[technical] Looking for Video Camera shooting good Progressive quality

[MichaelTan]

Looking for the cheapest video camera in the world capable of progressive recording, capable of true 16:9 using square pixel without flags, recording on flash card. HD or SD (standard def) does not matter. Codec does not matter. Lens does not matter.

To the supergeeks among you, you probably know what I want. A camera fully capable of taking superb quality images for Vimeo HD upload with the least required processing. Vimeo does not do any deinterlacing (to their credit) and for those interested in seeing how interlace looks like, see here:

http://vimeo.com/1990867

Just for purpose of discussion, D1 PAL 720x576 widescreen DVD resolution is usually interlaced. This is a problem because, for 720x576 widescreen even if deinterlaced, with a aspect ratio of 1.25, will show up weird on Vimeo. For Vimeo to show in true wide, you need 1024x576 ... see here for clarification: http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:8241

I like Vimeo's method, doesn't screw around with your video, but is there a vid camera capable of shooting at 1024x576 in progressive? or better, being able to shoot at 1280x720p50 or p60, to be truly part of the HD standard resolutions?

Looks like my shortlist includes Canon FS10 (SD) or HF10 (HD).

2 questions need answered:
1) Does the FS10 shoot in PROGRESSIVE MODE? What is the resolution and framerate?
2) Does the HF10 shoot in progressive mode? What is the resolution and framerate? is it 1920x1080p24, p25 or p30? (singapore version)

But these are not satisfactory choices.... Please advise.

(just for clarity: I will edit directly from the H264 files without conversion, using Pinnacle Studio 12 ultimate, this is still the hero for AVCHD and H264 recording. )

 

[Flashbulb]

as long stated 24p/25p/30p is already progressive recording. Its whether you are using NTSC or Pal.

Vimeo processing speed depends on the video bitrate and settings, the higher and more complex the longer.

there isnt one since most follow recognized HD resolutions of 1280x720/1920x1080 or Youtube mode. Only way i think is thru Post Processing.

FS10 records in SD, HF10 records in HD though i recommend the HF11 as it records in 24mbps.

 

[MichaelTan]

as long stated 24p/25p/30p is already progressive recording. Its whether you are using NTSC or Pal.

Vimeo processing speed depends on the video bitrate and settings, the higher and more complex the longer.

there isnt one since most follow recognized HD resolutions of 1280x720/1920x1080 or Youtube mode. Only way i think is thru Post Processing.

FS10 records in SD, HF10 records in HD though i recommend the HF11 as it records in 24mbps.

you mean there's a flash-based camera can shoot 720p??? Can help name?

 

[jaegersing]

you mean there's a flash-based camera can shoot 720p??? Can help name?

Nikon D90, (it's true, but I'm just joking).

Actually all of this is a bit of a red herring. If you are going to be editing the video before uploading to Vimeo (please please please do so), the acquisition format is not so important, as long as it is high enough quality.

Once you have edited your timeline, of whatever format, you can then render into a Vimeo-friendly format. I usually use Divx or QT MP4, around 4 Mbps progressive, 1280x720.

As mentioned, Vimeo doesn't handle non-square pixels properly, so 1440x1080 is out, as is 720x576 widescreen.

Also, note that Vimeo forces all files to play back at 24fps, so if you upload your pristine 720P clip that was shot in 25P, it will become jerky due to frame-dropping. I usually get round this by using Procoder for rendering, as it just alters the playback speed to change the frame rate to 24P without any jerkiness or artifacts.

 

[MichaelTan]

jaegersing, great feedback. deinterlacing of H264 is not easy and not fast. Tools are barely available, and Virtualdub does not easily recognize the MTXXX containers. And even when the editing programs handle the deinterlacing, they don't give me the control I need.

Thanks for using Canopus and Procoder. As you might know our company distributes Canopus also. I am confirming the Vimeo force 24p issue with Eugenia... I hope it's not accurate (no offence)

 

[Flashbulb]

really depends..de-interlacing is usually critical only if switching from NTSC to PAL and vice versa but for multisystem tvs is not of an issue only if using on the internet in which case de-interlace is usually the norm. as for control, Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere has plenty of tricks and more are being added by 3rd party software developers and independent users with time on their hands. Its more of a choice for the consumer now that they can just download time limited full versions of the video editing softwares. Some more now that Adobe has merged Photoshop + Premiere so that can mix and match clips which presents a lot of video possibilities.

http://www.vimeo.com/help/hd

Can you recommend some encoding settings for HD?

Yes. Your quota for the week is 500MB, so it’s a good idea to compress your video down from phenomenally high quality to just amazingly high quality. We recommend using the H.264 codec at size 1280×720, bit rate 3000-5000 kbits/sec (optimized for “download&#8221, key frame every 30 frames (frame reordering on), using whatever frame rate you shot in. For sound, use AAC at 128kbps in stereo. This is what your export window should look like using Quicktime on a Mac:

Not the best but it gives quite good quality for the size.

 

[jaegersing]

jaegersing, great feedback. deinterlacing of H264 is not easy and not fast. Tools are barely available, and Virtualdub does not easily recognize the MTXXX containers. And even when the editing programs handle the deinterlacing, they don't give me the control I need.

Thanks for using Canopus and Procoder. As you might know our company distributes Canopus also. I am confirming the Vimeo force 24p issue with Eugenia... I hope it's not accurate (no offence)

Hi Michael. What company is that? If it's Convergent, how about some news of the Edius upgrade please? I have resigned myself to buying from overseas yet again because it seems to take ages to get new Grass Valley products in SIngapore thru Convergent.

Anyway, back to the Vimeo thing. I still think it is not necessary to shoot in your delivery format, there are tools around to do whatever you need. And an intermediary codec like Canopus HQ, Mainconcept or Lagarith will take care of AVCHD problems. If you are so concerrned about deinterlacing, you can still shoot progressive, right? But you don't need to shoot 1280x720 or any other square pixel format just because that's what you finally want to upload to Vimeo. I recommend you choose your camera based on other factors like image quality, storage media, control features and of course budget (and personal preference).

Yes check with Eugenia if you wish about the 25P, although she's in NTSC land and I think you would be better checking with the Vimeo guys. They already confirmed to me that they had problems handling 25P in the past so they don't even try to do it at the moment. One of the mods said last weekend they would give it another try for Vimeo Plus but I don't know how long that will take.

Another way to check of course is to upload a short 25P HD clip with smooth movement in it. The jerkiness will be very obvious.

Or here's one that I put up a while ago, before I started converting to 24P. The jerkiness is not my shooting, honest!

http://www.vimeo.com/770502

 

[MichaelTan]

really depends..de-interlacing is usually critical only if switching from NTSC to PAL and vice versa but for multisystem tvs is not of an issue only if using on the internet in which case de-interlace is usually the norm.

Flash that was complicated compressed text but I read it after some time decoding. Thanks, I agree also.

Hi Michael. What company is that? If it's Convergent, how about some news of the Edius upgrade please? I have resigned myself to buying from overseas yet again because it seems to take ages to get new Grass Valley products in SIngapore thru Convergent.

The contact person is Brian@convergent.com.sg DID:68281826

His name is Brian Mak and he's into a project at this time, but he'll be glad to help.

I'll alert him to this thread too.

Anyway, back to the Vimeo thing. I still think it is not necessary to shoot in your delivery format, there are tools around to do whatever you need. And an intermediary codec like Canopus HQ, Mainconcept or Lagarith will take care of AVCHD problems. If you are so concerrned about deinterlacing, you can still shoot progressive, right? But you don't need to shoot 1280x720 or any other square pixel format just because that's what you finally want to upload to Vimeo. I recommend you choose your camera based on other factors like image quality, storage media, control features and of course budget (and personal preference).

You're right on all counts. In my case, however, I have a disturbed mind. I'm just a fan of minimalist - I don't like huge bloody 24mbit/s files hanging around, and I have a serious psychological complex against deleting stuff. I have DV tapes piling up from the beginning of the Panasonic-Sony agreement, so it's probably 10 years now??? And with digital SLRs I shoot in burst mode all the time, and usually have 20 shots per scene and I keep them all and discard only the clearly crap shots, and cannot decide among the prime specimens who to go and so, at home I have 2 NAS and planning the 3rd one (probably Thecus 4100Pro)

So it'd be great to shoot at 1280x720p50 because I really don't need much more. And I've found an affordable camera to do that - the Xacti HD1010 - but that cam is great on paper but doesn't perform, needs Viagra. Just search Vimeo for the cam's videos, you'd think it's worse than the Samsung MX20.

Regarding shooting interlace and fixing later, my perception of great quality is totally destroyed once I see interlace artifacts. Deinterlace is a seriously difficult process, half art and half science. Look at an extreme view in http://100fps.com ... Native Progressive video is also easier to compress compared to deinterlaced progressive - no matter how well we do the DI, even with motion comp - we still have motion artifacts. And when that happens, the compressed file becomes big, and dirty.

Anyway, so I bought a HF10 yesterday (MISTAKE! sHOULD BE HF100! BECAUSE I THOUGHT HF100 HAD FLASH INSIDE, WHEN ACTUALLY IT'S THE OTHER WAY ROUND! I didn't want to have flash inside, I sell flash for god's sake) and I'm really delighted with the picture quality especially when I'm shooting indoors. It can't hold a candle to my 3CCD MiniDV cameras that I have, but for a small little cam it's incredible. Only one grouse, 25fps progressive is a trifle slow for fast pans, so have to be very careful.

Yes check with Eugenia if you wish about the 25P, although she's in NTSC land and I think you would be better checking with the Vimeo guys. They already confirmed to me that they had problems handling 25P in the past so they don't even try to do it at the moment. One of the mods said last weekend they would give it another try for Vimeo Plus but I don't know how long that will take.

Another way to check of course is to upload a short 25P HD clip with smooth movement in it. The jerkiness will be very obvious.

Or here's one that I put up a while ago, before I started converting to 24P. The jerkiness is not my shooting, honest!

http://www.vimeo.com/770502

I confirmed that they do 24p, here:

http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:8302

In fact I think those in PAL countries should chip in their sentiment here:

http://vimeo.com/forums/topic:5638#comment_460445

There's really no reason for them to limit to 24p, looking at the thread 5638 I really don't understand still.

The vid you posted shows the frame discard, and it's disgustingly just as expected - in major pans you have big issues, and I would think worse for zoom in-outs. Damn... I love Vimeo but ... this sux.

Framerate change has its own share of issues I'm sure, including clipped audio, but the benefits in this case far outweigh the issues.

Regarding the D90, just a word. The D90 video is so misleading, because even though it's 720p when the cam moves there are scan-lag issues. WTH?!!!

 

[DXNMedia]

There's really no reason for them to limit to 24p, looking at the thread 5638 I really don't understand still.

The vid you posted shows the frame discard, and it's disgustingly just as expected - in major pans you have big issues, and I would think worse for zoom in-outs. Damn... I love Vimeo but ... this sux.

Sorry to barge in on this thread, but I can't help it after reading some of the postings.

If you want progressive mode of shooting, then you gotta live with jittery pans issues or learn how to cope with it.....even in film acquisition which is progressive, cinematographers have a rule of thumb on pan speeds in relation to framerate & focal lengths

 

[MichaelTan]

dxnmedia, feel free to barge in.

Yes, the limited framerate of 25p does give very unsmooth pan, but if you see Jagersing's video, they discarded one of his 25p frames to make 24p, causing an abrubt jerk ever second when he was panning the F1 car smoothly. It would appear much smoother in the original 25p upload, but the additional step of the frame discard by Vimeo caused a jerk above and beyond the normal issues of panning when shooting progressive.

All this until we get our first cheap 1920x1080p60 camcorders .... dunno when.

 

[jaegersing]

Hi Michael. Interesting thread. I didn't realise you were looking for 50p or 60p. That makes a big difference!

I don't think there is anything decent (at a reasonable cost) around at the moment that can shoot 50p or 60p. The JVC HD200 can do it but it's not cheap, also I have heard that the codec is not very robust at 50/60p shooting. HVX should be able to do it, also not cheap and you'd have to learn to live with the P2 cards. Not sure about the Sony EX1 and EX3. They can certainly shoot 720p50, but they call it overcranking and I don't know if you can play it back at 50p or if it is permanently converted to 25p slomo. If so, I suppose you could always speed it up again in post. Maybe Engr can advise? Anyway EX also not cheap.

I'm still learning how to shoot smoothly at 25p. Best results so far come from switching off the image stabilsation, but of course that brings its own challenges. Always got something new to try, ha ha.

 

[DXNMedia]

If frame rate conversions can be done as easily as through simple software calculations or randomly dropping frames, then those high end frame rate converter manufacturers (eg. Snell & Wilcox) will go bust....
These convertors have superior motion compensation & frame interpolation algorithms, and they're freaking expensive. :thumbsup:

In HD environment, it is a lot simpler in terms of image processing because ATSC standardize HDTV to 1920x1080 & 1280x720 frame sizes....back in the Standard Definition era, conversion between PAL to NTSC is slightly more tricky because of frame size differences.


For your Vimeo requirements, I would suggest shooting native frame rate as to your delivery requirements.

Ie. if you need to deliver in 25FPS, shoot in 25FPS....if need to deliver in 24p, then shoot in 24p.

It is always easier to process frame size differences then frame rate differences.
And that is why I have broadcast video cams for almost all modes of acquisition.
PAL 720x576 (4:3 or 16:9 native)
NTSC 720x480 (4:3 or 16:9 native)
720p 24/30
HDV 1080i 50/60
1080p 24/30/60

Back in PAL & NTSC days, choosing a cam is simple...
PAL or NTSC....next to decide is recording format.

So now in HD, points to consider in choosing a camera is the following:
- Acquisition Frame Rate (24/25/30)
- Acquisition Frame size (720 or 1080)
- Compression codec (AVCHD, HDV, Quicktime, H264, MP4, MotionJPEG or other higher end codecs like HDCAM, DVCProHD, XDCAM or even uncompressed)
- Recording Format (Tape, Harddisc, optical or flash based)


2cents worth...

 

[DXNMedia]

I'm still learning how to shoot smoothly at 25p. Best results so far come from switching off the image stabilsation, but of course that brings its own challenges. Always got something new to try, ha ha.

Hi Richard, shoot like how you would shoot film.
Slower pans & pan with a motivation (ie. follow a moving object.)
Instead of zooms, pan & tilt, go for crane up/downs, track left/right, and dolly in/out. :thumbsup:

Other than increasing frame rate (over cranking), another way to tackle the problem is to play with your shutter speed & focal length when dealing with fast motion shots. In the theory of film, the brain will filter off any slight motion or jittery images if you can get them to focus on your story & visuals that you are presenting to them. :thumbsup:

 

[MichaelTan]

Hi DXN, I'm afraid there's no way for a HF10 PAL version to shoot 24p. Even for the American NTSC version which can shoot 24p - it's not even true 24p because they encapsulate the 24p video a 60i stream to maintain compatibility with TVs. So this 24p, or more accurately PF24, has pulldown frames in it, needs reverse telecine to remove the pulldown frames. If at any stage a mixed progressive+interlace frames video is again deinterlaced, you will see a really bad ghost image on the screen.

I think your broadcast cams work way differently from consumer cams ....

 

[DXNMedia]

Interesting point that you've brought up again...

I'm not too sure if the consumer cameras does a 3:2 pulldown in a 60i native capture though. Some consumer cams may be equipped with a native 24fps capture....as far as consumer cameras go, the last cam that I tried for 720p acquisition is the Canon TX1 Powershot. It was recording in a 30fps rate though.

In my HVX P2 camera, at 1080i filming mode, 24fps rate is a pulldown from 60i. Unless I shoot in native 720p, then I can get a true 24fps rate.

If I remember my tech specs correctly, JVC is the only pro-sumer or ProHD format that does native 720p 24fps mode.....I may be wrong, but perhaps you may want to check that out. :thumbsup:

 

[jaegersing]

Another point about shooting different frame rates is that you can get terrible flickering or pulsing if you shoot for example 24p under 50Hz lighting.

My eventual solution for Vimeo (shoot 25p, slow down to 24p in Procoder) works great for shooting in Sinagpore, without any motion artifacts at all. Only real issue is that the pitch of the audio drops by around a semitone, but for most of my stuff this isn't too important.

Regarding 24p on a 60i stream, as long as your NLE handles the pulldown correctly, you should not get any deinterlacing artifacts. The problem is that sometimes the correct project settings are not that obvious, and you just need to make a mistake one time in the chain to screw things up.

 

[DXNMedia]

Oh yes, totally agree with the flickering problems.... I was shooting for Disney on a project in Korea with my PAL PD150 camera a few years ago and I had problems with lights flickering.

Worse part was that the flickering wasn't reflected in the tiny LCD of that primitive camera.
However, nowadays after some experimenting, the trick to minimize that was to select a proper shutter speed that is in sync with the AC freq of the area.

 

[jaegersing]

However, nowadays after some experimenting, the trick to minimize that was to select a proper shutter speed that is in sync with the AC freq of the area.

The shutter speed can't really be "in sync" with the AC freq, but if you make it slow enough it smooths out the variations in light intensity from cycle to cycle.

I had big problems with this when I tried out a Nikon D90 in video mode recently. There was no control over frame rate (24p) or shutter speed (probably 1/48s) and the flickering was horrible. At least with a real video cam you can try out different shutter speeds to reduce the problem.