Does the Canon 1D X sharpen as well as the 5D Mark III? Plus bonus 1D Mk IV comparison

[Andrew Reid]

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[img]http://www.eoshd.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/1dx-comparison1.jpg[/img]

Battle of the flagships

We had a [url="http://www.eoshd.com/content/8259/canon-finally-stretches-video-legs-with-eos-1d-x-resolution-fixed-and-better-compression-chip"]small glimpse[/url] at what the 1D X was capable of last week. Now Associated Press shooter Ivan Sekretarev has very kindly provided his raw test clips to EOSHD. Here’s my view on them…

[url="http://www.eoshd.com/content/8299/does-the-canon-1d-x-sharpen-as-well-as-the-5d-mark-iii-plus-bonus-1d-mk-iv-comparison/"]Read full article[/url]

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[gene_can_sing]

Wow. That grass looks awful. I think I'll pass one this one. Canon's DSLRs give new meaning to the term: "Painting with Light," because...... well.... the image really looks like a painting.

[jcs]

Here's the best grass I could do with the 5D3: https://vimeo.com/40200361. I believe the circular polarizer in the Gen (1!) Fader ND helped with improved accutance (microcontrast). The 24-105 F4L is not ultra sharp, yet the grass after post sharpening is just starting to alias.

The 1DX has weaker horizontal antialiasing (vs. vertical as noted in the article). In computer graphics we call this 'anisotropic' filtering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering), which means the filter is not the same in all directions. If one desires to post sharpen 1DX footage, performing a horizontal blur (Guassian, etc.) before sharpening can help prevent aliasing.

For relatively low-motion 1080p shots, IPB produces less artifacts than ALL-I (except when shooting 720p60: ALL-I is better). I've seen ALL-I break 101Mbps (600x Lexar Pro CF), but it still can't match IPB quality for low motion shots.

[matt2491]

John, your clip looks great- very organic. ;)

[Simco123]

You see I was right earlier on. 1DX is no better than the 5DIII after post. While the 1DX is indeed sharper out of the box it has smaller bitrate than 5DIII. Unlike Canon higher bitrate on the D800 HDMI out apart from minor improvement in colour space has virtually no impact on bringing out details in post because of line skipping so basically Nikon optmised  their video out of the box but with aliasing issue.

[RichST]

After seeing the comparison last week I'd have to concur, the 1Dx [i]looked[/i] sharper than the 5D3 but I didn't see any extra real detail being resolved, it just looked like it had been sharpened more. Some things that were being attributed to extra detail (like the stairs on the escalator) were due to the 1Dx's apparently better dynamic range and not increased resolution.

[Andrew Reid]

Interesting that you found less macro blocking in IPB mode JCS. What about transcoding ALL-I to ProRes with 5DToRGB? Does that solve the decoder issues?

[jcs]

[quote author=Andrew Reid link=topic=913.msg6660#msg6660 date=1340969767]
Interesting that you found less macro blocking in IPB mode JCS. What about transcoding ALL-I to ProRes with 5DToRGB? Does that solve the decoder issues?
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Transcoding ALL-I to ProRes might have brought ALL-I up to IPB quality in terms of macroblocking (tested in OSX; reported results on other forums), but it did not surpass IPB. Additionally, ALL-I was noisier. Noise steals bits better spent on detail. CS6 appears to do a better job with macroblocking and ALL-I. However A/B compared 1080p ALL-I to IPB could not see an improvement with ALL-I (low motion shots). 720p60 ALL-I was clearly better than IPB, however.

It's clear that long GOP codecs can be very efficient and very high quality for both static and motion shots: the XF camcorders and C300's 50Mbps MPEG2(!) 422(!) codec performs extremely well. That would be an awesome codec for the 5D3. Perhaps biz/marketing reasons won't allow it. 422 H.264 theoretically could be even better than MPEG2, however while supported by the standard, has not been implemented yet (would have compatibility issues).