Canon XL H1 Filmout Results - Awesome!

(Posted by David Taylor in the absence of David Newman)

In the blog dated Tuesday, January 17, I offered details for the 35mm filmout test we initiated with the Canon XL H1 shot in its 24F mode. During the shooting portion of the test, the XL H1 was simultaneously recorded to HDV tape and also to the Wafian HR-1 direct-to-disk recorder. In this post I’ll offer some subjective commentary on the results of the filmout.

After our first day of shooting (described below) we did a second day of shooting. In addition to the XL H1, the second day of shooting also included a Sony F900 that was recorded to HDCam tape in 24p mode. Unfortunately we did not have an HD-SDI module for the F900, and we acknowledge that recording to tape reduces its visual fidelity somewhat. When recording HDCam to tape the spatial resolution is 1440 x 1080 (same as HDV) with 3:1:1 chroma (versus 4:2:0) and 8 bits of precision (same). The filmout included the F900 material after it was ingested from HDCam tape. Comparatively, the CineForm Intermediate files are always 1920 x 1080 with 4:2:2 chroma and 10 bits of precision.

Of course viewing 35mm material on-screen is mainly a visual experience, and is inherently subjective. Perhaps the most consistent comment by all 20-ish of us who had the privilege of viewing the material was “Awesome!”. It can be stated emphatically that the XL H1 when printed to 35 mm film really looks excellent – colors, shadows, highlights, range, low noise, etc. It held up very well to the F900. I’m not sure why, and it was a surprise to us, but the F900 had a noisier appearance than the XL H1.

I’ve included a few image grabs from the test sequences used in the filmout that compare the XL H1 in its HDV mode and its D2D mode using the Wafian HR-1. The images were created by grabbing corresponding frames out of the video sequences and exporting them as bitmaps. Note that the source images were 10-bit CineForm Intermediate files, and the bitmaps are 8-bit files. As is evident in the images there is more resolution and more preservation of detail in the XL H1 D2D captures than the HDV captures. Unfortunately I do not have any F900 images to compare to. The F900 sequences were ingested at I/O Film during the recording session and were not grabbed separately on the editing workstation.

www.cineform.com/downloads-other/ColorChart-D2D.zip
www.cineform.com/downloads-other/ColorChart-HDV.zip
www.cineform.com/downloads-other/FabricChart-D2D.zip
www.cineform.com/downloads-other/FabricChart-HDV.zip
www.cineform.com/downloads-other/ResChart-D2D.zip
www.cineform.com/downloads-other/ResChart-HDV.zip

As a final comment, we’ve had the privilege of being invited to two additional camera test shoots also intended for 35mm filmout. Both shoots were performed earlier this week: One included the HVX200 and XL H1. The other included the Grass Valley Viper, shot in its HDStream mode, and the XL H1. We’ll offer more details on these shoots in the coming weeks after the filmout process.

Many thanks are in order for this filmout project, including to Robert Margouleff at Mi Casa Multimedia who initiated the project, Scott Billups for managing and performing the tests, Chris Angel at Mirage Productions for doing the post work, IO Film for doing the filmout, Birns and Sawyer for offering their facility for the first camera shoot, HDVision for use of their facility for the second shoot, and FotoKem for offering their viewing facilities.

CineForm on Tour

CineForm is coming to a city near you by joining the Adobe Production Studio Tour. David Taylor (CineForm, CEO) will be at each of the city locations demonstating a Wafian HR-1 and Aspect HD and Prospect HD post production solutions. This show will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about Adobe/CineForm/Wafian solutions for film and TV acquistion and post. It should be great tour to attend, but unfortunately I'm not able to go. Please add a comment if you make it to one of these events and report your experience.

Canon XL-H1 test shoot

As I wasn't at this particular event so the entry below was written up by David Taylor. It was a great opportunity to really put the Canon's 24F mode to the test (with a film-out planned.) I will update more on this shoot as the data comes in. I hope you enjoy the details below.

- David.N.

---

David Taylor wrote:

The story starts out with a phone call I received from Robert Margouleff at Mi Casa Multimedia (www.micasamm.com/newsite/) who has exceptional expertise in various audio endeavors, including audio remixing for feature films before they are distributed on DVD. Robert's partner is Dan Kavanaugh (Mirage Productions), and together they had plunked down some money on a new Canon XL H1 at Birns and Sawyer in Hollywood. But prior to taking delivery they wanted to run some performance tests in 24F mode while recording from its HD-SDI output, then send the material to I/O Film for a filmout test in order to judge big-screen visual quality. To run the tests, Robert recruited Scott Billups, who has a long resume of successful theatrical production and visual effects credits, and who had been itching to give the XL H1 a run for its money.

Robert had heard of the new Wafian HR-1 direct-to-disk recorder and asked if we'd like to participate. We have a couple Indie films in production that are using the HR-1 with JVC's new HD100U, but we hadn't had a chance to participate in an event like this for the XL H1. So of course we jumped at the chance. So last Thursday (1/12), Jeff from Wafian, plus Thad Huston and me from CineForm tooled up to Hollywood for the test shoot which was held in the new Birns and Sawyer facility near Sunset and Vine.


Jim Martin (left, Birns and Sawyer) and Scott Billups getting ready for the shoot. Two cams were used - one to setup the shot on a local monitor, and the second (with the Prime lens) was recorded.

Scott wanted to perform both indoor and outdoor tests, which included both res chart shots plus people and motion shots. Material was recorded to HDV tape, and was simultaneously recorded from its HD-SDI output to the Wafian HR-1. (Momentary digression - For those of you not familiar, the Wafian HR-1 is a direct-to-disk recorder manufactured by a partner of CineForm called Wafian. More info is here. Wafian has integrated our 10-bit CineForm Intermediate codec plus an HD-SDI card into a D2D recorder with lots of innovative software intended for on-set recording - essentially D5 quality but lots of cool features. One further reference - CineForm Intermediate records files as full-raster 1920 x 1080 with 10-bit precision and YUV 4:2:2 color space, so its spatial and chroma resolution is greater than an F900. Okay, digression off).

Because we were recording using both HDV tape (1440 horizontal resolution and 4:2:0 chroma) and HD-SDI (1920 horizontal resolution and 4:2:2 chroma) we felt this would be an excellent opportunity to compare the quality of both.

After the shoot last Thursday we reviewed the footage briefly on large LCD panels we brought with us, but as time was short we didn't get a chance to do any big-screen projection testing. But Scott was very enthusiastic about the preliminary results, saying the quality looked "simply awesome!" multiple times.

In order to judge whether his euphoria was a momentary lapse based on our lack of food on Thursday, I sent him an email Saturday morning asking whether he remained as enthused as he was on Thursday, to which I received the following email:

"Damn this is good looking footage! I showed it to a couple producers and they want to set up a demo next Thursday for a major distributor. ….

BTW, this footage keys much better than F900 (HDCAM) using both Keylight and Primatte. Once I get back (from Sundance), I'd like to pump some Viper, F950, F900 and XL H1 into the box (Wafian HR-1) and set up a real side-by-side (Digital / Film projection at ETC) for ASC, DGA, 600 and SMPTE. I can get all the cameras so the only question is, how many boxes can we get for the test.

Nice job guys. If I had another hand I'd give ya three thumbs up.

Scott Billups"

Well, that's pretty much where we leave the story for now. Scott is intending to render the footage out to DPX files and deliver them to I/O Film on Wednesday (1/18) before he heads off to Sundance. Hopefully we'll see film footage soon thereafter. I don't know if there's a full plan yet for how to screen the material to those interested, but I suspect quite a number of people would like to see how this looks on the big screen. When we know more of the logistics we'll let everybody know.


The crew and the cameras! (l to r) Chris Angel (Mi Casa), Scott Billups, Robert Margouleff (Mi Casa), Jeff Youel (Wafian), David Taylor and Thad Huston (CineForm - no we didn't plan for the redundant red shirts and levis), and Jim Martin.

CineForm and the new Premiere Pro 2.0

Already the rumors are flying on DVInfo.net so lets sort them out here. Firstly, Aspect HD has been upgraded to support Premiere Pro 2.0 (finalizing its beta testing); the version of Aspect HD needed for this is 4.0 (which will also continue to run on Premiere 1.5.) Adding Aspect HD to Premiere 2.0 is in no way impacted by Adobe's choice to remove the "free" (well it wasn't totally "free" for Adobe) CineForm components from the Premiere release. It should actually make things easier for CineForm (users will no longer confuse the free components with the Aspect HD tools, causing unnecessary technical support issues.) The second issue: now that Adobe has "native" MPEG editing, what does that mean for CineForm. At first we were disappointed in Adobe's discision, for about five minutes, then we realized how much this will benefit CineForm. We already have significant brand recognition thanks to partners like Adobe and Sony. Aspect HD has a good market share, but now the performance gap has increased in Aspect HD's favor -- previously CineForm was completing against it own tools, now it has a clear lead, as it does against any "native" MPEG system.

I want to point out that I believe this makes the CineForm-Adobe relationship stronger. We aren't really in competition, every Aspect HD and Prospect HD sale is a customer using Premiere Pro. CineForm helps Premiere Pro shine in the higher end production and indie film markets, particularly as Prospect HD is one of the standard solutions in Adobe's Open HD initiative. The Adobe sales team are very complementary towards CineForm tools, often using Aspect HD to demonstration Premiere Pro at tradeshows. Having a lot of CineForm components within Premiere did create some tension, as I sure Adobe had hoped we would be make a "free" version of Aspect HD, yet our own pipeline was a faster than theirs and they didn't license that -- we don't get our speed from the codec alone. So I feel there was disappointment on both sides with the 1.5.1 relationship, but now that 2.0 is here, we see an excellent partnership moving forward.

Premiere Pro 2.0 gives us a lot of opportunity to grow, in new features and market share. Adobe continues to provide the best third party plug-in interface of any of NLEs, this is why they have more acceleration options than any other vendor. Now that the rendering engine within Premiere 2.0 has extending beyond 8-bit, Prospect HD has much more room to grow adding great post-production features. We will be shortly be releasing Prospect HD 2.0 to start down the path of expanding the deep color experience -- previous only CineForm filters provided 16-bit color with PHD. Prospect HD 2.0 will be backwards compatible with 1.5.1, allow customers to upgrade there NLE whenever they need.

It is going to be an excellent 2006.

Crazy Test Posts

Sorry for all the test posts here over the last few days. Blogger.com has an error when using email based blogging; I run those tests three days ago (the emails took that long to hit blogspot.) This is all in preparation for me being far away for 2+ weeks (China) where I don't know what level of internet access I will have (so the tests were for email based blogging -- but I don't expect be to doing much CineForm related blogging from China.) While I'm away other CineForm staff will step in the help with forum questions that I usually spend time answering (particularly over at DVInfo.net.)

It has been a quiet time on this blog, as I have been so busy with CineForm projects (jamming things is before my trip.) We didn't close for holidays. Over the time that of company's were holidaying, we did two minor updates to Aspect HD 3.4 (now build 45), and a new beta candidate for Prospect HD 1.2 (coming soon.) We did a new build for Prospect 2K (for the LBS project) and preparing for upcoming Adobe software releases. We have more codec enhancements coming (even more speed) and we are working on real-time compression of HD gaming consoles (more on that soon.) In a recent in-house experiment of the new "stuff" and some very fast PC gear we were encoding 1920x1080 progressive at 88 fps (that is nice full resolution HD overcranking.) All this without mentioning the projects that won't be announced until NAB. Fun stuff.

Excellent day for CineForm powered music videos

After watching Alex's DVD (see last post) , my email in-box had another surprize. Jacob Rosenberg of Formika Films (Premiere guru and on-line supervisor for Dust to Glory) has released his latest project, Cactusflower, a music video for John Gold. The production of this music video received an excellent write-up and cover story in Video Systems magazine (see the article here.)

I have known about Jacob's new project for some time as I think this was the first production to use Prospect HD as a 24p disk recorder, bypassing the Sony F900 tape based compression. This allowed 10-bit for resolution 1920x1080 images to be captured rather than HDCAM's 1440x1080 8-bit. If he shot now, a Wafian HR-1 may have been an easier set-up, but the underlying technology is the same. A cool production fact: the F900 camera was shoot on it side, producing a tall 9x16 image, and the featured room was shoot in five slices to reconstruct a very wide anamorphic image, making a huge composite around 6000x2000 (from memory) to assemble all the slices into a seamless (very cool looking) frame.

See the truly excellent results here : “Cactusflower” video
Bonus : scroll down the page for a 720p WMV download version.

The best customer feedback

Early today I received a DVD of a music video produced by long time Aspect HD user Alex Raskin (www.FancyFlix.com.) It is always great to see what customers are doing with the software we create, and Alex's project is a lot of fun. Customer DVD's arrive every so often, but I do hope to encourage more of this. Please send them our way, we want to know what you are up to.