1ccd vs 3ccd

[George Chapanian]

hi everyone im new here

besides low light is their a huge diffrence between 1ccd and 3ccd.can someone tell the diffrence between the hv10 footage and the xh-a1 in default setting,daylight recording.thank you

[Chris Hurd]

The difference between single-chip and three-chip camcorders lies mainly in how they reproduce color.

Keep in mind that the image sensor is a monochromatic device and doesn't know what "color" is. Therefore it needs a color filter. There are two kinds of single-chip camcorders... those with complimentary (CMY) color filters and those with primary (RGB) color filters. If the camcorder has an RGB color filter, then it will build color information the same way that a three-chip camcorder does, through the Red, Green and Blue color wavelengths. So the answer to your question is yes, *if* the single-chip camcorder has an RGB color filter. The Canon HV10 and HV20 have these primary color filters.

See http://www.dvinfo.net/canonoptura/ar...ra70-2.php#rgb for a little more info.

[Rich Dykmans]

I've been impressed by the HV10 in good contrasty outdoor light (magic light) not only in resolution but color reproduction when compared to my HVX200. It doesn't have the dynamic range in the shadow detail but it's pretty amazing for what it is. After pushing the levels a little it intercuts in fairly well.

[Paulo Teixeira]

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the 1 chip camcorders that you see aren’t CCD but are CMOS based. CMOS are much cheaper but the color reproduction is much better which is why CMOS camcorders look just as good as 3 CCD camcorders.

[Chris Hurd]

And another thing to keep in mind is the digital still camera industry... all digicams from point & shoots to Digital SLRs are single-chip RGB. It won't be too long from now (hopefully) when the video camera industry will follow suit.

[Graham Risdon]

Hadn't thought about the still camera comparison... Not sure I agree that single chip is as good as 3 chip - I can't think of any pro camcorder that is single chip?

That said, if they do develop single chip to the same quality as 3, it should bring the cost down a bit!! Somehow, I can't see Sony et al doing that!!

All the best

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Graham Risdon

Hadn't thought about the still camera comparison... Not sure I agree that single chip is as good as 3 chip - I can't think of any pro camcorder that is single chip?

Besides the Sony A1u, this:
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=85486
And lest not forget about the RED, because if I remember correctly, it’s going to use only 1 CMOS imager which is one of the reasons its going to be very affordable for what it can do.

[Pieter Jongerius]

....so many questions now...

isn't the big advantage of 3CCD that color resolution is 3 times as high?

- Or does the color separation process by prisma introduce a loss?
- Or is CCD a more noise-prone technology than CMOS?
- Or does YUV depth compression result in enough loss to diminish the 3CCD gain?
- Or do CMOS sensors generally have higher pixel values thus compensating for the color-res loss?

I'm not asking for an 'encyclopedia' (in fact the theory can be found on the web of course), but If you have any thoughts on this...

(and we may want to move this :)

[Thomas Smet]

In many ways 3CCD is kind of a waste for most shooting. any extra color detail that may be there is instantly lost when compressed to 4:2:0. Even if you did a live capture as 4:2:2 you still loose half the chroma pixels anyway.

1 chip cameras can have interpolated pixels because every other pixel needs to be calculated. For example "GRG" The green pixel where the red pixel is needs to be interpolated to fill it in. This is done by math formulas. 3 chip cameras have the advantage of having every pixel there but "only" if they use the native resolution to begin with. A HD camera that uses for example 3 960x540 pixel chips and uses pixel shift to get to 1920x1080 also uses interpolation. Pixel shift is much better then just normal resizing but it still has pixel blanks that need to be filled. That is why I think a 960x540 3 chip camera is pretty much just as good as a 1920x1080 single chip camera. In fact I think the single chip is better because you still have an accurate 1920x1080 array and only in between pixels need to be calculated. At least one color is accurate for every pixel in the array. Pixel shift kind of depends on certain colors in the scene. If you have a scene with a lot of reds and blues and very little green then the pixel shift will not help as much. This is because the green chip is offset by half a pixel but if the colors do not really contain any green component then it doesn't see it anyways.

Again if you are shooting to tape or pretty much any camera based format you have reduced color anyways so the only time any of us would see the loss of color is if you could somehow yank RGB frames from the camera which none of us can do.

This is why the only HDV/DVCPROHD camera that offers you a true 1x1 pixel representation is the JVC HD100/HD200 series of cameras. But if you record to tape or even uncompressed it doesn't really matter because you loose 1/2 or 3/4 of the color anyways.

[George Chapanian]

thanks for the replys,i read somewhere that the hv10 can get better picture than fx1,what do you guys think.

[Holly Rognan]

Originally Posted by George Chapanian

thanks for the replys,i read somewhere that the hv10 can get better picture than fx1,what do you guys think.

Absolutely! It can get better images than my A1 in good light. But it depends on the shooting scenario.

The HV10 is killer!

[George Chapanian]

but are the color accurate as the a1

[Thomas Smet]

Colors can be very accurate with a single chip camera. I mean the RGB filter in front of the chip passes RGB colors to the DSP. A 3 chip camera uses a prism to split the light into RGB and each chip reads that RGB from each slpit beam of light. In the end it is all reading as RGB. The only difference is that 1 chip cameras have to interpolate every other pixel for each channel. The colors are very accurate, the image just isn't as crisp as it could be due to the interpolated pixels. Remember extreme highend DSLR's are also using a RGB filter with a single chip and these produce images that are very photographic for even some of the most strict pros. Even the interpolated pixels can be accurate because they are based on formulas used from the other pixels in that area.

Canon is well known to create some very accurate colors with it's DSLR cameras using a RGB filter so it is safe to say they kind of know what they are doing.

[George Chapanian]

how is the hv10 in low light

[Yi Fong Yu]

very interesting discussion =D.

lemme add to the questions:
1. what's this business with chroma? what is it such a difficult thing to both capture and reproduce in general?

2. been reading about industry moving towards 36-bit color (cause HDMI1.3 standards, new LED/technology displays coming out). what will this mean for recording?