DPStewart

Hey gang, You may have noticed that VIMEO recently changed their public playback structure to be exactly like YouTube's - meaning it will now "Auto-Select" a playback quality for viewers. The tab where you could specify what playback quality got assigned has been removed. So far their P.R. people have been saying "Too bad, we're being competitive." but controlling the playback quality is pretty much the ONLY reason any of us use Vimeo over YouTube. It is ABSOLUTELY the ONLY reason I pay for their "Plus" or "Pro" service. This little campaign here got started by Oron over on DVXUser and he has already had some email exchanges with them that he posted for all to see. When he told them that controlling playback quality was his ONLY reason for buying their paid service, and that he would be terminating it if this control is not restored - well, they quickly stated changing their tune. To be certain - ANYTIME I have watched any of YOUR Vimeo videos recently, my stream defaulted to their "Auto" setting EVEN THOUGH THE "HD" INDICATOR WAS STILL ON. My system and connection plays 1080p perfectly smoothly all day long - and ALL of YOUR videos are displaying at a drastically reduced quality for me because of this "Auto" YouTube-style setting. Here is some of the email exchange Oron posted: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This is part of an emails they sent me from customer support: part of email 1: "Unfortunately, adaptive streaming is the future of Vimeo’s streaming capabilities and we completely understand your hesitation if you content is not displaying as you’d like it to." Part of email 2 (after I replied I don't like this idea): "I’m sorry to hear that my rely has disappointed you. We strongly encourage you being able to find and use a video hosting platform that is best for your needs and we’re sorry to hear that we cannot be that for you at this time." After I decided to stop my Vimeo plus membership that will end next month, they send me this email: "I want to be clear that I do understand your concerns about HD video, and having control over what qualities your viewer sees. Our product team is evaluating this kind of feedback, and I will certainly pass yours along for consideration." So, again, if more people will say something it will change, I'm sure people that have Vimeo Plus or Pro don't want other people to view their videos on 720p or 360p just because vimeo thinks they don't have the bandwidth, I want to decide those things, that's the all point of vimeo. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PLEASE join in and send VIMEO's customer service an email if you are a paying customer of their "Plus" and "Pro" subscriptions. Thanks all !

Hey araucaria, You shredded me and my post, but I'm gonna do you a respect here. First, drop the anger and smugness. I'm not "Telling you to"...I'm just asking you to. I'm asking....could ya? Earlier on you made a good point that most people didn't focus on. Piracy in certain other countries. You mentioned Turkey, but I'd like to add China and India to that, because historically those two countries were hotbeds of huge amounts of movie piracy. At first, the worldwide movie selling industry didn't even attempt to get into those countries because the Governments really didn't let them. So the worldwide movie industry grew for decades without them. (Of course China and India have made their own great movie industry - but that's not what we're talking about here.) There's a difference now - the difference is that all of the countries that DID support the worldwide movie industry are now DRASTICALLY increasing their participation in piracy and so they are reducing the industry's ability to earn it's money fairly. I never said we "Have to give up our Privacy" but I did say "What society has or does accept as any sort of privacy on the Internet is going to have to change RADICALLY or we risk losing one of the most cherished aspects of our modern life - Movies." We don't really have all that much privacy online already anyway - and I only suggest that what we "accept" as privacy (cuz it ain't really much already) is going to have to change IF...IF...we want to keep our movie world going as great as it has been. I have been a monetary supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 8-years now, so I am ABSOLUTELY on the side of Internet privacy and freedom. So, I understand and respect your position of NOT wanting to relinquishing any more online privacy. No one is saying that's "wrong". Although maybe it seems that's what people are saying - it's really not. What we ARE SAYING - is that it is going to be one or the other. One or the other. We will NOT be able to keep both. That part is already obvious. Pick one, and understand that you will be saying goodbye to the other. If you ONLY like 'flag pole" (big budget) films like superhero movies, then you'll still be happy. But if you like the other varieties of movies too then maybe you won't be so happy when no one will make those anymore. YOU ARE FULLY ENTITLED to only like superhero movies if that's your thing. No judgement of you there. You're on this forum, right? So I'm kinda guessing that you have an interest in all varieties of movie making. We all just want to see those movies continue to get made, and NONE of us has the answer yet of how that's going to happen.

Well then your chosen route will also probably ensure that most of the movie industry goes bye-bye. Leaving us (and you) with little more than superhero sequels. If that's all you want to see out there anymore - well then, by all means, have at it.

That's logic! Yup. That's exactly the kinds of things to do. Look for some small yet specific differences that are easy to pin down the function of.

YES. Piracy or illegal downloading or file sharing WILL hurt - already IS hurting the film industry. With the amount of lost revenue that we are already clearly seeing - Money losing films will now be total busts, Break-Even films will now be money losers, Mildly Profitable films will also become money losers, and the FEW films that are seriously profitable and generally make up the earnings gap in the industry for ALL THE CREW INVOLVED will now either have much of those earnings taken away, or will move all the way into NO-PROFIT territory. Ask yourself this very simple question: Of ALL the many types of talented tradesmen, and workers on a film crew- from the electricians to the companies who's entire business is craft services (food), to the riggers and carpenters, to the costume designers and tailors, all the way through to the actors, directors, producers and even the office staff of the film companies (even little small ones)... HOW MANY of those people do you think will choose to, or could even AFFORD to stay in the business if the profits are cut this severely? Hmm? Think on that for a few minutes. How many of you would choose to, or could afford to work a full-time job that MAYBE paid you 15 or 20 thousand dollars A YEAR? You gonna get a mortgage for your family house with that? (No) You gonna raise and feed and clothe kids with that? (No) Get them through college with that? That's the new reality for the majority of all those different kinds of people who's work makes up the film business. They already ARE leaving the business for exactly these reasons. What do you think the business will be like when even more of them leave? What society has or does accept as any sort of privacy on the Internet is going to have to change RADICALLY or we risk losing one of the most cherished aspects of our modern life - Movies. It's a new world out there - with new problems of types that have never been seen before. We are going to have to be prepared to change if we don't want to lose the COMPLEX things that we love...like movies.

This is pretty much exactly how it worked with the GH2 hacks. Vitaliy got a hold of the firmware obviously when they released the first update. Then he created a GUI called "PTool" that loads in the firmware and has windows for you to enter in new values for just the relevant fields. Then the "PTool" GUI saves your changes in a file identical to the actual Panasonic firmware which then gets loaded into the camera in exactly the same way one would normally update the firmware. You never "see" your new values displayed anywhere on the GH2. You just see the results and you can see the bit-rates associated with your new footage. So this is considerably different from how Magic Lantern works, but everything we've learned so far points to the NX1 firmware functioning at least somewhat similarly to the Panasonic. So that's encouraging. The easiest things to change will be the bit-rates (they've already provided for several ranges so we know it will work) and the removal of the 29-minute limit ... which is probably nothing more than a flag which can simply be removed like it was on the GH2.

Sorry for the dumb question but... why is 16-235 an option at all? Mabe it's naive but isn't less information always worse than more information... (you can limit your data in post if necessary) Oh, it's more crazy than that. Here are 3 links that 'try' to explain it. I'm still looking for a workflow method that completely accounts for any possible error in the whole 16-235/0-255 thing. And: http://***URL removed***/forums/post/54884851 And: http://***URL removed***/forums/thread/3764384 Yikes!

That's some fine lookin' stuff right there. I looked at a bunch of your other stuff too. I think this Lens-Lut combo is a real high-point. The stuff with the Samsung lenses is unbelievably sharp and clear, but at times almost feels too sharp...know what I mean? Those AI-s lenses are still sharp, but I don't see the almost distractingly sharp edges to things. Kowabunga!

I think this sums up the situation pretty well. I agree that contacting the Magic Lantern people might be the best bet. Really there were only ever TWO hacked Camera OS's - Canon by Magic Lantern and GH2 by Vitaliy. Casey's suggestion of enticing other hackers into it with a bounty might be the other viable option. I've never contacted the Magic Lantern people - but I know they ARE contactable. But it ain't gonna come cheap because those are pro's that have already done their time in hacking and have moved on in their lives. Maybe we could pitch in our money and offer them a private concert by CHARO. That should hook anybody, right?

As for upload file format for Vimeo/YouTube, I've been rendering out to fully massive 10-bit DNxHD at the MAX bit-rate. Lime 180Mbps for 1080p. I figure it kills 2 birds with one stone. I get a nice master file at the same time. Yeah...it'll be HUGE. But who cares? The only very small bummer is that it will of course take a looooong time to upload. So do it at the end of the night, right? I've been getting the best results I've ever had with this. ...and that ProRes vs. h.264 directly above - that shows why I hate h.264 so much. I really do hate that codec. At least the way Adobe implements it.

The newest Premiere Pro version working natively with the h.265 is great - but what is a really good Transcoder to convert them to PreRez of DNxHD/HR? What are folks using lately for that particular task? ~Danke

Hey Kidzrevil, can you start making a clean list of these resources - like links to the NX1 Firmware versions, and links to known NX hack activity - all in your original post on the first page? That would really totally not suck at all if you could do that. THANKS MATE!

I have liked the results I've had using fine grain very lightly. Although I'm going to have a go at using the Super16 grain the way you suggested.

Dude, you're gonna get such sharp images with those Milvus lenses that you're going to need to switch back to 720p. Thanks Sir! Ya know...funny you should mention the SLR Magics..I really had it in my mind that I was going to put a whole set together, but then a big bunch of multi-cam work came my way, I bought three more Blackmagic cameras, and then I needed to get a bunch more lenses that matched the Nikkors and Samyangs I already had... so sadly the SLR Magics that I do have are now my "odd man out" so I'll probably sell them. They're still mint though - I take better care of my glass than I do of my ass.

There's a website called "PERSONAL VIEW" that was (and is) home to the community that did most of the Panasonic hack development. http://www.personal-view.com/

LOL! Well...I'm gonna say it....that was a "rookie error"! Like OUCH, that's gonna leave a mark! (I've done worse! ) But seriously - what you encountered is a really problematic issue. Guess how many viewers' monitor screens or other playback devices are NOT displaying 1:1? It's a trick question - we CAN'T KNOW. And therein lies the problem. Because it's A LOT. I have FREQUENTLY run into this problem with things I've shot in 4k and almost as often with Blackmagic 1080p RAW stuff too. It's all effectively "TOO HIGH resolution" and there's all sorts of edge artifacting or aliasing that's coming from PLAYBACK, not the actual file. In these sorts of cases footage from my TOTALLY NOT SHARP Canon cameras looks BETTER. It is indeed a cruel and unjust world. It looks better because the lower resolution tends not to result in edge artifacts being generated by the unlimited number of viewing situations and conditions that do not show the viewer the exact 1:1 display. And on monitors that are less than full 1080p (like smaller laptops etc.) you can't really get the full 1:1 no matter what you do. The subtitle of this nightmare could be "How to produce higher resolution video that looks WORSE to the viewer" ...... great. In small windows - like on a YouTube page or embedded on someones website - my stuff from the Canons will look just as good, and as I explained - sometimes even BETTER. Now of course when you look at them full-screen at 1:1 the Canon stuff looks like crappy old Standard Def by comparison. There's just no winning... (Oh, and I mean Canon T2i and 6D just shooting internal codec. A 5D in Magic Lantern RAW is a totally different story.) Maybe I'll try to find some direct comparison stills to illustrate all this - but you probably already know what I mean.

Haha! Yeah, well you're comparing it to this brand new NX1 video which is pretty darned amazing in its own right. In fact many have said that the NX1 is THE dslr that starts to rival the 5D RAW's general image quality. However - for post processing latitude and flexibility the RAW still destroys the NX1 codec. It destroys all codecs.

Super useful - but I don't think something like that could be added within a software hack. It would need some analog input that can safely take an incoming voltage. I don't think the NX1 has that. There's a tiny chance the external Mic input could be redirected, but that's a long shot.

Brilliant!

There ya go.

+1. $$$ And will contribute money absolutely. $$$

No digital cameras are completely and totally free of aliasing. They all will exhibit artifacts in some instances. The majority of million-dollar movies have artifacts in them somewhere - be it aliasing, moire, noise, etc., even the Arri Alexa can produce the "black hole sun" artifact in the right conditions. The whole ballgame is to get a great overall image. For $2,500 the Canon 5D with Magic Lantern does so good a job that nearly nothing in that price range can equal it. My Panasonic GH2's, because of their design, have nearly zero aliasing and moire when compared to a 5D, and they are sharper than a 5D not shooting ML RAW...but does that make them a better image? Hahahaha! No way! Not even close! Don't get hung up on small image artifacts because every camera has them in one way or another. Look at the overall image. The whole picture. Do you like it for the job you're shooting? Do others watch it and also like it? If the answer is 'yes' then you win. Nothing more to be done there. There's always a more expensive camera out there and they're usually better too, but you have to work within reasonable expectations or you'll drive yourself crazy needlessly. If any camera for $2,500 new could deliver images as widely liked as the 5D with ML RAW it would take over. Sony thought they had it with the A7 cameras..BZZZT! Already selling for half price in the used market and being dumped by enormous numbers of early adopters. Trust your gut. Don't fixate on specs. kgv5 - your stuff is gorgeous.

The deal is that sensors have what they call a "native ISO", which is their own internal native functioning gain level within the device. So all other ISOs are either an amplification applied to that or an attenuation applied to that, so that's why some cameras might give its best result at say 400 ISO. But like you've heard - it varies from camera to camera. As far as I have been able to see, the response of the sensor in the NX1 doesn't seem to show any bias towards any one ISO - meaning that it all just looks equally clean in the lower range regardless of what its "native" ISO might be. That's good engineering. I agree with Casey. Just follow normal exposure and ISO techniques and the NX1 should respond with no surprises. Hell of a camera...ain't it?

Hey all, I'm new to this forum today, but some of you know me from the Blackmagic forums or DVXUser. I am shooting almost exclusively Blackmagic RAW these days but I got an NX1 for the high frame rates and for the occasion that some client may insist on 4K. Lots of GREAT GREAT information being traded around on this thread here. These kooky codecs can drive ya mad, so I applaud those of you struggling through what must feel like endless testing. Thank you. Right off the bat I wanted to add 2 points here: First - Variable ND's do indeed all use two 'quarter-plates" (polarizers) against each other and that results in color shifts every time. EXCEPT the SLR Magic Vari-ND. This one is the exception. I have two of them and compared to the others I can assure you that the quality and freedom from color shift is far far better. Want some happy? Go there. Second - I've read through this entire thread and looked at everyone's stills and videos and I just want to shout: "BIT-RATE!" Meaning that almost all the image quality issues of this camera are coming from its low recording bit-rate. I've been through this exact routine already during the era of the development of the 'hack' for the Panasonic GH2. Dear lord...it's ALL in the bit-rate. I bring this up because if WE ALL get involved in pushing for a hack for the NX1 that will allow for a much higher bit-rate then it will stand a chance of happening. I haven't checked in with the N500 hack status recently, but it sounds like the ball is rolling. Masses of folks getting involved was what pushed the GH2 hack so far so fast. All these image quality problems were the same on the stock GH2 - macro-blocking, color breakup, etc., and they are ALL gone now with the 150Mbps hack we ended up with. Yeah, you read that right - 150Mbps just for 1080p. Yeah, that's a card eater, but that doesn't matter anymore at today's memory prices, and watching all those problems vanish was just so delightful. Anyhoo, continue getting down wit' your bad selves!

Hi guys, I'm new to this forum, but some of you know me from the Blackmagic Forum or from almost a decade on DVXUser. The 5D mkIII shooting M.L. RAW is STILL the best image out of any DSLR. I STILL wish I could afford to add one even today. And I have 4 Blackmagic cameras. One Cinema 2.5K and three Pockets. I also have a Samsung NX1, two hacked Panasonic GH2's, and three Canon DSLR's: A T2i, a 70D mkII, and a 6D. First of all - I run Magic Lantern on ALL my Canons ALWAYS no matter what. IT'S FINE. ("Hack" is not really the right word as Hans just pointed out.) It adds so many great features that even if you never use the RAW functions, it's almost like a whole new camera. My Canon's with ML have NEVER crashed on me strangely enough - I say that because almost every camera I've ever worked with HAS crashed or frozen on me at some point -and I mean with their own normal stock firmware. Second - RAW beats everything. Hands down. No contest. Not even close. Once you've shot RAW you'll never want to go back. And memory is really no longer a problem. I got a handful of Sandisk Extreme Pro 256Gig cards for about $150 each and I get OVER an HOUR of RAW on each one. (Plus I can use them on every single other camera I have.) The FREE DaVinci Resolve 12 just plays and edits these files normally. Just drag and drop. No doing anything extra. Premiere Pro is even close on Resolve's heels now with RAW handling too. The whole thing about RAW being too hard to work with is in the past - and aside from my nVidea 970 card I only spent $900 on my computer and it handles the RAW files as normally as any other. Third - If you use a BMPCC (Pocket) you will really get much better imagery with RAW. For some reason the ProRes on the Pocket Camera is significantly inferior to the RAW - while on the Cinema Camera 2.5k the ProRes is much closer in quality to the RAW. I don't know why...but it is pretty well known. I think the 5D M.L. RAW is absolutely as great looking as the Blackmagic. Canon color science is phenomenal. Plus the low-light abilities of their full-frame sensors are topped only by the Sony A7 cameras - which I think look like crap and refuse to use. Plus, on the 5D you get better audio, and one of the best stills cameras ever made. You might ask why I don't have one then? It's just a money thing. $2,500 for just a body is more than any camera I have. I got the 6D and it's nearly the same image - which I got mainly for low-light work - but sadly its small buffers prevent it from shooting RAW in full 1080p like the 5D can. As for Speedboosters - The Metabones BMPCC specific booster is SIGNIFICANTLY better than the cheaper ones. I have the cheaper ones too (Mitakon) and they are GREAT! They never come off my GH2's or Cinema Camera. But the BMPCC specific one is seriously better. It's a bit better optically (not that the Mitakon is bad - it's NOT. The Metabones is just a tad better.) And the extra light and the bigger field of view it delivers on the BMPCC are absolutely worth the extra couple hundred bucks. My third BMPCC was used - so as soon as I got it I shot a good bit of colorful footage to verify all was well. Here's that video if you care to check it. NOTE: I made exposure adjustments to match changing light conditions but this has ZERO color correction nor color grading done to it. Just in and out with DaVinci Resolve 12's standard automatic RAW to Rec.709 conversion. I didn't apply LUTs or anything. ~Cheers! https://vimeo.com/149123448