Just purchased and have begun to use my new HV10. 20 minutes of taping so far but I am getting sporatic dropouts on the hdv tape. One scene will be great and the next will look like SD but filming in HDV with sparkels all over the dark areas both taken from the exact location, etc. It is doing this whether I'm filming inside or outside. I get 2 good shots and 1 speckeled on average. I am using top of the line Panasonic AY-DVM63AMQ tape. The manual says this speckaling can happen when close to floresent lights but this is not the case. Suggestions as to the problem?? Thanks in advance.

Do you have any examples you can post.

I believe this has to do with dark scenes and dark objects with the CMOS chip. I'm not sure if it's from the camera gain or what, but the same artifact happens with some still digicams in low light situations, you can get whilte sparkles in your picture. Most have a noise reduction feature that looks for these sparkles and replaces those pixels with black or adjacent pixels or something. Guess that's too much processing to do in real time with moving HD video.

The low light is very ugly- it's not just added grain from video gain, but it looks like noise, there are vertical patterns- almost looks like analog RF interference or something- of course all of this is displayed clearly on a large screen HD set. I think this is what you're seeing when you say it almost looks like you're now shooting SD. I agree. The camera is also quick to drop the shutter speed very low, causing strobing.

i'm very disappointed that this occurs with this otherwise great camera- it may prompt me to return it.

Lee and Mike. Thank you for replying.

Lee, I don't have anything to post at this time. Still trying to get some more shots for examples.

Mike. As I study the different scenes, I think you have hit it right on the head. As the light decreases in a scene the noise/sparkels increase. Then come the vertical lines as you describe. The picture has gone basically HDV to SD quality. The outdoor day shots are fantastic. As real as you can get. Disappointing otherwise.

For you guys that are not happy about the camera automatically dropping the shutter speed in low-light, this can be fixed. Simply go in to the menu and you'll find a setting for slow shutter speed. Turn it off and the camera won't drop below 1/60 unless you tell it to.

Blue sparkles, primarily in dark areas?
Think it's noise from the CMOS chip in low light. I've seen it too, at night.
Slow down the shutter and it helps a lot... but then you get strobing...

The funny thing about that strobing is that it was the precise reason why I've disliked cams in the progressive mode (25p etc.). I bought the first HDV cam from JVC and wound up returning it due to the progressive nature of its video and its inability to capture smooth rapid motion. Yet for some people it doesn't seem to bother them. Each to his own I guess.

Could it be a bad tape or maybe a bad sensor?
I have the HV10 and have not experienced any sparkles shooting on the same Panasonic tape. When you say "low light" are you talking about indoor room light or outdoor night shots? I have found the camera perfectly acceptable under indoor incandescent light (better then expected actually)

I have noticed noise in black areas when trying to shoot footage of the NYC skyline for example, but it just looks like the camera is adding too much gain instead of leaving black as black. (I also might not be using the right settings) There was a sample clip of a boa constrictor from the HV10 in low light posted in this thread:Could it be a bad tape or maybe a bad sensor?
I have the HV10 and have not experienced any sparkles shooting on the same Panasonic tape. When you say "low light" are you talking about indoor room light or outdoor night shots? I have found the camera perfectly acceptable under indoor incandescent light (better then expected actually)

I have noticed noise in black areas when trying to tale footage of the NYC skyline for example, but it just looks like the camera is adding too much gain instead of leaving black as black. There was a sample clip of a boa constrictor from the HV10 in low light posted in this thread -that did not show any sparkles.

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=78613&highlight=boa

Thanks for all the input. The sparkels/noise is there virtually all the time as I examine the film closer and closer. Ever so slightly sows up in the darkest portions in an outside day shot and then progressively increases as you move indoors and to extreme as you go to night shots. I have followed everyones suggestions - tried night setting, sunset setting, turned off the auto shutter. Each made no difference. Last night I bought the panasonic head cleaner and tried that. Again no difference. Conclusion: I think I might have gotten a defective HV10. It can happen. I have been working with Brian from Zotz Digital. Great company to work with. Highly recommended.

I can see the sparkle during recording (at night shots) in the LCD monitor, not on playback, so I doubt it's the tape.

That slow shutter setting is greyed out in everything but the auto mode. I set it to off on mine but it's hard to tell at this point if it's disabled when using the AV priority mode. Anyone know anything definitive about this?

John, if you post some samples, even stills, we can make a better assessment.

Lee

Working with Brian from Zotz Digital, we concluded that it was most likely a defective HV10. Brian bent over backwards for me and in the end I returnded it to Zotz. He has had only excellent reports on the HV10. Zotz was out of stock on the HV10's now so I made the jump to the Canon XH 1A. Guess it's my Christmas present along with Fathers Day, birthday, ........ But am I excited now! Great company to deal with. They just proved it to me. Merry Christmas everyone.

Sorry to hear you had a bad unit. My HV-10 has had some sparkels i just think it's really crappy low light with the cmos itself. I have been able to avoid it buy white balance with the on camera light on and not zooming in at all... in fact i shot a blue flame yesterday in total darkness once i get a chance i will post the footage.

good luck with your new cam