Keywall question -- New Camera

Hi all,

My Betacam is in the shop. I have a loaner Sony XDCam Standard Def camera.

It's configured to shoot DV25. I can configure it (I think) to shoot DV50.

I'm shooting some action on a blue wall tomorrow, and I've heard the horrors of DV and key problems. Any advice?

-MW

CRAP! i say get another camera! as i recall, the xdcam shoots to mpeg compressed format - REALLY BAD for chroma shooting.

if you HAVE TO use that camera, id say the best advice is - LIGHTING, LIGHTING, LIGHTING!!!

Ugh. Shoot me.

>I'm shooting some action on a blue wall tomorrow, and I've heard the horrors of DV and key problems. Any advice?

Take it back and get a BetaCam loaner! Shooting a talking head on a blue screen you may get by, but action? I'd stick with a betacam.

When you say betacam - you do of course mean Digibeta?

Because Betacam SP (analogue) is worse than DV25 for quality (4:2:0 or 4:1:1) and as long as the DV50 or DVCpro50 you shoot is true DV50 then thats as good as Digibeta for Chromakey as its recorded 4:2:2

Are you are using the SONY XDCAM PDW530P or PDW510P?

Neither of them do DV50 only do DV25, they do shoot 30/40/50Mbps IMX MPEG though - which as wayne says is REALLY BAD for chroma shooting.

My advice would be the same - go back and hire/loan a DigibetaCam or DVCpro50 or DVCproHD Camera.

Ben





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

I don't of course mean digibeta. I mean SP.

I'm not a model number sort of guy, and the camera's not with me right now, so I can't tell you which it is. Suffice it to say I'm under the impression that it shoots DV50. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Unfortunately, this loaner was free, and budget prohibits the renting of a digibeta or similar just for this project.

Thanks for the advice though. Wish me luck!

BetaSP is NOT worse than DV25. DVCam or DVCPro25 were concieved as lower cost options when BetaSP or Digibeta were pretty much the ONLY options.
It was never meant to be better than SP, but "good enough" for many including broadcast applications like news. Of course it was and is used for more than that.

It is analogue, the sampling numbers don't apply in the same way and there is no point quoting them. SP is 4:2:2 for the record.
I still get alot of SP footage and it is perfectly nice and has none of the DV25 compression artifacts. However, you get to deal with tape dropouts more frequently than you get on DV.

You will not see DV50 in a Sony product as the DV50 format is proprietary to Panasonic.



Post Edited (08-17-06 10:46)

Sprocketz, you're living in cloud cuckoo land I'm afraid. SP is certainly not 4:2:2 by any stretch of the imagination. It has about 75% of the resolution of 4:2:2. Therefore it's luma resolution is 75% of that of DV and Digibeta. It tends to be noisier too. DV chroma is 4:1:1, so SP is a little better than that, but not as good as Digibeta, which is true 4:2:2.

If you're doing SD chroma key, use DV50 or Digibeta. And get the lighting right. You can pull great keys off DV if you know what you're doing. The key is knowing what you're doing.....

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Sprocketz

According to many experts in the video field, Beta SP sits one rung below DV on the quality ladder.

For comparison this is Adam Wilt's [www.adamwilt.com] definition of SD Video format quality on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest):



Having worked/played with almost every format here including and old Fisher-Price audio tape camcorder! I have to agree with his scale.

I would also venture to say - that DVCAM from a pro camera would certainly have a better lens and CCD (or 3) than the Old Beta SP cameras making the image markedly cleaner and sharper giving you a much better final result. Much like a pro camera will give better results than a consumer or prosumer model of the same format.

I used Beta SP for many years and am well aware of the results using it for chromakey.

Mike - I think as the XDCAM camera is all you will have, it may be an idea to shoot DVCAM 25 and if you have time, try the IMX mode in 50Mbps and see what results you get - I'm afraid I've not personally tried keying 50Mbps MPEG but it may yield good results.

I have achieved fantastic results with even PAL DV25 4:2:0 (albeit in After Effects and a lot of faffing) so all is not lost.

Please let us all know how you get on either way.


Ben





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

After a few tests (ugly) and the advice of those here, we went a different route. Shot in front of a black curtain and going to fake it. I just can't handle green outlines.

Thank you all for your expert opinions.

-MW

Well since Graham pretty much resorted to name calling (such a nice guy, I have his Film Effects plug-ins) I have to respond.

First, it was my mistake to add the 4:2:2 reference. If you look at my post you will see it was edited. The original post didn't mention 4:2:2.

It's been 10 years since this whole thing was originally hashed about and I couldn't remember what the sampling numbers would equate to so I went looking it up on several other websites where I found numbers equating that. Note that Graham puts SP chroma quality slightly ahead of DV. But frankly I will concede to whatever source you want to quote about all the math.

Alot of times the math guys don't sit in edit bays with clients over their shoulder.
(Which is not a slight against Graham as he correctly challenged the 4:2:2 statement although nastiness was unnecessary as it was a simple mistake for me to have quoted from elsewhere)

Since you felt the need to list your experience to support your statement, here you go:

Started editing on early 1", 2B's-VPR3's, Sony, Ampex, etc. BetaSP, D2, Digibeta since 1996, DV25, (I owned a DSR-300), DVCPro50, HDCam, D5. Editing systems Ampex, Grass Valley, CMX, Avid and now FCP. Graphics in AE and Shake now, up from the old Chyron days.
So if you want to throw down that way fine.

I only answered your post at all because of your "worse" comment and your sampling numbers.

The chart you provided places DV one tenth better than BetaSP by his rekoning.
Extremely close as per Adam Wilt.

What the chart does not provide is any kind of simple observation.
What do the two formats look like.

When I bought the DSR-300, I loved it because it is was a much more professional camera than the usual DV offering. However, when I started looking at the material I was disappointed. DV compression is noticeable and at the time I was worried that the clients I had then would accept it. In the end I was careful to use DV for certain jobs and SP for others.

Mike is clearly used to SP and is well aware of the drawbacks of analogue recording.

However, many times in the past I have sat in edit bays with DP's, Directors and Producers doing tests to determine what format to shoot when they only have SP or DV25 to choose from (those formats being what the production company owns). Sometimes they go for the DV25, but plenty of times they are turned off by the obvious compression issues in the DV25 picture and go for the SP. Believe me, I would like to have gotten more rentals on my DSR-300.

Since Mike is in an SP shop, I assume he knows how to handle keys using SP footage.

It surprises me that should Mike be stuck with DV25, no one offered to recommend one of the DV25 specialty keyers like DV Matte or DV Matte Blast for Motion 2, especially as this is a FCP forum.

Most of the SD stuff I edit now is Digibeta but a few clients still like SP because in mulitcam situation DBeta deck rental costs become significant. So some shoot SP and finish DBeta. A couple months ago one of those clients found his usual rental source was all booked up so another company came in with test footage shot with a DSR570. They immediatly saw the compression and rejected it.

My point is that SP is not as inferior to DV25 as indicated when approached from the "how does it look" angle. It's more or less a subjective toss-up as to which trade-offs you prefer.

I agree of course with all the comments about DV50. For my personal projects I have an HVX200 and have shot alot of SD DV50 with it. It's looks terrific for SD.
If he can score a DVCPro50 camera, he is much better off.



Post Edited (08-17-06 19:41)

Hey Sprocketz - I don't think we meant to be abrasive in our responses just giving our experience and opinion.

It may have sounded like a massive quality gap between SP and DV in my original post it wasn't meant to sound like a comparison between VHS and Digibeta, you are right it IS very close.

However that wasn't my recomendation, it was, if you notice, to get digi, DVCpro50 or better.

Seeing as he had no choice then it was down to using what he had. ie the XDCAM and to do a test or two before wasting time with the crew/talent on the shoot.

Anyway - on another subject - how are you finding the HVX200? - we are shooting a lot of DVCproHD 50i on it with the Redrock 35mm Adaptor (after a lot of setup!), capturing direct to a MacBook HDD and are really pleased with some of the results.

I haven't got the guys to test DV50 on it yet though, will have to try some soon.

Ben





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Sprocketz - no intent to offend you! Just that certain things get my heckles up and one of those is any unsubstantiated claim that certain analogue tape formats have superior resolving powers to humble DV. I spent a lot of time and effort to do a comparative study in various tape formats chroma sampling, and I looked at luma resolution too.

You're totally right that there's a hefty dose of subjectivism in this, and also, you're spot on that it's "what you're used to coping with" too. But if you actually measure things, you can avoid the subjectivism and quite accurately state the luma and chroma resolution of a number of formats. What the visual effect of these numbers are, is subjective to a great extent, but th numbers themselves are pretty objective.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Nuff said, I guess "Cuckoo" made me go cuckoo!

Regarding the HVX and SD

I like the camera alot. It's not perfect, the resolution is lower than I would have liked. The variable frame rates are great. The P2 cards are great to work with but the obvious size/price limitations right now can definitely cramp your style.

I did a shoot last Saturday DVCPro50. I have one 4gig card.
I did 14 card dumps to a powerbook/firewire drive which adds up to over an hour of downtime during the day.

I have also shot via firewire directly to the powerbook/fw drive and that works fine.

Shooting SD:
When I first got the camera and shot some tests with the stock settings my heart really sank. Aliasing on hard straight lines was bad, especially when they were nearly horizontal/flat on the raster. It was not presentable to a client.
But after more experimentation I got it to look MUCH better.
You have to go into the Scene Settings and switch "V Detail Freq" to the "Thick" setting. Also turn down the "Detail" and perhaps "V Detail"

You will still see some aliasing in hard straight edges. I think Adam Wilt mentioned this in one of the "Camera Shootouts". But overall the picture looks terrific. Skin tones look especially nice. Of all the cameras I think Panasonic has really nailed the "film look". CINELIKE D gamma in 24P mode looks great.
DVCPro50 is great to work with in FCP and plays so nicely on a laptop, allowing easy shot review in the field.

Mostly I get dropped jaws from clients looking at the SD image