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What is broadcast quality ?? Canon EOS 5D Mark III

igmolinav said:
Hi,

I watched this video. I am quite new to video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh-2oQfSPYA

What is the difference between raw (footage) and H264U ??

What is broadcast quality ??

What is a DP ??

Thank you, kind regards,

igmolinav
Click to expand...

RAW is an unprocessed acquisition (shooting) format. From my non-technical understanding, it contains more information so you can 'retrieve' more image details in color correction / processing. More in the shadows, more in the highlights.

h264 is a distribution codec. It sucks for editing.

"Broadcast Quality" is an obsolete term. Its a vestige of the days when television mattered. From my non-technical understanding, it referred to NTSC standards and 3CCD cameras.

DP stands for Director of Photography. It doesn't necessarily refer to the guy who holds the camera because that's the camera operator. Sometimes the DP is his own camera operator. Sometimes he stands by and barks a lot. Like a dog. :D

Hope you are enjoying video!
 
platypusrex256 said:
"Broadcast Quality" is an obsolete term. Its a vestige of the days when television mattered. From my non-technical understanding, it referred to NTSC standards and 3CCD cameras.
Click to expand...
While the term is ambiguous it is not obsolete as there are still technical specifications that must be met or the material will be rejected by the broadcaster for quality assurance reasons. In the past, more so than now, it also helped to define cameras based on the quality of image they could produce (accuracy of colors, image detail etc.,) but camera technology has progressed so rapidly that the difference today between a consumer HD camera and a professional HD camera is much smaller than the difference between consumer and professional cameras of 15 years ago.


Lethal
 
Wait the mark three was announced??? :eek:


I was about to pull the tirgger on a new camera.

Was looking at the Gh2 or the Af100 but a Mark III sounds interesting.
 
igmolinav said:
Hi,

What is broadcast quality ??
Click to expand...

While the other posters are correct that "Broadcast Quality" is ambiguous, every network that I've worked for or submitted material to has quality standards, for instance many frown upon the HDV format because of the bit rate and chroma subsampling. So while the term itself may have lost some meaning and doesn't have a strict technical definition, the purpose behind it still remains.

platypusrex256 said:
"Broadcast Quality" is an obsolete term. Its a vestige of the days when television mattered. From my non-technical understanding, it referred to NTSC standards and 3CCD cameras.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say "obsolete" -- certainly it's lost some meaning, but colloquially the meaning remains; basically of high enough quality to deserve being aired. Yes, you're exactly right about the use in the old days, but we still throw it around from time to time when talking about HD video.
 
Broadcast Quality is different for every network.

Discovery has different levels for each of its channels and type of show. Certain types can contain NO material that is not full HD and shot on HD CAM or better. Other levels of thier shows can contain only a certain percentage of HDV or upconverted materials.

Other networks have lower standards. I worked on a show a few years back when the XD CAM cameras just came out. We shot the pilot on one and they network approved the quality and picture. but after that network was sold the new company would not let us use it for the second season.

Before you shoot anything you need to see what the network requires.
 
Also applies to sound. My friend works in a deaf-run and staffed media company that are currently filming several series for small channels. They are hoping to sell one series to a national UK channel (channel 4).

Even though the series is mainly footage of deaf people signing, channel 4 has given them strict sound guidelines, e.g. all shots must have clear environmental sound, the small sounds made by people signing must be clear etc etc. Sorry I'm not a sound guy so I'm not giving a very good technical summary, but apparently it is really detailed, and must be followed even though there is actually nobody talking and no background music.

They filmed an interview with me, and they asked me to redo several sections for sound reasons, even though I was doing the interview in sign language. :confused: :confused: hence the explanation.
 
What is RAW

Hi there,

Once you understand what RAW is you can see pretty easily why it has so many advantages.

The sensors used in digital cameras are basically two-dimensional arrays of photo-sensitive (photon-sensitive i.e. light) regions. Each region is is 'excited' by photons and, once excited, send an electrical pulse which - when combined with all the other regions' data - creates an image.

The thing is, the regions are not sensitive to colour. So, what happens when you take a picture is that three filters are used sequentially (red, green, blue) that block all other wavelengths of light from hitting the sensor. With JPG (or other compressions) these three pieces of information (intensity of light with blue filter, with green filter, with red filter) are combined to give you one single value (thus saving a lot of space). The problem is that if you are hoping to edit the photo later, you have lost the makeup of the region (or 'pixel')'s exact composition - which makes it much harder to get good results.

RAW, on the other hand, stores all three of these values (as opposed to combining them) so that, when editing, you have a lot more to work with. This comes at a cost though: keeping the three filters' information takes up a lot more space, the primary reason why RAW files are bigger than JPG.

I hope this helps !
 
Wiggy17 said:
Hi there,

Once you understand what RAW is you can see pretty easily why it has so many advantages.

The sensors used in digital cameras are basically two-dimensional arrays of photo-sensitive (photon-sensitive i.e. light) regions. Each region is is 'excited' by photons and, once excited, send an electrical pulse which - when combined with all the other regions' data - creates an image.

The thing is, the regions are not sensitive to colour. So, what happens when you take a picture is that three filters are used sequentially (red, green, blue) that block all other wavelengths of light from hitting the sensor. With JPG (or other compressions) these three pieces of information (intensity of light with blue filter, with green filter, with red filter) are combined to give you one single value (thus saving a lot of space). The problem is that if you are hoping to edit the photo later, you have lost the makeup of the region (or 'pixel')'s exact composition - which makes it much harder to get good results.

RAW, on the other hand, stores all three of these values (as opposed to combining them) so that, when editing, you have a lot more to work with. This comes at a cost though: keeping the three filters' information takes up a lot more space, the primary reason why RAW files are bigger than JPG.

I hope this helps !
Click to expand...

Good explanation on RAW.

However I think a lot of the confusion with the term "raw" where video is concerned comes from the traditional sense of the word overlapping with the new technology. It's really only been recently where RAW (in the sense you outlined above) has been implemented in video cameras. And it's still only found on the high end stuff. When talking about video, "raw footage" usually refers to the format captured natively from the camera before any post processing, whether that be on tape or the digital files.

Obviously it's going to become more commonplace when RAW is implemented in more cameras, but I still see people get these 2 different meanings confused daily.
 
Wiggy17 said:
(wonderful explanation)
Click to expand...

Just to add to your fine explanation - I also understand the RAW file to contain a wide range of luminance info, which is clipped and stripped down when the RAW file is converted to a jpeg.

Hence when you work with a RAW file, I think you can set it to display at a wide range of ISO film speeds, wheras the jpeg is fixed at the ISO setting you set the camera to. I'm not sure if I have this right.
 
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