Hi,I have some doubt ,Why Panasonic didn't make a built in recorder like Nanoflash with the AF100,Nanoflash can record 8bit 4:2:2 at 280mb,if Panasonic make this kind of built in recorder with the AF100,we no need connect any additional recorder,right?the technology is there ,I don't know what is the criteria...........................
Why Panasonic didn't make a built in recorder like Nanoflash ?
- Thread starter jonatha
- Start date
pannyfreak
Active member
It would turn a $5,000 camera into a $10,000 camera.
If you need 280mbs, slap on an external recorder.
But for most buyers, they won't need it hence it wasn't included to keep the price low.
If you need 280mbs, slap on an external recorder.
But for most buyers, they won't need it hence it wasn't included to keep the price low.
Barry_Green
Moderator
They do make an external recorder, which is better quality than the NanoFlash. It's the HPG20, and it costs $5,000. If you think it's worth it, you're free to buy it. For those who don't need it, they don't have to pay extra for it.
They also make another external recorder, the HMR10, which records AVCCAM to SDHC cards. Not much point in using it with an AF100, because it records the exact same codec as the camera's own, but it is an external recorder sort of like the Nano. It isn't intended to be a super-duper-high-quality unit; it was originally intended to be used as paired with a small remote camera head, but if you wanted to use it as a recorder for redundancy, it might be an option.
They also make another external recorder, the HMR10, which records AVCCAM to SDHC cards. Not much point in using it with an AF100, because it records the exact same codec as the camera's own, but it is an external recorder sort of like the Nano. It isn't intended to be a super-duper-high-quality unit; it was originally intended to be used as paired with a small remote camera head, but if you wanted to use it as a recorder for redundancy, it might be an option.
The cost argument is missed. Atomos Ninja (shipping) is priced at 900$, touch screen, enclosure and such. KiProMini (shipping at 2k) records onto compact flash, the cost is mostly in the interfacing.
It could not be more than 300-400$ extra to implement ProRes/CF for embedding into AF100. Anybody of a sound mind would swallow that.
But maybe the issue is somewhere else, maybe there is nothing, or little enough, to be gained from 422 high bit rate recording of the signal coming from this camera head?
10 bit is an ovekill, only the top broadcast cameras deliver signal clean enough to gain from that depth. Vertical chroma resolution might be limited by the AF100 camera head already, so perhaps only marginal gains are to be made from going to 422 sampling.
Professional testing like the EBU/BBC, should determine all that, hopefully soon enough.
It could not be more than 300-400$ extra to implement ProRes/CF for embedding into AF100. Anybody of a sound mind would swallow that.
But maybe the issue is somewhere else, maybe there is nothing, or little enough, to be gained from 422 high bit rate recording of the signal coming from this camera head?
10 bit is an ovekill, only the top broadcast cameras deliver signal clean enough to gain from that depth. Vertical chroma resolution might be limited by the AF100 camera head already, so perhaps only marginal gains are to be made from going to 422 sampling.
Professional testing like the EBU/BBC, should determine all that, hopefully soon enough.
nugat I dont agree that prores inbuilt is any kind of solution when you consider that the AF100 is not an Apple product - it has to be cross platform to all NLE's. If Panasonic were to say we're going to implement anything - what say ye users, Id sing the same old AVC Intra song Ive been singing and even moreover than any external recorded I still think it would yield the most gain.
I must say the more I use the AF100 the more Atomos Ninja peaks my interest. I was entirely on the ki pro mini bandwagon before I touched the AF100 - and it is a great product on spec, I like what the Atomos company is trying to achieve. And as someone that doesnt shoot for BBC or discovery they can say what they like. They produce probably not even 1% of global content.
I must say the more I use the AF100 the more Atomos Ninja peaks my interest. I was entirely on the ki pro mini bandwagon before I touched the AF100 - and it is a great product on spec, I like what the Atomos company is trying to achieve. And as someone that doesnt shoot for BBC or discovery they can say what they like. They produce probably not even 1% of global content.
The issue is not Prores and Apple licenses, or any other 422 scheme. The question is, is there anything significant to be gained from such a scheme, as compared to transcoding the AVCHD 24mbit when ingesting. Perhaps the AVCHD records /delivers almost all of what the camera head has to offer.
Darren Levine
Veteran
it doesn't matter what the bitrate could have been or whether they could have done it or if we would have gained for it. this is yet another whining and complaining that the big bad manufacteres didn't give us everything we wanted for $3 with financing at .01% APR.
be happy they gave us this much, moore's law doesn't even move this fast ;P
be happy they gave us this much, moore's law doesn't even move this fast ;P
BobbyMurcerFan
Well-known member
I have to say that I really agree with you. No matter what is added, there is always going to be complaints for more and cheaper.
nyvz
Veteran
Of course there is something to be gained from less compressed recording. Have you looked at high detail or high motion scenes in 24Mbps? Such heavy compression introduces a host of different artifacts and unwanted effects that are only also exacerbated by pushing or processing the image in post. Even if the af100 somehow natively produced 4bit 2:1:1 images heavily compressing the images would add things like blocking, softening, mosquito noise, etc that wouldn't have been seen in the camera's images without heavy compression.
Some tests have been done on that:
[FONT=Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial]http://crews.tv/blog/2010/10/22/af100-images-pushed-to-the-limit/[/FONT]
The question again is of diminishing returns calculations...
[FONT=Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial]http://crews.tv/blog/2010/10/22/af100-images-pushed-to-the-limit/[/FONT]
The question again is of diminishing returns calculations...
Elton
Veteran
I have a pretty good action/high motion clip of me and my kids whooshing down a snow tubing hill that's recorded internally 1080 24p PH and externally on the nano using 1080 24 PSF output at 140 mbs long GOP.
You can see minor breakup in the AVCHD, but you really have to pixel peep. It held up much better than I expected.
You can see minor breakup in the AVCHD, but you really have to pixel peep. It held up much better than I expected.
It's not the question whether higher-bitrate 422 codec is better, of course objectively it is.
But is AVCHD 24 mbit/sec, 4:2:0, GOOD ENOUGH for AF100 ? [FONT=Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial]
http://crews.tv/blog/2010/10/22/af100-curveball/
[/FONT]"...we took the Panasonic AG-AF100 footage into the editing suite we couldn’t tell the difference between the on-board 24Mb/s AVCHD recorded material and the off-board 100Mb/s AVC-Intra recorded material.
We had been lucky enough to have a few hours with a pre-production engineering sample of the new 4/3″ Panasonic AF100, destined for release in December this year.
For the first time we were looking at the ingested footage, ready for cutting into a sequence for uploading to the net.
We thought we should have been able to pick the difference. After all, Yves Simard has years as a television director of photography and I spent years at the sharp end of the camera rental business.
But editor Simon Coldrick had pulled a nifty trick – he had put up the split screen without telling us which side was which.
It was a puzzle, given that so many professionals in the business spend so much time trying convince producers that it is worth paying more for cameras with bigger bit streams and better codecs.
But when the producers can’t see the difference with their eyes, it’s a pretty hard sell – a fact that DSLR evangelists take full advantage of.
For all that, the quality of a codec should show up when you shoot some green screen or start pushing the footage around during a grade. After all, it would be a rare shoot that was all perfectly controlled lighting circumstances.
But there was another surprise in store, as Coldrick explains, “When I lifted the video levels of both images the AVC-Intra 100 appeared to come off worse with more pronounced noise in the blacks.”
“The greater 24Mb/s compression appears to mask this noise, as it can’t reproduce the data it contains as accurately,” he says, at the same time providing the answer to the conundrum.
“A codec can only work with the picture it is given. While the AVC-Intra recording doesn’t make the picture worse, it can’t make it better,” he says.
“The result is much larger files than necessary for the information contained and it will be almost impossible to see the difference against the native AVCHD file.”
The idea we took to the shoot – to avoid the limitations of the internal AVCHD recording codec on the AF100 by taking an HD-SDI feed out the back – turns out to be not the fix-everything solution we’d expected..."
But is AVCHD 24 mbit/sec, 4:2:0, GOOD ENOUGH for AF100 ? [FONT=Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial]
http://crews.tv/blog/2010/10/22/af100-curveball/
[/FONT]"...we took the Panasonic AG-AF100 footage into the editing suite we couldn’t tell the difference between the on-board 24Mb/s AVCHD recorded material and the off-board 100Mb/s AVC-Intra recorded material.
We had been lucky enough to have a few hours with a pre-production engineering sample of the new 4/3″ Panasonic AF100, destined for release in December this year.
For the first time we were looking at the ingested footage, ready for cutting into a sequence for uploading to the net.
We thought we should have been able to pick the difference. After all, Yves Simard has years as a television director of photography and I spent years at the sharp end of the camera rental business.
But editor Simon Coldrick had pulled a nifty trick – he had put up the split screen without telling us which side was which.
It was a puzzle, given that so many professionals in the business spend so much time trying convince producers that it is worth paying more for cameras with bigger bit streams and better codecs.
But when the producers can’t see the difference with their eyes, it’s a pretty hard sell – a fact that DSLR evangelists take full advantage of.
For all that, the quality of a codec should show up when you shoot some green screen or start pushing the footage around during a grade. After all, it would be a rare shoot that was all perfectly controlled lighting circumstances.
But there was another surprise in store, as Coldrick explains, “When I lifted the video levels of both images the AVC-Intra 100 appeared to come off worse with more pronounced noise in the blacks.”
“The greater 24Mb/s compression appears to mask this noise, as it can’t reproduce the data it contains as accurately,” he says, at the same time providing the answer to the conundrum.
“A codec can only work with the picture it is given. While the AVC-Intra recording doesn’t make the picture worse, it can’t make it better,” he says.
“The result is much larger files than necessary for the information contained and it will be almost impossible to see the difference against the native AVCHD file.”
The idea we took to the shoot – to avoid the limitations of the internal AVCHD recording codec on the AF100 by taking an HD-SDI feed out the back – turns out to be not the fix-everything solution we’d expected..."
Elton
Veteran
Here is a link to uncompressed pict files from both a nano @ 140 mbs and internal AVCHD PH mode (converted to ProRes in FCP).
https://www.yousendit.com/download/MzZINnFEayszS3BFQlE9PQ
Shot at a snow tubing hill at night under ugly sodium lights. Was still balanced for daylight so it's very orange in places.
Olympus 14-54 f2.8-3.5
ISO 800
Not sure about all the settings--first time with the camera and was just having fun with my kids...pretty sure Cine D gamma and Norm2 matrix, -2 master ped.
Nanoflash was in my coat pocket ;-). Triggered via timecode start/stop. SDI out was set to 24psf.
Happy peeping!
https://www.yousendit.com/download/MzZINnFEayszS3BFQlE9PQ
Shot at a snow tubing hill at night under ugly sodium lights. Was still balanced for daylight so it's very orange in places.
Olympus 14-54 f2.8-3.5
ISO 800
Not sure about all the settings--first time with the camera and was just having fun with my kids...pretty sure Cine D gamma and Norm2 matrix, -2 master ped.
Nanoflash was in my coat pocket ;-). Triggered via timecode start/stop. SDI out was set to 24psf.
Happy peeping!
David W. Jones
Veteran
Built-in nanoflash recorder???
Why didn't Panasonic provide a sit on your ass button? I would love to sit on my ass while the truck is being unloaded.
Come to think of it, how about a light the set button? I would sure like to be drinking an espresso while the set is being lit.
Speaking of which, Hey Panasonic... How come the AF100 can't make a decent cup of coffee? For crying out loud, is coffee too much too ask for from this camera?
And what about a menu item that is assignable to button 1 or 2 where flags, dots, and cutters come out of the camera? It is 2011 you know!
Not to mention an airbrush makeup and mic the talent option. Hell for what we paid for this camera, I want it to drive me home after drinking too much after a wrap.
Are you listening Panasonic? :violin:
Good Luck with your wish list!
Why didn't Panasonic provide a sit on your ass button? I would love to sit on my ass while the truck is being unloaded.
Come to think of it, how about a light the set button? I would sure like to be drinking an espresso while the set is being lit.
Speaking of which, Hey Panasonic... How come the AF100 can't make a decent cup of coffee? For crying out loud, is coffee too much too ask for from this camera?
And what about a menu item that is assignable to button 1 or 2 where flags, dots, and cutters come out of the camera? It is 2011 you know!
Not to mention an airbrush makeup and mic the talent option. Hell for what we paid for this camera, I want it to drive me home after drinking too much after a wrap.
Are you listening Panasonic? :violin:
Good Luck with your wish list!
Matt Gottshalk
Resident Preditor
Epic, lol.
I think the cost factor is not a big deal,Atomos Ninja $900,Kipro Mini less than 2k,that case Panasonic could make an internal chip and console,the cost may be less than 1k right?if there is a possibility ,then no need go for any compression to 24mbps isn't it?we will not loss any color space ,we will get uncompressed video at 4:2:2 @280mbps
NB:This is not a complaint or demand I am thinking about ,just possibilities thats it...............if you guys are happy with 4:2:0 @24mbps(maximum)I also happy, otherwise if we could get uncompressed video in high bit rate ang high color space we are more happy isn't it....................
NB:This is not a complaint or demand I am thinking about ,just possibilities thats it...............if you guys are happy with 4:2:0 @24mbps(maximum)I also happy, otherwise if we could get uncompressed video in high bit rate ang high color space we are more happy isn't it....................