I have posted clips of my tests of the camera made a few weeks ago. I will describe those clips and the condition and adjustments of the camera in the following. They will be listed in the order of their shoot.

you can download them at:
http://static.dvinfo.net/ericb/

EBil_E-flowers.m2t / This is the first test I shot with the camera. I had just understood the locking of the exposure. I used a ND9 filter and this one is a little underexposed. Mostly focus and color tests on flowers on a sunny day. the background was in shadows.

The N series was shot at night on two different occasions, the first one was around 2 AM and the second one was about 11 PM. I used no additional lights as I wanted to see the camera's reaction.

EBil_N-bridge.m2t / f2, 1/30. Taken about 500m of a bridge illuminated in parts.

EBil_N-church.m2t / f2, 1/30. Taken from the other side of a river, about 400m away. train passing and a church behind it.

EBil_N-incar.m2t / f2, 1/30. Taken from the inside of a car with dirty windows, a few neon signs and dashboard lights.

EBil_N-store.m2t / f2, 1/60. View of a store from the other side of a road.

EBil_V-guit.m2t / f2, 1/30, polariser filter. flythrough of a guitar.

EBil_V1.m2t and EBil_V3.m2t / f2, 1/30, ND6. Shots taken in a house, around 2 PM, no added light.

If you have already read my two reviews, you will no doubt understand a few of the things I talked about by seeing these clips.

Kickass speed! :) 1KB/Sec 21 hours left!
But I really want to check them out!

Whats up? I went to download and I had to wait 21 hours?!?!!

Wish I could see them... :(

I just sent a message to the webmaster about that. Sorry guys for the speed, it was not that bad when I put them in (it was even pretty fast).

How did you get these posted Eric? I have a nice clip generated by a HD1 that shows off what that camera can do pretty well. I'd love to get it up there, so far all of the clips are for the HD10, so anyone trying to determine if the 10 is worth the extra dollars is kinda doing it blind.

I contacted Chris Hurd for that.

The alternate adress is no longer valid, the server was not fast enough and the DVinfo server now has more than enough bandwith.

Eric

I've upped the cap on download speeds, but the reason they're limited is that we've had problems in the past with people who use 'download manager' applications which claim to speed up your downloads. What they do is open lots and lots of connections to the server, and it brings the machine to it's knees. We've started capping the big media file download speeds because we still want people to be able to access the forums.

The footage is very intersting.

The Night shots are more impressive than I would have imagined, while the shots of the family at the bottom are very cinematic.

Well worth the download.

Good work Eric

DBK

For Mac & PC users wishing to view those m2t files- go to www.videolan.org and download the free player (plays Divx files and a host of other files as well- even DVD vob files!!)......it's open source code and absolutely free-

I used it to view the posted files fullscreen on my Mac 23" HD display and they looked good.....check out the player and these files for yourself
(you guys owe me one!!- hahah)

Videolan is a good player but as it was once said, in decompressing it tends to create a little more artefacts than the original footage.

Eric, can you recommend any other players for the Mac users that would like to see the footage?

For the moment I know of no other. It was just a reminder that decompressing the image gives a less artefacted image than when viewed in VLC. It is nevertheless a very good player. For those having a HD10 and a HD monitor you really should look at those with it.

Eric,

I don't have a HD10 but a I'd like to request some sample short clips of people in nicely lit conditions or animal shots of say birds in bushes- something that can demonstrate the cameras detail abilities under good lighting.

Thanks.

I will see what I can do about that :)

Great- I think allot of us here are excited at seeing detailed shots posted....I'll be watching.

Eric wrote:

EBil_V-guit.m2t / f2, 1/30, polariser filter. flythrough of a guitar.


Hi Eric...

Thanks very much for the clips and thanks to the board for hosting them.

So far, I have only looked at the guitar clip.

I was able to kinda-sorta view it in Vegas 4, and with a good deal of finagling, was able to export it to DV format to actually run the video.

This clip was well composed and colorful (ahem!), but I thought it was too blurry to use in an actual project.

Can you tell us whether it's feasible, given enough trail and error, to do this shot without so much blur? Maybe as a result of a slower camera movement?

PS I would also try to get a little more convincing "playing" behavior out of my talent...

I posted a couple of short clips here.

http://www.advancedcomputerdesigns.com/hd1demo.m2t

http://www.advancedcomputerdesigns.com/hd1demo2.m2t

This is just home movie type stuff but it shows what the camera can do by just locking the shutter @ 1/60 of a second in manual mode. The second clip was taken very close to dusk so there is a lot of shadows. BTW my camera is the non-pro HD1.

Mike

The blurry effect comes from the 1/30th shutter speed mostly. I now tend to use 1/60th for moving camera... :)

As for the convincing playing... I was so close to the guitar with the camera that I doubt he could have done better.

Mitch Gould wrote:
"This clip was well composed and colorful (ahem!)"

Well, as I pointed out in my review (head to head with the DVX100), the HD10 has good colors but less saturated than the DVX, so in my humble opinion it had a better film look because colors are too high to my taste on the DVX (as it is on most 3ccd's miniDVs). I believe colors react pretty similarily to good DV but slightly less saturated.

Oh, by the way, VLC is a good player to see these images: http://www.videolan.org

Let me know your opinion on the other shots ;)

Well done Mike! I have worked a little with the HD1 and I thought the edge artefacts where very bad but in your case they where less apparent than I would have imagined. The flower shot is very nice, not much chroma compression artefacts, very good indeed. You seem to know how to handle your baby. Though I still prefer the HD10 I think you improved a lot my opinion on the HD1.

Thanks Eric,
I also used a circular polarizer on both clips however I probably should have taken it off on the boat clip because of the lighting conditions. The polarizer does also seem to cut down some of the crush in the highlights and reduces EE effect caused by over exposing in bright, high contrast conditions. If you don’t use the polarizer to remove glair it seems like it can be used as a kind of adjustable ND filter. I think the filter also slightly improves color saturation.

Like others I almost sent the camera back because of the default auto shutter being so fast causing the jitter that everyone complains about. Then I found out here the suggestions to lock the camera @ 1/60 and life will be good and they were right.

I think JVC should consider making a firmware change and re-evaluate the algorithm used to determine shutter speed in full auto-mode because using the camera fully automatic is simply unacceptable with any kind of motion and I am sure have resulted in lost sales.

I come from a still camera background prior to all automatic everything so it does not bother me to adjust the camera manually although the I do agree with others this cameras idea of manual is not what I consider full manual. Manual focus is bit weird the way it works but once you get the hang of it I can deal with it.

I project the image with a NEC XG CRT projector on a 110" diagonal screen and have actually NOT bored the neighbors to death with the home movies they have stared in. I frequently have neighborhood movie night in my home theater and during the winter with a foot of snow on the ground it will be fun to play some of the summer shot.

Mike

Yeah, I had guessed you might have used a polariser. Of course, as the edge artefacts appear in too contrasted bright areas, the polariser would help a lot lowering them. I think that 1/60th is the right speed for most situations because there is a blurry effect on the 1/30th.

Mitch, by the way, the blurry effect on the guitar shot is not that present when the clip is seen on a monitor (HD or SD). It looks pretty well.

Eric, sorry for my confusion here: did you take those shots with an HD1 or the HD10U? They look fantastic. I almost think I like the slight added sharpening if it's an HD1.

It was a HD10,

Thanks for the comments Kevin.

i downloaded the videolan app, and i get errors when trying to open any of the sample m2t files posted...is there something i need to know about using this program?

I normally open the app, drag the files in the opened playlist (the button with two arrows, one up and one down on a macintosh) of VLC and play them without problem, it does not recognise them on drag and drop though. The other possibility is to rename them to .m2v and drag them on the app's icon.

thanks for your help...I tried both methods, tried renaming them...basically I downloaded the .m2t files, and tried both renaming, and just keeping as is and dragging to the playlist...in both cases, it starts to open a window, and then crashes with the following error:

"The instruction at "0x0051e59f" referenced memory at "0x035a3000". The memory could not be "written".

this crashes the entire program...

VLC is a very complex program since it can be programmed in many ways. You might have done someting in the prefs or else, I suggest flushing it and reinstalling it. I had a similar problem at the beginning and it worked out fine after reinstallation.

Just a quick reply to put the threads (on Paul Mogg's footage and mine) up so people searching for sequences can look at them. It seems lately, only stills are available...

The clips may have been moved from one of our servers to another. I'll ask our server swami to track them down. We still have 'em online, or at least, we should.

It works now, for those interrested.