I have read in a few of the posts on the board how badly the compression artifacts and other problems are with the JVC HD200u when shooting in either 720p60 or 720p50. I've also heard mention to avoid these problems by shooting in something other than the MPG1 transport onto tape or the little harddrive recorder.

How does one do that? I'm really interested.

Analog component out to an IO solution that can capture less lossy video in real time to a laptop or field computer.

So a long component cable out to a laptop. What kind of IO solution is reasonably priced for a laptop?

an AJA IO would be a choice. I saw the pre-production model at a JVC HD seminar a couple years ago.

AJA Video - Serial Digital Video Interface and Conversion (http://aja.com/html/products_Io.html)

It looks great except that it requires power and is fairly large and expensive. But a serious choice to go between your uncompressed HD component video and your laptop/tower/RAID drives. I shrugged my shoulds when I ran the math and thought it would make more sense getting a Panasonic HPX-500 and some P2 cards and have more freedom of movement.

Boy, more and more I think I was pretty foolish to suggest to my boss that we go with the JVC. I really liked that it shot 720p60, but it apparently doesn't do that well. Actually, it seems it doesn't do much well in comparison with the Sony's.

It really depends on what you are shooting...

I've watched Little People, Big World in HD (shot exclusively with HD200 and 250's) and I think the image quality is really good there. Looking at the show I'm pretty sure they are shooting 30p.

If you are going to go out and shoot sports (race cars, water sports, rodeo) then the 60p will kill you.

Bottom line the camera is very good for ENG stuff and reality TV. Particularly because of it's form factor and lenses. To me- the ergonomics trump a slight compromise in image. Some of us just refuse to do run and gun with fixed pseudo lens camcorders. I WON"T DO I TELL YA!

J.

That maybe, but it seems that the actual image capture of the JVC is trouble. Or, is that only with the 60p option?

I wish there was some sort of flash option to do a constant backup with. The harddive module seems to be trouble from what people say.

Boy, more and more I think I was pretty foolish to suggest to my boss that we go with the JVC. I really liked that it shot 720p60, but it apparently doesn't do that well. Actually, it seems it doesn't do much well in comparison with the Sony's.

Well I would say Sony doesn't really do anything well under their XD-Cam or HD-Cam. Others here would say don't bother anything under CinAlta. So always remember who you are talking too and where their head is at.

Me for instance, my head is only 24p or nothing. And there is nothing in the market that I consider usable under $8,000 but a JVC, (panasonic HVX-200 is good, but lots of P2 cards per hour that for me adds up to over $10,000 quickly). Others that work in in 1080i broadcast will have a completly different take. They will choose Sony XD-Cam, HD-Cam or DVCPRO-HD or if they can afford the rental then the CineAlta (sweeeeet)...

So while I may bitch and wine about JVC, I wouldn't for a minute consider a sony HDV for work nor the Canon HDV either, (though Canon seems to get better results than Sony and both are swell for college students and hobbyists for 24p aquisition. I'm not saying they are bad, I just think the 2x - 4x render times and down conversions adds nothing to the final image except time wasted where I watch my hourly income drop by 50%) Again if you needed 60i and not 24p, then the Canon and Sony's are fine cameras, though not generally allowed as main camera for broadcast TV. If your not selling to networks but weddings and such, then don't worry about it.

I think the only decent 60p format in the same market price comparison is the DVCPROHD HVX-200 or better yet the HPX-500, but you need a Focus Enhancements DTE drive or a bunch of P2 Cards to shoot any length of time with it. To be fair to JVC I don't have the 200/250 camera so I can't speak on it's 60p aquisition at all. However, if you watch NFL on an HD channel, you are starting to see 2 $80,000 Sony cams and 3 or 4 JVC HD200/250's with microwave senders. Sony $80k cameras are the A cameras and the JVC's are the B mobile cameras.... You can see a difference, but it's not always earth shattering to the viewer, (assuming the camerperson has it in focus). Scripts (owns various NBC and I think a few ABC or CBS stations as well as non network stations) just purchased several months ago ANOTHER 1,000 JVC HD200u's with the $10,000 18x Fujinon lens.

To be honest, if I had a $80,000 CineAlta, I would be here complaining how it still doesn't have the resolution or latitude of 35mm film in a Panaflex, and yes, if I had a Panflex I would be complaining that it still doesn't compare with the 60mm/70mm film cameras....... SOOOOO.... take all criticism from all users with a grain of salt. We tend (myself included) convince ourself we made the right decisions about the $6,000 to $15,000 we spent on electronics instead of a new car.

Oh, and before my coffee buzz wears out... There is a new JVC/Sony/FE DTE unit coming outearly next year that mounts on the tail end of the JVC HD200u ONLY and bypasses the JVC's encoder and can encode in Sony XD-Cam format in 1080i/p 720p 24p/30p/60p. Sooooo maybe a REAL choice for you is the JVC HD200u with the upcoming Sony/JVC/FocusEnhancments DTE drive early 2009. Otherwise I would say go for a HVX200/HPX-500 and several thousand dollars in P2 and DTE drives.... if you truely needed 60p that is.

Alex,

Thank you very much for your post. You have cheered me up greatly. My boss does not film, other than for a goof around bit, so when he told me I could use the camera just research it and pick one, I jumped at the chance and chose the JVC. Since then, all I seem to read is how deficient it is at one thing or another and the end result is I spend time wondering if I really wasted this opportunity. So far, I've only had one real problem with it ( a tape that has so many dropouts it totally ruined a once in a life time shoot), but that problem is starting to really phase me. Now, my boss is sending me on some shoots to act as a b roll camera man and I'm just really stressed I picked the wrong thing. Perhaps I didn't.

I am looking forward to this new attachment. I will buy it for sure when it comes out. Do you know if it plugs into the fire wire port? I hate that firewire port. It isn't very secure and I read all the reports of 2 thousand dollar repair jobs for it.

Oh, and before my coffee buzz wears out... There is a new JVC/Sony/FE DTE unit coming outearly next year that mounts on the tail end of the JVC HD200u ONLY and bypasses the JVC's encoder and can encode in Sony XD-Cam format in 1080i/p 720p 24p/30p/60p. Sooooo maybe a REAL choice for you is the JVC HD200u with the upcoming Sony/JVC/FocusEnhancments DTE drive early 2009. Otherwise I would say go for a HVX200/HPX-500 and several thousand dollars in P2 and DTE drives.... if you truely needed 60p that is.

Bypasses the encoder? Are you sure about that? I can see that on the HD250 because it has SDI but on a HD200 too?

Is there any more info on this available?

JVC Professional Features page (http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101824)

I'm a little confused. It's Sony XDCAM EX MPEG-2 but the file will be .mp4 which I guess means MPEG-2 wrapped in and MPEG-4 container.

So it sounds to me like it is basically JVC's HDV MPEG-2 (the same that we shoot on tape) packaged up into .mp4.

Also the unit appears to only work with the 200UB and the HD250 which sucks for me because I have a 200U.

Bypasses the encoder? Are you sure about that? I can see that on the HD250 because it has SDI but on a HD200 too?

Is there any more info on this available?

That is what I was told (month ago?????)

I just emailed the west coast JVC sales rep and we will see what they say, and I'll obviously pass it along.

I'm closely reading the JVC's site about the 200b model and i'm thinking that it's AFTER the encoder via firewire... so it's making it compatible for other editing platforms, but i'm not sticking my foot farther down my throat at the moment.

that you only use one brand, and depending on what your shooting for, get the best of that brand, I use the JVC HDPro tapes and have never had a hit. I also use the DRDH100 and it's only had a handful of hits over a space of a year, and under very strenuous shooting conditions.
Don't get hung up on 50/60p. Its great for slow mo and maybe if you intend on becoming a National Geo wildlife specialist.
I believe if you go firewire out you can't bypass the codec as Justin has said, unless somehow in the latest incarnation they've found a way of bypassing the encoder? The reason I but the HD250 was so this could be done and then you can record at a lot higher quality. Hopefully the XDR will mature enough soon for general use, at the moment it shoots Quicktime at 50/100mbps, which is almost as good as uncompressed, mxf is only a moment away, and then shooting 720 50/60p will be a dream on this camera, it'll make it a weapon equal to camera's 3 times its cost, of course you'd still have the 1/3 latitude difference, and if they are attached to a XDR its the same deal, but still heaps cheaper.
I shoot motox, horses out of cars and helicopter and 25p does me for most things!

good luck

adam

I have read in a few of the posts on the board how badly the compression artifacts and other problems are with the JVC HD200u when shooting in either 720p60 or 720p50.

Jason, word of advice: shoot some stuff in 60P and see if it works for YOU and your company.

I shoot 60P exclusively because of the fluidness of motion. I don't slow it down to 24P (and I understand how the compression artifacts could completely become more visible), so I can't speak to that but we ALL have our opinions and there certainly is a debate about what looks "better" 24P, 30P or 60P.

To put it all in perspective: I'm a broadcast guy and I've used some VERY nice cameras over the years and I bought 2 HD200u's for my business model. Does it have it's limitations? Sure. Bang for the buck? Excellent. Can you get better for the money? Depends on your wants and needs.

Tim Dashwood is one of the best ambassadors for the JVCs and he uses all sorts of imaging choices from the JVCs to Sony XDCam EX stuff to film. The camera is only a tool. Don't worry so much and spend some time field testing the camera to see what works for you.

Alex,

Thank you very much for your post. You have cheered me up greatly. My boss does not film, other than for a goof around bit, so when he told me I could use the camera just research it and pick one, I jumped at the chance and chose the JVC. Since then, all I seem to read is how deficient it is at one thing or another and the end result is I spend time wondering if I really wasted this opportunity. So far, I've only had one real problem with it ( a tape that has so many dropouts it totally ruined a once in a life time shoot), but that problem is starting to really phase me. Now, my boss is sending me on some shoots to act as a b roll camera man and I'm just really stressed I picked the wrong thing. Perhaps I didn't.

I am looking forward to this new attachment. I will buy it for sure when it comes out. Do you know if it plugs into the fire wire port? I hate that firewire port. It isn't very secure and I read all the reports of 2 thousand dollar repair jobs for it.


Jason, sorry I missed your post last night! Stick with 1 brand of tape, (I use JVC since it makes since the tape division and the camcorder division would probably talk at some point over the years and compare notes over coffee at some point vs using TDK in a Canon for instance) I use for most things the cheap JVC tapes as backup and have hard mounted a Focus Enhancements DTE drive hard mounted to my IDX battery system on the back of the camera. Nothing moves, nothing jiggles. Record around 10 hours of HDV footage (24fps). Love it. If I have an issue I have tape as backup. Now for bigger (higher paying projects/once in a lifetime events) I always use the JVC PRO-HD tapes. maybe $9 a tape when bought in boxes of 10 or more. Everyone says they are better. I find the biggest issue was swapping brands around. It's true. Mixing sony/fuji/jvc/panasonic on a shoot where they were supplying tapes I got a "Dirty Head" message where presumably the lubricants of 2 or more tapes where reacting to each other. Pulled out the JVC tape cleaner tape... 2 minutes later, no issues. Even with the cheap Walmart JVC tapes I get 1 drop out every 2 tapes on average. the odds of my DTE drive AND my tape having an issue AT THE SAME TIME is remote... About as remote as a P2 hardware failure. They happen, just not that often. I've seen film fail far more often than a P2 card fail, and operator error 10x more than that. Hell, on TITANIC we were 5 miles off the coast of Mexico with 200 extras on life boats and a barge for the cameras, and then we realized the van with the Panaflex cameras was broken down 2 hours back on the highway................ Can you imagine the screaming at $100,000 an hour in lost production time? So yeah, things happen. Don't worry too much. Be a good Quarterback. Learn from the mistake and move on.

Philip Burns from JVC emailed me to let me know he has asked "Doug ???" to verify how it works before he tells me. So hopefully I will know later today and I'll of course pass it on.

It still looks like a better unit than the FE HD100 DTE drive, though I have no issues with mine except for 115'f + days in direct sunlight. Then again, I always power off the camera and the unit if I have to remove it (almost never) and power down the DTE unit before plugging/unplugging the firewire into the computer for file transfers. I would NEVER think about a DTE that wasn't mounted on the camera. To much to go wrong without the unit bolted to the camera with some sort of mount.

Thank you very much for your responses guys.

I think my issue is getting psyched out by the camera. My boss just laughs at me and says that if I think this is an issue, I should try shooting with 35mm.

But the first time I went out with the camera, without a backup and just on guy to help, I used the JVC pro tape (the 9 or 10 dollar stuff from B&H). After I was done, I ended up with 100 or so dropouts in about 48 minutes of footage. Obviously, it ruined the shoot. And the shoot was, while maybe not once in a lifetime, the opportunity to shoot it again could be deadly to me and I don't think I have that many balls when it comes down to it.

So I got kind of psyched out about the camera. Then, with a lot of reading, I see all the other problems and I ended up going from kind of psyched out to totally psyched out and thinking I had mad the wrong decision.

But, it is a super cool camera, and baring anymore dropouts takes really good footage. Especially now that I am really following Tims brilliant DVD.

So thank you for all the words of wisdom with the camera. I'm going to take a fresh try with it and really pay attention to what I'm doing, and hope like hell I don't get any more bad tape.

I am really looking forward to the SxS car adapter. And I really hope it doesn't use the firewire slot. That would be GREAT. So I hope that you get a response soon from them.

Once again, thank you for all the help.

Are you meaning issues with your NLE? Are you using Final Cut Pro? If that's the case, it's not the camera.

Interesting.

I've copied over 15 or 16 tapes and have only had it happen with one. And this one did it in Final Cut and in Sony Vegas Pro.

Do you think they are doing something?

The footage on the tape is dark, cramped, and lit with just the on camera light and their was a bit of bumping (not hard though) of the camera as I adjusted around the really cramped conditions.

Weird. Well if someone is near you that has a DTE drive meet up over coffee and buy them lunch and let it capture away and see what happens. Everything I read, (I'm running FCS1 FCP5 so I'm not a good beta tester for you) is that if you have FCS2 FCP6 you should try capturing apple's ProRes422 or whatever it's called. I haven't used Sony so I can't comment on their software. It's also maybe you just had a bum tape and it was bad from the factory or some piece of lint landed on the tape surface and rolled like a tumble weed between your heads. Personally I bet (hope) it's the over twitchy apple's capture issue. Try capturing with imovie when you are bored and see what happens. Yeah I know... imovie.... but you've got nothing to lose while watching TV tonight. Let it roll and see if it works.. if it does, export it to FCP for this project.

For me, before I got the DTE drive, a tape would capture differently each time I tried, and the drop outs at different times and locations. Nothing was ever repeatable. I thought briefly about returning my JVC and getting a canon and shoot 1080i 24f and deal with longer rendering times and Canon's quirks, though I hated the idea of going back to a handy-cam form factor, but decided to get the FE DTE drive. It works on both cameras so it wasn't throwing money away if I changed my mind on cameras. It worked as advertised, I didn't sell my JVC. It's stupid that it natively doesn't seem to marry well between Apple and JVC, but the DTE does. I put 90% of the issue with Apple in this case, though I have nothing to back up that statement. The unrepeatability of each drop out and error makes me think it has more to do with software than hardware.

where do you live?

Alex,

Thank you very much for your input and advice. I'm going to buy the harddrive module.