ADDENDUM 51 : Tests and Settings on a Panasonic AG
Contents
1. AutoFocus disables Focus Push Auto RECORDING SETUP PH 1080 601 PH 1080 30p PH 1080 24p PH 720 60p Non standard PH 720 30p PH 720 24p HA 1080 601 HG 1080 601 terminology Rec Format HE 109900 PH 21 HA 17 PH 1080 501 PH 1080 25p PH 720 50p PH 720 25p HG 13 HE 6Mb s HA 1080 50i1 HG 1080 501 HE 1080 501 all VBR On Off Memory cache for prerecording y D 50dB 60dB C S0dB 60dB AV OUT SETUP Item mode range comments _____ Letter box Squeeze y Video Setup 0 7 5 Video black level for 60Hz only Cam PB Ch1 Ch2 Ch1 Ch2 pe a ee HP Mode Live Recording Headphone feed use Live for off speed DISPLAY SETUP Item mode range comments __ Zebra Detect 1 50 105 by 5 Default 80 left leaning zebra Ss Se 50 105 by 5 Off Safety Zone Camera 90 4 3 0ff J o oo O Rec Counter Camera Total Clip J Record counter Record counter Video Out OSD On Off Screen info to video output Off Time Date Time amp Date Off Number pe On Off Audio levels on screen Card Batt On Off Remaining capacity LCD backlight High Normal Low LCD set Dep Coley eel EE D nig ness Panel set brightness contrast colour LCD contrast a a a Ca Other Display Partial All Off Amount of stuff shown in the V F Ca Ca a EVF set C B BASE CONE TONE T E D urg nines V F set brightness contrast colour LCD contrast Self shoot For when panel is forward facing EVE colo2. range comments Delete PB AlClips Select No ____ Won t delete protected clips Index PB YesNo _Addindices to clips or delete them Clip Protect OB o YsNo Protect clips OTHER FUNCTIONS Item mode range comments IR Remote Rec Lamp Beep Sound Clock Set Time Zone About 5 minutes except when on external System Freq System Info Cam PB s C Cs iLSC Camera version number _ Menu Init Camera C S SCCSL_seReset_alll menu items not time zone Cam PB o o Showpoerontime 6 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the product Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 2 Measurement results The HMCI151 has no built in test signal generator This alone sets it apart from most professional and broadcast cameras Thus measurements of the gamma curve are difficult using optical test cards and an awful lot of data processing 2 1 Transfer characteristic gamma correction By inspection the available gamma curves seem to be identical to those of the HVX200 and HPX171 therefore specific measurements were not made on this camera and the results for the HVX200 are quoted here except for the overexposure range which was confirmed as 250 The found equations for the Hdnorm curve are V 4 5L for L lt 0 03 else V 1 05L40 5 0 05 This is a reaso
3. 80 interlaced and psf and for 720 film and sport where sport covers all uses that are not intended to look like film Items that have an important effect on picture appearance are highlighted It is unfortunate that the colour bars that the camera generates are only 100 0 75 0 i e EBU rather than the much more useful SMPTE or ARIB bars that are ubiquitous in HDTV Factory default values where known are underlined Settings are only starting points recommendations They should not be used rigidly they are starting points for further exploration However they do return acceptable image performance This is not intended as a replacement for reading the manual 1 Menus and Settings CAMERA MENU Viewfinder and LCD panel settings FUSER FIDE o METADATA S PB MENU Playback in the camera PLAY SETUP O OoOo o O oOo THUMBNAIL SETUP OPERATION Clip management SW MODE ee AV OUT SETUP Analogue connection and HDMI settings DISPLAY SETUP Viewfinder and LCD panel settings 2 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the product Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 CARD FUNCTIONS Formatting etc USER FILE OTHER FUNCTIONS Sundries that don t fit anywhere else CAMERA MENU SCENE FILE 1 6 Item mode range comments BBC Card Read Write Read Write No Load Save a scene file SD card Load Save scene
4. Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 Colorimetric and Resolution requirements of cameras Alan Roberts ADDENDUM 51 Tests and Settings on a Panasonic AG HMC151 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the product Data for this section is taken from the user manual and a short examination of a production model of the Panasonic AG HMCI151 camcorder This is a HDTV unit physically almost identical to the AJ HPX171 with 3 3 ccds the manual gives no clue as to the sensor resolutions The model under test ran at both 60 and 30Hz video rates actually 59 94 and 29 97 24Hz actually 23 98 and 50 and 25Hz It records HDTV using the AVC HD algorithm at data rates between 6 and 21Mb s It does not operate in any SDTV mode Recording is onto SDHC cards there is no tape mechanism The camera is light 1 7kg and has an integral lens and viewfinder with side lcd panel and seems aimed at the high end of the consumer market rather than full broadcast which would normally demand interchangeable lenses and higher quality recording media and coding It has the usual internal menus for setting the performance not as complex as in broadcast cameras but enough to control most of the important features It is not suited to multi camera operation because it cannot be genlocked or remotely controlled It has analogue video outputs componen
5. There was no evidence of sucha noise 47 distribution One possible cause could be the use of head amplifiers with a limited gain bandwidth product this would produce softer pictures at low signal levels and reduce the noise near black It is very difficult to measure resolution at low signal levels 50 so it is almost impossible to establish whether this trick has been played If it has it has worked 91 Another possible cause could be that the primary source of noise in this camera is the digital coding system rather than the sensors and heads amplifiers themselves The performance measured is typical of 10 bit data in the linear signals or 8 bits after gamma correction AVCHD is an 8 bit recording Figure 4 Noise levels system so has a noise floor of about 54dB so the measurements are all realistic Sensitivity was not measured However the specification claims 3 lux at F 1 6 12dB gain and 1 25 second shutter Thus sensitivity is 6 lux at F 1 6 12dB gain and 1 50 second shutter 24 lux at F 1 6 and OdB gain and 1 50 shutter The aperture setting for 2000 lux illumination is thus 1 6 2000 24 14 6 which is typical for cameras with 2 3 full resolution sensors which have pixels of the same dimensions as the half resolution sensors in this camera 9 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the pr
6. ar SS Spotlight Backlight Blackfade Assign user switches User 1 2 3 Chee Whitefade ATW ATWlock 18dB works only with P formatsp aes Gain18dB Dzoom Index ShotMark Last Clip Default 1 Whitefade 2 Backlight 3 Index Ss Li Assign Focus Assist button Graph shows Wave Vector Wave Vect LCD rev LCD bl Assign LCD button Bl is backlight These values for detail enhancement are taken from the settings document for the HV X200 since this camera is almost identical to it One set of values was checked and found to produce the expected results Noise levels are lower than in the equivalent camera the HV X200 so coring level can be set lower resulting in slightly sharper pictures The knee function cannot be switched off Although this makes some measurements difficult to make at least it ensures that overloading will not necessarily cause clipping Norm1 appears to be normal Norm2 produces higher saturation the other matrices produce special effects 3 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the product Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 4 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the product Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 AUTO SW Item mode range comments
7. ay not be possible to derive a specific film look for it However there is sufficient flexibility to achieve much of what is desirable in film look settings Photographic speed was not specifically measured but is assumed to be the same as for the HPX171 about 640ASA The camera and menu structure are both extremely similar to those of the HPX171 Many of the menu items have little or no effect on image quality Those that have significant effect are highlighted The full set of menu items is given for completeness In boxes with a range of numeric settings e g 99 99 the values indicate the range and zero means no alteration to factory setting not zero effect and no scales are given For each item the factory setting is given if it is known and the range offered by the camera under test BBC settings are in the last column where appropriate The following table shows the menu settings when the camera is in Camera mode these affect picture performance other menus are included for completeness Values that are underlined are the factory default settings The menus are very similar to those of the HPX171 and share some features with the Varicam in that Scene Files store a great deal of information permitting widely different settings to be stored When shooting in 720p mode the camera can shoot at a variety of frame rates between 12 and 50 or 60 depending on the system speed BBC preferred values are given for 10
8. ection 2 3 below 2 2 2 Resolution 1080 line This is a quarter of one circular zone plate from the test chart with zero frequency at bottom left The right hand extreme is 1920 lines picture width the top extreme is 1080 lines picture height The alias patterns are clear where the concentric circles are reversed taking centres outside the pattern and indicate that the camera does not deliver full resolution at 1080 either horizontally or vertically However it is reasonably well behaved in that there do not appear to be significant aliases centred on other frequencies as would be expected if the interpolation process from the 960x540 of the ccds_ were compromised in any way The absence of coloured aliasing could be interpreted as evidence to support the supposition that there is no precision offset of the sensors and why there is no extension of the frequency response beyond 960x540 However the aliasing is not particularly strong which indicates that there is either a good optical low pass filtering bi refringent or that the lens 1s relatively soft The diagonal aliasing is strong evidence that quincunx precision offset is used The settings given in Section 1 are not ideal they are a reasonable compromise but overall performance of the camera is not a good match to other HDTV cameras in this respect it is subjectively rather soft 2 2 3 Resolution 720 line Resolution at 720 line is almost identical to t
9. files in the camera Load Save Init Camera Load Save Initialize No aa asd Initialize factory reset Synchro Scan 1 n 1 249 8 n frame rate will not set longer than 1 field or frame 0 10801 2 1080p Detail Level Camera Horizontal and vertical edge detail 2 720sport 4 720film 2 10801 4 1080p V Detail Level Camera Vertical edge detail 3 720sport 0 720film Detail Coring Chroma Level Camera 7 047 OSa O O Chroma Phase ences ee aa Color Temp Ach Camera 7 0 7 Fine white balance offset affects A preset _ Color Temp Bch Camera 7 0 7_ Fine white balance offset affects B preset _ Master Ped Camera 100 0 100 Master black lift A Iris Level Camera 10 0 10 tori gain O DRS Off 1 2 3 Dynamic Range Stretch HDnorm ITU709 Low high contrast skin HDnorm Canes HDnorm Low SDnorm High press SDnorm DV X 100 High black video B press Cine likeD Cine lineV stretch B press crushes Cine V more Cine contrast than CineD film Knee Auto Low Mid High Reaches 250 knee at 80 90 100 Meas Norm1 Norm 2 Fluo Cine like N nh ae Skin Tone Detail On Off Reduces skin detail Name Edit Camera Names the selected scene file s Set shutter and fps values also sets Operaa YES Adeo PIN SynchroScan indicator to time or angle a SW MODE ltem mode range comments BBC Tris dial Camera Down open Upopen a a as
10. hat at 1080 line This is a good indication that it would be better to shoot at 720p since then 50Hz images can be recorded which are much easier to down convert to SDTV using relatively simple conversion 2 2 4 Lens aberrations The lens showed a little chromatic aberration in the corners In this example there a displacement of 8 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the produc Figure 3 Chromatic aberration Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 between 2 and 3 pixels Thus is quite adequate for a consumer professional HD camera and does not present any problem 2 3 Noise and Sensitivity No calibrated noise meter was available during the measurement procedure and the camera specification does not mention noise Software analysis of captured frames gave some indication of performance Measuring the signal to noise ratio at several signal levels all at OdB gain produced noise levels from 48 to 52dB This is quite good for any HDTV camera a performance achieved by the use of sensors with large photosites This was confirmed by direct observation on the crt display and waveform monitor However the noise level is normally expected to change with signal level since it is primarily caused by the sensors and head amplifiers before gamma correction and thus should correlate with the slope of the gamma curve typically by 10dB or more noisier near black
11. ly be judged by measurement at the expense of introducing some coloured aliasing similar to that from a Bayer patterned single sensor This is particularly relevant since the camera delivers signals at 1080 and 720 Although this camera does have quincunx precision offset there is only faint evidence of the diagonal aliases it inevitably produces either the lens is a little soft or the camera has good bi refirngent optical filtering or both 7 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the product Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 A zone plate test chart was used calibrated for 1920x1080 HDTV It contains 6 circular patterns each being a phase space of the spatial frequencies i e all possible frequencies in all possible directions which such a camera should resolve Analysis was made of one zone in luma or grey scale to investigate the frequency responses and the presence of aliases 2 2 1 Detail enhancement The settings for the HVX200 and HPX171 were used here since there seemed to be no good reason for changing them Although this setting produces a little overshooting on edges there was no setting in the HV X200 at which the overshoots were absent Detail level settings of 0 and 2 horizontal and vertical are still recommended but the coring level can be lowered since the noise performance is rather good see s
12. nable match to ITU709 but is not perfect The Knee causes the curve to break at signal levels of 80 Low 90 Mid 100 High and then extend to an exposure limit of 2 5 250 before clipping occurs at about 107 The ITU 709 curve the nominal standard for all HDTV cameras 1s V 4 5L for L lt 0 018 else V 1 0099L40 45 0 099 The contrast range for the settings given in this document are derived from these equations The maximum exposure the camera can handle is 250 while the minimum exposure that is visible in the output can be defined as that which causes the signal voltage to be 2 of the coding range the video level of the super black bar in ARIB colour bars used for setting display black level Since the noise level is reasonably low a lower point can be taken 1 would be the normal minimum considered relevant here For the Hdnorm curve this defines the contrast capture range to be about 1100 1 10 1 stops quite good for a camera in this category Measurements of the High Black Stretched gamma correction curve produced a decent match to the BBC 0 4 law V 5L for L lt 0 02262 else V L 0 037703 1 0 037703 0 4 This gamma correction curve generally produces more accurate colour rendering The user should generally choose one of these two curves for working in HDTV Hdnorm produces more vivid colouring while High is more accurate For normal use Knee can be set to Auto but when the production will be going
13. oduct
14. r On Off For black white V F CARD FUNCTIONS Item mode range comments Clip Property PB YesNo Show info on selected clip y e3 y se gt The camera does not produce significant content above the limits of 720p therefore it makes more sense to shoot only 720p since it can be better down converted to SD than 10801 5 This document is a report of the results of tests that are the precursor of those described in the EBU technical document Tech3335 It is not an endorsement of the product Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 USER FILE Item mode range comments BBC Card Read Write Cam PB Read Write No Up to 4 User files oa Load Save Init Cam PB Load Save Initialize No Power on off needed to take effect META DATA Item mode range comments _ Card Read Record User Clip Name Typel Type2 E Clip Count Reset Camera YessNo J S Meta Data Prop Meta Initial Set Camera YessNo Initidize metadata PLAY SETUP Item mode range comments _ _ Pe romat ai l 720 60p 30P 720 24p C PB On ip oping Resume Play PB On Off Start playout from where left off Skip Mode PB Clip Clip amp Index Start point for play after pause THUMBNAIL SETUP Item mode range comments _ Thumbnail Mode PB All Same Format Marker Index Indicator B On Of Data Display PB TC UB Time Date Date amp Time Date Format PB _ YMD M D Y D M Y 0 OPERATION Item mode
15. to a colour grading operation Knee should be set either to Mid or Low depending on the type of programme Mid for programmes where skin tone is prevalent Low for natural history The other variants of the gamma curve were not investigated the descriptions given in the manual seem to be sufficiently accurate and explicit for the user to make an intelligent choice 2 2 Resolution and Detail The HMC151 is interesting in that the sensors do not appear to be native resolution for HDTV Although the specification does not say so the 3 ccds are each 960 by 540 pixels spaced on a Sum grid as in full resolution 73 1920x1080 sensors it would be more usual to find sensors in a 1080 line camera having 1080 lines rather than only 540 but that would be at the expense of either sensitivity or video noise Presumably Panasonic chose to use these lower resolution sensors in order to increase sensitivity since the pixels are bigger the same 5um square dimension as is found in 7 3 format HDTV cameras In most cameras with less than ideal numbers of pixels the camera is made to deliver HDTV resolutions by physically offsetting the G sensor from R and B by a half pixel both horizontally and vertically It is normal to offset just horizontally when the delivered horizontal resolution is apparently about 50 higher than would be dictated by the pixel count alone This quincunx offset increases both horizontal and vertical resolution just how well can on
16. ts via a multi pin connector and digits via HDMI and USB There is a section on measurements at the end of this document The specification claims sensitivity to be 3 lux at F 1 6 1 25 second shutter and 12dB gain This converts to approximately F 14 for 2000 lux from a reflectance chart of 90 typical of HDTV cameras with sensor pixels of 5 um such as are used in full resolution HDTV cameras The same assessment procedure was used as for other HD cameras partly attempting to get a good film look and the settings reflect that It 1s useful to think of the camera when used in this way to be mimicking a film camera and telecine with best light transfer to tape with about 10 stops maybe 10 5 of tonal range Assuming that a grading operation will be used in post production the settings attempt to give the colourist the same range of options as with film The recommended settings allow about 1 3 stops of Over exposure and one of under exposure relative to normal operation This is not as good as can be achieved in most 2 3 cameras Panasonic AG HMC 151 July 2010 Colorimetric and Resolution requirements of cameras Alan Roberts ADDENDUM 51 Tests and Settings on a Panasonic AG HMC151 The assessment of this camcorder was aimed mostly at discovering what it could do rather than deriving a preferred setting results are given in Section 2 The controls are not as flexible as for full broadcast cameras so it may or m
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