I'm new to this whole thing and I've recently started making short films as a hobby. I'm using my Sister's old camcorder at the moment with no other real equipment... save Premiere Pro 1.5 (Soon to be 2.0).

Would the HV20 be a good camera to move up to? I know that I'll immediately see a big improvement in picture quality. I also plan on picking up the shoe horn mic attachment as well, eventually, maybe some lens attachments. That means the sound I'll be getting should be improved as well.

Is this camera a wise step up? I'm really unfamiliar with the professional cameras and don't have 3 grand to spend.

Would the HV20 be a good camera to start off with if you were in my position?

Opinions wanted...

Thanks,

Mike

Yes, it is a fabulous camcorder, the best under $2,500 IMO. It has just about everything a consumer would want and the picture quality and set of controls that professionals desire. You can't really go wrong. This cam wont be obsolete for at least years, even when ACVHD starts to bleed through more to professional users. I am planning on getting one or two to supplement my XHA1. It doesn't look professional, but the features are monumental at this price point.

Without the slightest ounce of doubt, the HV20 would be a great and wise upgrade IMHO!

With the HV20 your hobby becomes an addiction...a healthy addiction that is! :)

Seriously, it sounds like it would suit you perfectly.

Thanks!

One thing though, how do you think it will compare to the new JVC HD Everio?
I'm looking for the camera with the best image.

The file transfer convenience is nice with the JVC but I want the best possible image.

From what I've read... it's the HV20.

Thanks again,

Mike

Mike:

Mike, my understanding is the Canon will have 24fps capability, which is something that will take your films to a more film like level. Don't know if the Everio does that. Although I am a Sony owner, for this price range, I thing the new HV20 is the thing to go with...

The JVC HD7 is the only camcorder that has just about every thing you need to produce excellent work including a microphone input built directly into the body and a focusing ring. It records straight to MPEG2 at a resolution of 1920X1080 at a variable bit rate of about 26.6MBPS that goes up to 30MBPS verses 1440X1080 and a constant bit rate of 25MBPS of HDV. So far this is the camcorder to beat as far as features is concerned.

http://www.jvc.com/presentations/everiohd/feat.html
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20070208/127547/

Plus, there are extra features that JVC haven’t announced yet.

If you're thinking of the HV20 as anything other than a really nice home movie cam, the biggest question marks are the lowlight ability and the manual controls.

The HV10's lowlight ability is ... well, not good to put it simply. The HV20 is reportedly an improvement in this area but until someone uses it, it's hard to say how much of an improvement.

As for the manual controls, on the HV10, manual focus and exposure are controlled via the little menu dial at the back of the camera, and it's difficult to use (a) without making the entire camera shake a lot, and (b) with enough precision to properly focus, so as to make it almost useless. Luckily the Instant Auto focus is quite good, so for a home movie cam, it's great, but as a camera to make short films, I'd think you'd want much better focus control. The HV20 appears to be an improvement -- though it doesn't have a focus ring, such as the one on the Sony HC1, they have located a decent-sized focus wheel up near the lens, so that it appears that, if one were cradling the camera with the left hand, focus adjustments could be made using the side of your left thumb in a more precise manner than the HV10. Not sure if this wheel is used to control exposure also.

Those reservations aside, I'm excited by the picture quality (as good or better than HV10, which is phenomenal), mic input, and the 24p.

The JVC HD7 is the only camcorder that has just about every thing you need to produce excellent work including a microphone input built directly into the body and a focusing ring. It records straight to MPEG2 at a resolution of 1920X1080 at a variable bit rate of about 26.6MBPS that goes up to 30MBPS verses 1440X1080 and a constant bit rate of 25MBPS of HDV. So far this is the camcorder to beat as far as features is concerned.



Or one could get a used HC1 for a lot less $$ ...

The JVC HD7 is the only camcorder that has just about every thing you need to produce excellent work including a microphone input built directly into the body and a focusing ring. It records straight to MPEG2 at a resolution of 1920X1080 at a variable bit rate of about 26.6MBPS that goes up to 30MBPS verses 1440X1080 and a constant bit rate of 25MBPS of HDV. So far this is the camcorder to beat as far as features is concerned.


How does that compare to the HV20 & DV25 compression? I thought that was better...

yes but a let down in the sensor department.. 1.5x3CCD vs 1.2/7 for latitude.

another factor for budget filmmaker is BACKUP! you cant trust HDD, DVD, BlueRay etc and LTO's are not cheap. think of a MiniDV tape as a MiniLTO you might get the occasional drop outs but no CRC errors that kills all..
i will wait till Holographic storage becomes the norm before adapting to anything HDD based because storage is not cheap nor reliable.

The JVC HD7 only uses chips that are 960x540 pixels and uses pixel shift. While pixel shift works to a certain degree it is anywhere near as good as using a raw 1920x1080 sensor to begin with. Perhaps the JVC may perform better in low light due to less pixels per chip and 3 chips but the HV20 should beat it hands down in well lit footage.

Also who is to say if any specific NLE will support the video from the JVC camera. Some NLE's may be limited to HDV specs and wouldn't work with the footage. footage from the HV20 however will work with any normal HDV capable NLE right out of the box.

Finally you start to run into the problem HVX200 users have with backing up footage. Where do you store and backup all the video from that camera harddrive? With tapes you end up with a $3.00 backup for every 60 minutes worth of HD footage. While blank DVD disks are cheap it would be a pain to have to backup 4.7 GB disks one at a time. What if you shot 20 hours worth of footage for one project? That would make one heck of a lot of recorded DVD's for backup. If you are lucky enough to have a Blu-Ray burner the disks are expensive and they still take a lot of time to burn each disk. Tape is going to be tough to beat for at least a few years yet mainly due to the cheap $3.00 backup costs.

Besides I question if those chips would even resolve the amount of detail to make a difference between 1440 and 1920. You may at best gain a few % of extra lines of detail and thats it.

Tape is still the only reasonable answer to common Joes dealing with a lot of filming. Ask the Panny HV200 people what they are doing with all their footage. 60 gigs will on the camera will give you maybe 4 hours. Now you stop and offload, I don't know how long that takes, then what. Your footage is on your 150 gig hard drive, and what to you do with that ? Tape is still the answer because it is a safe storage medium, that you can go back to time and time again.

yes but a let down in the sensor department.. 1.5x3CCD vs 1.2/7 for latitude.

another factor for budget filmmaker is BACKUP! you cant trust HDD, DVD, BlueRay etc and LTO's are not cheap. think of a MiniDV tape as a MiniLTO you might get the occasional drop outs but no CRC errors that kills all..
i will wait till Holographic storage becomes the norm before adapting to anything HDD based because storage is not cheap nor reliable.
So are you also saying that the XD-CAM discs aren’t reliable as well.

The JVC HD7 only uses chips that are 960x540 pixels and uses pixel shift. While pixel shift works to a certain degree it is anywhere near as good as using a raw 1920x1080 sensor to begin with. Perhaps the JVC may perform better in low light due to less pixels per chip and 3 chips but the HV20 should beat it hands down in well lit footage.

Actually, the pixels are 1016x558 and it’s a little bit higher than the HVX200. You don’t hear too many HVX200 users complaining about the picture quality.



Also who is to say if any specific NLE will support the video from the JVC camera. Some NLE's may be limited to HDV specs and wouldn't work with the footage. footage from the HV20 however will work with any normal HDV capable NLE right out of the box.

Within a few months we may see some NLEs allowing you to edit AVCHD files natively and that’s a whole lot harder to edit than the MPEG2 files of the JVC. Beside, A lot of NLEs should be fully compatible with the HD7 by the time it comes out.

yes but with the HVX200 look how there is very little difference between recording 720p and 1080p. You would think there would be a huge difference but there isn't. The HVX200 does look very nice and nice a nice clean soft look to it but it isn't as detailed as other cameras. Perhaps this is ok for some people but we also have to remember the HVX200 is a much higher end camera with 1/3" chips. It is easier to pixel shift larger chips. The smaller the chip is the less light that will hit the fraction of the pixel due to the shifting.

Paulo would you buy a SD camera if it had 360x240 chips with pixel shift? Pixel shift was used on SD cameras to enhance the already native resolution to enrich the image and make it look slightly over sampled. With HD cameras pixel shift is being used to create pixels and detail. Clearly two different methods of use.

So are you also saying that the XD-CAM discs aren’t reliable as well.

no, i wasn't aware of XDCam grade discs. i don't know how this bluray is gonna pan out but i have had very bad experience with DVDR, HDD to even think of them as an archive solution.

but as mentioned for the budget filmmaker minidv is very cost effective and reliable. even if HDD fails, go back to your trusty tapes and transfer again.

I will be buying an HV20 to replace my HV10 as soon as its out. On the subject of the GZ-HD7 Everio 1) it does not record Progressive Video (which is ridiculous since the JVC uses native Progressive CCDs anyway and over 1/2 of all internal video processing is done at 1080p) and 2) because the CCDs native resolution at 960x540 is low, despite using Pixel Shifting. To do a "TrueHD" camera with a fujinon lens, etc, and then NOT use full res 1920x1080 imagers in it, does not make sense.

I shot regularly with the Panny HVX200 that is an absolutely fabulous camera (also using 960x540 imagers and pixel shifting like the JVC). However, let's face it, when it comes to sheer image resolution and detail, my current HV10 completely smashes it. JVC did almost everything right on the design of the GZ-HD7 and they could have made it "THE" 1080 camera and get rid of all competition. But no. Low-res imagers and no progressive recording... nothing will touch the HV20, specailly for the price. I think Canon is on the right path to rule the Consumer and Prosumer HD markets and I feel the HV20 will be one of the most important groundbreaking products of the year as far as price, features and overall quality.

There are many other people on this board that own the HVX200 who would say that its picture quality is much better than all of the HDV camcorders but its also true that what looks good to one person may not look so good to someone else.

Another example you can use is the FX7. During the day when you’re shooting outside, its interlaced images are better than the XH-A1 and its pixels are lower. Here are some examples. http://www.fxsupport.de/15.html. That’s just comparing the XH-A1 to the FX7 with smaller imagers. The V1u is even better.

You can argue that it’s because the FX7 is using CMOS images while the XH-A1 uses CCDs but in the case of the JVC HD7, the electronics inside is completely new.
“In the development in a bid to realize 1920 x 1080i recording, JVC started from entire revision of major parts, namely the camera block including the lens and prism as well as circuits capable of 1920 x 1080i video processing, among others.”

Anyway, like I said the pixels are 1016x558 although the effective pixel count is 976x548.
“The camcorder uses a 3-CCD camera system. The CCD is a 1/5-inch model and its aspect ratio is 16:9. Its total resolution is 0.57 megapixels (effective resolution 0.53 megapixels = 976 x 548) and output is progressive. Of the CCDs respectively dedicated to R (red), G (green) and B (blue) recording, only the G-dedicated CCD's optical position is offset and fixed from the other CCDs' by one-half pixel in both vertical and horizontal axis, which is so-called "Pixel Shift structure" (already employed for the "GZ-MG505"). JVC secured total resolution of 2032 x 1116 and effective resolution of 1952 x 1096 pixels through this technology.”

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20070208/127547/

We shouldn’t be downgrading this camcorder before we see any images and JVC have specifically said that there are features that they don’t want the public to know about yet so who know, their may actually be modes such as 720 60p, 720 30p and even 720 24p and we're not going to find out about it until its almost released.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1586994789220018918&q=camcorderinfo&hl=en

no, i wasn't aware of XDCam grade discs. i don't know how this bluray is gonna pan out but i have had very bad experience with DVDR, HDD to even think of them as an archive solution.

XDCAM discs are Blu-Ray by the way.

Just like everybody else, I want the prices of standard Blu-Ray discs to fall but as is, it’s still very affordable, just 15 dollars for a 25 gig disc and 37 dollars for a 50 gig disc although 600 dollars is very pricy for a burner but it will go down very quickly.

I have a question. Can I use the S-400 (firewire?) port on my laptop to capture video from the HV20?

Is this the best way to do just that?

I want to know what options I have, and what would be best.

Thanks,

Mike

I have a question. Can I use the S-400 (firewire?) port on my laptop to capture video from the HV20?

Is this the best way to do just that?

I want to know what options I have, and what would be best.

Thanks,

Mike
Yes, it is the main way to transfer your video to the computer natively. For HDV video, you just need to make sure you have SP2 installed in Windows XP.

Yes, it is the main way to transfer your video to the computer natively. For HDV video, you just need to make sure you have SP2 installed in Windows XP.It's a new laptop and SP2 is installed, I keep it fully up to date.

Thanks, Paul.

Any othe tips for editing HDV?

I have 2 GB's of RAM and an Intel Centrino Duo 1.6 Ghz processor. Will that be enough? Using Premiere Pro 2.0

Thanks,

Mike

Your Processor may or may not be powerful enough if you had only 1 gig but the fact that you have 2 gigs of RAM, you should be fine.

Pana has just announced a small AVCHD 3ccd cam that uses mem cards 44/88 min that off load to a 40gig HDD. JVC has is mentioned 3ccd HDD model using better then HDV compression, and Canon with the HV-20 with HDV tape. All three cams are very exciting with each their pro's and con's.
The Canon will have the worst low light performance, but also will cost half of the $ of the other two cams. One thing for sure nothing will be as cheap as the Canon. Consumers are migrating to HDD cams because of ease of use. They want the footage into their PC now, not in an hour. Tape has its merits for some as an achieving medium. The Canon may very well have the sharpest image, but the worst manual controls. As far as features, frame rates/progressive or not, we have to wait for the actual spring release of these little puppies to really compare.

Your Processor may or may not be powerful enough if you had only 1 gig but the fact that you have 2 gigs of RAM, you should be fine.

Thanks again, Paul!

The Canon may very well have the sharpest image, but the worst manual controls. As far as features, frame rates/progressive or not, we have to wait for the actual spring release of these little puppies to really compare.You are probably right... but this..

Adding to the professional look of the HD video captured by the HV20 HD Camcorder is Canon's Smooth Zoom Speed Control. Offering users a choice of three pre-set zoom speeds, the zoom speed control helps ensure that no matter how hard the user may press the zoom button, the pace of the zoom will remain smooth and constant.
...sounds promising. LINK (http://www.usa.canon.com/templatedata/pressrelease/20070131_hv20.html)


The Canon will have the worst low light performanceIs that true? I thought the HV20 improved that quite a bit. Still nowhere near the others?

Between the lowlight capabilities and picture quality, it’s really a tossup between the Canon HV20, Sony HC7, JVC HD7 and the Panasonic AG-HSC1U. We can all agree or disagree about how the picture quality is going to be but one thing we should all agree on is waiting until there are proper reviews for each camcorder before anybody makes the final decision.

Anyway, by the time every one of these camcorders is out, we will see more camcorders in NAB since it will be held in April.

Look at the miracles they are now doing in post with even mini-dv (such as Inland Empire). I'm sure, for enough money, they could make hv20 footage look like super16mm.

Look at the miracles they are now doing in post with even mini-dv (such as Inland Empire). I'm sure, for enough money, they could make hv20 footage look like super16mm.In some ways HV20 footage could look as good as or better than super 16 (roughly the same resolution, but not as much grain), but the dynamic range and color depth will be inferior, at least in theory (how noticeable the difference is depends on a host of factors). You can't, however, compare the HV20's lens to Zeiss, Cooke, Canon, etc., super 16 glass, which costs 10 to 15 times the price of the HV20. But getting the most out of the HV20 shouldn't cost a lot more than any other film-out. Most of the quality is achieved through the same basic techniques used to shoot film or any form of video (e.g., adequate lighting, proper focus, and [specifically for video] avoid excessive edge enhancement). In defense of the HV20, at least it's supposed to support 24p, so a frame-rate conversion or shooting with PAL gear would be unnecessary for film-out.