I think that Mr. Rosie just invited another one of his VJs to the forum.
anyhoo - oddly enough nobody else on this site will discuss this shlt with me any longer. bummer!
Been a while but listen man, I heard it all
1) Metal - Particles do not drop-out from digital tape
2) Digital tape does not stretch or crease.
3) Digital to Digital media has no generation loss. (no loss at all)
4) Viewers won't see a difference in a product shot with a digi-beta or xl1.
My favourite!
5) SONY gave away SX to CNN, CBS, CBC, Most large market CTV O&Os, New Zealand networks, all major play-outs around the world, 2/3rds of all Asian broadcasters and our above friend in Africa WTV.
On second thought this is my all time favourite myth of 2003
6)
MPEG-2 is intended only for delivery. You better tell this myth to Matrox, Avid, Pinnacle and the hundred other manufactures who make MPEG-2 studio profile switchers, MPEG-2 studio profile routers and MPEG-2 servers & edit systems.
I heard other myths as well. Hope you don't believe those too. (many others do)
7) Viewers don't care if a production uses a three week trained monkey cameraman or a properly trained cameraman
8) Digital cameras don't need well lit subjects.
I must admit though, this is the first time I ever heard this myth.
9)
"DV50 formats don't abide by the legal ITU-R 601
specs"
I'll have to add that above one to my list of digital doom. One more and I have a top ten "silly digital myth list for my pet peeve advocacy site.
But seriously,
I'll try to categorize my reply but frankly some of your writing is very confusing to me. For instance you say that 4:2:2 versus 4:1:1 matters to YOU but not to your viewers. Sure your viewers won't care about stupid numbers but I assure you that most do care about the level of "product quality". Just like some consumers won't care about the specs of their cars, computers, microwaves or shavers but most care about the performance.
Statements like "The viewers don't care" seem to be made up only by people that produce a crap product -- to try and justify their lies to the sucker buyers. Shows that shoot on Digi-Beta do so because they have a LARGE VIEWERSHIP and they know that a majority of their viewers care about quality. That is why a prime time PBS NG special will be shot using large very experienced crews with very expensive cameras. Hack shows just kill air-time, they know they will only attract a handful of viewers and they can't justify using expensive crews or expensive gear thus on the NG channel you will see a lot of hack crap produced by amateurs using armature gear. (anyone familiar?) see post script
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Let's get the HDTV stuff out of the way. (keep in mind, I'm a virgin when it comes to workin' HD)
Quote:
You don't seem to have your Sony marketing hype straight. HDCAM-SR is not a replacement for HDCAM.
You don't seem to read properly. (even after quoting me in your post) Either that or you don't understand that most episodic comedy and drama is shot on "FILM". I wasn't talking about news mags or reality shows, although even for those type of shows HDcam or DVCpro-100 are only the first generation portable systems used. Mag shows in the 80s were shot on 3/4 inch composite tape. Today you'd be laughed at trying to get a gig like that using 3/4 tape. In the future you'll be laughed at trying to get a gig like that using HDcam or DVCpro100.
We are in the very early stages of HDTV gear and anyone that thinks that today's HD formats will be around for the next 50 years is sadly mistaken. Both Panasonic and Sony are racing each other like greyhound dogs to come up with the better HD system. Now finally SR-HDcam meets the ATSC highest (to date) standards. (not the SR beta tape but only the third party Hard Drives) All near in the future systems will be compared to those ATSC specs just like in SD all systems are compared to D1. A little farther down the road - for theatrical shoots HDTV formats will be compared to something much better then today's ATSC HD television standards.
Still with HDTV, FILM and the "broadcast colorspace"
Thank you, I know how components (Y, B-Y, R-Y,) and (RGB) work. The funny thing is that the networks were spending big bucks on episodic television being """filmed""" since day one. Even though our analog televisions were and still are only capable of receiving over the air composite NTSC signals. Episodic television quality is not judged by decades old NTSC specs, nor is episodic TV judged by the better then NTSC Betacam Y R-Y B-Y specs not even by the better then SP Digi-Beta specs. Not even HDcam or DVCpro-100 specs. Episodic television is still to this day judged by 35mm film specs. WOW EH!
Still with sampling COLOURS, BRIGHTNESS & COMPARING SAMPLING RATIOS.
In the opinion of many engineers - if you're dealing with high bandwidth - 3:1:1 is closer to 4:2:2 quality then 4:1:1: quality because the sampling ratio between Y and B-Y R-Y is closer together. In other words even though you are throwing away more luminance percentage with 3:1:1 as opposed to 4:1:1 - your Y versus the two colour elements ratio is still fairly close and they figure with the high bandwidth you can afford to throw out more Y. That is the whole principal with HDcam and even BetaSP, 3:1:1 ratio. "Since we have a high bit ratio we will throw away more "over-all" data but keep the ratio between the elements as close as we can afford to do. In any case "TRUE SD STUDIO QUALITY" should be 4:2:2 ratio. Panasonic JVC and SONY will all admit to this. You will find out in the near future that they will also admit that with "TRUE HD STUDIO QUALITY" 4:4:4: RGB should be used, even for episodic television and one day when HD consumer sets will beat ATSC specs then even for EFP and ENG shoots. (just like today consumer tvs beat composite ntsc specs and SD shoots are done using component formats. )
What were you trying to say regarding "broadcast colorspace anyway"? RGB 4:4:4 studio sampling is too high for HDTV television? Oh never mind, you're the person that claims 4:2:2 studio sampling is to high for our limited analog broadcast colorspace.
For a very long time "ANALOG STUDIO QUALITY" wasn't judged by composite NTSC specs but by you guessed it judged by the higher component specs. Hell even ENG quality has been judged by component specs since the early 80s. I bet your teachers taught you that component analog is to high for the limited composite NTSC broadcasts. It all gets squished to our sets and no one can tell the difference between Y/C SVHS and component Y R-Y B-Y betacam specs when squished to out tee vees, right? JEEEEZZZ! How many time have I heard this crap trying to be justified by people who work with less then studio accepted quality!
Oh wait, I do have a top ten list after all.
DRUM ROLL
10) Whether Digi-Beta or XL1 - after it gets squished to our home TV sets you can't tell the difference.
READIN' up on MPEG-2
BEFORE 1994, MPEG-2 was considered for delivery purposes only. """BUT""" in 1994 the MPEG society started working on a MPEG-2 """MAIN-LEVEL" profile for acquisition & studio purposes -- ONLY TWO YEARS LATER (well after digi-beta came) the MPEG society proved to the world that MPEG-2 should indeed be used for all DTV (including studio) purposes. You are living in the dark ages, all major industry related societies including SMPTE and ATSC verified this. Geez, this was proved a whopping 7 years ago.
Of course at the time only SONY was brave enough to invest in MPEG-2 (betacamSX) but SONY screwed themselves big time keeping their SX codec all to themselves. Perhaps they thought that the same will happen with SX like with SP.
Finally SONY learned their lesson giving IMX access to everybody and today we have pretty well every major player offering MPEG-2 edits routers and switchers. (IMX to be specific)
You can call editing SX a hack but the real hack is editing 4:1:1, even Panasonic encourages editing in 4:2:2. Lately they been encouraging acquisition in 4:2:2 as well. (they know what a difference it will make when we all own digital sets. (even SD signals will be received in component at our homes as opposed to composite received on analog tuners.) BTW - in the old days SX was hard to edit but not today. Just like SR HD is hard to edit today but won't be tomorrow - no SR-HD isn't a "hack" either.
You might want to read up on MPEG-2. It isn't a single standard, it's a group of standards.
There is no "transcoding" going from IMX or SX out to DVD, Satellite, Cable or Air. It's still going through the MPEG-2 "ML" (Main Level) system.
Yes, IMX, SX, DVD, SD-DTV (air, cable, satellite) all are MPEG-2 @ Main Level" (ML) encoders - decoders. SX and IMX works at Studio 4:2:2@MainLevel and for broad-cast, cable-cast, sat-cast or DVD MPEG-2 dumps at the same level but reduces the bit rate to 4:2:0. no transcoding, just dropping bandwidth and sampling.
Your final out to air play-out will not look as good as the studio stuff but the only quality reduction is caused by lowering the bit rate. With non MPEG-2 material you are causing further quality loss due to - you guessed it "transcoding.
Almost forgot, this is taken from SMPTE papers, I'm sure you seen it before.
... Common image sampling structures were touched upon: Reference Master (CCIR/ITU 601 4:4:4), Subsampled Color Components (CCIR/ITU 601 4:2:2), MPEG-2 MP@ML Distribution (4:2:0). showed the Video Data Rates for several Digital Video formats, and how CCIR/ITU 601 Video (including Digital-S and DVCPRO50 Video Tape formats) can transcode to MPEG-2 easily, but DV25 will bring in errors, sacrificing source quality.
One final thought on MPEG-2 and how SX uses it:
You are right about SX being harder to edit due to GOP and B-Frames. Since you know so much about GOP and stuff why don't you admit that the only reason SX is done the way it is - is to preserve quality, yes at a trade off in editing but 18Mbps MPEG-2 is comparable to a much higher non GOP system.
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As to performing tests on """tape formats""", what the hell does that have to do with camera heads, lenses and lighting conditions??? The last set of test we done, (SX versus DVcam in this case) we took computer generated graphs and dumped them to tape using various methods from component analog to SDI to native SDTI (with SX) and firewire (with DVcam). Out of these tests DVC came close to SX only with the native SDTI test and only came close in the first three generations, after that SX started kicking ass like it kicked ass in component and SDI tests. As you can see I'm not a sony bigot.
I don't get why you 4:1:1 lovers keep insisting that average people can't tell the difference between 4:1:1 and 4:2:2. I have friends too, most of my friends can indeed tell the difference between the two.
By your own self admission, so can you.
Sorry about the 5:1 mistake on my part - of course you are right, .DVCpro-50 and D9 are 3.3:1 compressed, not 5 to 1. (must of been typing too much)
POST SCRIPT
As to the Nat. Geo. channel I was being sarcastic. What I meant is that they seem to buy a lot of really really bad crap produced by three week trained VJs whom tend to use consumer cameras. The
ITU-R 601 compliant DVCpro-50 codec isn't that bad. Especially when it's used in the studios on hard disk instead of the dinky tape.
Verified Info
Gotta go for now but I must laugh at that format link you posted.
Even the b-roll market info is more accurate then your ""link - what a joke.""
From the trendwatch questioner that has been sent to about 200 stations
Please check which format you use
Analog Video (Tape, BetaCam)
Digital Video (DV, DVC Pro)
Compressed SD (DigiBeta, D2)
Uncompressed SD (D1, D5)
Compressed HD (DVCAM, DV100)
Uncompressed HD (D9, Voodoo)
What the hell? DVcam is compressed HD??? Where the hell does this survey offer a choice for SX or IMX or D9 in this stupid survey???? I bet it belongs with the "digital video category. What a joke! If you really believe that only 14% of broadcasters use SX, IMX, D9, SVHS, M11, DVcam, 3/4 inch HDcam .....I bet what they meant is that 47% work with analog and 39% work with digital - not just DVCpro.
Nice verification dude
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PS,
Nice introduction and entrance to the forum - Are you sure we haven't met before? Hmmmm, let me think.
Keep pointing out how stupid the broadcasters are using formats like digi-beta - looks good on ya...