DSLR video quality

Hi,

I own a Nikon D700 and I've never used any DSLR to make movies. My interest in DSLR video is quite limited (for the kind of video I need I just use my (very) old Canon P&S) but I was curious, reading how DSLR can have so good recording capability (I read this since the 5DII).

I found this video link and downloaded the 1080p sample http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZZMIo7Zfys

I think the coming D4 is supposed to produce the best DSLR movie quality but when viewed on my TV (or even my 17" laptop) I must say that I was quite disapointed by the quality. Image seems soft, I can see artifacts, motion not as smooh as I expected...

Can some specialist here tell me if it's normal ? Maybe it's just because of Youtube ? As I said I'm not really in video and don't have a lot of knowledge on this matter but, if I compare with some movies I have, there's no doubt that the quality is not even on par with some 720p I've downloaded.

Just curious, can you really expect "professional" quality from DSLR ? I mean same quality than you can find with properly encoded 1080p movies ?

I also tried the s95 of a friend (with 720p video) and honestly the files were so huge compared to what I was using with my old P&S (VGA recording 640*480) for a not so evident gain in quality (well, in my eyes at least).

Many thanks to who can answer my curiousity.
Fabrice

I am guessing youtube, even if downloadable isnt the best source.
edit...I didnt check your link

http://vimeo.com/34666308

Anyway...I think the vimeo version looks very nice. Has a pop about it that smaller sensor wont acheive.

--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rabbitstu77/

DSLR video quality is actually excellent in cameras like the 5D MKII and Nikon's own D7000. It is very good, and although there are some problems with 'rolling shutter', it's not major.

The real problem is that DSLR's in general are not as easy to work with for video as dedicated video cameras. For example, manual focus is often difficult and for best results may require a third party hood or HDMI LCD screen. Sound quality is also usually not that great, and many people just use other recording devices and then 'sync' later in post production, and of course the ergonomics are really not that great for video.

....but in the end the reason indie filmmakers love DSLR cameras for video and put up with all the 'quirks' is because the video quality is just so good.

--
http://www.southfloridapics.com

fvdh said:

I found this video link and downloaded the 1080p sample http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZZMIo7Zfys

I think the coming D4 is supposed to produce the best DSLR movie quality but when viewed on my TV (or even my 17" laptop) I must say that I was quite disapointed by the quality. Image seems soft, I can see artifacts, motion not as smooh as I expected...

Click to expand...

Your link comes up at 360p. You have to change it to 1080p.
--
Robin Casady
http://www.robincasady.com/Photo/index.html

Hi,

Yes I know, don't know how to post a link to the 1080p. But I really have downloaded the 1080p version.

It's 229mb for 430 seconds => about 2gb for 1H.

Mmmm, 1080p I have are mostly 8gb for 1h30. Can his explain why I don't find the quality that good ?

I'm not saying that the movie is bad, in fact I really enjoyed it, it's just that I hear so much about DSLR video used by pro that I was surprised by the average quality.

Can someone tell me where I can download real DSLR 1080p quality files and not something heavily compressed for youtube or vimeo ? (well, I presume as the D4 is not yet available it have to be 5D mark II at the moment ?)

fvdh said:

Hi,

I own a Nikon D700 and I've never used any DSLR to make movies. My interest in DSLR video is quite limited (for the kind of video I need I just use my (very) old Canon P&S) but I was curious, reading how DSLR can have so good recording capability (I read this since the 5DII).

I found this video link and downloaded the 1080p sample http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZZMIo7Zfys

I think the coming D4 is supposed to produce the best DSLR movie quality but when viewed on my TV (or even my 17" laptop) I must say that I was quite disapointed by the quality. Image seems soft, I can see artifacts, motion not as smooh as I expected...

Can some specialist here tell me if it's normal ? Maybe it's just because of Youtube ? As I said I'm not really in video and don't have a lot of knowledge on this matter but, if I compare with some movies I have, there's no doubt that the quality is not even on par with some 720p I've downloaded.

Just curious, can you really expect "professional" quality from DSLR ? I mean same quality than you can find with properly encoded 1080p movies ?

I also tried the s95 of a friend (with 720p video) and honestly the files were so huge compared to what I was using with my old P&S (VGA recording 640*480) for a not so evident gain in quality (well, in my eyes at least).

Many thanks to who can answer my curiousity.
Fabrice

Click to expand...

The stills camera with the best quality video and best implemented video mode is the Panasonic GH2, especially with the hack. The use of contrast detect autofocus lenses that have silent autofocusing, stepless apertures and power zoom makes shooting video much easier. The video resolution and lack of moire and artifacts are vastly superior to any DSLR video I have seen. Download some samples from the Internet. I think you'll be very pleased with the results.
http://www.eoshd.com/content/4279/how-the-gh2-is-still-top-dog-for-video-quality

fvdh said:

It's 229mb for 430 seconds => about 2gb for 1H.

Mmmm, 1080p I have are mostly 8gb for 1h30. Can his explain why I don't find the quality that good ?

Click to expand...

Yes. You are viewing a movie compressed at roughly 4 Megabits/second. Most DVDs play at that bitrate with about 1/6 the image data. Bluray movies are in the 25-30 MBits/second while Netflix HD is something like 4-6 MBits/second. In my experience with low-end pro camcorders such as the Sony Z1 and EX1, 35 MBits/second is what is needed to look impressive for 1080p30 or 720p60. At 25 MBits/second (HDV), the image "tears" or "falls apart" during motion.

If Nikon and other DSLR cameras provided uncompressed video output over the HDMI, another recorder (Nanoflash, computer with Black Magic Design card) could do better data compression.

I will try to explain the shortcomings.

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Even if the glass is great and the sensor is. The weak link is the compression....Yes you heard right. It is the compression.

Nikon marketing dep has had a home run having all the tech sites (including DP-review) reporting of the new "uncompressed" out from D4.

It is just that in the motion picture world we usually talk about dynamic range when we are mentioning compression....and not really about jpg artifacts so much.

For example: 10 bit 4:4:4 would be considered a pretty uncompressed stream.
8 bit 4:2:2 would never be considered uncompressed when talking dynamic range.

Other manufactures of videocameras has had 4:2:2 cameras on the market for 6-8 years and never have they ever in any marketing material used the word uncompressed, even if it had a "clean" output signal.

Thats why the video you see in your example does not look as good as your stills.

Regarding the "WHY" shoot, the location and environment light has really been planned with perfection. It is a well made production, and the sync with the climber looks great due to the fact that the lighting is very controlled and does not have a great dynamic range even in the real world.

here is another example that really is unflattering for Nikon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQIDXnCSWqE

Look at the shots that are a little complex where there is both bright sunlight and shadows...it does not handle those shots well.

Now, regardless of this, I think Nikon has done a great job with D4 and for photojournalistic assignments the quality of the D4 video is more than enough, and it is just the level of quality I wished for (well maybe 10bit 4:2:2 50mbps would have made me even happier .

A commercial shoot however, or a real film project would be better of short on Alexa, Red, Sony Cine Alta or even maybe an F3 if you can do it on 1080p...

Arctistic said:

Nikon marketing dep has had a home run having all the tech sites (including DP-review) reporting of the new "uncompressed" out from D4.

It is just that in the motion picture world we usually talk about dynamic range when we are mentioning compression....and not really about jpg artifacts so much.

For example: 10 bit 4:4:4 would be considered a pretty uncompressed stream.
8 bit 4:2:2 would never be considered uncompressed when talking dynamic range.

Other manufactures of videocameras has had 4:2:2 cameras on the market for 6-8 years and never have they ever in any marketing material used the word uncompressed, even if it had a "clean" output signal.

Click to expand...

4:4:4, 4:2:2, or even 4:2:0 has nothing to do with "compression", but rather color sub sampling. Indeed you can have "uncompressed" 4:2:2, in fact many video cameras have it, it just means that the signal coming from the camera has no compression (around 1.2Gbs for 1080p). For consumers this makes little sense since they would want to store the data, and also view it, this is why all cameras (even professional) have an aquisition format whether it be mp4, AVCHD, h.264, or whatever. The benefit of having an uncompressed output (HDMI in this case, HD-SDI in some other cases), is that you are not limited by that built in compression format, and can either choose to record it uncompressed (150MB per second or so for 8bit!), or choose thier own less agressive compression via a external recorder like DNxHD or something).

Btw, you are uninformed to think that video camera makes don't talk about "uncompressed" output for 4:2:2 cameras even 8 bit, for example:
http://panasonic.com/business/provideo/AG-AF100.asp

Arctistic said:

Thats why the video you see in your example does not look as good as your stills.

Click to expand...

It's probably one of the reasons. Also realize that we don't know what settings the video was shot in. And even the best camera can be made to look like crap by someone who isn't using it right. For example, do we know if it was recorded externally via the uncomressed HDMI? Or that they didn't use some crop mode, that may not give the best results? No we don't.

I agree there are a couple clips that looked terrible, but in the end, I think we should just wait for more samples with more information.

Oh, and to the OP regarding a compact cameras video mode, often times they will be recording to some other compression scheme such as M-JPG, which results in very large files compared to other internal codecs like AVCHD, or MP4. The files will be big (it's HH afterall, you want them to be big!), and for some they'll want them to be even bigger.
--
Cloverdale, B.C., Canada
Currently shooting: Nikon D3S, D700
http://www.joesiv.com

Arctistic said:

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Even if the glass is great and the sensor is. The weak link is the compression....Yes you heard right. It is the compression.

Nikon marketing dep has had a home run having all the tech sites (including DP-review) reporting of the new "uncompressed" out from D4.

For example: 10 bit 4:4:4 would be considered a pretty uncompressed stream.
8 bit 4:2:2 would never be considered uncompressed when talking dynamic range.

Click to expand...

The specs "10-bit 4:4:4" and "8-bit 4:2:2" only tell you how the image was sampled at the front end of the chain. They say nothing at all about compression, which occurs later in the stream, and is a completely separate consideration.

Dynamic range is primarily dependent on the luminance signal, and isn't compromised by reducing the chroma sampling rate. In other words, 10-bit is better than 8-bit, but 4:4:4 has insignificant DR advantage over 4:2:2.

Arctistic said:

Other manufactures of videocameras has had 4:2:2 cameras on the market for 6-8 years and never have they ever in any marketing material used the word uncompressed, even if it had a "clean" output signal.

Click to expand...

Because they have no uncompressed output. Define "clean."

Arctistic said:

Thats why the video you see in your example does not look as good as your stills.

Click to expand...

Funny you should mention those stills, because a Bayer array itself has a lower spatial sampling rate for color, than it has for luminance, i.e., it is not 4:4:4.

Arctistic said:

Regarding the "WHY" shoot, the location and environment light has really been planned with perfection. It is a well made production, and the sync with the climber looks great due to the fact that the lighting is very controlled and does not have a great dynamic range even in the real world.

Click to expand...

Good point. Easy subjects make better images.

Arctistic said:

Now, regardless of this, I think Nikon has done a great job with D4 and for photojournalistic assignments the quality of the D4 video is more than enough, and it is just the level of quality I wished for (well maybe 10bit 4:2:2 50mbps would have made me even happier .

Click to expand...

Ah, now you're talking compression, by including the "50mbps" spec.

Yes, to all... The word "compression" is by definition not the same as sampling but lets use the word with everything it can define...

What is the dynamic range of what the human eye can see?
What is the dynamic range of a RAW file from a D3s
What is the dynamic range from a 8-bit 4:2:2 feed?

Compressed compared to what the eye can see? Or limited? Or stripped of information?

Light hitting glass with one dynamic range instantly transforming on the sensor to a dynamic range that is less of what hits the lens...Im having trouble to put another word for it than compressed, even if the word is more commonly used regards to the compression by mathemathic formulas..

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