So what's the Family Truckster worth?

[Nick Hiltgen]

Stephen,

I think you make a good point, but also, I wonder if maybe you make another as well. When i paint a camera (uh, digitally that is) I use chroma dumonde chip chart (french for really expensive) and a waveform and a vectorscope. Which leads me to believe, if you're going to color correct something and you have access to a waveform, a vectorscope and the other items you spoke of (I'm not familiar with those sorry) how neccessary is it to have a great 5000 dollar (or if you get into the HD world 10,000 dollar) monitor? Does the monitor ever become something of just a reference to what your client will really see on thier home TV?

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Nick Hiltgen

Does the monitor ever become something of just a reference to what your client will really see on thier home TV?

You hit the nail on the head my brother. It's only reference to the output.

If you're looking at the camera output in the wave form you can get your skin tones right on the IRE you wish and other elements as well. You can make sure the whites aren't blown out and the blacks aren't crushed. Basically you can broadcast legalize the entire image or fix an image in post production just using the waveform. You can color correct off the different scopes and color match using either a histomatch routine or do it manually with a 3 point white balance adjustment. Sound's BIG but it's not that hard to understand once you see it done a few times.

I decided to download the Windows Player, it was not long ago that you had to have Flip4Mac to watch .wmv files on a Mac, but the continued competition between Windows Media Player and Quicktime has eliminated that.

In the Past:
Quicktime = Mac
Media Player = Windows

Now it's wide open and I think that's great, as each one can keep the other in check. And PC and Mac users can use the players they like most. This will keep each one wanting to stay on top with the most (and best) features so they can have more people using it. The speed of progress continues to amaze me.

[Jay Gladwell]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

You hit the nail on the head my brother. It's only reference to the output.

I would say that's a gross over simplification.

Jay

Downloaded Windows Media Player Version 9.

Went to play the movie and got this message:

http://www.thisis24p.com/movie2.html

Played the movie anyway, and running into basically the same thing except this time it's a black screen. I can hear sound, just can't see anything.

http://www.thisis24p.com/movie3.html

I'll go to Microsoft's site and make sure that there is not a more advanced player I can load. When I was given a choice I loaded Version 9 for OSX 10+, which looked to be the most advanced choice possible. But maybe I overlooked a better player. Will any updates here.

- - - - -

It looks like there's only one version higher, it's version 10, but it appears that it's only for Windows XP at this point.

Has anyone else viewing this thread using a Mac been able to see the movie that Stephen has posted? Boyd, can you see them?

Originally Posted by Damon Botsford

Andrew,

I could be wrong, but I don't think the footage available on the Apple site is from consumer HDV video cameras. At least I see no mention at all regarding HDV. I'm pretty sure the sources of those videos are film and full blown HD cameras. I don't think that footage is indicative of what you'll get with an under $10,000 video camera.

I think Damon's right. Please let me know if we are incorrect. If you know that any of the movies posted on Apple's site that showcase HDV and h.264 were made with cameras that cost under $10k, or were edited with a editing suite that cost less than say, $20,000 let everyone reading this thread now (or in the future) know.

Here are the links again, so nobody reading this has to backtrack:

HDV Gallery of Footage:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/

Particularly good Music Video:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guid...obymacgone.html

Andrew, the three videos I watched were beautiful, especially the Aimee Mann and Toby Mac videos. I thought the color was a little faded in the Africa video, but that could have been done on purpose. I'd just like to know the camera and editing equipment they used. Was it high dollar stuff, or was it something, that in theory, Boyd Ostroff could make with his Z1 and FCP studio set up, with the right crew, lighting, director skills, etc., etc.?

Stephen,

I guess the same opinions and questions I posted above would apply for the video's posted at DivX and on Microsoft's site as well.

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Derek West

Stephen,

I guess the same opinions and questions I posted above would apply for the video's posted at DivX and on Microsoft's site as well.

YOu know the pisser of it all? QT7Pro does not work correctly on Windows to encode H264!!! Oh well, we tried.

@ Jay Gladwell Of course its a gross oversimplification. This is not a classroom hombre...

Stephen,

You're cool! Let me know if you need anything or want me to test anything out for you in the future to try to get it working.

Originally Posted by Derek West

Yes HD can be delivered via the Internet, but how's it look after it's been compressed in Sorneson, Compressor or any other web compression software? Even if you compress it so it looks good and is 3 times the file size of SD footage?

Looks like we've made some progress on this part of the question.

How's it look?
As I mentioned above, I think the samples of HDV that I saw looked good.
Pretty hefty in size, but that's the price you pay for high-quality movies with very clear detail.

Now we just have to find out what was compressed? Was it footage from under-$10,000 HDV cam's? Or was it footage from camera's and crews that would cost well into the $6 figure range?

Stephen tried his hardest to show me some footage from the HD100 that he and Nate Weaver worked on. I had been wanting to see this even before I started this thread, but I was unable to see it. I could be in the minority here though. For those of you who saw it, any opinions?

So what would happen if I had the HD100 or the Z1 or FX1 (or in the future the XL H1 or DVX200 for that matter) and my client loved the HDV footage that I burned onto a DVD for her. She loved it so much, that she wanted me to put it on her Web site, so clients from all over the world could see it.

What do I tell her?

[Edit: changed the the client from a man to a woman.]

[Jay Gladwell]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

YOu know the pisser of it all? QT7Pro does not work correctly on Windows to encode H264!!! Oh well, we tried.

@ Jay Gladwell Of course its a gross oversimplification. This is not a classroom hombre...

To the point of being misleading. That serves no purpose, homre.

Jay

[Steven White]

he wanted me to put it on his Web site, so clients from all over the world could see it. What do I tell him?

You tell him he's got two options:

#1. Stick the HDV files directly online. This would be equivalent to hosting a DV project online as native DV... no one does this.
#2. Compress it to one of the web-delivery codecs - be it WMV or H.264 (preferably both). It is also recommended that you make smaller web-deliverables at SD and lower resolutions in widely adopted codecs (i.e., Sorenson3 for Quicktime, WMV).

This is all possible... hosting is just expensive. But it's getting cheaper. Getting a server with 5-10 GB of storage space and 100 GB of bandwidth a month isn't atypical.

-Steve

Then what do I tell her when she says -

"None of my friends can see it."

- - - - -

If it's possible, then why have I not been able to look at Stephen's footage? I'm under the impression, he's been overly helpful and has done everything under the sun to display the HD100 clip.

Originally Posted by Derek West

...and can shoot the quality of footage as displayed in the above links with a currently available HDV camera then I'll have to look at aquiring a HD100 or Z1 before the end of the year.

Doesn't look like its possible with an under-$10k HDV cam, so I won't be looking to sell my XL2 anytime soon for any HDV "solution."

Feel free to say otherwise, but please post some .wmv or .mov links to the footage that was filmed with a Sony Z1, FX1 or JVC HD100 that illustrates your point.

[feel free to add XL H1 and DVX200 to the above line in Nov/Dec 2005.]

In the mean time I can't help but to sum it all up with a quote from Seinfeld:

Babu's Brother - "Where is Babu? Show Me Babu!"

I think HDV is really cool and hope that everyone keeps up the good HDV work that's being done as the technology unfolds.

But as for me and my needs, from this XL2 owner to all the other XL2 owners out there...

I'm driving the "Family Truckster" to Wally World ;)

[Andrew Wills]

In response to the questions above about what type of camera was used to record this footage I have only found one reference in my exhaustive investigation.

It seems that at the very least the WildLifeHD footage was shot on a Sony F900/3, which retails at the wonderfully expensive price of $100,000.

Dissapointing. I can't be sure, but I guess it's safe to assume that the rest of the footage was shot on similar, non-affordable (for non-millionaires) HD cameras.

I do apologise for the misleading presumption that this was shot on pro-sumer HD cameras. I simply assumed that Apple would be advertising how good their new codec looks from a consumer/pro-sumer production perspective, not from a studio perspective, which is why I guess, they left out this crucial information.

I suppose its still possible that some of the footage was shot on pro-sumer HD cameras. I also think that with the right camera operator, and some great lighting, the same results could be achieved with HD, and be indistinguisable to the human eye.