Two new pieces of footage from the GR-HD1 have been posted at:
http://www.aquamonkey.com/gr-hd1_ts2.zip
http://www.aquamonkey.com/gr-hd1_ts3.zip

To me, these are a big improvement over the previously posted footage and seem to show an incredible lack of picture noise for the low light conditions which they were apparantly shot under. Also no visible "macroblocking" that someone reported seeing previously. I've got to say I'm more impressed than before, I'm looking forward to some outdoor shots that the guy says he's going to post shortly.

<<<-- I'm looking forward to some outdoor shots that the guy says he's going to post shortly. -->>>

This is a USA site while AquaMonkey is in Japan -- and they sell aquariums. But, the following is another option:

"The so-called Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH) has many different forms and proponents, but basically argues that the best way of explaining many human features is to see them as aquatic not savannah adaptations."

Paul, the Heuris demo seems not to be HD.

FYI, The links to the GR-HD1 clips are from the http://www.avsforum.com HDTV/HDTV recorders forum, you can follow the thread there if interested. Hopefully soon someone will post something other than darned fish clips!, (but the jellyfish clip looks good anyway) The guy who's posting says he's in Long Beach and has a Japanese model camera.

On the Heuris encoder, they have several demo versions available for download, you have to download the Powerprofessional HD Pro 2.5 (I think that's the right name). I have encoded a couple of test HD clips using it to MPEG2-TS HD format, successfully, it seems to do a very good job.

How can you view these in Media Player? Or do you need something special to view them?

On the Mac you can view them on the VLC media player (shareware). On the PC you can view them using the Elecard player (also shareware), they play very well on either, full screen HD!!

Oh God, the Elecard player. I downloaded that to show MPEG movies during a live theater performance, and little did I know there was a 21-day expiration, and day 21 was the day of the show. What a day.

They are a huge improvement. Well we'll have to reserve final judgment until the final product is released I guess. But word on the street is not good. I was talking to a guy who does a lot of indy work and he said these new cameras are not being serioously considered by anyone for films.

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Moore : I was talking to a guy who does a lot of indy work and he said these new cameras are not being serioously considered by anyone for films. -->>>

Nor should they. No one should shoot 30fps progressive for film.

Nor is that the intended market.

Don't they do 24p?

No. They are intended for HD production.

Isn't that pretty foolish on their part? Why shut out a whole potential market by not including 24p? That can't be that difficult to do.

Just to see if it'd work I loaded all 3 clips into Vegas 4. On my 3Ghz Dell, they playback fine from within Vegas. Vegas 4.0b even added HD project templates. I strung all 3 together on the timeline with a couple dissolves (just to prove it rendered) and rendered to Windows Media 9 720/30p. The resultant file is just under 22 MB and looks pretty damn good!

<<<-- Originally posted by Bob England : Just to see if it'd work I loaded all 3 clips into Vegas 4. -->>>

I haven't installed Vegas 4 yet on my PC so I have a couple of questions.

Did it import the TS files directly?

If not, what apps did you use to prior to Vegas 4?

I would expect Blade-2 support as well.

On the Mac, we are missing a FireWire I/O app.

The jellyfish is wonderful.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Mullen : <<<-- Originally posted by Bob England : Just to see if it'd work I loaded all 3 clips into Vegas 4. -->>>

I haven't installed Vegas 4 yet on my PC so I have a couple of questions.

Did it import the TS files directly?

-->>>

Haven't installed Vegas 4 yet? Shame on you :)

I dropped these TS clips directly on the timeline. I changed the project template to "720/30p" first, so I could see the whole frame. Works great, but it doesn't play at full framerate on my slow machine. I also added some titles and rendered to WMV 720/30p HD.

///d@

<<<-- Originally posted by Dennis Adams I also added some titles and rendered to WMV 720/30p HD.
-->>>

With the right graphics card, I think you could play your WM9 movie directly to an HD projector.

If so, rather than go back to tape -- you could save movies to a harddrive. And move the disk????

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Mullen : With the right graphics card, I think you could play your WM9 movie directly to an HD projector. -->>>

Steve:

Seems reasonable, via the DVI or VGA connections. I'm sure some of the Home Theater PC (HTPC) folks are already trying this. I haven't been on the HTPC forums lately. The new Terminator 2 Extreme DVD (coming out soon?) has an HD WMV disc, currently only playable on PCs, and also on the forthcoming WMV DVD players.

///d@

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Mullen : <<<-- Originally posted by Bob England : Just to see if it'd work I loaded all 3 clips into Vegas 4. -->>>

I haven't installed Vegas 4 yet on my PC so I have a couple of questions.

Did it import the TS files directly?
-->>>

Yes, they import directly. In the Import Media window, you just have to set the Files of Type dropdown to All Files.

I have also played with these files in Blade 2.1, but I haven't tried exporting them from it yet. Blade seems to have a somewhat more traditional NLE interface than Vegas for what that's worth.

Also, I have the JVC HM-DH30000U DVHS deck so I've transferred these files via firewire from my PC using the shareware DVHSTool and viewed them on my Pioneer Elite HD rearscreen. Though not quite as sharp as 1080i broadcasts they look pretty damn good and you're right, the jellyfish is wonderful!
I'm at home on both Macs and PCs (my laptop is a Titanium G4) but I have to admit Windows XP is further along in it's support of consumer HiDef. It comes with a driver to support the JVC via Firewire. And while the Mac is missing a FireWire I/O app, there are several for Win XP as well a nice little shareware app, Murdoc Cutter for cutting segments (commercials?) out of transport streams (it's Japanese though, and there's no English instructions so it takes alittle time to figure out). There are a number of HD tuner PCI cards that record the MPEG2 transport streams to hard disk and transferring these files to and from DVHS is not difficult. Anyone interested in this subject should visit the following link:
http://www.webtc.com/DVHS/default.htm
JVC is smart to use transport streams over DVB-ASI as a means of transfer from the HD camcorder to it's DVHS deck as it seems to be fast becoming a defacto standard. And with even the new Blu-Ray HD DVD standard using MPEG2 transport streams, I'm thinking/hoping there will be little difficulty in transferring from the JVC HD camcorder to Blu-Ray HD DVDs.
Now if they'd just hurry up and start selling the cameras here!

<<<-- Originally posted by Bob England : Also, I have the JVC HM-DH30000U DVHS deck so I've transferred these files via firewire from my PC using the shareware DVHSTool and viewed them on my Pioneer Elite HD rearscreen. Though not quite as sharp as 1080i broadcasts they look pretty damn good and you're right, the jellyfish is wonderful!
-->>>

Wow! You've gone further than anyone!

Looks like we need a Mac version of "DVHSTool" but with the addition of a function to output/input regular MPEG-2 files. (Of course we need an HD MPEG-2 codec for QT!!!)

1) Do you have any idea of what audio formats can go with an Apple MPEG-2 file. AC3? MPEG1 Layer2? WAV? AIF?

2) Please lert me know how it goes with Blade-2. I much prefer it. I pointed Jamie Carr the way to the TS shareware so I'm hoping he'll get the functions added soon.

Is there a windows MPEG2_TS encoder? or a program that will output that format? If so could someone post what and where it is please?

Paul

A little FYI for our Mac friends...
Vegas can pull QT source directly on to the timeline so....
If you want to get you content moved to Windows Media 9 HD, hook up with your friendly local Vegas user and don't feel left out.
Be nice to see what something encoded with a 10bit BlackMagic codec would look like in WinHD.

About you guys talking about this camera for film production, even if it was capable of 24p, why would you want to use it anyway? Maybe it's resolution is good, but it's still a 1CCD camera.

<<<--
Yes, they import directly. In the Import Media window, you just have to set the Files of Type dropdown to All Files.
-->>>

When these MPEG2 based camcorders were first announced, there was the strong feeling that editing could not be Frame Accurate.

Normal MPEG2 has a 15 frame GOP which would mean that only 2 frames per second would be visible as we STEPPED through a file. (When we learned the JVC has a 6 frame GOP we were happy that we would be able to to see 5 frames in every second.)

But here we are bringing this MPEG2 into our current NLE's and we are able to STEP through every frame in either direction!

But it's more than STEPPING at issue. It's the actual cutting of an MPEG2 stream!

When we MARK on anything other than an I-frame -- what happens when we render? Clearly the frame we have Marked has only part of the information needed. I find it hard to believe that, during rendering, the decoder is smart enough to obtain the previous I frame and compute all the intermediate frames up to our Marked frame -- and from there until the next I-frame.

1) Were we wrong 2 months ago? Are MPEG2 decoders able to construct every frame? (That would mean it keeps a GOP worth of IBP frames available so it can construct any frame.)

2) Are we wrong now? Is it possible that the KDDI MPEG2 capture application does a conversion from IBP frame to I-frame during capture? If that is the case, then we are inputting I-frame-only MPEG2. This would be a nice bonus if true.

Are there any tools that could be used to check the GOP structure of a file?

Steve:

A well constructed NLE MPEG decoder can reconstruct any random frame, be it an I, P, or B frame. The decoder will have to seek to the I frame at the start of the GOP and construct frames forward to the desired frame. The MPEG reader in Vegas is able to do this. However, it's not as efficient as I-frame only formats, such as DV, and up until recently, MPEG was never intended as an edit source format.

The trick is during rendering, to be able to re-use existing GOPs for segments without FX, transitions, compositing, etc. Only a limited number of tools can do that (Vegas currently cannot, and re-renders MPEG sources), but I suspect many more tools will do this in the future, if MPEG streams intended for editing catch on (such as the JVC HD1 and the Sony MicroMV cameras).

///d@

<<<-- Originally posted by Dennis Adams : Steve:

A well constructed NLE MPEG decoder can reconstruct any random frame, be it an I, P, or B frame. The decoder will have to seek to the I frame at the start of the GOP and construct frames forward to the desired frame. The MPEG reader in Vegas is able to do this. However, it's not as efficient as I-frame only formats, such as DV, and up until recently, MPEG was never intended as an edit source format.
-->>>

So our computers have become fast enough that we simply don't see the reconstruction. Nice.

<--- The trick is during rendering, to be able to re-use existing GOPs for segments without FX, transitions, compositing, etc. Only a limit number of tools can do that (Vegas currently cannot, and re-renders MPEG sources) -->>>

So during the Export, the decoder generates (using previous I frames as needed) all frames which are then re-encoded. For those of use who used Premiere V2 with a VideoVision, the Export render wait is familiar.

The problem then is HOW to see full-speed playback of MPEG-2 in our NLE. Can Vegas do this?

What's strange is that MPEG-2 on DVDs play at full-speed, but MPEG-2 in a Timeline doesn't. I wonder if Apple's MPEG-2 decoder doesn't use AlitiVec?

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Mullen : The problem then is HOW to see full-speed playback of MPEG-2 in our NLE. Can Vegas do this? -->>>

On a fast enough machine, yes. I would venture to guess that next year, CPUs will be fast enough to do this in realtime in a software NLE. I was seeing about 20 fps from Windows Media 720/30p source media in Vegas, on the 3GHz Pentium 4 workstations we had at NAB. I would have liked to try the HD1 footage on the identical machine, but didn't have the chance.

Regarding PC-based DVD playback, they are often faster than an NLE because they use hardware assistance for the video overlay display, YUV->RGB conversion, and sometimes DCT decoding. The player software (and the PCs memory bus) often never needs to touch decompressed images.

///d@

<<<-- Originally posted by Dennis Adams

Looks like I need to install Vegas and quickly learn to use it. :)

It would seem possible for an NLE to, before Export, scan down a timeline and "render" every cut-point where the incoming clip did not natrually begin on an I-frame.

This assumes, of course, that it is legal to generate a short GOP. I've always wondered if this was acceptable.

Thus, cuts would be treated like any transition that must be rendered. Then unmodified MPEG-2 would be able to be simply copied to the Export file.

In fact, the little "cuts render" could be done automatically so one could view the Timeline in realtime (assuming a fast enough CPU).