FULL SIZE MiniDV CLIP POSTED AGFA MOVIECHROME 40 ON WORKPRIN

[mattias]

BTW - Try Photo JPEG

you're not going to like this, but... i actually wrote that as well, in that same message. what is it about it that makes you not want to read it? :-)

/matt

[crimsonson]

you're not going to like this, but... i actually wrote that as well, in that same message. what is it about it that makes you not want to read it?

/matt

I thought it was not worth my time... ;)

Seriously,
I just wanted to give specifics about P-JPEG over DV - that is all.

[S8 Booster]

BTW - Try Photo JPEG - which many editors and composite artist prefer over DV. Its 4:2:2 and lower data rate also.

Hare is a link for quality test of many popular high end codecs .

http://onerivermedia.com/codecs/index.htm

The PJPEG looks way superior over DV for sure at a higher but not dramatic bit rate.
This is analog to what I think was the performance of the FAST? STUDIO? (P)JPEG suite of the early ´90s?


R

[S8 Booster]

To Lucas. You idea to investigate if Agfa is willing or capable to put the A40 or better AS40(sound) cartridge back in business is probably good.

If Agfa also re-introduced the sound carts they would at least get a fair share of S8 users in their hand that may not thereafter use the Kodak as their No 1 choice. Could be Agfa´s advantage over Kodak together with a good performance for video transfer. Got the most in one action?.

If Kodak really scrapped all their sound stripe machinery and Agfa didn´t it would at least take some time for Kodak to re-enter the market with a new and soundstriped film giving Agfa an initial advantage?

By the way: The Elmo 812 S-XL had an awesome performance with the A40, much better than my Canon 1014 XL-S. Never knew why but I know Agfa and Elmo did have a very tight cooperation in S8 in those days.

R

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Thanks S8 Booster,

It does make some sense to us, but as with most things it takes some real effort to put something like this into action, and usually requires a highly motivated individual to take it on as a project, which I can't actually afford to do - but if anyone knows anyone at Agfa, it might be worth asking them if they think it's a goer.

If only someone on the inside of Kodak or Agfa or some such company could see the potential. I learned that Kodak's reason for abolishing Sound carts was in part due to having sold only 1000 units in the last year they made them. That's probably the same as you could expect to sell today, IF you had Kodak's marketing and distribution - actualy forget the marketing - they don't do any! Not as biggybigbig as I thought, perhaps.

Lucas

[mattias]

The PJPEG looks way superior over DV for sure at a higher but not dramatic bit rate.
This is analog to what I think was the performance of the FAST? STUDIO? (P)JPEG suite of the early ´90s?

mjpeg and pjpeg are the same exact same things, which is moving pictures codecs built on the jpeg standard, and so is dv. dv is the best, mjpeg the second and pjpeg the worst. apples pjpeg implementation is a lot better than their mjpeg one though, but dv is still the best at the same bitrate.

/matt

[S8 Booster]

Sure you are right about this.

The old systems ran at much higher bit rates than MiniDV. The system required a boost board/from the computer bus, a RAID disk drive SCSI interface controller (rated at continous transfer rate of 20+ MB/s) and the code/decode board with a dedicated JPEG processor. The better imagery is/was due to a higher bit rate not the packing principle.

Still in principle, if the bit game capacity is rised the JPEG can or will offer better DV quality.

However the hardware required may still be very expensive for this setup so the MiniDV system gives more performance for the money I suppose without knowing all the latest gizmos available.

R

[mattias]

Still in principle, if the bit game capacity is rised the JPEG can or will offer better DV quality.

indeed. imho they set the specs for dv just below the level where consumer becomes professional, whcih kind of sucks. if you're looking for the best codec though, intraframe mpeg-2 is even better (although still "just" another jpeg codec), and it's what's being used by most high end cards today, as well as the video servers tv channels use for storage and broadcast...

/matt

[S8 Booster]

Quite off topic but do you know which interface is used beween say a high res cam and a High-End mpeg-2 board/converter to keep the res up?

I read somewhere (Adam Wilt?) that MiniDV res is just barely below minimum broadcast standard in the USA. From flash memory.

R

[Carlos 8mm]

To Lucas. You idea to investigate if Agfa is willing or capable to put the A40 or better AS40(sound) cartridge back in business is probably good.

If Agfa also re-introduced the sound carts they would at least get a fair share of S8 users in their hand that may not thereafter use the Kodak as their No 1 choice. Could be Agfa´s advantage over Kodak together with a good performance for video transfer. Got the most in one action?.

If Kodak really scrapped all their sound stripe machinery and Agfa didn´t it would at least take some time for Kodak to re-enter the market with a new and sound stripped film giving Agfa an initial advantage?

R

At this moment Agfa stops to manufacture Camera Motion Picture films. They only offers M.P. films for laboratory works.

They produces reversal film for still Photo I.E. Agfachrome 50, 100, etc.

I think that the idea of demand to Agfa manufactures S8 stock again(specially stripped sound film), It´s very difficult.

At least Fuji still produces Motion picture film stock (And very good), so could be more easy to demand Fuji to sell S8 silent or sound stripping film in raw stock. (reloadable S8 cartridges are easy to acquire).

Perhaps the fact that Kodak still introduces new S8 stock, and they exerts an absolute monopoly with this film format, can discourage the production of S8 stock from other brands like Fuji, Agfa, et-cetera. :roll:

Anyway, Is better to try it, ´cause we don´t have nothing to lose.

Ok Guys, let us begin with the S8 campaign.

Carlos.

[crimsonson]

if you're looking for the best codec though, intraframe mpeg-2 is even better (although still "just" another jpeg codec),
/matt

MPEG 2, although can be extremely good, is not that efficient.
Most high end cards like Kona, Igniter, Digital Voodoo, Meridien are all still MJPEG. MPEG 2 is really a distribution format and not an acquisition & editing format, since it artifacts heavily during recompression. AS you have mentioned I frame is really the only format where MPEG2 can be used for editing - but it CPU and bandwidth intensive.
Photo JPEG from QT is CPU intensive - however looks like uncompressed and can be either 4:4:4 or 4:2:2. Plus the bandwidth at 4:2:2 is better than DV.

I think DV50 is the codec to look out for. Less 8 Megabytes and 4:2:2. By this year FCP will support it. Avid in their high end products, and probably in XDV's next version.


S8 Booster

High end facilities dont use their cam as feeders, they used dedicated VTRs. High end facilities use several flavors of SDI [Serial Digital Interface] to transfer video signal from place to place [deck to deck, deck to PC, etc].

[mattias]

MPEG 2 is really a distribution format and not an acquisition & editing format, since it artifacts heavily during recompression.

not as long as we're talking about i-frame only. i-frame mpeg-2 and mjpeg is almost exactly the same thing, although mpeg-2 uses newer and slightly improved technology. you're right that most systems still use mjpeg, but i'm pretty sure that's because of the "if it ain't broken don't fix it" rule. mpeg-2 isn't a huge improvement so shifting to it just for quality reasons doesn't make sense, but it's flexible, scalable, compatible and a lot of other things that mjpeg isn't. being able to use the same hardware for both editing and distribution of anything from gprs phone images through sd and hd video to 4k film scans will be a huge advantage, right?

/matt