Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register 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 :)

The Prosumer 1080/60p Barrier?

Tom Lowe

Tom Lowe

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 5, 2007
Messages
8,520
Reaction score
1
Points
0
It seems like people have been waiting for like 5 years for a prosumer camera that can shoot true 1080p with 60p overcranking. What is the holdup??

Is there some kind of magical barrier preventing this technology from being manufactured? I'm totally baffled as to why this hasn't been done.

I guess Scarlet will be the first? What is Panasonic doing?....twiddling their thumbs?
 
Tom said:
It seems like people have been waiting for like 5 years for a prosumer camera that can shoot true 1080p with 60p overcranking. What is the holdup??

Is there some kind of magical barrier preventing this technology from being manufactured? I'm totally baffled as to why this hasn't been done.

I guess Scarlet will be the first? What is Panasonic doing?....twiddling their thumbs?
Click to expand...

I think benefits of higher temporal resolution are harder to grasp than the benefits of spacial resolution. People tend to be pixel counters as this concept is easier to grasp and well established. Some people even strive to have lower frame rates (24fps) for that elusive film look of century-old habit. :devil: I personally don't like 24fps as it introduces objectionable flicker, motion artefacts and limits creative camera movments from locked-off to slow. but I guess I have unique point of view :biggrin:

Technologically: there is twice the bandwidth needed, so it does not come for free. On balance this concept is harder to sell.
 
I'm just wondering if there is some kind of barrier to this that I am not aware of? It seems like a no-brainer to me that videographers and cinematographers would want 1080/60p.
 
24p is nice from a production standpoint.
- Light sensitivity is good. 60p will cut down light sensitivity.
- Easy to do VFX work on, don't have to roto as many frames.
- Frame rate conversion is easy (but 60p should allow doable frame rate conversions too).
 
720/60p seems okay in terms of light.
 
I think the lack of 1080/60p in the prosumer market has more to do with ATSC broadcasting standards, which for 1920x1080 only allows the following:

(taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_Standards)

interlace
25 (50 fields/s)
29.97 (59.94 fields/s)
30 (60 fields/s)

and,

progressive
23.976
24
25
29.97
30

I guess the thinking is, why record an "illegal" format in a video camera made for broadcast video applications?

Thats just my thinking.
 
Tom said:
BTW, I was looking at all these tiny Panasonic HDD "1920x1080" cameras today at Best Buy and was wondering if these are actual 1920x1080 progressive frame?

Like this camera, for example:

http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-...-HS100.S_11002_7000000000000005702#tabsection

What are the downsides to a tiny camera like that?

I'm looking for a 1080p camera I can put in a backpack and hike overnight with.
Click to expand...

Bad Auto WB, Cheap Auto-Focus, excessive GAIN when you don't want or need it. If you don't care much about quality, I suggest you get a small one like that. Sometimes(in the right conditions, and don't ask which ones 'cause they vary), you can get a decent image.

Also, WORKFLOW is the biggest problem. The one my church has(EVERIO 60GB), for mission trips records to a funky file that I have to open in MPEG Streamclip to export an HD image...very time consuming.:sick:
 
I guess the thinking is, why record an "illegal" format in a video camera made for broadcast video applications?
Click to expand...
For terrestrial broadcasting, the ship has kind of sailed. We'll likely stay locked into those formats. But 1080p60 will convert easily into the broadcast formats.

For next generation HD, 1080p60 would be possible to deliver over cable (change the set-top box), fibre, IP, satellite, etc. I suspect that it will be the way to go since it will compress better than interlaced. But it will take time for broadcasters to transition over to 1080p60 equipment.
 
I think we'll see 1080p @ 50/60Hz in the next few years. The ATSC is working to add these as broadcast standards, actually they're also working to add 100/120Hz as well.

But for now I think the market for a 1080p 50/60Hz camera in the prosumer world is very small from the point of view of being able to broadcast or deliver such formats to typical audiences. In general, broadcasters don't accept or like 1080p material. 1080p is really only deliverable on Blu-Ray. I guess HD-DVD as well, but it's an officially dead format now.

Most north american broadcasters can't even fill their prime time slots with all HD content. They're not going to be pushing for 1080p on top of what they don't already have.

On the flip side, satellite and some cable services are starting to announce 1080p on-demand content. But this is a move to market to the Blu-Ray crowd. They're trying to say, "why rent that Blu-Ray disc from Blockbuster, when we have 1080p streaming right to your set-top box?". Although none of that content is 1080p-50/60Hz.
 
Just to be clear here, I'm talking about 1080p/60p for playback at 30p or 24p, etc. I'm not talking about shooting for 1080p/60p playback.

Haven't HBO and other cable channels been broadcasting 1080p movies and stuff for a couple years now?

What formats do Discovery HD, Nat Geo HD, etc, broadcast in? Do they do 1080p? Or only 720p?
 
Broadcast formats

Broadcast formats

What formats do Discovery HD, Nat Geo HD, etc, broadcast in? Do they do 1080p? Or only 720p?
Click to expand...

A mixture, but if 1080, then its 1080i
 
HBO does 1080p, right?

No regular channels do 1080p?
 
On the consumer side, they REALLY try to keep cost down. There is some interesting cost-cutting hacks in the DV standard... 4:1:1 chroma (4:2:2 would be slightly higher quality at same bitrate, chances are), and the Cb is shifted 2 pixels compared to Cr so they can omit some delays in the DSP (camera manufacturers don't necessarily follow that standard; I think Panasonic's prosumer DV does things according to spec, while their consumer stuff does the chroma siting the higher quality way).

Anyways, adding 60p/overcranking to a camera would likely add cost (because the DSP has to run faster).

2- Doesn't some prosumer JVC camera record 720p60?
 
Several prosumer camcorders do 720p60. But 720p60 is an accepted broadcast standard in use by a few broacasters as opposed to a 1080i format.

Tom, HBO has no means to broadcast 1080p. They may be doing 1080p internally (I don't know on that level), but so far no broadcasters, cable companies, satellite providers, etc.. are offering 1080p on any delivered channels. Dish Network has added some 1080p content and so has Comcast in a few markets, but they are only offering this for a select few on-demand offerings. And from what I've heard, it's all marketing to compete with Blu-Ray rentals. The actual picture quality is supposedly very lacking compared to a 1080p Blu-Ray. Kinda like it's still the same "HD-lite" that we're all used to seeing on cable and satellite -- 1280x1080, overcompressed, etc..

1080p60 on a camcorder for overcranking would appeal to the indie film crowd, just as 720p60 does. But camera makers don't tend to look at the market from that point of view. Once again because the indie crowd is still a niche market, even with cameras like the HVX200 or others that were sought for their 720p60 ability by the indie crowd.

Anyway, I think Scarlet is going to shake things up a bit... Small form factor, 2/3" sensor w/ 3K resolution, nice range of frame rates, etc..
 
Somehow I have a 1080p HDTV rip of an HBO showing of Revenge of the Sith. ....I thought it was HBO. Perhaps it could have been a German HDTV rip. It's some kind of HDTV rip, and it's a nice-looking 1080p, on par with Blu-Ray, although with a significantly lower bitrate (what you would expect from cable tv compression).

Glenn, yes, there are tons of 720p/60p cameras that can overcrank, but they all seem to be bottlenecked at 720p/60p, and have been for years now.

When does Scarlet come out?
 
Bandwidth.

If content providers could just switch to 50/60p they would. What every content provider has to take into consideration is deliverability of it's content, which depends on cable companies. You want to sell your content to as much cable providers as you can, to as many subscribers as you can.

For non English speaking countries you want to localize programs to draw more subscribers, which is additional cost for both cable provider and/or content provider, depending on the deal. Every new transition (upgrade) for cable provider is a HUGE step (both time and $'s). Think Head Ends, Nodes, setup boxes...the transition to twice the amount of data is not cost justified. Unless you're talking about VOD, where you also need critical mass of potential customers. Since VOD is much more unpredictable business model than subscription model, investments in new infrastructure solely dependent on VOD is not something cable providers are rushing into.

So, bandwidth...you might get 16Mb/s Mpeg4 stream but you also might get 8Mb/s Mpeg2 (ouch). Now imagine it @60p. Number of subscribers will always be the priority, which among other factors depends on the capacity/bandwidth of the infrastructure...and the infrastructure is always the last to keep up. No matter how many 1080 60p cams are out there. I'm guessing that the camera manufacturers are very well aware of that.

One more thing: if I was watching a live coverage of lets say...Formula 1, I'd rather have the ability of choosing 6 streams @25p/50i than 3 @50p.
 
Well look at it this way:
With JPEG compression, is it better to make the image smaller and then apply JPEG compression. Or is it better to keep the image at its original size and then apply JPEG compression?

The latter is better in most situations. (At extremely low bitrates the former is better; but the image would be crap and there wasn't much point in trying to make JPEG polish a turd.)

So the same should theoretically apply to compression progressive versus interlaced images. Throwing half the fields is an inefficient way of reducing bandwidth. By throwing away half the fields the bandwidth-reducing technique would be resampling. Resampling is terrible at bandwidth-reducing compared to other compression techniques, e.g. motion estimation, DCT, etc.

2- Interlacing also makes chroma subsampling less effective.

3- A lot of the time theory is wrong (heh...) so you really got to test this stuff.

The EBU technical review pages has some information on this stuff:
http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_308-hdtv.pdf

*You could argue that the people behind various papers are biased towards a particular solution and manipulate the test or interpretation of data towards a particular outcome. So that's something to watch out for sometimes. Though I don't think it's the case here.
Especially pay attention if the information is from a manufacturer and pimps their own equipment or trashes competing technologies.


A progressive system would give slightly more streams at the same bitrate and quality... that would be a compelling reason to adopt it as the next generation HD format.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top