Attila Bakos

Recently purchased the X-H2s, and you know me, the first thing I look at is chroma resolution. Just dropping this in, on the left side you see the Cr channel of an EOS R 4K C-Log 8bit 4:2:0 recording (about 420 Mbps), on the right side it's X-H2s 4K F-Log 10bit 4:2:2 (about 615Mbps):

Don't get me wrong it's better than the X-T3, but this smoothing can still lead to loss of color. I really wish we could turn it off and deal with color noise in post.
ProRes RAW helps but it's a mystery to me. RAW on the X-H2s has the X-Trans pattern, obviously. However, it gets magically converted into Bayer in the ProRes RAW file. I had discussions with people who are involved in ProRes RAW->DNG conversion, also did my own test with Raw convertor (resulting DNG has Bayer pattern) and it seems that the data that arrives to a Ninja V recorder is already Bayer, even though the sensor is X-Trans. I'm still trying to confirm all this but if the body demosaics the X-Trans pattern and remosaics it into Bayer, then it's kind of a hack which in some cases can lead to artifacts.

Recently purchased the X-H2s, and you know me, the first thing I look at is chroma resolution. Just dropping this in, on the left side you see the Cr channel of an EOS R 4K C-Log 8bit 4:2:0 recording (about 420 Mbps), on the right side it's X-H2s 4K F-Log 10bit 4:2:2 (about 615Mbps):

Don't get me wrong it's better than the X-T3, but this smoothing can still lead to loss of color. I really wish we could turn it off and deal with color noise in post.
ProRes RAW helps but it's a mystery to me. RAW on the X-H2s has the X-Trans pattern, obviously. However, it gets magically converted into Bayer in the ProRes RAW file. I had discussions with people who are involved in ProRes RAW->DNG conversion, also did my own test with Raw convertor (resulting DNG has Bayer pattern) and it seems that the data that arrives to a Ninja V recorder is already Bayer, even though the sensor is X-Trans. I'm still trying to confirm all this but if the body demosaics the X-Trans pattern and remosaics it into Bayer, then it's kind of a hack which in some cases can lead to artifacts.

Recently purchased the X-H2s, and you know me, the first thing I look at is chroma resolution. Just dropping this in, on the left side you see the Cr channel of an EOS R 4K C-Log 8bit 4:2:0 recording (about 420 Mbps), on the right side it's X-H2s 4K F-Log 10bit 4:2:2 (about 615Mbps):

Don't get me wrong it's better than the X-T3, but this smoothing can still lead to loss of color. I really wish we could turn it off and deal with color noise in post.
ProRes RAW helps but it's a mystery to me. RAW on the X-H2s has the X-Trans pattern, obviously. However, it gets magically converted into Bayer in the ProRes RAW file. I had discussions with people who are involved in ProRes RAW->DNG conversion, also did my own test with Raw convertor (resulting DNG has Bayer pattern) and it seems that the data that arrives to a Ninja V recorder is already Bayer, even though the sensor is X-Trans. I'm still trying to confirm all this but if the body demosaics the X-Trans pattern and remosaics it into Bayer, then it's kind of a hack which in some cases can lead to artifacts.

No, I'm referring to NVIDIA/AMD. I just did a test for you. I have a Lenovo Legion 5i Pro laptop with an i7-12700h CPU and a 3070Ti GPU. I loaded a 2160p 4:2:2 HEVC F-Log clip to Resolve, added a LUT and some tweaking.
With hybrid mode enabled (that is Resolve can use both internal GPU and the dedicated one), I get smooth 25fps playback with low CPU usage and rendered out the clip with the H.265 Master preset in 18 seconds.
Now if I switch to dedicated GPU only mode, I get 21-23 fps playback and high CPU usage and the clip rendered out in 41 seconds.
So basically with 10th or higher gen Intel CPU I get 4:2:2 support in addition to what the GPU already offers, no need for a Mac (for this).

No, I'm referring to NVIDIA/AMD. I just did a test for you. I have a Lenovo Legion 5i Pro laptop with an i7-12700h CPU and a 3070Ti GPU. I loaded a 2160p 4:2:2 HEVC F-Log clip to Resolve, added a LUT and some tweaking.
With hybrid mode enabled (that is Resolve can use both internal GPU and the dedicated one), I get smooth 25fps playback with low CPU usage and rendered out the clip with the H.265 Master preset in 18 seconds.
Now if I switch to dedicated GPU only mode, I get 21-23 fps playback and high CPU usage and the clip rendered out in 41 seconds.
So basically with 10th or higher gen Intel CPU I get 4:2:2 support in addition to what the GPU already offers, no need for a Mac (for this).

Here is a short demonstration of the Cr channels: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1veiqGodXKxerdNF_ksqLlAnFWbGQUtEe/view?usp=sharing
8bit is rubbish, never ever use it. 10bit is somewhat better than on the X-T3/4, but the chroma smoothing is still there, ProRes doesn't seem to help either. Interestingly the X-H2s seems to have more smoothing than the X-H2.
As much as I love Fuji for stills, I think I'll stick to other brands for video as I'm very sensitive for this kind of stuff, but for 99.9% of Fuji video shooters this is still a non-issue I guess.

Here is a short demonstration of the Cr channels: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1veiqGodXKxerdNF_ksqLlAnFWbGQUtEe/view?usp=sharing
8bit is rubbish, never ever use it. 10bit is somewhat better than on the X-T3/4, but the chroma smoothing is still there, ProRes doesn't seem to help either. Interestingly the X-H2s seems to have more smoothing than the X-H2.
As much as I love Fuji for stills, I think I'll stick to other brands for video as I'm very sensitive for this kind of stuff, but for 99.9% of Fuji video shooters this is still a non-issue I guess.

Here is a short demonstration of the Cr channels: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1veiqGodXKxerdNF_ksqLlAnFWbGQUtEe/view?usp=sharing
8bit is rubbish, never ever use it. 10bit is somewhat better than on the X-T3/4, but the chroma smoothing is still there, ProRes doesn't seem to help either. Interestingly the X-H2s seems to have more smoothing than the X-H2.
As much as I love Fuji for stills, I think I'll stick to other brands for video as I'm very sensitive for this kind of stuff, but for 99.9% of Fuji video shooters this is still a non-issue I guess.

Thank you for all the clips, I hope I can take a look at them this evening.

Thank you for all the clips, I hope I can take a look at them this evening.

https://we.tl/t-ZnnuboUFed
That's another X-H2 ProRes 422 HQ clip in 8K (FLOG 2)
Autumn trees at infinity
Will be interesting to see how (or if) the processing has changed

Here is a link to all the footage.
All shot with the xf 23mm f1.4 R LM WR at F4. Iso was at the base iso for each respective flog 2 and the shutter speed was changed to get similar exposure. NR and Sharpening at -4 and no interframe NR.   Video levels for Prores and full range for HEVC. 
Files are named what they are, e.g. XH2 PRHQ is Prores HQ shot on the x-h2.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1h7OQtCirDoy9fcxxZaIDBxlJOPEn-Dcx

Sure. I don't have 2 copies of the same lens so I won't be able to shoot them simultaneously.
I might be able to get some black magic shots too, I don't own any canon or Sony since I've gone to Fuji.

Please shoot something with lots of fine detail and varying colors at infinity focus (trees with autumn colors are the best, check my youtube video I posted in this topic), both h.265 and ProRes. When it comes to h.265, the higher bitrate the better, and ProRes should be 422. UHD or higher resolution is fine.
When comparing both cameras, please use the same scene with the same settings. F-Log and/or F-Log2 please.
I know I ask a lot, but if you have other cameras as well, Canon/Sony/Panasonic, it would be nice to see them as well. The issue might not be obvious until you start to compare it with other cameras.

Please shoot something with lots of fine detail and varying colors at infinity focus (trees with autumn colors are the best, check my youtube video I posted in this topic), both h.265 and ProRes. When it comes to h.265, the higher bitrate the better, and ProRes should be 422. UHD or higher resolution is fine.
When comparing both cameras, please use the same scene with the same settings. F-Log and/or F-Log2 please.
I know I ask a lot, but if you have other cameras as well, Canon/Sony/Panasonic, it would be nice to see them as well. The issue might not be obvious until you start to compare it with other cameras.

Great, will grab you some files and post the links below later

I just had a chance to take a look at some X-H2s originals shot in F-Log and F-Log2 in H.265, and it seems to me that the chroma smoothing is way less aggressive in this camera. It's still there, but it won't cause problems I think. This is just my first impression, not a deep analysis. And now you can completely get rid of the smoothing by shooting raw to an external recorder, I tested this with a ProRes RAW HQ clip. What I couldn't test is ProRes internal.
I also noticed that the H.265 files are now tagged with the BT.709 matrix coefficients instead of the BT.601. This will definitely solve some interpretation issues. One small downside is that the files are no longer full range (at least the F-Log and F-Log2 originals I received), they only use the limited range, so we lost some precision here.
 

I meant the reason for the color loss, which is the chroma smoothing. The reasons for the chroma smoothing at this extent I don't know and as you said, we may never know.
I wouldn't say this is a compression issue. This is not something caused by compression algorithms, this looks like some kind of smoothing, tupp already shared some thoughts about that in this thread:
https://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/60753-color-detail-issues-in-fujifilm-video-files/?do=findComment&comment=471363
 

In my video there is a section where I create a 100Mbps H.265 file from a 3584 x 1730 5D3 raw source and compare it with the 400Mbps Fujifilm file. While it's slightly less pixels than Fuji's UHD, the 100Mbps one is close to indistinguishable from the raw and the Cr channel is very detailed. And I didn't use some well optimized x265 encoder, I created the 100Mbps file in Resolve with GPU acceleration. When you put this next to Fuji's recording which has 4x the bitrate it becomes clear that there must be some purpose to the chroma smoothing other than preserving bandwidth for the luma channel. And I also mention in the video that I checked many files from other manufacturers (some of them have the same amount of luma detail and less bitrate) and didn't see this kind of chroma processing.

I found something strange when I was looking at the chromaticity channels of Fujifilm video files and did some search online, and to my surprise noone is talking about this, so I decided to make a video about it. If you're a Fuji user, you might be interested.
 

Okay, for those who find this kind of stuff interesting, here is a comparison of Cr channels (with added contrast for easy visualisation) from the C70, X-T3, and X-H2s:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pbfjdx4c2zxhhzq/chroma_compare.mp4?dl=1
C70 is C-Log3, 100Mbps
X-T3 is F-Log, 400Mbps
X-H2s is F-Log, 360Mbps
There is definitely an improvement over the X-T3.
(I only received this files from someone, so I can't do other comparisons.)

I just had a chance to take a look at some X-H2s originals shot in F-Log and F-Log2 in H.265, and it seems to me that the chroma smoothing is way less aggressive in this camera. It's still there, but it won't cause problems I think. This is just my first impression, not a deep analysis. And now you can completely get rid of the smoothing by shooting raw to an external recorder, I tested this with a ProRes RAW HQ clip. What I couldn't test is ProRes internal.
I also noticed that the H.265 files are now tagged with the BT.709 matrix coefficients instead of the BT.601. This will definitely solve some interpretation issues. One small downside is that the files are no longer full range (at least the F-Log and F-Log2 originals I received), they only use the limited range, so we lost some precision here.
 

Okay, for those who find this kind of stuff interesting, here is a comparison of Cr channels (with added contrast for easy visualisation) from the C70, X-T3, and X-H2s:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pbfjdx4c2zxhhzq/chroma_compare.mp4?dl=1
C70 is C-Log3, 100Mbps
X-T3 is F-Log, 400Mbps
X-H2s is F-Log, 360Mbps
There is definitely an improvement over the X-T3.
(I only received this files from someone, so I can't do other comparisons.)

I just had a chance to take a look at some X-H2s originals shot in F-Log and F-Log2 in H.265, and it seems to me that the chroma smoothing is way less aggressive in this camera. It's still there, but it won't cause problems I think. This is just my first impression, not a deep analysis. And now you can completely get rid of the smoothing by shooting raw to an external recorder, I tested this with a ProRes RAW HQ clip. What I couldn't test is ProRes internal.
I also noticed that the H.265 files are now tagged with the BT.709 matrix coefficients instead of the BT.601. This will definitely solve some interpretation issues. One small downside is that the files are no longer full range (at least the F-Log and F-Log2 originals I received), they only use the limited range, so we lost some precision here.
 

I just had a chance to take a look at some X-H2s originals shot in F-Log and F-Log2 in H.265, and it seems to me that the chroma smoothing is way less aggressive in this camera. It's still there, but it won't cause problems I think. This is just my first impression, not a deep analysis. And now you can completely get rid of the smoothing by shooting raw to an external recorder, I tested this with a ProRes RAW HQ clip. What I couldn't test is ProRes internal.
I also noticed that the H.265 files are now tagged with the BT.709 matrix coefficients instead of the BT.601. This will definitely solve some interpretation issues. One small downside is that the files are no longer full range (at least the F-Log and F-Log2 originals I received), they only use the limited range, so we lost some precision here.