Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

A JVC 4K consumer camcorder early in 2012 - am I reading this right?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I'm very interested to know the response of the industry about the codec/media we will be using for feeding our 4k home displays.

Here in Switzerland Blueray still is not the standard for showing content... DVD is still king )-:

Would be great to see Redray come into action!

Pat
 
The codec will probably be complete horseshit. I saw a predecessor version of this a while back, and the codec was crapola.
 
Is this like the other consumer 4K camera that records 4 1K images to 4 separate SD cards and then compiles them in post?
 
I hate to say it, but I'm pretty much at a point now where if it's not capturing in a raw format I'm not very interested.

But, that's the close minded me talking. I'll probably test it out no matter what when it's available.
 
4K is well within H.264 Level 5/5.1. L5.1 Hi444P can get you 10-bit 4:4:4 4K @ 30fps at upto 960 Mbit/s. Of course, this is unrealistic for camera acquisition, but the point is the tech is there. AVCHD 3.0 (or AVC4K or AVCQHD) is in the works, and the same will be used in Blu-ray QHD. Should be here sometime in 2012. I doubt consumer camcorder makers can afford to get adventurous enough to design their own H.264 implementation or maybe even use X264 with the right settings. In short, the tech is there for superb 4K compression, it's just a matter of implementing it. Hopefully we will see decent QHD consumer camcorders @ $1000 by the next CES.

Today, X264 can make incredible 4K images at 30 Mbit/s or 4 MB/s with the Very Slow preset. Obviously, not an acquisition preset, but once again, the tech is there.
 
Subhadip Sen said:
In short, the tech is there for superb 4K compression, it's just a matter of implementing it. Hopefully we will see decent QHD consumer camcorders @ $1000 by the next CES.
Click to expand...

...and hopefully they'll be doing it on at least 2/3" sensors or larger. I can't see 4k coming off of a 1/3" tiny imager looking good at all.
 
I held a JVC's tiny little 60fps 4K camcorder at last year's Cinegear - and viewed footage on a 4K monitor.

Immediate thoughts were:
- I wouldn't want to shoot a feature on one... but gimme a stereo pair on an Octacopter IMMEDIATELY PLEASE!
- Picture looks better than I expect - except for the CA on the lens and limited dynamic range :)
- Would these work intercut with RED footage in a feature - say for an establishing shot of a town or something where the DOF difference wouldn't be crazy? Sure, might work if you exposed right and graded with care. Good to know if I get kicked out of a location but need to come back and grab another shot, looking like a tourist.
- Though with the 4K Canon DSLR... why wouldn't I want that instead?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bruce Allen said:
I held a JVC's tiny little 60fps 4K camcorder at last year's Cinegear - and viewed footage on a 4K monitor.

Immediate thoughts were:
- I wouldn't want to shoot a feature on one... but gimme a stereo pair on an Octacopter IMMEDIATELY PLEASE!
- Picture looks better than I expect - except for the CA on the lens and limited dynamic range :)
- Would these work intercut with RED footage in a feature - say for an establishing shot of a town or something where the DOF difference wouldn't be crazy? Sure, might work if you exposed right and graded with care. Good to know if I get kicked out of a location but need to come back and grab another shot, looking like a tourist.
- Though with the 4K Canon DSLR... why wouldn't I want that instead?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Click to expand...

From the prototype I saw, it basically has consumer hd codec and all the IQ issues that go with that

also, bad lowlight performance
since it was 4K on smaller than S35 sensor...
 
N.D. Paolo said:
From the prototype I saw, it basically has consumer hd codec and all the IQ issues that go with that
Click to expand...

Well sure - well, when we can get two Epics on an Octacopter to shoot in stereo, that'd be better... but we need another generation of miniaturization and power efficiency improvements to make that work!

That said, consumer codec at 4K, with 4x the data rate > consumer codec at HD with 1x the data rate. So to me, this is a big improvement.

N.D. Paolo said:
also, bad lowlight performance
since it was 4K on smaller than S35 sensor...
Click to expand...

Well, I wouldn't be planning on flying that Octacopter in the dark!

But yes, agree overall :)

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Bryce O said:
...and hopefully they'll be doing it on at least 2/3" sensors or larger. I can't see 4k coming off of a 1/3" tiny imager looking good at all.
Click to expand...

Panasonic's 3 x 1/4" system creates excellent images at 1080p - clean 1000 lines without aliasing at upto 60 fps. Incredible stuff out of a $1000 camcorder. I know it's an overly simplistic extrapolation but a similar 3 x 1/2" might get you QHD or 4KHD at 2000 lines - that is Epic territory. I can see why single sensors have become popular, but under the right circumstances these triple small sensor arrays can potentially get you an excellent image at a very low cost.
 
Subhadip Sen said:
Today, X264 can make incredible 4K images at 30 Mbit/s or 4 MB/s with the Very Slow preset. Obviously, not an acquisition preset, but once again, the tech is there.
Click to expand...

Is it possible to encode X264 from Adobe Premiere Pro or AE? is the compression much better than the standard H264? X264 works well with 4K material?
 
Tom Lowe said:
Is it possible to encode X264 from Adobe Premiere Pro or AE? is the compression much better than the standard H264? X264 works well with 4K material?
Click to expand...

Yes, yes and yes. Depending on the settings, X264 is much more efficient than MainConcept H.264 that Adobe bundles. At "very slow" preset a ~12 Mbps X264 matches up very well with the 32 Mbps MainConcept H.264. X264 is most impressive are at low bitrates - even 6 Mbps can produce excellent 1080P video, something MainConcept H.264 will need 20+ Mbps to match. MSU Video Group have detailed comparative tests between the different H.264 encoders. Not surprisingly, X264 is always on top by considerable margins even in conservative tests.

There are two ways to get X264 out of Premiere Pro (I am assuming you are using Windows - it isn't possible on OS X). One is using X264VFW which encodes X264 AVI directly - install X264VFW and choose X264 under Windows AVI. The other more elegant method is using Debugmode FrameServer with an X264 frontend of your choice. I use Debugmode FrameServer to serve frames from the NLE to MeGUI, which does the encoding. While X264VFW is easy and direct it is unpredictable when used at 4K resolutions (hopefully this is fixed in a future build) and requires a remux to MP4 or MKV (I use MKVMerge GUI). Debugmode FrameServer to MeGUI works immaculately but as you might expect 4K frameserving and encoding is very slow. Luckily you can frameserve across a network to distribute the load. Or you can simply render uncompressed 4K from Premiere Pro and use MeGUI or equivalent to transcode it to X264. It's a longer process but at least it is safe and familiar.

Do note that X264 is extremely powerful and flexible, but it will need quite a bit of testing and configuration to get the right encodes to suit your needs. The biggest problem with 4K X264 today is that many popular software players like VLC or Quicktime choke up or don't even play - they aren't Level 5+ compliant. Media Player Classic works fine with 4K X264 material and most ffdshow based players on Linux and Windows should work too.

The good news is that 4K X264 encoding and decoding for is getting better and faster all the time.
 
There will be more than one consumer 4K (er.. quad-HD) camera released in 2012. I have already seen one of them (from someone other than JVC) as a functional pre-release unit.

We're going to see more QHD/4K activity in the consumer sector than in the prosumer or professional markets over the coming months. One big reason for this is camcorder sales are in the doldrums -- at record lows. People have little interest in buying a 1080p palm-sized camcorder now that most people have a smart phone in their pocket which does the same thing. Most new camcorders released in 2012 will be QHD and/or 3D.

FWIW, the prototype I've seen recorded an AVC-Intra variant codec, I think at 48Mbps (yeah, not 50Mbps, 48...). Uses XQD or SDXC cards. 4X optical zoom, approximately 16mm sized sensor. 30fps, not 24fps. Supported 60fps for 1080p recording, or was said to, it was not functional on the prototype, but 4K 30fps was. Looked way over-compressed and crappy to me. On par with Youtube 4K.
 
I'll go take a look at CES if the camera is there. If it's anything like the one I saw last year, be prepared for moire, noise, demosaicing artifacts and horrible compression and workflow.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
I'll go take a look at CES if the camera is there. If it's anything like the one I saw last year, be prepared for moire, noise, demosaicing artifacts and horrible compression and workflow.

Graeme
Click to expand...


yeah, just generally shitty video. it looked super ghetto. dynamic range was similar to an iphone or something.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top