Varicam tested on 35mm


Projection of Panasonic Varicam footage printed to 35mm

Report by Doug Braddock

I’ve recently been to a screening of Panasonic Varicam HD material printed to 35mm and projected on a very large projection screen.  The results were certainly impressive. Thanks to Zane Holmes and Panasonic NZ for setting this up. 

The test included VFX intensive material from South Pacific Picture’s Maddigans Quest project, as well as test footage shot under a wide range of conditions, with wideshots, nature studies, human close-ups, and mood lighting shots.  There were also examples of the vari speed function  - recording water in a stream in this case – from around 60 frames per second (which gave a very pleasing slowmo) up to 4 frames per second (a very workable under crank).

I felt that the quality was very good.
  • There was certainly no sign of the TV lines that can sometimes be seen when SD is transferred to film.

  • Colours looked ‘filmic’.  (I didn’t notice any bleeding of saturated yellows and reds).
  • Tribute to the high definition - I could definitely see greater resolution in facial details, and in clothing fabric than I’ve ever seen on digital betacam on a grade one monitor.
  • I looked hard for compression artefacts and may have seen some in detail areas in wider shots – but certainly had to look hard.
  • Talking with DOPs and experienced Editors after the screening there was a general feeling that wider shots with lots of detail were not as good as could be achieved with higher-res systems with less compression.  These conditions are probably the most telling for any HD system.
  • Blacks and whites seemed to hold up well in my opinion, though at least one senior editor felt that highlights were slightly clipped on some of the shots.
    • Technical details:

    The Varicam system works with 720 x 1080 pixels which is a little more than twice the resolution of PAL SD (note however that it is an anamorphic format effectively recording 720 x 960 pixels on tape, or 1.67 times the res of PAL).  By comparison Sony’s 1080 x 1920 resolution is 5 times the res of PAL (but you’d need to have an HDSR rig to record that directly, HDV is also anamorphic putting 1080 x 1440 pixels on tape at 3.75 times the res of PAL). 

    Compression is achieved within each frame (this technique is used for most conventional compression schemes from DV through Digital betacam); as opposed to compression between frames (this is the secret of long GOP compression (used by HDV and many other HD systems).  By comparison Long GOP gives substantially more efficient compression, but presents additional challenges for editing software which has to create the ‘between frames in software’; combinations of high detail and motion can be the hardest to compress transparently. 

    There is a CineGamma mode which I believe ‘compands’ additional contrast information in the black and white ends of the spectrum providing a result that is more like film.  Note however that colour grading is essential if you use this function; without grading shots are likely to look milky and bland (effectively the blacks have been lifted a little and the whites reduced a little in order to fit a wider range onto tape, and this process needs to be intelligently adjusted during grading).

    Good lenses make a huge difference to any camera.  The Panasonic Varicam bodies can accept a range of professional lens, and on Maddigans Quest a selection of very high quality film primes were brought into the country especially – with very good results. 

    My thoughts in conclusion:

    The system gives good results now, but improvements will certainly be coming out with future versions –
  • I’m sure that future Varicam models will have higher resolution (1080 x 1920, or at least an anamorphic version of this).
  • The way Varicam records multiple frame rates is via a clever means of ‘flagging’ intended frames on tape, whilst always recording 60 fps.  To play this back either needs an expensive framerate converter or special software in your editing system.  Newer generation cameras won’t record to video tape in the first instance which will mean that different frame rates can be achieved directly without the work-arounds needed for tape.