HV20 PAL @ 25p footage

[David Grieser]

I've done a lot of shooting the last few days, just wanted to share the results.

First video is composed of shots around my house:
http://www.ralf-grieser.de/pgod/hv20/in_my_place.zip (XVID @ 8000kbit/s, 25p)

The next one was done at night mostly using low shutter speeds (1/6 - 1/12) and additionally lowering the exposure to get less noise:
http://www.ralf-grieser.de/pgod/hv20/black.zip (XVID @ 5500kbit/s, 25p)

This one was done a few meters away from a friends house, I sometimes used too low shutter speeds (1/25) but it's still good:
http://www.ralf-grieser.de/pgod/hv20/fields.zip (XVID @ 6000kbit/s, 25p)

Get XVID here:
Windows: http://www.koepi.org/XviD-1.1.2-01112006.exe
Mac: http://www.xvidmovies.com/mac/

I always shoot 25p because if I would shoot in 50i, the deinterlacing (which is lossy) would bring it down to 25p anyway.

The first video wasn't "deartifacted" with Magic Bullet, you can see the difference it makes here:
http://www.ralf-grieser.de/pgod/hv20/deartifacted.zip

All shots where captured with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0.

[Javier Gallen]

Nice videos. Rich colors, beautiful landscapes and excellent definition.

They are shot in tv or cinemode?

[David Grieser]

They were all done in Tv mode with contrast set to -1 and adjusted exposure.
I don't like the look of the Cinemode, it's brown, not sharp and colors aren't rich.

You just have to set it up right for every shot to get the best overall brightness so nothing is overexposed.

If I wanted a different look I would always create that in post.

[Javier Gallen]

That was exactly my first conclusion, but after doing some tests, I'm starting to think that cinemode maybe IS the right choice.

As I posted here (http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=92477&page=2), in cinemode footage with a simple black level adjustment, colors and contrast come back, resulting in a wider, richer colorful, contrastier image. The bad thing is you need to render one more thing, and that could be TIME, but never like magic bullet's deartifacter, who takes forever.

Here is an example: http://dvinfo.net/conf/attachment.ph...4&d=1178019829

[David Grieser]

Yeah I just don't like this example cause the shot is overexposed :(

But you have some true points, perhaps I will have to test it myself too finally decide.
There are two things always stopping me from shooting in cine, you loose sharpness and more importantly control over the shutter speed...

But I will definately test it more thoroughly, some scenes need to be complimented with more dynamic range.

[Fergus Anderson]

David I have also come to appreciate cine mode - I have done some tests by sharpening the raw cine files with very pleasing results. You get the gamma curve of cine and extra dynamic range with the sharpness of non cine. Actually I think that cine just takes down some of the in camera sharpening so you dont loose detai, neither does it add noise to the image when sharpening is added in post.

When I get chance I will post some examples in 25p

[John Kristoffersen]

David, that's some very nice clips. The night scenes have much less noise than other night clips I have seen. I also liked very much the music and the images. The Xvid encoding makes the clips play much better on my not quite new PC than the various .mov and mpeg compressions most people use. Well done!
John

[Chris McCreary]

All three videos are stunning and beautiful, Thank You! Might I be so bold to ask: what music did you use in your "Black" video? It is very compelling and puts me in a pensive mood (which is a good thing!)...

[David Grieser]

Soundtrack:

In my place:
The String Quartet Tribute to Coldplay
• Tom Tally - In my place

Black:
Craig Armstrong - Piano Works
• Craig Armstrong - Leaving Paris
• Craig Armstrong - Theme From Orphans

Fields:
Regina Spektor - Begin to hope
• Regina Spektor - Field Below

[Pieter Jongerius]

Hi David,

wirklich wunderbar gemacht, ich habe sehr genossen davon.

The "in my place.avi" demonstrates how amazingly sharp the image is (even though it's partly the in-cam processing that cine mode lacks), maybe even better than quite some of the footage I've seen here.

Second observation: in "black.avi", if i'm not mistaken, an old question of mine was answered: what happens to the frames if shutter speed drops below the frame rate (1/25s). It seems that frames are repeated until the next shutter cyle. Thus, a 1/5 shutter should yield identical 5 frames in a row, then the next five, etc. Correct?

Thanks,
Pieter

[David Grieser]

Originally Posted by Pieter Jongerius

It seems that frames are repeated until the next shutter cyle. Thus, a 1/5 shutter should yield identical 5 frames in a row, then the next five, etc. Correct?

Yep, that is absolutely correct.

Nice german btw :D


EDIT:

Here is another one:
http://www.ralf-grieser.de/pgod/hv20/heath.zip (XVID @ 6500kbit/s, 25p)

Soundtrack:
Faultline - Your love means everything
• Faultline feat. Chris Martin from Coldplay - Where is my boy

[Pieter Jongerius]

Schon wieder ein gutes video ;)
Funny how seemingly random, and photographically and technically great (i.m.o anyway), shots with good choice of music add up to something greater than the sum of its parts.

Question: even on the sideways-walking-handheld shots the progressive "strobing effect" seems to be very mild... how low a shutter did you use?

tnx
Pieter

[Fergus Anderson]

apart from anything else these are some of the best re-encodes I have seen

Could you explain how you did it? The first file - In my place - is particularly clean and retains the sharp look raw. When I render from Vegas apart from the fact that black levels change I dont achieve the same look even at those bitrates.

Good work sir!

[Clayton Moore]

David,

Its hard to believe this is a one chip CMOS camera. I'm clearly amazed. I am going to start posting some content online and have been stessing over the cost of a three chip HDV but WOW.... Im sold and now I can get three for the price of one.

Canon - Im very impressed.

[David Grieser]

Originally Posted by Pieter Jongerius

Question: even on the sideways-walking-handheld shots the progressive "strobing effect" seems to be very mild... how low a shutter did you use?

I try to use 1/25 in steady shots, cause I like the mild motion blur it creates, but while moving I'm always using 1/50 cause the blur would be to much...

Originally Posted by Fergus Anderson

Could you explain how you did it?

I do all my work in Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 but don't use their exporter, instead I frame-serve it with DebugMode FrameServer.
It creates an AVI file that is only a few KB of size which can be opened by all external encoders,
you could even just play it in a media player if Premiere can serve the frames fast enough.

Now I open the file in VirtualDub and choose XVID as the video compressor in its standard settings with the bitrate set to at least 5000kbit/s.
Additionally you have to add the filter "resize" to get 1920x1080, what also helps is adding the filter "sharper" and set it to "12",
that's because you generally lose sharpness with compressions like XVID.

After that you just have to hope that it turns out well, because some sceens just don't work so well with MPEG4 compressions... you might get terrible artifacts :(
But I think XVID is the right choice if you want small file sizes but good quality.

Originally Posted by Clayton Moore

Im sold and now I can get three for the price of one.

Yeah, the Canon HV20 is the best HD consumer camcorder of 2007.
You get the most for your money!