Panasonic AG-AF101

Alex Fuchs · January 6, 2011

Hi out there,

does anybody know what kind of chroma subsampling the new Panasonic AG-AF101 has? Found nothing about that at the Panasonic Sites Data Sheet. Anybody an answer?

Thanks a lot

Alex

Alex Fuchs · January 7, 2011

Sorry, posted it in the wrong forum.

Cheers,

Alex

Adrian Sierkowski · January 7, 2011

I thought it was 4:2:0 but i'm not 100% on it. I would, honestly, be surprised if it was 4:2:2.

Brian Drysdale · January 7, 2011

I thought it was 4:2:0 but i'm not 100% on it. I would, honestly, be surprised if it was 4:2:2.

Yes, it's 4:2:0, there's an HD SDI out, so for anything better you'll need an external recorder

John Sprung · January 7, 2011

Not doing 4:2:2 is only an issue in the interlaced modes. For shooting and post, progressive is almost always a better choice. Then convert to interlace if that's what you need to deliver.

-- J.S.

John Sprung · January 7, 2011

BTW, this thread really should be moved from Panavision to Panasonic.....

-- J.S.

Freya Black · January 7, 2011

Not doing 4:2:2 is only an issue in the interlaced modes. For shooting and post, progressive is almost always a better choice. Then convert to interlace if that's what you need to deliver.

-- J.S.

Not sure what you mean by this. The camera is still 4:2:0 in progressive modes. I think the AVCHD codec is only capable of 4:2:0 so far.

For a lot of digital effects work tho, progressive is obviously better than interlaced.

If you want 4:2:2 then you can connect a nanoflash to the camera and the output from the camera is clean.

love

Freya

John Sprung · January 7, 2011

Not sure what you mean by this. The camera is still 4:2:0 in progressive modes.

Yes, and for progressive, 4:2:0 should be just as good as 4:2:2.

The reason for all this is that the human eye doesn't resolve color anywhere near as well as it resolves brightness, and the human brain will take the color information it gets from the eye, and adjust it to fit on the brightness part of the picture.

What 4:2:2 means is that for every 4 luminance samples along a line, we have 2 red and 2 blue color difference samples. This originated back in the days of analog CRT television, way before there was any such thing as memory, and the ability to store a whole frame of video.

When memory made frame stores possible, and with progressive scanning, it became possible to subsample both horizontally and vertically. So, we had a notation mutation. In the old understanding, 4:2:0 would have meant that all the blue information was discarded. What it really means is that we have one set of color difference data for every two by two group of luminance samples. That's fine for progressive, but the trouble with interlace is that the vertically adjacent samples aren't there, they're part of the other field. So, for interlace, there's still an advantage to 4:2:2.

So, 4:2:2 and interlace are relics of long gone technical constraints. Now that we have memory, we should forget about them.

-- J.S.