Unbelievably bad resolution from Canon XL2!!!

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King Rudi

Member
This is a snapshot of the RAW footage I'm getting from my Canon XL2 after both Premiere and OnLocation capturing!

http://www.easy-share.com/1917674635/XL2.jpg

Anyone know what the problem could be? The only thing I've changed on my camera is 2:3 to 2:3:3:2. Do I need to change capture settings or something to compensate? This footage really is shocking! :shocked:
 
King Rudi said:
This is a snapshot of the RAW footage I'm getting from my Canon XL2 after both Premiere and OnLocation capturing!

http://www.easy-share.com/1917674635/XL2.jpg

Anyone know what the problem could be? The only thing I've changed on my camera is 2:3 to 2:3:3:2. Do I need to change capture settings or something to compensate? This footage really is shocking! :shocked:
Click to expand...

The Canon XL2 is an SD camera, so, the image that you gave as an example, is a 1920x1080... HD... so there has been some 'uprezing' done to get from SD to HD... and attendant loss of sharpness... the pulldown/around/up cadence should not impact the basic resolution of the camera.

On another item. The shot is a table shot, and the foreground table setting is thrown way out of focus, the plane of 'sharp' focus seems to be about 4-5 feet into the scene, that combined with a rather shallow depth of field, lends further to a 'blurry' look.

On can 'almost' read the cards at the plane of sharp focus, everything else is fuzz... I tend to 'deep focus', so I probably would have focused such that the foreground items were 'sharp(or sharper)' and only the distant objects and window soft.


As an additional note, for stills of the 'size' that your sample was, you can upload the stills to your album on this site, an embed the still in your post. Rather than having someone go to a transfer site, and have to wait for all the stupid timeouts for 'free' downloads.

On the other hand, those sites are used by folks to transfer actual video clips that can be quite large.
 
Thanks for your reply. The reason that the image has those dimensions is that it was a Screen Print of the video. The sequence settings are 720 x 480. Here is another image (attached to the post itself:) ) which was exported as a JPEG with 100% quality. Surely this is not right?

Photoshoot.jpg

I seem to be getting better definition from my little Sony Camcorder:/
 
To me the second shot, in keeping with SD, seems 'ok'... There are jaggies on the 'near' horizontal lines, and for me the shot is slightly 'low', but given the background sky is tending towards 'white', and no fill, that seems like it is what it is.

At this point I'd ask...

1) Do you have other clips that do not have the 'quality' issue you are seeing now?
2) Are you doing any 'sharpening', or other process that enhances 'edges'.
3) Other issues involving SD have to do with how the computer representation is vs. how it will appear on a Real(tm) TV screen. In particular the 'rectangular' aspect ratio of the DV pixels, leads to some false calls about the 'quality' of the material. I'd suggest burning a DVD, playing it, and checking for quality. You can also play your original clips through the camera on a Real(tm) TV to check 'input' quality vs. 'output' on the DVD.
 
Hey there,

Thanks for your reply. I knew my video was bad when I tried it on the TV and my girlfriend asked "Why is it so pixelated?". To answer your questions:

1) All my clips look rather terrible.
2) No sharpening or anything like that
3) The DVD looks the same

Here is another screenshot, check the "lines" on the car, they're more like ZigZags. I've read so many reviews of the "AMAZING" footage from the XL2, I'm pretty sure that I'm not experiencing any of it:/

zzz.jpg
 
It might be a bit of an interlacing issue...mess around with the different interlacing options in Premiere (in Interpret footage, and also in each clip's Field Options) and see if that helps anything. Also make sure Maximum Render Quality is selected on export. Also under Interpret footage make sure it's removing the pulldown.
 
Gabrobot said:
It might be a bit of an interlacing issue...mess around with the different interlacing options in Premiere (in Interpret footage, and also in each clip's Field Options) and see if that helps anything. Also make sure Maximum Render Quality is selected on export. Also under Interpret footage make sure it's removing the pulldown.
Click to expand...

Yes, when I was shooting with the DVX100 and SD with 24pA mode, I used After Effects to remove the pull down. I don't believe I had an occasion where it didn't correctly interpret field order, as well as cadence, automagically... perhaps I was lucky...

But I have noticed differences between Premiere's handling of things and AE.

So, yeah, manually select the various options for field order (even or odd), and pull down cadence.

Since I've not done this with Premiere, I don't know what options are available to the Premiere user. (I don't have the time right now to start it up and check some of my own footage...).
 
King Rudi said:
My raw footage is also jagged though, this is the problem:/
Click to expand...

This is were you'd put a clip up on one of those transfer sites, and let someone, like me look at it to see if that is the way it is, or if there is something that I can see 'wrong' with setting things up.

If you have a 30 second or so 'raw' from the camera clip. Perhaps take a test shot with the setting you used, and have 'angular/structure' elements in it, perhaps I can take a look at it sometime today.

Be sure to use the same settings you used for your wedding shots, if there is not some small clip from the wedding that shows the problems. I've seen at least one wedding so I don't need to spend a lot of time watching another...
 
King Rudi said:
Here is a sample of the raw footage:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/96qd6v
Click to expand...

Wasn't much of a clip, and really didn't have any of the 'straight' lines to see the jaggies on but as far as I can tell, the clip was

NTSC Widescreen. After Effects gave more 'details', and I used the 'guess' at the 24pa cadence, which seems to have been
WWWWS

In any case, I selected an NTSC Widescreen preset for creating a sequence in Premiere, and this is the result. I don't see any
extraordinary problem with the 'resolution', other than it is NTSC... and Widescreen to boot...

If you are viewing this on anything but an NTSC TV, certain 'things' will be problematic. The mavins of yore decided to 'digitize' NTSC (and PAL) at non-square
pixel aspect ratios. This means that when the media is viewed on a 'square' pixel device, like your computer monitor, things will look 'strange', because the software
has interpolated the retangular pixels of the DV format to the square pixels of the computer monitor.

It's not clear to me what happens on a HD display, but most people play their NTSC/PAL stuff 'full screen' on HD displays and complain about the 'crappy'
resolution... I often play NTSC stuff at either 1/2 or 1/4 zoom factors.


I also did a Unsharp Mask pass on the second one just for comparisons.

attachment.php
 
Last edited:
King Rudi said:
Hey there,

Thanks for your reply. I knew my video was bad when I tried it on the TV and my girlfriend asked "Why is it so pixelated?". To answer your questions:

1) All my clips look rather terrible.
2) No sharpening or anything like that
3) The DVD looks the same

Here is another screenshot, check the "lines" on the car, they're more like ZigZags. I've read so many reviews of the "AMAZING" footage from the XL2, I'm pretty sure that I'm not experiencing any of it:/

View attachment 38874
Click to expand...

I had the same issue a little while ago shooting in SD. I kind of came to the conclusion that perhaps I got used to shooting in HD, I forgot how bad SD can be. BUt I think I need to go back to look at my footage again as I don't think these lines should be there.
 
Hey the XL2 natively interlace or progressive? I know you shot it on 24p but if the timeline it writes on is interlace you should export it with upper or lower field order, not progressive. That did the trick for me with my HPX's SD footage on Premiere. All and all I'm sure it is a interlace related issue.

For the record, I played around with my footage on FCP as well and change the timeline setting from Lower to Progressive worked for me there.
 
chromeboy007 said:
I had the same issue a little while ago shooting in SD. I kind of came to the conclusion that perhaps I got used to shooting in HD, I forgot how bad SD can be. BUt I think I need to go back to look at my footage again as I don't think these lines should be there.
Click to expand...

The question is how did you view your SD clips... Broadcast monitor via Firewire, via DVD on a Real(tm) TV set... or on a computer... or HD display...

The use of computer displays often leads to misestimation of what the resulting TV display will be. Even in the case of HD displays, with the larger number of pixels, and displaying 720x480 material at 4x enlargement or there abouts, leads to such misestmations...

The simple fact is, NTSC/PAL SD is about 720x480 (PAL having a few more lines...), further, the rectangular aspect ratio of NTSC/PAL also induces interpolation artifacts when viewed on square pixel devices.

The other issues that factor into really obvious artifacts, is wrong field dominance, 3:2 removal, especially the pA type, etc. But even for 60i material, having the wrong field setting will lead to 'strangeness'...

Having looked at the OP's footage, all I can say is that it looks like normal NTSC 24p Widescreen material... which 5-6 years ago was 'great'... these days... less so...
 
Hey King Rudi, can you give us a quick 3 sec clip of the van where you see the lines? I'll to play with it in Premiere and FCP.
 
Problem found, no solution yet though:/

Problem found, no solution yet though:/

Hey guys,

I found what the problem is: The clips which are really bad (with the super jagged edges) are the clips in which I copy the clip to another sequence and then put that sequence back into the timeline. The sequences are the same settings. I have no idea why it would cause this. Anyone have any ideas?
 
They are. I duplicated the sequence I was working from. I've compared the sequence settings side-by-side, exactly the same:/
 
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