Introduction - Panasonic AG-DVX100B Setup

Introduction

The AG-DVX100 has captured the imagination of creative filmmakers, broadcasters, and
video professionals around the world, with its 24p (progressive) capabilities.
Panasonic has won a total of 15 Emmys, 12 of them for advancements in the area of digital
video technology. Panasonic's engineers are continuously pushing the limits of product de-
sign and the AG-DVX100 is a prime example of their innovation and imagination.
What is 24p?
Lets start with film, which is shot at 24 frames per second. Inherent in this capture rate, is a
motion blur that is used by the artistic filmmaker to draw the attention of the viewer to his
subject. In the movie theater, film is projected at 48 frames per second due to a shutter in
the projector. The AG-DVX100 uses an electronic shutter which the user can set to differ-
ent speeds.
"When you watch 24p, you know you are being told a story". It's a different look. It's the
difference between the look of a soap opera or the six o'clock news and the look of a fea-
ture film.
There is a three part answer to what must be done to create the cinematic look in video
What is Cine Gamma?
Fact: The contrast ratio of film is greater than contrast ratio of video. Can the range of
bright to dark areas be correctly exposed in a scene? Video has been optimized for high
ambient lighting during image capture (studio) and viewing (living room). Therefore image
brightness has a been much more important than contrast ratio. Film, when used in cine-
matic presentations, has a very high wide dynamic range providing great detail in both the
brightest and darkest areas of the image. The Cine-like Gamma feature of the AG-DVX100
emulates this wider exposure range characteristic and with the recommended 1/2 f-stop
under exposure should help to maintain increased highlight handling abilities.
What is Progressive?
Rather than capturing one half of a picture (the odd lines) and 1/60th of a second later cap-
turing the second half of the picture (the even lines), wouldn't it be better to capture an en-
tire frame of video with no temporal (time) difference? Progressive recording does accom-
plishes this! What progressive recording does is creates a picture with double the scan
lines of a conventional interlaced picture, to create a noticeably sharper image.
What is 24p Playback?
If you made a recording in 24p or 24p advanced and now you want to play it back
on a standard NTSC video monitor. The AG-DVX100
has a built in "telecine" or con-
version circuit so that you can playback your 24p recordings on a NTSC Monitor. There are
two different schemes used in the AG-DVX100, 2:3 and 2:3:3:2. In 24p playback mode we
use a 2:3 pulldown scheme and in 24p Advanced mode we use 2:3:3:2. This is actually a
method of mapping the 24p into the 30 frames per second NTSC standard video. See the
next page for additional details.
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