VX1000 - Quality Difference Between Exported Footage

[pj chad]

Hi,

I’ve always been curious as to how some upscaled VX1000 footage tends to look so washed out and cloudy when compared to others. Here’s an example to help illustrate what I am trying to convey:

https://youtu.be/VmFJty66Pgw

https://youtu.be/Ed0i5GIkjG4

I understand that the Magenta video has the 60p frame rate which makes the footage look smoother, but to me there is a night and day difference between how the footage looks between these videos.

I assume it to be related to any one of these/a combination of them:

• VX configured with a lower aperture/shallow depth of field
• general export settings
• faded CCD’s on the VX
• incorrectly imported VX footage
• slight moisture in the VAP/lens?

I’ve always tried to go above and beyond to make sure my VX footage looks as good as it possibly can. Any general input is of course appreciated.

[bataaard]

i think it's faded ccd + foggy lens, and none of the rest.
add contrast in post to fight the foggy look

[linty]

It should be nearly impossible to affect the quality of captured footage in any way, unless you do transfers via RCA instead of Firewire. There could be some third party apps that compress/convert the footage but Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro don't do that. They also recognise the correct specs automatically even if you accidentally choose DV PAL instead of NTSC in the capture settings. 

Both of the examples in this case are NTSC footage but the format difference between PAL (720 x 576) and NTSC (720 x 480) might also cause some confusion as far as variety in exported image quality goes.

Like Bataaard said, it's most likely due to faulty VAP units. There's a possibility that the filmer has chosen to turn the sharpness setting down but that's unlikely, too.