Hi there, recently purchased a HVR-V1U, and I've been having some serious growing pains. I was wondering if anyone could help with some settings recommendations for picture profile, ect.

Here are a couple of problems I'm having:

1) I find I'm getting quite a bit of 'bleeding' from colours, especially reds. I previously had a Panasonic DVC-30, so the Sony is definitely a step up. However, I found the Panasonic colours were a bit warmer, and I never seemed to have a problem with bleeding.
I film quite a bit of sports, and just over the past couple of days I've been struggling outdoors while shooting soccer. I've tried the factory setting without a picture profile, the portrait setting etc., and it just doesn't seem to look that great...


2) Indoors shooting in low light... Any recommendations?

2) The volume level for the headphones is very low, even when I've cranked it all the way up. This is a lesser problem, but I figured I'd bring it up as well....

Anyway, the biggie is if anyone can recommend settings right now for outdoor filming, specifically sports. I'm not a techie by any means (obviously lol), but if anyone can help I would appreciate it!

Hello Alex,
Are you shooting in HDV or DV mode? I can imagine getting bleeding in DV and playing on a standard def NTSC monitor, but haven't had that kind of problem with HDV, playing on an HD monitor. Picture Profile could also be called 'Personal Preference' -- and I tend to prefer to use one of the Cine Gammas outside. They compress your whites a bit and seem to smooth out the midtones. Again, that's my personal preference.
I also may 'warm up' the white balance a touch - either electronically or by using bluish 'warm cards' from Vortex Media to white balance.

Low light - try to add some light - don't overexpose, and don't add too much gain - this will make it grainy and nasty. Camera looks great when there's enough light, so try to give it what it needs.

Yes, audio out is on the low side. I bought a little headphone booster from Radio Shack a while back - it plugs into the headphone out and has three places to plug in headphones and an on/off switch.
More importantly, make sure you have good, high effeciency headphones. I use the Sony 7506 (/or V-6) models, and sometimes some very efficient JBL's. I've found most ear buds are too inefficient for the camera's output - with the possible exception of ones from Philips, which seem to be more efficient than most.

Hi Alex,

I would highly recommend getting the V1 hand book by Steve Mullen, it goes through everything in detail all the settings.

A small tip in low light if u need to add up to 15db or even 18db of gain is to enable Cinematone as this smooths out any grain caused by using high Gain settings.

Alex,

I agree with Mark that you should purchase the Steve Mullen ebook "The Videographer and Filmakers HVR-V1 and HDR-FX7 Handbook"

A couple of years ago when I bought two V1u's that was one of my first purchases and well worth the money as he goes into quite a bit of detail on getting the most out of the V1.

I exclusively use my V1 for HDV and have never had any problem with red bleeding on either camera on any shoot in any weather conditions and I have shot everything from indoors to direct sunlight requiring the neutral density 2 filter.

I use a picture profile recommended either in the Mullen book or in a post on a forum a couple of years ago and have never changed it as I liked the result.

The only major change I have made in using my V1's is that the first year I recorded in 24p with the cameras on a triopd of spider mount. When we started using a glidecam and crane the jello effect of the rolling shutter when the camera is moving was horrible and we found taping in 60i reduced the effect significantly.