Behind the scenes: Panasonic’s 12-bit converter & LP rec

[zorankarapancev]

http://panasonic.co.jp/pavc/global/diga/share/popup/behind_the_scenes/index.html

[captcrunch]

Does this apply to my ES-10 that I have now??
Or is this for future decks??
This article is from Feb 2005.

[lordsmurf]

Panasonic LP mode looks like crap. It's simply full of blocks.
No amount of "magic" or press releases can change that simple fact.

I challenge this image here:


That comparison image is complete bullshit. No way in hell. Nope.
I've seen a LOT of fake before/afters in my day, this is another one.

[MozartMan]

zorankarapancev

How much does Panasonic pay you to promote their bull $hit?

[slacker]

captcrunch,

These features should apply to your ES10. Check your manual. I do know these features came with my ES30VS.

[captcrunch]

I am constantly doing tests on my panasonic Es-10,probably more so than the average person.And it seems to depend on the signal totally.One thing I noticed with the cable tv system I have is some stations are better quality than others,These days The Tv land station is broadcasting tv shows and the quality has been weird looking, very smeared almost the soft setting.This is where the panny looks worse in 4hr mode,But the more clearer digital quality can be passable.But for the most part I see moving artifacts more than blocks,But I do see blocks from poor videotape.If I try not to think about it I forget the quality and The average person probably wouldn't care about this but I consider myself to be a videographer and I do notice.

2 important notes though:
1.)On the panny If the input is on the darker setting,The less artifacts can be seen on the recorded disc.
2.I see less artifacts when the disc is finalized and played on my Magnavox dvd player as opposed to playing it on my panny recorder.

[lordsmurf]

The best a Panasonic can do in 4-hour mode is on relatively still footage, usually with large portions of the image being flat same-colored areas. And then it has a "splotchy" effect.

.
.

This is what a clean encode from an ATI AIW card would look like,
as well as any number of better DVD recorders (Pioneer, JVC, etc):



.
.

This is what a Panasonic would look like with a clean source.
It has a "splotchy" effect to it, and it tends to "wiggle" a bit on screen.
Notice how gradient patterns are virtually destroyed:



.
.

And finally, this is what happens on VHS source.
Notice the blocks, the noise, and the compounding of "splotchy" effect.
The image quality is turned into video kibble.



Now then, because it requires viewing the video on a tv set to see these difference in action, the images above have been slightly degraded a bit more to more clearly show you the effect.

There is no special reasoning behind these errors. It's merely incompetent engineers at Panasonic developing inferior in-house video chips. All that would be required to fix this is to work on an encoder that has a better matrix for lower resolution encodes, as well as using adequate bitrate allocation to the resolution. No matter how they spin it, 2500k VBR is inadequate for 720x480 resolution. On their encoder, even 2500k VBR on 352x480 was inadequate. It's broken, and needs to be fixed.

[trhouse]

zorankarapancev,

Nice article. That certainly puts an end to the speculation about whether the ES10 has a 12 bit input ADC. It is interesting to read their reasoning about going to D1 for LP mode. I would not have thought that many users were recording in LP mode.

While it is true that going to D1 in LP mode should result in more blocks, I am not sure that the compromise is as bad as it would seem. It depends on the source. For example, on cable, I sometimes see far worse blocks than from the recorder.

I think that the solution of the Panasonic engineers while an interesting one is a temporary fix at best. As dual layer media drops in price, SP mode performance with LP record times will be reality anyway. If I were Panasonic, I would do as Pioneer has done and add DL recording as soon as possible.

[AngusMacGyver]

Funny thing.
The article says LP mode has 250 lines. Maybe in PAL systems, because my E50 (NTSC) has the following resolutions:
XP and SP: 704x480
LP: 352x480
EP: 352x240
As we can see, there are 480 lines (if PAL, would be 576) in both SP and LP modes.

[donpedro]

Funny thing.
The article says LP mode has 250 lines. Maybe in PAL systems, because my E50 (NTSC) has the following resolutions:
XP and SP: 704x480
LP: 352x480
EP: 352x240
As we can see, there are 480 lines (if PAL, would be 576) in both SP and LP modes.

Not sure about correct number but your model is old. New line has different resolutions.

[Synergy]

Funny thing.
The article says LP mode has 250 lines. Maybe in PAL systems, because my E50 (NTSC) has the following resolutions:
XP and SP: 704x480
LP: 352x480
EP: 352x240
As we can see, there are 480 lines (if PAL, would be 576) in both SP and LP modes.

When # of lines are referred, it means "analog" video signals and only measures horizontal resolution since vertical resolution is fixed. the 704x480 (called broadcast D1 resolution) or 720x480 (called full D1 resolution), on the other hand, refers to # of pixels which is measurement of "digital" video signals. Since DVD recorders convert analog signals (except when DV input is used) to digital format, you need to be careful about the two very different references.