Why HDV rather then solid state?

[Mike Tesh]

I was in a discussion earlier with someone and we were talking about the sub $10,000 market and how it's now being flooded with HDV cameras. The there is the HVX200 which is sort of the oddball stuck in the middle. I remember when the HDV format was first mentioned and a lot of people sighed and said something like "great even more compressed then DV".

Both the XL-H1 and the HVX200 came out within close proximity of each other and within a reasonable price of each other.
But why did Canon choose HDV over a less compressed solution and a solid state recording medium like P2?

What is it about HDV that all the other companies besides Panasonic seem to like so much?

[Yasser Kassana]

HDV is an efficient mpeg compression tool that sony, jvc and canon agreed on. Also, most pro-sumers will find it difficult to store solid state technology, especially when it only stores 8 minutes max in HD. Now i'm not pissing on the hvx, i'm sure it's a great cam and nor do i want to get into the artifact vs solid state debate. But in short it's about ergonomics and ease of use. HDV can be good. i.e. canon technology i have seen and heard that it is relativly noise and artifact free. I suppose it depends on the algorithm of the hdv in use. Anyway, i'm sure some techie can get into in more detail.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I think many people see it as a cheap way to get HDV: you're getting high definition onto the same cheap mini dv tapes as you were shooting dv...

[A. J. deLange]

The HDV standard states what an implementor must do - not how he is to do it. Cannon seems to have come up with a particularly good algortithm for estimating the motion vectors which are used to construct the B and P frames. I nor anyone else posting here seems to be able to come up with a way to break their CODEC. It's my personal belief that this algorithm is also involved in construction of F frames from i fields as motion estimation is the key to that process too. I have to admit that I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the HDV pictures from this camera. Where motion is involved they are much better than I expected.

[Christopher Glaeser]

Originally Posted by Mike Tesh

What is it about HDV that all the other companies besides Panasonic seem to like so much?

Good question. One way to answer this question is to approach this from a different angle and ask the question, "What is it wrong with HDV?" Take a critical look at the HDV clips from the Canon XL H1. Are there areas that are seriously lacking, or does it hold up pretty well? Review the comments and experiences posted by the XL H1 owners on this list, and you will come to the conclusion that many users are quite impressed with Canon's HDV implementation.

Best,
Christopher

[Daniel Epstein]

The reason all the other camera manufacturers besides Panasonic adopted HDV
has to do with extending DV into HD for Consumers and Prosumers. Consumers are not going to spend thousand of dollars on storage to shoot a few minutes of home movies. Prosumers might. Panasonic didn't sign on to HDV so they don't want to make it. Panasonic is using P2 for Professionals and is trying to suck the Pro DV users out of tape into a new workflow because they don't want to make HD or DVCPRO50 decks at low prices.
Almost all the technical arguments against HDV come from Panasonic saying it isn't good enough. People who don't like Long GOP recordings etc. Almost all the arguments for HDV come from the manufacturers who are trying to sell it. Inexpensive tapes recording better signals. Good enough is a moving target and very often succeeds in the marketplace. When compact flash cards or other memory systems get big enough and cheap enough then HDV will fade away. This could be ten years or it could be shorter.
Canon, Sony and JVC went HDV as they realized they could record a very high quality signal using a proven technology at a low cost. The cost and workflow are similar to DV.
Panasonic decided we would need a new technology to go with the quality of HD they were comfortable with. You will see very few consumer P2 cameras but there are already many consumer HDV cameras.
Of course professionals are all going to try and record to harddrives and not use tapes as masters so it may not matter if there is an HDV tape drive in the camera but it could be a great cheap back up. The Panasonic offerings have many advantages but cheap is not one of them except for the cost of the camera itself.

[Giroud Francois]

i think the original question mix several concepts that should not be.
first HDV is not tape. HDV is a kind of MPEG2, that can be stored on tape, disk or solid state.
The same for the HVX200. The codec is DVCPro, as well can be stored on several media.
Problem 1, DVCPRO50 or 100 cannot use DV tape technology (limited to 25Mb/s), so too bad for the cheap storage.
Problem 2, HDV is limited to less than 25Mb/s to fit the old DV tape technology, so bye bye 4:2:2, short GOP and high quality.
HDV is currently under 25Mb/s, but could be as well upgraded to higher bandwith, but then it will be the same problem as on the HVX200, you need to find a media that can eat data so fast.
As soon we will se an easy, affordable technology (hard disk probably) able to support bandwith over 25Mb/s and offering better capacity that solid state, there will be no more competition between HDV or DVCPro.
I am pretty sure that HDV can do better than DVCPro at same bandwith (50Mb/s), since it is already comparing well with DVCPro at only 19Mb/s.

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Daniel Epstein

Panasonic... is trying to suck the Pro DV users out of tape into a new workflow because they don't want to make HD or DVCPRO50 decks at low prices.

Absolutely false. You are sadly mistaken. It's not as if they don't "want" to make inexpensive HD tape decks... they can't make inexpensive HD tape decks. Don't you think, that if they could make a DVCPRO HD tape transport for $1,000, they would do it, and own the market by flooding it? It's utterly an ridiculous proposition to assume that professional HD tape transports are priced high artificially. This gear is expensive to sell because, like Sony HDCAM decks, this gear is expensive to make. What's great about P2 is that it offers the single least expensive, most affordable way to shoot in the DVCPRO HD format, and it completely bypasses the video capture process associated with tape.

Almost all the technical arguments against HDV come from Panasonic saying it isn't good enough.

Wrong again. Almost all the technical arguments against HDV come from punters who have never used it.

You will see very few consumer P2 cameras but there are already many consumer HDV cameras.

Most likely you'll never see a single consumer P2 camcorder, not for awhile anyway. And currently there are not "many consumer HDV camcorders," there are actually only a handful: three from Sony, one of which is discontinued. JVC and Canon have not yet entered the consumer HDV market (JVC had one consumer camcorder before the format was officially adopted).

[Hans Ledel]

The first but not the last step down the "price ladder"

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...o-04_18_04.htm

Cheers

Hans

[Giroud Francois]

that is exactly what i said.
the last picture of the presentation says "Mpeg 720p/1080i", so it will be not DVCPro, but rather an HDV signal stored on P2.
That should artificially increase the capacity of the P2 card, since a 4 GIG card will be able to contains a lot more of video at 19mb/s than it could at 50Mb/s.
The problem with this, it is that it does not push Sony to go to an HDV at 50Mb/s, but rather to offer the same kind of product (4 gig memory stick ?), so the race is now more on storage than on increasing quality (or bandwith).
That seems a no-way direction, since HDV can be easily stored on cheap, big hard disks, so solid state, will probably never compete neither in price nor in capacity with HDD.
The worst thing is they can even decide to offer "HD" at broadcast speed (less than 10 Mb/s) so they still can say HD, sell cheap & slow solid state memory and tell the customer that it's progress.
On the other hand , they can devellop the PRO equipment by increasing HDV to 50mb/s (blu-ray ?) so there will
be a definitive difference between consumer and professional equipment.
The Sany HD1 is a good example at how low you can go and still say "HD", and the worse of it is you will find many people saying: "after all , it is not so bad"

[Chris Hurd]

That's a two-year-old link to something that officially doesn't even exist. You certainly can't buy one today anyway. One quick note, by definition, HDV is in fact tape-based, according to the HDV consortium. All HDV camcorders and decks include a tape transport. If they don't, then they're not HDV. Panasonic and other manufacturers may introduce their own HD encoding processes that are *similar* to HDV, but they certainly won't be referred to as HDV. Hope this helps,

[Ron Pfister]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

This gear is expensive to sell because, like Sony HDCAM decks, this gear is expensive to make.

This is only true because the market is tiny. If there was a consumer application for the same technology, these decks could be produced much less expensively. But the consumer application for such decks is not there - tape is on the way out.

Although I don't have any figures to back this up, I'm quite sure that the ever improving video capabilities of digital non-SLR still cams are eating up consumer camcorder market volume. And what are the digicams recording video on? Correct: solid state media. Face it, that's where it's heading. Kill all the moving parts, and you've taken care of many, many points of potential failure. And the larger the market for solid state media, the cheaper it will become. It will still be a while until you can buy a DV/HDV-tape's worth (12 GB) of solid state media for todays cost of high-quality tape stock. But I won't be surprised if it will be nearly that cheap at the end of this decade...

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Ron Pfister

This is only true because the market is tiny.

Absolutely right, but that doesn't alter the fact that it is true nonetheless. And I agree with the rest of your comments right down the line.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Mike Tesh

What is it about HDV that all the other companies besides Panasonic seem to like so much?

HDV is a wonderfully practical solution to the challenge of capturing high-definition video at a reasonable price, both in terms of the cost of the cameras and the cost per hour of recording. Consider that standard flash memory currently costs ~$40-60 per GB compared to ~25 cents per GB for DV tape, and it's not hard to figure why HDV makes sense for now. In a few years the cost of flash memory may drop to the point where tape is no longer relevant, but we're a long way from that today.

A better question would be why someone doesn't make a camera designed to record to standard 2.5" laptop hard drives costing ~$1 per GB at today's prices. For example, the HVX200 is a perfect size to have a slot for a removable hard drive molded into the bottom of the camera, instead of attaching an external hard drive recorder as many people will now do. The end result would be the same for many users at a small fraction of the cost per hour of recording time, resulting in a camera more useful to more people without waiting for flash memory prices to plummet.

But have no fear: it looks like flash memory recording is likely to be quite common in the future. I'm guessing about five years or so before it becomes pervasive.

[Hans Ledel]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

That's a two-year-old link to something that officially doesn't even exist. ,

"press conference is September 2006"