I can't say i wasn't warned.
When i mentioned buying an A1 (or any other HDV cam for that matter) i floated the idea on the LAFCPUG (final cut pro users group) only to be bombarded with advice to abandon the idea immediately and get the panasonic HVX200 instead. The reason being that this format does not like motion.
I ignored the advice and bought the Canon.

Generally i'm very happy with the purchase. It produces a lovely image as long as you don't want to start panning or tilting. I took my A1 to a nature reserve and was pleased with the results when the camera was locked off. I was shooting in 25f. I did a couple of pans and can tell you that looking at them on my 23 inch apple cinema display gives me a headache. I'm unsure of the jargon to describe it(artifacting?aliasing?) but i'll call it a smudgy irridescence, along witha nasty judder. I had a moan on the LAFCPUG and was met with a chorus of "i told you so's" from the HVX crowd, many of whom have vastly more experience of the shortcomings of HDV than the fans of it on this site.
As much as i like this camera I'm beginning to question the wisdom of buying into this format. Sure, there's some fine footage posted here, and i'm hugely impressed (and grateful) for Steven Dempsey's presets. I have noted that none of the stuff Steven has posted has any pans in it (from what i've seen at least). Few other clips i've seen posted put their cameras through any pan or tilt tests, so i'm not sure what other people are experiencing.
I think that switching to 1080i instead of 25f will improve the judder part of the problem, and i've upgraded my tripod system to a Libec LS38 which has a lovely smoothe pan, but i suspect that is only one of the problems, and that HDV is indeed a seriously flawed format when it comes to motion.
If this is so, would it be better to use this camera in SD mode when shooting in motion? I have bought FCP6 so will be able to cut both formats in the same timeline presumably.

Do you watch Discovery HD (one of the highest quality HD broadcast channels)? They surely use material with codecs much better than HDV, and yet all those grass blades and tree leafs are tad sharp only when stationary. Any movement causes visible quality loss...

Your A1 may be loosing some sharpness when shooting action, but it starts with a higher resolution than the HVX200, so stop worrying.

Personally, once I started watching Discovery HD, I stopped fussing around the quality of my V1E picture.

i find the pans on the A1 to be quite smooth.

shooting in 60i, i have not experienced any smear or judder.
fast pans on any cam will produce unpleasing results.

panning a full 180 degrees should take 5 to 7 seconds for the
best image.

Shooting at 60i you're recording 60 different images per second Eric. Dom's shooting progressive at 25 fps by the sound of it, so he must expect far more jerky pans.

You do know that your display was probably set at 60 hz? When displaying 25/50 material on a 60 hz display WILL CREATE judder. It's not in the material itself. You guys really need to careful about how you view your material. Plug it in a pal tv and take another look.

The panasonic hvx200 would show the same judder if used in pal mode on a 60 hz monitor.

HDV's mpeg2 compression WILL NOT create judder. It will make compression artifacts, nothing else...

Other option is that you have your shutter speed too high for 25fps.

You do know that your display was probably set at 60 hz? When displaying 25/50 material on a 60 hz display WILL CREATE judder. It's not in the material itself. You guys really need to careful about how you view your material. Plug it in a pal tv and take another look.

HDV's mpeg2 compression WILL NOT create judder. It will make compression artifacts, nothing else...

In theory, you're right. But I cannot see any difference (motion-wise) watching my 25p on a HD PC monitor (obviously 60 Hz) and a 42" plasma TV (obviously 25/50 Hz compatible, at least in the specs sheet). It beats me, why...

I've only had my A1 for a little over a week, but one of the "getting to know my camera" tests I did the other day involved quite a few pans. I shot in 24F mode, and I was surprised to see the pans turn out smooth (the weak link in the set-up was me).

Granted, I'm a virtual idiot when it comes to shooting, so I can't claim some expertise or special knowledge.

shutter speed, speed of pan, detail of image, camera stability, and i''ll reiterate.. SHUTTER SPEED

ALL progressive cameras, even film cameras, have the tendency to "stutter" the image if not shot correctly

This is true. When shooting 24fps, you need to shoot as if you're shooting with a film camera. Also, the shutter should be at 1/48. If you use the default 1/24, you will get more judder and blurring. The factory defaults are meaningless--take the time to tweak your camera properly.

I don't feel any difference in the look of the pans on the A1 vs the DVX100, personally. As pointed out you have to observe certain rules about pan speed just the same as with 24 fps film, this becomes instinctive after a while. I have directors regularly ask me to pan slower or faster and I have to explain to them that it will strobe if I do that.

I heard many things about HDV but so far I have yet to have experienced serious issues with the format.

I did a test yesterday using the 25f setting on a pan. I set the shutter to 1/50th with auto aperture. The results were smooth looking, and certainly better than if you used a higher shutter speed, but its not an effect I can say I'm all that keen on (not on PC monitor playback anyway).

Just my opinion,

Mark

Unless you have some great work to look at for those HVX users or whomever your talking about...take it with a grain of salt. if it works for you thats good enough. I see alot of HDV/A1 bashing at Dvxuser and the fact is they may have a better codec in their HVX but the work I see done with it doesn't give them much of an edge. The camera ins't everything, ive seen some awful work from the HVX, even with the fancy shmancy DVCProHD.

- Kyle

probably you already know this, but just in case:

- turn off image stabilization
- use a 1/60 or 1/48th shutter
- if you've never shot at 24fps, know that there is a range of pan/motion speeds which produce pathological juddering, and that there are guidelines (also can be found with an internet search) for staying out of this range.

You do know that your display was probably set at 60 hz? When displaying 25/50 material on a 60 hz display WILL CREATE judder. It's not in the material itself. You guys really need to careful about how you view your material. Plug it in a pal tv and take another look.

The panasonic hvx200 would show the same judder if used in pal mode on a 60 hz monitor.

HDV's mpeg2 compression WILL NOT create judder. It will make compression artifacts, nothing else...

Other option is that you have your shutter speed too high for 25fps.

you can trip up the hdv codec with significant motion on complex imagery: waving bushes on a trucking shot, panning waterfall, etc. for these you get macroblocking, but as someone else said, the canon has more resolution than the panasonic, so if you downres to the same res as the panasonic, :) the macroblocking is less dissagreable.

Ok, so its operator error. I need to tweak the camera more. That's a relief.

But its still unnerving to recall that numerous camerman/editors i spoke to who'd tested the HDV cameras opted for the HVX for precisely the reasons i'm now complaining about.
Also, its not the judder that concerns me - I can see the judder when i turn the camera from one side of my living room to the other,and when i put it in 1080i mode it goes away - its the blurry/smudgy look of the image.

My hope is that by following the advice of you guys i can prove them wrong.
Anyway i resent the price of p2 cards on principal.

Bill, my PAL A1 default shutter speed for 25f is 1/50., unless i changed it and forgot.

BTW, this post should probably have been put into the general HDV section since it is not really about the A1 at all, a camera i'm very happy to own. I think i'd be in the same situation with any other HDV camera.

here's a 24f pan with fast motion from my movie, i think it looks absolutely fine and very film like motion... thats my opinion though.

http://www.citizencine.com/films/celestie/pan.mov

that's really impressive Marlon. No sign of the interference evident on my pans. I just watched yours 3 times. Mine gave me a headache each time i watched it.
Looks like i need to experiment some more.
Thanks for that.
Dom

Your pan looks good. And you followed the "rules" of shooting progressive (or film). Follow your subject and you won't see judder.

I own an A1 and have used an HVX on numerous shoots. They're both nice cameras, but I'll take the A1 over the HVX for most shoots (I do like the over and under cranking of the HVX though).

A lot of the early HDV cameras did have motion issues, so did a lot of the early DV cameras (ever pan through a tree with a VX1000?). But, today these are really non-issues in my opinion. A lot of the stuff you hear about HDV today is marketing propaganda from Panasonic and their users - and like I said, I am a Panasonic user (actually shoot with the Varicam quite often).

While HDV is harder to edit than DVCProHD, I think as an acquistion format it is solid. Just transcode in post.

Of course the dirty little secret with the HVX is it needs A TON OF LIGHT. I almost had to do an entire reshoot because we shot "moody" on purpose and got back to edit and the footage (especially in the shadows) looked like Super 8mm film.

In theory, you're right. But I cannot see any difference (motion-wise) watching my 25p on a HD PC monitor (obviously 60 Hz) and a 42" plasma TV (obviously 25/50 Hz compatible, at least in the specs sheet). It beats me, why...

I can see a difference between 50 and 60 in my lcd. It's refresh rate is 60 and 50fps material has small jerks. 25 is more difficult to spot though, that's true.

I've done another test using the 25f setting. I managed to get some much better panning. I used 1/50th shutter and auto aperture with 1/32 ND filter.

Here's a vid (44mb) which also includes some close-ups, all shot at 25f....

www.rcflights.co.uk/Videos1/25f.wmv

Mark

There isn't an HDV camera made which doesn't have issues with high data rate change in the field of view (any other camera system with a prime frame compression regime is similarly afflicted). The 25 mbs data rate limitation on the tape transport means that if every single pixel on every frame is different, somat has to go. With HDV, it's detail.

Pan too fast and you will lose detail, period. Slow pan, you're cool. Get sommat into the forground which ISN'T changeing, even better.

Take the situaion where you're on a lake/ river bank shooting across water. Do a fast pan across the trees on the other side and it will go to hell in a hand basket.

Now, same place, but now you're shooting a racing 4 or 8 coming towards you. Before it gets to you you're zooming out to keep them as stationary in the frame as possible. As they get near to you, the pan starts.

Object: to keep them in the middle of the picture.

Because you're trying to keep them centered in 50 +% of the frame, their data rate is not varying by that much. The background can be going past at a great speed, but because the data rate of 50% of the frame is staying more or less constant, the detail in the background isn't getting trashed (so much).

Add that to the fact that the viewer is looking at the boat and the rowers, not the ever more smeary background whizzing by as they get level with you, and the effects can be ameliorated considerably.

(Er, am I allowed to use "ameliorated" on this site, whoops!)

Of course, it's all made worse by using 24/ 25f (p), the use of which totally eludes me - if "I" wanted to shoot film, I'd buy a Arie/ Panaflex and a shed load of film and go do. I bought an A1 instead and it shoots beautifull 50i.

But hey, that just my PO, so no descents from great heights from the assembled - OK? (er, please!)

Cheers,

Chris

PS. IMHO, the scenario above can be used to great advantage. It's almost like getting back the DOF missing with these cameras. Shoot a subject up close and personal and keep them in the centre frame no matter how fast they're going and in which direction. The background seems to go to s**t and the subject just jumps out as a result - hey presto, instant DOF.