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According to this article on TVB the BBC have allowed the use of Canon 5D Mk2′s for programmes that they have commissioned that will be transmitted on BBC 2. This flies in the face of the BBC’s own guidelines and tests and once again shows just how meaningless the published list of BBC approved cameras really is. It’s well known that the 5D Mk2 produces extreme aliasing. It’s so bad that when Alan Roberts tested it for the BBC he didn’t do any tests beyond pointing the camera at a plate chart. He deemed the camera unfit for broadcast due to aliasing. Yes, the 5D will produce some filmic looking images under the right conditions and aliasing can be minimised through the use of shallow DoF, but come on, if the article is correct the cameras are not going to be used in a carefully controlled environment and they are the primary cameras. In fact it sounds to me as though it’s going to be the worst case scenario for the 5D. A working Supermarket is going to be full of repeating patterns, strong horizontal and vertical edges etc, all things that can alias terribly.

I also don’t understand why in this day and age it’s taking the production company, called “Conkers” amusingly,  4 hours to import 30 minutes of AVCHD and convert it to ProRes and sync it to the sound. I can import and transcode Canon AVCHD footage faster than real time and syncing using any of the plugins that use the audio tracks should take just a few minutes. If it was April I would think this to be an April Fools joke. Do these people know what they are doing?

OK, so the initial broadcasts will be via the internet, but then it’s going to be shown on BBC 2 in SD. Perhaps the fact that it’s SD makes using a sub standard camera as acceptable. Then you read that an HD master will be created… oh hang on… The 5D only resolves 650TVL so it’s not really HD.

Who’s fooling who? Or have I just gone mad. What’s happened to “broadcast standards”, why does the BBC bother with an approved camera list and expert camera tests when they are so completely ignored? Myself and many of my readers spend tens of thousands of pounds trying to comply with the BBC’s specifications, trying to produce the best possible images. Both technically and creatively, only to have the rug pulled from under our feet when our expensive “BBC standard” equipment is made worthless through the use of unapproved, unfit for broadcast (according to the BBC’s own tests), cheap as chips equipment. Why do we bother to try to compete in a market where the budgets and standards are just driven down and down. I wish the BBC would start to appreciate the impact on production companies and freelancers that their actions have, especially when then publish lists of approved cameras only to choose to ignore them when they please.

I noticed today on the BBC HD guidelines site that the Canon XF300 and XF305 have been approved for use by independent production companies. This is a little bit surprising, not because the Canon’s are not up to the job, but because this flies in the face of the BBC’s own guidelines that state that cameras must have 1/2″ sensors. The BBC have been using XDCAM EX1′s and EX3′s for a couple of years, more recently with NanoFlashes to bring the bit rate up to the BBC’s 50mb/s guidelines, yet the EX1 or EX3 have never been listed on the front page as approved. According to my sources DV Solutions at the BBC consider the EX/NanoFlash combo as acceptable.

According to Alan Roberts the XF300 and 305 are good cameras, performing better than they should given that they are 1/3″. One of the key issues that normally goes against small chip cameras is diffraction. Alan says on one web forum that the 305 is “good to almost f8″ while he states that the EX1 starts to suffer after F5.6, so by the sounds of things, very similar however in his full report of the camera Alan states that significant resolution is lost at f8 so exactly where the onset of diffraction occurs is a little vague but it’s safe to assume a useable aperture range of f5.6 to f1.6 for the Canon as opposed to f8 to f1.9 for the EX.

In terms of sensitivity Alan Roberts reports the XF305 to be about a stop slower than the EX1 but also 2.5db less noisy when you use the Canon’s noise reduction (1 stop = 6db). This would suggest that the EX is still the winner as at -3db gain (with noise reduced by 3db)  it would still be 1/2 a stop more sensitive, but as the 305 lens can go to f1.6 compared to the Sony’s f1.9 at the end of the day low light performance is extremely close. One nice Canon feature is 0.5db gain steps and the ability to control the amount of noise reduction being applied. I would really like to see what effect this noise reduction has on motion.

So overall it appears that the Canon has a very good lens and a remarkable sensor for a 1/3″ camcorder. It also has a 50Mb/s 4:2:2 codec, a very smart move by Canon. But that lens comes at a price, dealer prices for the Canon appear to be around 30% more than for an EX1R.Don’t forget as well that the Canon is region specific, a hardware update is required for multi region use.  Clearly Canon have produced a very nice camcorder but it doesn’t sound to me as though it is significantly better than an EX1 other than the codec and that’s easy enough to sort thanks to the NanoFlash. Even if I get a Canon I would still use the NanoFlash as at 100Mb/s things really improve. The difference between 35Mb/s 4:2:0 and 50Mb/s 4:2:2 in terms of artefacts isn’t huge (the compression ratio’s are not hugely different due to the smaller amount of data recorded at 4:2:0) and if you shoot progressive it’s very difficult to tell the difference in the raw images.

I think the biggest surprise is how quickly the Canon has received approval. The camera has barely hit the streets, so all the testing and evaluation must have been done with prototypes and pre-production units. It normally takes the BBC months to evaluate a camera properly and reach a conclusion as to it’s suitability.

Must get a 305 to test. It does sound very good.  You can download Alan Roberts report by clicking the following link. Canon XF300-305

Just watched the final episode of the current series of Dr Who. Excellent stuff, shot with a Sony F35 and it looks very good indeed. On BBC HD that was followed by Dr Who Confidential, a behind the scenes look at Dr Who. A large part of this followed a trip to the USA to promote the series. Lots of shots in Cabs and walking down NYC streets, some intercut with shots from the main series.It all looked very good, the quality of the NYC footage not looking out of place compared to the footage from the F35′s used on the Dr Who series. This got me wondering what the NYC material was shot on, afterall shooting two people sat in the back of a cab from the same rear seat requires a compact camera. A big clue came during the press events where flash photography revealed it to be a CMOS camera. My money was on XDCAM EX. So I continued to watch the show and outside a NYC cinema there is sequence shot with two cameras and the other camera can be seen in many of the shots. It is, as I suspected an XDCAM EX1. But there is no sign of a NanoFlash, just a plain vanilla EX1, recording 35Mb/s 4:2:0. So the BBC once again prove that their own rules are being broken on internal productions ie, minimum 1/2″ sensor, 4:2:2, 50Mb/s. There is also no way they could claim that the EX footage only made up 20% of the show as the NYC sequences make up the bulk of the programme.

I just don’t know what all the fuss is about. The EX footage in Dr Who confidential holds it’s own against the F35 footage. I can’t see any more artefacts in the EX material or objectionable concatenation effects. The behind the scenes footage looks good too. Sure the F35 has shallower DoF and has a very filmic look, but the EX footage looks very good too. The XDCAM EX codec is a very good codec that really performs better than it should considering it’s compact size.

Update: PDW-700 now on BBC’s official approved list.

This is getting very confusing! Last week I was told by several different sources working on productions for Sky HD and the BBC that the BBC & Sky were going to agree to a common minimum standard of 50Mb/s with 1/2? sensors for HD production. Today I hear from a production company that is making HD programmes for the BBC that they were told at the end of last week that 35Mb/s from the XDCAM EX1, EX3 and probably the new PMW-350 is acceptable. Right now there is a lot of confusion over what is and what is not acceptable. I wish the BBC or Sky would publish, in public their HD production guidelines, I was told this would happen last Thursday but so far no-one has been able to find anything. The confusion over what is acceptable makes it impossible to plan productions or make any equipment purchases and this can only harm the industry as everyone holds off waiting to find out what they can or can not use. Come on BBC and Sky… lets us know whether 35Mb/s is acceptable. My guess, reading between the lines is that if you shoot at 50Mb/s 4:2:2 either with a PDW-700/F800 or with an EX with a NanoFlash you will be fine, whatever the BBC or Sky’s decision. I also think that 35Mb/s from the EX’s will be allowed under dispensation or with restrictions to usage and workflow. One thing that appears to be lost in this whole debate is that the EX at 35Mb/s 4:2:0 has the same compression ratio as the PDW-700 with it’s 50Mb/s 4:2:2. The extra bits used by the 700 are taken up by the extra colour information. So in terms of blockyness and robustness through the production chain there should really be little difference between the two. My feeling is that much of the confusion is caused by the older PDW-F350 type XDCAM HD cameras which recorder 1440×1080 at 35Mb/s. This “thin” raster signal causes a lot more problems in post than the full raster of the EX cameras. The re-sizing from 1440 to 1920 (and back in the case of Sky who broadcast 1440×1080) leads to soft pictures and nasty compression artefacts, so I think that these cameras will NOT be allowed while the EX might.

There’s lots of rumors flying around of a pact between Sky HD and the BBC over the minimum acceptable standards for HD acquisition. It’s been known for some time that the BBC wants a minimum bit rate of 50Mb/s and camera sensors that are 1/2 inch or bigger. At the same time there have been many Sky productions produced using XDCAM EX cameras (Road Wars for example) which are shot using XDCAM EX and are 35Mb/s. The BBC have also been using XDCAM EX within many HD productions. Now however it looks like Sky is going to follow the BBC and insist on 50Mb/s for all HD production. 50Mb/s is not a surprise, but what’s being said now is that there will no longer be any exceptions to this rule. So RawCut, the producers of Road Wars are now having to work out ways of shooting at 50Mb/s while still using their existing EX camcorders. The NanoFlash from Convergent Design is an obvious solution.

This new, stricter ruling is not good news as it makes it harder to produce HD programmes with small budgets. If HD is to grow and become the norm for TV production, excessively ridged regulations like this will not help. Surely it would be better if exceptions were allowed. Perhaps following an evaluation or consultation process to allow the use of cameras that fall outside of the 50Mbps, 1/2″ minimum criteria for shows such as Road Wars where filming inside police cars with full size cameras simply is safe or practical.

I’ve seen Road Wars on Sky HD and it always looked fine to me. What will Sky and the BBC’s view be on all the Discovery and National Geographic produced material which doesn’t meet the Sky/BBC specs?

This reminds me of when DVCAM was launched. The BBC and others all announced that DV was unsuitable for broadcast. Well look at SD production now. DVCAM is the workhorse format used by just about everyone for low budget work. The BBC owns thousands of DVCAM camcorders and even has it’s own special “DV Solutions” department. I suspect that once the BBC and Sky realise that they will be closing the door on many interesting HD projects this ruling will gradually disappear into the mists of time.

Now it’s not one of my programmes of choice, but my wife likes it. It’s the BBC’s Gardeners World. Once upon a time this used to be well shot, but tonight’s programme had a beyond belief bad segment featuring a female presenter. The opening shot was of her waffling away, totally out of focus. I don’t mean a little soft, I mean way, way, way out of focus, not only that but there were  drop-outs! Then for the rest of the segment all the interviews were over exposed with blown out faces and further out of focus shots. What’s going on? There are plenty of good camera ops out there, this is a prime time evening slot on a terrestrial channel, not some obscure satellite channel.

What I don’t understand is who lets such dreadful material get transmitted? Is no-one taking responsibility for the standards of programmes any more? I’m really getting fed up with seeing out of focus, dirty lens, badly exposed, poorly composed no white balanced footage in mainstream TV. There is no excuse for it and no need for it. If a cameraman on a rolling deep sea crab fishing boat in the middle of an arctic storm can get in-focus correctly composed and white balanced shots while having ice cold water blasted at him why should we put up with setup shots in a dry sunny garden that are overexposed and totally out of focus. 10 Years ago out of focus picture like that would have led to a programme being rejected by the quality control people, today there doesn’t appear to be any quality control. What a shame.

The BBC’s Danielle Nagler’s keynote speech at the HD Masters strongly hinted at the BBC accepting the use of the Sony EX1 and EX3 for mainstream HD broadcast production. I’ve always said that the EX cameras are remarkable cameras and this just backs up my assertion that the EX is good enough for broadcast. Danielle showed footage of an EX cut with a HDCAM camera commenting that “what this small camera can deliver is a breakthrough, allowing us to consider the migration of a much, much wider range of BBC programming than has previously been possible.”

You can read the full transcript here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/06/hd_masters_conference_keynote.html