HD For Indies

(or at least new info to me)

Reader Stephen attended the ResFest demo of the Panasonic HVX200 camera. First public exhibit outside of IBC.

He also has some news about the Canon XL H1's native CCD resolution.

Now, keep in mind, this is what a rep told him. I have found it notoriously difficult to get good, solid information on new products from reps, because it's all new to them, too. So this is what we've been told, by company representatives, but it does NOT mean that it is definitely true. So I can verify that this is what they told Stephen, but I can't verify that it is all factual, since the reps don't always have it right at the beginning.

His report, starting with the Panasonic camera with a rep talking about it (my bold for emphasis):

After a rather interesting seminar, focused on differences between codecs, she showed us some live footage of 1080i, and it looked pretty good. Then we had a question/answer session.

The camera can do 1080 in 60i, 30p, 24p. Variable frame rates in 720p. This is interesting because when I asked the question "What is the native resolution of the chips?", she got a bit flustered, bullshat for a minute, then just said, "I'm not at liberty to say" and then went on to say how it didn't matter, because what you got was 1920x1080. This is even more interesting after I talked to the canon rep, who said that canon really wanted to go 1080p, but a chip that could actually do 1080p would have made the camera cost $100,000, and they had no choice but to make the compromise. (on that note, I have information on this 24f thing) From my conversation with him, coupled with Panasonics avoidance of the question, I'm pretty sure the chips are not natively 1080. So its not a question of 1440x1080 or 1280x1080, its a question of how much smaller than that it is. Bummer.

From what she said, you can get anything out of the camera that the camera can shoot, I believe she said through firewire, but there is a catch. when recording to P2, you simply get 24 frames. coming out of firewire, you get 60 fields, so you have to do a pull down, which is a pain in the ass, and makes file sizes larger (i didn't realize that).

Audio, on p2 or over firewire: Uncompressed 48k 4 channel w/ dvcpro100 Uncompressed 48k 2 channel w/ dvcpro50

Variable Frame rates are still not decided, however the following are "definite": 12, 18, 22, 36, 48, 60 Only in 720p

Low light rating. She wasn't' sure, the only thing she could say is that its f8 @ 2000 lux, while the dvx was f11 @ 2000 lux, and it has 7 stops of latitude.


The model camera only did 1080i, and the image looked like shit. the demo footage was done by someone obviously not skilled with a camera, and out of a hotel window, was shot on an overcast day and was grainy as hell.


p2 started sounding a little more reasonable after the seminar. I didn't realize that the idea is that you never buy more than 3 cards. Its not a storage solution, just an intermediary between the camera and the storage. After the costs of tape, and the convenience of not having to log/capture, in the end, just might be cost effective.

XL H1: Native 1440x1080 chips. It does 24i, as in field a and field b have temporal differences. He did say that it is not as noticeable at a slower frame rate since the interval between the fields is less time. (wrong - see MikeNote1) I wasn't quite convinced. The camera did look pretty cool.

I didn't take the best notes on other peoples questions, and realized so afterwards, but if theres anything else your curious about, shoot me a question and I'll try to remember.

-Stephen


Mike's Comments: This all sounds very interesting.

Storage issues: FireWire vs P2

The most interesting tidbit new to me is that the footage that goes to P2 is not the same as goes to FireWire. The P2 card is smart enough to not need to work like the Varicam, putting the flagged 24 frames in a 60 fps stream. Since there is no tape transport involved, it can just record the 24 important frames and not record the others. Going out over FireWire, 720p60 is the format. To make it do just 24p, they'll have to be flagging frames again. (If you are unsure of how 24p works with Varicam, read the archives. Google has broken archive searching at the moment, very very irritatingly). So recording to the FireStore FireWire based device will require more storage than the P2 cards will if shooting 24p. Two and a half times more, since 24 goes into 60 2 1/2 times. So the two 8GB P2 cards you get in the $10,000 bundle with the camera (total of 16GB) will hold as much 24p footage (regardless of 720 or 1080 resolution) as 40 GB of FireStore device. Eeek. Not quite as groovy as when we started. I haven't seen a quote as to the size of the FireStore device, but I'd guess it would be in the 60 to 100 GB capacity. The largest drives that will fit into the form factor he's going to use are 120GB drives, but they are quite expensive on a per GB basis as compared to the 100 or 80 GB drives. An 80 GB size would be a safe assumption of minimum size, perhaps 100GB. So an 80 GB FireStore would hold as much as 4 P2 cards in 24p mode, but at about 1/4 of the price - so still a good deal, just not as good a deal as we would have hoped, where it could have held as much as 10 P2 cards.

UPDATE - a sharp eyed reader caught a flaw in my math - the above ratios work for 720p, but not for 1080p. When in 720p mode, you're working with a 60 progressive fps stream of frames. When in 1080p mode, though, you're really only working with a 30p stream of frames. So the difference between P2 and FireStore is much less when dealing with 1080p compared to 720p. 1080p over FireWire to FireStore would only be about 20% less efficient than 1080p to P2. Because it would be a difference between 24 and 30 frames per second, not 24 and 60.


DVCPRO HD resolution issues

Based on her response, I'm guessing the HVX200 has a 960x720 imager, with the green pixels offset half way between the red and blue to give an effective 1440x1080 resolution. This would give you a perfect and clean DVCPRO HD 720p of 960x720, but could be interpolated up to 1280x1080 for DVCPRO HD 1080p and 1080i. Even if I'm wrong with my first guess, and it's a guess, and the CCD is 1280x720, 1080p or 1080i mode would be the way to get the most resolution out of this camera. And based on Stephen's report, something in what she said implies that it is less than 1280x1080, likely 1280x720 or 1280x1080 at best, and likely even less. Only if the CCDs were a non-offset 960x720 would 720p mode be the optimal way to get best quality out of the camera without stretching the image up. Because stretching the image up simply makes it bigger, not better. If the imager was 1280x720, 1080p/i DVCPRO HD would be optimal, otherwise 720p would only record 960x720 to P2/hard drive due to the DVCPRO HD codec.

Canon's CCD resolution and optimal workflow for best 24p resolution

MikeNote1: The rep purportedly said: He did say that it is not as noticeable at a slower frame rate since the interval between the fields is less time. OK, that can't be right. Maybe we're misreporting what he said, but that is factually incorrect. At a lower frame rate, each frame lasts LONGER, not shorter, so the interval between the fields would be more not less time.

At this price point, I can believe that 1440x1080 CCD resolution is real, but I would like to get confirmation. And is it a "real" 1440x1080, or the compromised 1440x1080 like the Sony HDV cameras? As for the 1080i 1440x1080 resolution of the Canon camera, from a strictly format point of view, it should be possible to get more resolution out of the Canon than out of the Panasonic, all things being equal (which they aren't). The Canon records natively to HDV and the Panasonic to DVCPRO HD, and they have different kinds of lenses (the Canon's are interchangeable, the Panasonic's is not). But, assuming you have a good lens, and go out the HD-SDI to a higher end recording solution than HDV, the Canon should be theoretically capable of sharper images. But there are waaaay to many real world variables to calll that for sure at this point. But XL H1 out HD-SDI to deck or uncompressed to disk, and 50i de-interlaced to 25 conformed to 24p, would be a HELL of a lot of work for a possibly better result than shooting 1080p24 on the Panasonic. Or possibly not. Would it be worth the added hassle, cost, time, weight, additional post work, and other factors to make it worth while? Depends on the vagaries of your expectations, shooting requirements, budget, crew, post situation, etc.

But that's the theory at this point, and theory is all we have at this point.

-mike

PS - there's all kinds of good info in the comments (link below) worth reading.