Hi Meryem (and to everyone who has contributed),

Wow - I have learned a lot from this board and appreciate the interest my question has generated. Thank you all for your feedback and discussion. Great stuff :).

Meryem, I agree that the over/undercrank ability of the HVX is appealing. After taking a look at another post showing the JVC trying to procees footage from a motorcross race (which looked choppy), that basically answered my question regarding 30p for fast motion. Otherwise, the JVC is awesome. Honestly - I'm back to square one, but it seems that my decision now boils down to an HVX, or waiting for JVC's HD200U in Oct/Nov. The HVX certainly brings a lot to the table, but holding the camera during extended periods concerns me. Anton Bauer's EgripZ would help, but for 3rd party shoulder mounts, they all seem kind of clunky. And as for P2 cards in the field - sure, I may be required to bring along a laptop or hard drive to dump files, but I think that's realitively short term. P2 capacity will increase, and prices will drop. Purchase two high capacity cards and a Firestore a year or two from now, and you should have hours of shooting. The HVX should prove to be a great long term investment. And what a great discussion to have.. two 24p HD cameras under $10k? Are you kidding? Deciding between the JVC and Panasonic is a win-win situtation. I'm just giddy thinking about this stuff.

Where I think you nailed it was on personal comfort. Great footage comes from getting a great shot, so if I've developed a method that works best for me, I probably should stick to that. Tape vs P2 (and either cam with a Firestore) is fine with me. I'm using an XL1 now, and JVC's shoulder mount seems a natural fit. I'll be making a trip to my local dealer to see what feels best. Great for me, not great for them - I love talking about this stuff, and after a while, I probably get a bit annoying. Then there's the Canon XLH1.. :). Actually, I can't wait to make my purchase.

Meryem, Boulder is awesome.. I actually just bought an investment house in Louisville. We have similar interests, so keep me posted on what you decide as well, and best of luck.

Thanks!

Ah yes.... but you can't have your cake and eat it. I agree that 30p is not suitable for what you want to shoot, and that is indeed an argument for the HVX and 60p (or waiting for the HD200), but if you use the HVX as a 60p camera, you lose the slo-mo ability. You can only overcrank it if the final product is to be 24p - which is not likely to be suitable for action sports.

To say 30p is unsuitable for "motocross" in this instance is to say no one ever shot good FILM of motocross, or racing. Crap. Film is only at 24p frames. Yes it can look bad, but it can also look fine if shot correctly. To give a blanket statement that 30p is just not suitable, when it is 25% more frames than film isn't correct to me. One would have to know how to shoot with a progressive camera for starters. Shooting for film 101 should cover the basics. Is it as desirable as 60p, no. But again unless you are soley distributing at 720p60, what advantage is 60p getting you other then over crank?

Well, OK, I'm happy to change my above remark to "......30p is less suitable for what you want to shoot, and that is indeed an argument for the HVX and 60p" if you like, but does it really change the argument? A feature film with every shot pre-plannable may well be easier to shoot "correctly", but with fast sport, and maybe unpredictable action, that can be easier said than done, as you seem to acknowledge with "it can look bad". My understanding is that is why in the broadcast world the choice is between 720p/60 and 1080i/30 for sport etc, both having 60Hz motion, whilst 24 and 30Hz motion may be preferred in some cases for drama.

As for distribution, then whilst 24p may be most suitable if that is for film, then my feeling is that 720p/60 would be better not only for HD showing, but would be better temporally for a downconversion to DVD etc, keeping 60Hz motion in SD through interlace.

thanks for the sharing your thoughts, jeremy. it's easy to get caught up in the technical details. i guess i'll know it when i see it.

i'm looking pretty hard at buying a studio space in Old Town Louisville (much cheaper than Boulder!). we're practically neighbors....

Distribution is the point I am trying to get at. If it is going to DVD then the 480p60 mode of the HD100 will suit now. If one is going to HDTV broadcast then I guess 720p60 is the best of both worlds, as it can be de-interlaced to 1080i like you said. Is this a common work around? I don't think when this thread was started it was ever stated how the final product would be distributed. It might help if we knew that.

Hello there from Australia, this is my first post here, thanks to all of you who make this forum so interesting. Having just bought an JVC HD101 I am curious about what the prefered PC software method of upsampling the 480p60 (or in my case the HDV 576p50) to 720p is to try and get the best quality rather than filming in the SD mode?

Regards

Jonathan

Wouldn't it be preferable to just shoot 720p in the first place, Jonathan?

I was wanting to try and take advantage of the 50fps option of 16:9 HDV 576P, from what I have read the higher frame rate would be better for fast action footage and would also look good when used in slow mo. Would this be correct?

JP

Not sure if I catch you. Do you mean, "rather than filming in HD mode"?
I believe Algolith is one on the best AE plugins for upsampling, but AE probably does a good job on its own.

Obviously. There is no better was to capture motion, then to actually capture motion. Any other way is creating motion through software, which can often have artifacts or soften the image.

You'll have to excuse my ignorance, I suppose the question is more in line with ken Hudsons suggestions about shooting in 480 60p for high motion shots (or in my case I also have the option of shooting in 576 50p) for either an upconvert to 720p30 or compression for delivery to an eventual elementary stream mpeg for DVD. I assume shooting in HDV 576 50 is going to provide a better image than shooting in standard DV especially after you compress for DVD distribution? I was just curious about the method used to upconvert the 480p60 footage to 720p.

JP

Originally Posted by Ken Hodson
One thing to consider is the 480p60 mode of the JVC. Yes it is SD but it is true 16:9 and does not use the lower quality DV codec. We have found that it upsamples to 720p very well. Use the 720p30 for locked down or long shots, and the 480p60 for all of the high motion shots. I would hate to think of how fast a P2 card would disapear at 60fps! The JVC will give you a full hour on the HDV tape.
Maybe rent a cam and see how well the 480p60 mode works for you.

Since this hasn't been answered I noticed Red Giant has a plug in that might be worth checking out:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/instanthd.html

For those who haven't seen it, I think Walter Graff's analysis represents what I found when I tested both cameras side by side for a month:

http://www.bluesky-web.com/HDVHVX.htm

Jeremy,

My suggestion would be to rent the cameras you are interested in, use them to shoot some footage under the conditions you envision you will be shooting under, run the footage through the editing system/NLE program you are planning on using, and then make your decision based on the EOE output within the delivery envelope you know your projected audience will be using -- AND the camera form factor that works best for the conditions you will be shooting under.

Charts, framegrabs, evangelical rantings, don't really mean much. It's your completed delivery system output and target audience that will be the final judge of "what's best" for you.

These forums are a great starting point to gather facts and undocumented features, but only you can make the "right" camera decision for the project you plan to shoot. All the new HD DV cams are just expensive enough to warrant buyers remorse if you make the wrong one.

Judging by what you have posted so far, it would appear to me that your best choice would be a modular camera (Sony ZI, Panny HVX200 vs. the JVC HD100 or Canon H1). I'm also assuming that autofocus and image stabilization are important.

Between the Z1 (or FX1) and the HVX200, the Sony units have better autofocus and better image stabilization. The HVX200 better color space and a slightly better/sharper image (but a softer image may help with fast moving subjects).

Some excellent comments have already been posted in this thread about media and storage issues, and you should really consider if the P2 system is going to work for you under the conditions you are planning to shoot under. The Firestore (on the HVX200) is still an unproven entity at this point in time (certainly unproven under your anticipated shooting conditions).

Since this doesn't look like a project where you have complete control over the action, are you going to be comfortable with taking the chance that a card will fill up just when the most exciting event of your project happened?

The HVX200 looks great on paper, and it was most certainly the cam I was waiting to get my hands on, but after putting about 80 hours of use on it, I have reached the opinion that most of the touted features are actually design compromises -- mostly due to Panasonic's decision (based purely on economics) to retool an existing design rather than starting with a clean slate.

The Z1 is also a retooled design, and the grandfather of all the HD DV cams, but from what you have posted here to date, may just be your best all around choice for this particular project.

what do you mean?

Brian,

I wouldn't know how to answer that fully without starting a flame war or looking like I'm bashing the camera (or "talking out of class") which I'm not going to do. Let me just say that it is NOT the camera Panasonic originally said they were going to deliver.

I think it's a great camera, and I use one (or two) for "tape-ups" and table cams with excellent results. It's also just light enough to work on a motorized head, and small enough to put in weird non-camera friendly places (also with excellent results).

Let me point you to a few pretty evident issues: The P2 system was originally leaked to broadcast outlets as being a "and/or" (along with a full HD stream tape option) system, now, it's not. It was to have full pixel count chips, it doesn't, and I don't care how anybody wants to massage the chip issue, it was a sensitive enough point that Panasonic was not forthcoming with the chip specs (I had to call Matsushita in Japan to get them). It was supposed to be firmware driven (like sister company JVC's DV-5 series and the HD100), it's not. You would think that after the DVX100/A/B fiasco, they would have learned a few things.

When I asked why the excellent set of proposed features were absent or not fully implemented on the production units, my contact at Matsushita replied that they had made a decision to build on an existing, well proven design (the DVX100), rather than an entirely new, unproven one (read, it's cheaper to re-tool than start fresh), and that in doing so, certain proposed features had to be eliminated or modified from the final production design.

By necessity, every camera made has some design compromises inherent when it reaches the final production stage, but I don't think I have ever seen so many "80% solutions" on a higher end pro market camera as those implemented in the HDX200.

My two 'pence worth.

There seems to be some flare around the cars headlights, probably due to best anti-reflection coating on the HVX. Does anyone know what lens they use? Is it Leica?

Has anyone done any comparison between these three sub-$10,000 cameras (HD100, HVX200 and Z1) that I can go have a look in the web? Shooting actual scenes?

Hi everyone - I forget what I wrote on my previous post, but I ended up purchasing the JVC and I've used it for about two months. Ergonomics are nice - the camera is lighter weight than I thought, and holding it for extended periods is fine considering the shoulder mount. It's easy to carry with a shoulder strap by rotating the eye piece. Controls are easy to get to, focus assist is terrific, set up is easy. I actually like having a tape - it's practical - I can record 60 minutes without having to swap cards in and out, but I know at some point I will want solid state. Working solo, tape is just fewer things to tamper with in the outdoors.

Filming the mountain bike festival in Whistler BC (Crankworx), I met several people using the Panasonic who couldn't record to P2 very well in 60P. Everyone had Firestores with laptops or portable storage. We're all walking around steep dusty dirt tracks. They also complained about having to hold the camera, so I suggested EZGrips. Even so, I'm sure they're getting a better picture at 60p. 30p just isn't cutting it for sports. I experimented some by upping the shutter speed & turning motion smoothing off (which helps), but fast motion still isn't very fluid.. kind of choppy. I also took the camera to biking events at the veledrome, same results. So for now, I'm sticking with Seattle - mountains, water falls, rivers, ferry boats. This type of footage looks amazing, but I do need to learn how to stabilze my shots better. Shaking is a problem at zoom range w/o stabilization, so I'm having to use Apple's Shake to smooth things out in post. Also, this camera has a lot of small covers & flaps on it to protect the connectors - I've already broken off the flimsy top cover over the play-back controls. It was only a matter of time. And some of the small rubber fittings have trouble staying fitted. I would love to see JVC improve this. My XL1 has been up and down mountain trails, and has proven to be a much more solid design. Nothing has ever come loose or broken with that camera. That's probably a good selling point for the H1. Maybe I sound like I'm giving the JVC a bad rap, but I actually love this camera. I'll be looking to buy the 200 when it comes out, and/or comparing it to the Canon & Panasonic again. The latest issue of DV Magazine has a great write-up on the JVC.

Enzo, your points are right on. Thanks!

Jeremy

Barry, with all due respect - you cannot "scan at 1920" if all you got is 960. Camera electronics begin imagining (instead of imaging) pixels (or shoves together pixels from different time-frames a-la interlace). You start with one quarter resolution, and then somehow computationally enhance it to the full size. Details (how to shift pixels in time and space to fill missing quadrants) are not important here, IMHO - enough to note that such shifting takes place.

To paraphrase - you cannot make a very tasty cake out of clay, no matter how artfully you form and re-arrange it on a plate.

Well, with all due respect right back at ya, the proof is in the tasty pudding. Look at the footage. There is no doubt that it's delivering fantastic-looking high-def footage, every bit a match for the JVC and Sony, although a bit lower res than the Canon (despite only having 1/3 as many pixels!)

This isn't digital uprezzing we're talking about here, this is a valid resolution enhancement technique that's used by just about all the major manufacturers. Canon uses it to go from 1440 to 1920, Sony uses it to go from 960 to 1920, Panasonic uses it in both the horizontal and the vertical.

It is a way of scanning the CCDs to enhance resolution. You have to keep in mind that the CCDs are analog devices, not digital, and they are scanned into YUV space, not RGB. It's not pixel for pixel. What happens on any particular CCD pixel bears no direct relationship to what happens in the scanned frame's pixel; each YUV pixel is made up of about 60% from the green CCD, 30% from the red, and about 10% from the blue. It is the way and pattern that these pixels are combined that delivers the final YUV image.

In many ways pixel shift is akin to bayer demosaic'ing, a technique used by just about every one-CCD (and one-CMOS) chip camera out there. It has also been vetted by the BBC, who determined that it is a perfectly valid technique that (on the surface) claims as much as a 50% increase in resolution over the nominal chip count, but results in a more practical maximum of 1.414x as much res, and as far as the BBC is concerned they think a 33% boost is about the most that the technique can legitimately deliver.

No question that it's being used by other vendors - though not to such a drastic extent, AFAIK.


I sorta understand, and agree that there is no direct relationship between CCD number of pixels and the "resulting pixels". But surely there is a relationship, and all other factors being equal quality of result is in direct proportion to the number of CCD pixels. Regardless of how you mix the CCD pixels together, the less pixels you got in the beginning - the less "stuff" you have to play with.

Or are you saying that the number of pixels on CCD does not matter? And the up-scaling algorithms are good enough to make scanned frames practically indistinguishable between say "native" 1270x720p and "up-scaled" 960x540?


33% boost would roughly be a step from 1440 to 1920, or from 960 to 1270. Does this BBC technique condone the simultaneous "boost" along both axes?

Boosting from 960x540 native chip count. If it's 33% of the total number of pixels (as I suspect it is), then you can boost 960x540 to only about 957x720. If we take more liberal 50% boost - we still end up with only 1080x720 of "legitimate" (according to BBC findings) pixels.

And for HVX200 to "always be 1920x1080 internally" you need doubling (i.e. 100%) on both axes.

As a side-remark: if pixel-shifting was that great - why would Canon spend extra and change from "pixel-shifted" XL-1S to "full-size" XL2?

The trouble with your statement is the "AFAIK." What you may not know is that Pixel Shift in both H and V axes is not at all uncommon in both standard and high definition video cameras..

It's never been a problem with them before. Pixel Shift in both axes has been around for quite awhile... Panasonic invented it more than a decade ago. It has *never* been an issue for *any* broadcaster.

Actually the XL2 uses Pixel Shift also, in the H-axis. Despite your error, I'm glad you've mentioned the Canon XL. It's one of my favorite counterpoints to the fallacy of believing that something must be wrong with the HVX because it uses double-axis Pixel Shift. The fact is that the Canon XL1 and XL1S both use double-axis Pixel Shift to achieve DV resolution from CCDs that were less than standard definition in pixel count. It was never a big deal then, so suddenly it's supposed to be a big deal now? Sorry, but no. The track record of double-axis Pixel Shift was proven with the original Canon XL1 (to name only one of a number of examples). Nobody complained then. I don't see how anyone can complain about it now. Sd, Hd, it doesn't matter... the process is the same.

I have no idea why this thread was ressurected when its most recent reply was almost a month ago... and before that, since June. Barry has summed it up quite well: the proof is in the image. I would like to encourage the measurebators and naysayers to please get your heads out of the numbers and look at the screen.

All that counts, is how good it looks. Thread closed.