
A number of nice images have been posted on this forum showing how well the Odyssey7Q performs in delivering quality HD images out of the FS700 utilizing the 4K RAW signal. But Philip always seems to have a way of cutting through things and demonstrating in a very effective manner. Here he does so with comparative images, which speak many 1000s of words. As we have stated, Convergent Design is working to improve the issues brought up in our 4K2HD capture mode, but there are some significant advances apparent as are illustrated in the video. Worth taking a look (be sure to watch in HD).

https://vimeo.com/90469354
 
interesting indeed - you can see clearly how different the gamma of 4K2HD is and how it crunches the blacks, also with more saturation. It has more sharpness but more noise too than HD from a 4K in Resolve. At the first sight 4K2HD looks more pleasant when you review your files after shooting but I for myself i'd prefer a lower contrast and lower gamma in 7Q's internal processing similar to the HD over SDI. Probably that would make REC709 out of the 7Q more suitable too (wild guess).
 
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Looks pretty solid! Any plans for ProRes 12-bit 444? The RAW post-debayer is slightly cleaner (something to shoot for in the 7Q ;) ), however the vastly smaller file sizes for ProRes are worth the minor quality trade off. If there's enough computing power, XAVC would be a nice option for the future if Sony will license it.
 
Clermond said:
interesting indeed - you can see clearly how different the gamma of 4K2HD is and how it crunches the blacks, also with more saturation. It has more sharpness but more noise too than HD from a 4K in Resolve. At the first sight 4K2HD looks more pleasant when you review your files after shooting but I for myself i'd prefer a lower contrast and lower gamma in 7Q's internal processing similar to the HD over SDI. Probably that would make REC709 out of the 7Q more suitable too (wild guess).
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As previously stated, we are working to address this.

Separate from these issues, one cannot deny the increased resolving power.
 
jcs said:
Looks pretty solid! Any plans for ProRes 12-bit 444? The RAW post-debayer is slightly cleaner (something to shoot for in the 7Q ;) ), however the vastly smaller file sizes for ProRes are worth the minor quality trade off. If there's enough computing power, XAVC would be a nice option for the future if Sony will license it.
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Yes.

;-D
 
well it would appear that footy is fairly conclusive. I have an odd question though. Has anyone ever done any resolution tests for scaling in Premiere?

I'm specifically asking about putting 4K footy into a 2K (or 1080) timeline and then seeing how well Premiere handles the downscaling resolution wise.

I took some 4K 1DC footy a while back and popped it on a HD timeline to see about playback on my machine (scaled down to 30% or 25% or so)

I wanted to see/ test how it would react to warp or different framing etc. I wasn't really impressed with the end result as far as IQ goes but I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong. Anyone ever try this and what were your results?
 
I tried scaling 4K down to 2K in Resolve, PP CC and Photoshop/ACR. Photoshop/ACR looked the best. With Resolve and PP you could see softening compared to Photoshop/ACR.
 
Chris Johnston said:
I'm specifically asking about putting 4K footy into a 2K (or 1080) timeline and then seeing how well Premiere handles the downscaling resolution wise.
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actually PP does not support editing native DNG so your first step would be transcoding DNG RAW files to a popular codec that can be used in PP. ACR/AE (very very slow rendering) or Resolve is the way to go at the moment.
 
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jcs said:
DNG's don't have the CDNG tags, etc.?
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I don't know details about this tags and format but PP doesn't support either 7Q DNG nor from Blackmagic Cinema Camera. It's supposed to come quite soon but at the moment not.
 
Is there any plans of a 4Kto2K prores? That seems useful to me. And should be easier to implement as no cropping has to be done, no?
 
jcs said:
Premiere Pro uses decent scaling algorithms (Lanczos, bicubic): http://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2010/10/scaling-in-premiere-pro-cs5.html
Was it soft looking during real-time playback? Did you make sure full resolution was being displayed (vs. 1/2 etc.)?
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I took the original 7Q .dng files and made 4k and a 2k 16 bit .tiffs at the default settings with ACR.
I put the 2K on the PP timeline. Then I put the 4K on top of it and resized it to 50%. Viewed it at full resolution and 100% size.

I was looking at a very detailed image (the edges of palm tree leaves, house exterior, etc.).

The PP downres looks fine on it's own. When you compare it to the downres from ACR the difference is apparent.
 
ACR sharpens at 25 by default. Perhaps try adding the Sharpen filter to the PPro clip and turn up until it matches the ACR version. If PPro can come close without artifacts (different kind of sharpen process), that will save time vs ACR. You could also save a frame out of PPro and apply ACR as a filter with Sharpen set to 25 in Photoshop CC (can also do with video after converting to a smart object, though is slow).

Did you use AE or Photoshop with ACR? I would expect PPro to match AE resize quality when PPro has Render Max Quality checked (unless something special is done when DeBayering along with the resize).

Rendering the 4K downscale at Max Render Quality and comparing frames might be helpful.
 
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