If there is a way to get the 60p signal recorded then I would forgive this camera for its 1/4" sensors and get it over the Canon A1/G1.

There must be a way, it would be brilliant if it was a simple as firewire or HDMI.

Incase you don't know about this CMOS chip yet, it images 60p 1920x1080 at 4:2:2 then delivers it within the HDV spec on tape at 4:2:2 and 24p. So these chips are doing 60p so there must be a way to extract it.

For a flash video about the chips, see here: http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/7179.html

Some decent information, but the author has rather misunderstood ClearVid, and is apparently unaware it has been used in prior cameras.

"as you cram more, smaller pixels into a tinier sensor chip, the light-sensitivity of each of those pixels suffers, and so does your available dynamic range. The ClearVid sensor addresses this by rotating the photosensitive pixels by 45 degrees, creating a diamond-shaped layout of pixels that can each be somewhat larger than their conventional counterparts."

Simply turning the pixels does not give you any greater area. If you have a 1/4 inch sensor, and divide it into two million pixels you will get up to a two millionth of the area of the full chip on each pixel regardless of shape. For a given vertical and horizontal resolution, as this steals from other aspects of the picture, you can use less pixels (just 1 million in this case) and thus each pixel can be bigger. Perhaps this is the point that was misunderstood.

"and the horizontal resolution of the acquired image is doubled by using the corners of the diamond pixel pattern"

Serious misunderstanding, following the Sony interpretation too literally.

What would you use the 60p for? There is no way of distributing a 60p HD video or even a 60p DVD. You could create a 60i DVD from the 60p but then you might as well then just shot at 60i to begin with. I can see no point at all to having 60p at 1080 except for maybe slow motion or scaling down to 1280x720x60p.

60p for slow motion. This is a huge attraction of the HVX and as the V1 images 60p there must be a way to get it from the chips post tape scaling and compression. We have a FX1 that we use for most of our projects (music vids and short films) and will use it for our upcoming feature film but will rent a HVX to film 60p slow-mo shots.

If the 60p stream could be extracted from this camera then it would be even better than the HVX which only does 60p @ 720.

Bring on 'full' 1080 60p for slow motion I say!

The only way you're going to get 60p from it is through something like the Andromeda. It doesn't output 60p through any other means.

If the 60p stream could be extracted from this camera then it would be even better than the HVX which only does 60p @ 720.
Well, no, because if you were to resort to an andromeda solution, then consider that an andromedized HVX could do 1080p at 60fps, but also any even frame rate from 2 to 60 fps.

60p for slow motion. This is a huge attraction of the HVX and as the V1 images 60p there must be a way to get it from the chips post tape scaling and compression. We have a FX1 that we use for most of our projects (music vids and short films) and will use it for our upcoming feature film but will rent a HVX to film 60p slow-mo shots.

If the 60p stream could be extracted from this camera then it would be even better than the HVX which only does 60p @ 720.

Bring on 'full' 1080 60p for slow motion I say!

But how are you going to record it? HDV would never be able to handle 1080p at 60p. You would have to have at least 50mbits/s for any level of decent quality. You might be able to get by with 35mbit/s but I just don't think it could handle it very well. You would have to use a whole new way of recording the video. 1920x1080p at 60p is not a video standard so therefore there is no way to ever send it through component or even HDMI. Both of those would have to be updated in the industry before 60p would even work. Stop thinking of 60p with this camera it isn't there. Just because the DSP processes 60p doesn't and shouldn't mean anything at all. Besides you do realize that there is a slow motion recording option on this camera that can do even better than 60p? I think the resolution is lower but it might be good enough if you scale down to 720p.

The smooth slowmotion on the camera *will* be bad. Simply bad. If the one CMOS HC3 is anything to go by, as it has the same feature. The slow motion is very smooth and slow, like perfect film cranking but the resolution is dreadful. There is a thread somewhere on these boards where I have seen full res video from the HC3 and then the same shot with the 'smooth slow motion' activated. The resolution is worse than DV, I don't think it would even be watchable on a 29" SD CRT TV.

I wish there was some serious overhaul of this feature but there just won't be. It's a shame that the 'smooth slow motion' couldn't utilise the 60p and record the 3seconds into 12seconds of 24p rather than all the field doubling etc.

Since there is no 1080p 60p recording format yet, what would have been nice is if we could have the option of recording 720p 60p. Since the DSP has the 60p it could have down sampled to 1280x720 and gave us a decent 60p camera if we really do need 60p video. This would have made the V1 the first universal HDV camera that could shoot both HD formats. Of course this would then mean the tapes wouldn't work very well in current SONY HDV equipment but it could have worked as a special format for special needs and I'm sure those who would want to use 720p 60p wouldn't mind the fact that the tapes could only be played from newer HDV equipment.

With that said 1080i can actually be bobbed and down scaled to make some very nice looking 720p 60p video.

Simply turning the pixels does not give you any greater area.

You are not considering the fill-factor. You don't get more physical "area" but with CMOS the key is the "area" that is the photodiode. Moreover, with CCD and CMOS there is the "area" that lies between and above pixels. So there are are at least three "areas" within the chip "area" -- and we have no idea of these sub-areas.

The CMOS chip is 16:9 so the chip is much wider than it tall. Yet, it has about a 1000x1000 pixels. That means either the pixels have an aspect-ratio of 2:1 or the pixel are square but placed (spaced) on a 2000x1000 grid.

We don't know.

Were the fill-factor 50% one could image that half the width of a pixel is the photodiode and half the width of a pixel are the three transistors and other logic. Think of a WIDE diamond divided in half vertically.

This would mean a "pixel" will have a pixel physical aspect-ratio of 2:1 -- and the photodiodes are on a 2000x1000 grid.