Panasonic-hdc-z10000-3d-camcorder - Page 10

Here's a rough draft of the stereo base extender video I put together in Vegas the last couple of days. It still needs a lot of tweaking (and I want to shorten all the titles and reposition them), but you get the idea. I had to do more correction than I had hoped, because my framing was a looser than I intended. Next time, I'll take a grease pencil.

This is a side by side m2ts render.

I like to sprinkle in SBE shots whenever I can, because the sense of depth is so much more powerful than the JVC alone. Whenever I can get about 12-15 feet between the closest subject and the camera, I try to use it.

Constructive criticism is always welcome.

I'll be cross posting this in the JVC thread.

Only if you make the SBE fixed IA AND fixed focal length AND fixed focus.

Probably a better approach would be to use prisms to angle the light and then use two conventional zoom lenses on the front of the SBE rig. ( Like a telescope right angle eyepiece. ) Now you could rely on off the shelf lenses, adding a servo sync system to auto focus them and track the zoom for each in sync. I think this could be off the shelf for at least the zoom part. Haven't seen anything for focus tracking. Once the light rays are parallel, you can make a telescopic tube to expand or contract the I.O. distance without making each element/mirror bigger in size.

Anyway you design it, it seems like using two camcorders is far simpler and more compact beyond a certain lens mm and IA.

Amazon Japan has this cam for about $2,200.. Is it truly worth getting and is it that great? Compared to the JVC is it any better? I know the files can be dropped into Vegas with no problems and it can shoot at 24p. Any problems with flicker of videos?
Edited by bravia3D - 6/27/12 at 2:35am

Get the Panasonic! The JVC has ONLY one advantage over the Panasonic and that is weight. Every other feature is better on the Panasonic from what I have seen. Plus, you really want to shoot in 24p if you plan on making your projects commercial on Blu Ray. I still keep that Z10K on my shopping list but right now other stuff is above it on priority. The JVC has never been on my shopping list!

Best price here is $2850 and Amazon is $3115.

I been really wanting it, just looks amazing and cheap price here now. Guess 3D cams aren't that popular here. May grab it after I get a refund from Silicon Micro for my ST1080's

But are any new 3D cams coming out soon? Be my luck I buy it and something better comes out right after!

From what I conclude from NAB the new stuff will pursue 4K / 3D. Not something we should aspire to for awhile. At CES, I think the new 3D stuff will be smaller in size and more consumerish. Like excellent quality image but lack manual features and control. It seems for guys like us, serious professionals and amateurs but not broadcast or Hollywood, the Pany Z10k has reached the best of breed for quite some time. If Sony ever competes with the Pany Z10K it will probably be much more expensive. Never been much of a fan of Panasonic cameras, especially broadcast stuff, but their 3D1 and the Z10K has changed my opinion of Panasonic cameras in this class.

I'll be posting my impressions (and comparisons) before too long. My Z10k is due here in a couple of days. Cycopital3D has pretty much finished using it to develop their adapters. I thought I got it for a great price at $3,000 from B&H Photo. $2,200 sounds like a steal. I'm keeping the JVC, though. It's a great little camera. This summer I have a few shots planned with its time lapse feature. I intend to capture a tropical water lily growing several inches in just a couple of hours. I also want to do some shots that show how light changes landscapes over time, especially at sunrise and sunset. I will have a bigger learning curve to climb with the Panasonic, because it gives you so much more manual control than the JVC.

Yikes! The Postal Service just left my Z10k on the porch without even ringing the doorbell.

I wish I had more time to shoot, but I'll try to get a few shots in today with the default settings. This thing is a monster compared to the JVC.

That is horrible, I hate when they do that. Thank god here in Japan they can't do that by law. I'd love to see some 24p footage with that bad boy!

I couldn't wait to try it out, so when I got a break I went outside and took 7 or 8 shots at 24p. I used a JVC memory card and it didn't even reformat it. It used the same folders for the Panny clips. I pulled the SDHC card and copied the clips to the hard drive. I dropped them into Vegas 11, added an mp3 music track, a NewBlue Titler Pro title, set up dissolves between all the clips, faded in and out and rendered a Blu-ray 3D disc iso. During the "edit" playback wasn't perfectly smooth in Vegas (nVidia 560 video card), but it was quite acceptable. The video is about 1:10, and it renders in less than 1.5x real time on my Core i7 3930 system. Total time, shooting to final 3D Blu-ray disc, about 20 minutes. It played back fine on my Epson 6010 3D projector. Motion is 24p, so it's not as smooth as 60i, but I can live with that for most of the things I shoot.

Vegas didn't crash at all, although it was hardly a rigorous test. This is the workflow I want.

It's far too early to tell about image quality, since I was using the settings Cyclopital3D left on the camera after using it for development. I will say that the look appears softer and less pleasingly contrasty than the JVC image. But, again, it's not fair to judge until I can set the camera up more to my liking. I'm sure when I have a chance to do that, I can achieve a better look. I'll start with Wolfgang's settings, and I'll definitely be hitting the manual hard.

Nice, I am wanting to buy one as soon as Silicon Micro refunds me. I can get this cheap here in Japan and getting excited.

BTW, I have been able to verify that converting the Panasonic Z10k files into CineForm intermediates is a one-step process now. Drop the MTS files into CineForm Studio Premium (or Pro) and it spits out 3D muxed avi's. For JVC owners thinking of getting a Z10k, that means you can bypass the whole MVCtoAVI conversion, and the manual pairing of the clips in FirstLight. Of course, the resulting files are just as humongous as the comparable JVC conversions, so you'd probably want to do that only if you need to edit in Premiere. The Premiere 3D workflow seems to work just fine, and if you plan to do a lot of compositing or other post effects with the Panny clips, you might want to use CineForm for such shots. For simpler editing, it's probably an unnecessary step.

Joe- Did you get the Cyclopital SBE yet?

How do you like New Blue Titler. I am think about getting that next month when receivables come in. Are you using it with Vegas?

I don't understand why you even consider all that Cineform / FirstLight work flow with the Z10k. Why not just drop the clips into the Vegas timeline and edit the way we do with the TD10? Am I missing something?

They're not quite finished with the SBE for the Z10k. The other adapters are all but complete. I should have the SBE in a few weeks, and the other adapters even earlier. The SBE turned out to be more complicated than Ken initially thought. It had to be significantly different than the one he designed for the Panasonic A1.

I really like the NewBlue Titler Pro plug-in. It came with my upgrade to Vegas 11. I don't think it's fully featured, so there may be modules/add-ons I need to get. Even with the built-in features, it's a really nice addition.

I'll drop those Panny clips straight into Vegas or Edius 99.9% of the time. The only time I'd consider doing otherwise would be for complex compositing or layered effects (like keys and mattes). CineForm intermediates hold up really well in those situations, especially over multiple generations. Granted, those effects will be very rare for me, but I have the option if I need it. Converting the Panny clips is a lot easier than converting the JVC ones, but it's still something I'll avoid whenever possible. And there's definitely something funky going on in the process of going from MVCtoAVI to Cineform to Vegas with the JVC clips. I haven't had Vegas 11 crash once today, and I've fiddled around a lot with those shots I took earlier. And when I used the JVC clips in Edius, there was never a problem. Results always looked great. Same for PowerDirector 10.

Joe- you are aware that Vegas has a very sophisticated compositing tool set with a hierarchy of parent / child timeline structure. It's a bit of a learning curve and I'm not well versed in it but the possibilities are endless.

No, I've explored very little of that in Vegas. I have so much to learn. I've been delving into image manipulation in Edius, and the possibilities are staggering there, also. I suspect those tools, or the ones in Vegas, will be very instrumental in getting the look I want with the Panasonic. Of course, I may not need much more than the tools already built into the camera to get close - yet another learning curve to tackle. I'm going to have a busy summer.

One thing I really like about the Z10k is that it's so much heftier than my JVC. I usually shoot on a tripod, and the carry weight doesn't seem too bad. The extra mass gives me hope that I can handle the camera better on top of my Blackbird stabilizer. The JVC felt like a feather on it, and I was constantly losing control by over compensating when it started to roll. I'm going to run some tests, and if I feel I have a half-way decent shot at controlling it, I'm going to invest in a Steadicam Merlin vest and arm. The Blackbird fits it with a small adapter. I'll get it from Amazon, so if I still can't make decent shots with it, I'll send it back and sell the Blackbird. If I can't control the Z10k on it, I'm hopeless.

After 10 minutes doing color correction in Edius 6, I've been able to get very close to the look I want for the Z10k footage. That's without changing the camera defaults. I have no doubt now that I'll be able to tweak it to perfection.

I'm using the 2D version of Edius 6, which has the same color controls as the 3D version that's due to arrive in July. I'm sure I'll be able to do the same in Vegas, but I still wrestle with its preview image. I struggle to get it accurate enough. The Edius preview window always looks exactly like the original video.

Joe- I'm using an older Dell HD 24" monitor for my main computer monitor and the preview window for both the Vegas and PD10 looks bad. I gave up with trying to get it better with photoshop tools. The Vizio has my custom calibration curves added in the advance menus. It looks very nice, especially with x.v. color. If I were you, I would not spend too much time making color correction curves for the editor and concentrate on designing one for the camera. I feel it is better getting the camera right since it is upstream.
BTW- I found the NB Pro titler install file and tested it out early this morning. Been up all night playing with it. I hope it's not just a 14 day free trial. The nag screen went off when I registered. I think it can do a much better job for my 3D titles than what I was doing in Photoshop and chroma key screen. It looks like it will fix my Valley of Fire Title. The key framming is a little confusing yet but I'll figure it out.

I got serial numbers for Vegas 11, DVD Architect and NewBlue Titler with my upgrade purchase to Vegas 11. They were running a special then, and I got it all for about $130, IIRC. I had to enter all three numbers at one point.

Yes, I'm going to try to get the Panasonic image as close as possible in the camera. I have some experimenting to do with the scene files. I'm also not so sure my new LG display is going to calibrate well. I may not be able to trust it, no matter how it's set.

Why not hook the HDMI output of the camcorder to the input of the LG and compare the live video vs realty?

That wouldn't work. Everyone has always told me that my grasp on reality is tenuous.

Joe, could ya upload some 24p garden shots?

Sorry, I don't have any. It was 108 here in St. Louis yesterday, and it will be over 100 for the next week. I won't be going to the Garden for a while. I am anxious to compare, though. My JVC shots always loodk amazing. If I can't get that level of detail with the Panny, I'll be very disappointed.

Yea i am very curious about it also, debating if I should buy it or not. I am kinda interested in a quadcopter also to get 3D videos

Joe would you mind trying the macro mode on something? It could be anything in your house or outside and upload it for download? Very curious how this feature looks and works.

I shot this under this really low light. I'll try to get something under decent light outside tomorrow.

The Panasonic Z10k at 18" from my home theater speaker. The macro mode only works at 1x zoom (minimum), at about a foot and a half. You can see that the depth is good, but it's also not very close. Moving back several feet and zooming in to maximum telephoto gets you twice as close, but it flattens the 3D dramatically. The only way to get "serious" CU shots is going to be with the Cyclopital3D Filter/Closeup adapter.

Compare the Panny "macro" shot to this mp4 taken with the JVC TD1, Cyclopital3D CU adapter and a Marumi +3 macro lens.

Both these shots play natively in 3D in PowerDVD 12, although anything shot at 60i doesn't play as smoothly, since PDVD12 converts 60i to 24p for 3D playback.

I must say, the Panasonic shot looked horrible with numerous artifacts. I realize it was in low light but that's pretty bad. I'm guessing the settings weren't adjusted? The JVC shot looked amazing though I do notice it looks to have some focus issues. Looking at the pollen at times it's really in focus and then others it wasn't. Still, the shot looked very good!
Edited by bravia3D - 6/30/12 at 9:12pm

You can't tell ANYTHING about the Panasonic image quality from that shot. Lighting was awful and there were no adjustments for white balance, exposure, etc. It simply illustrates how close you can get with the macro mode, which is what you asked for. The JVC was on area select for focus and exposure, and the movement of the bee caused some minor fluctuations. I have plenty of time for a good clean shot in that scene of my video. This is RAW, unedited footage, and in the case of the Panasonic, it's REALLY raw. I've only had my hands on it for a few minutes, and barely scratched the surface of the manual. I haven't even learned how to do a manual white balance yet.

BTW, the tweeter in that shot of my speaker is about the size of the flower in the JVC shot.
Edited by Joseph Clark - 6/30/12 at 9:44pm