AG-HVX200 vs GY-HD100U for Adventure Sports

[Ken Hodson]

Barry, is that .jpeg that you link to a result from your "lemon" HD100 that you claimed had extreem split Screen and a horrible lens with tons of CA? I find your HVX/HD100 comparison on DVXuser.com to be extreemly slanted, and in no way close to what other comparisons are showing.

[Barry Green]

This is from a newer HD100 that I've managed to borrow for shooting things. The "lemon" was back from September and was long ago returned to the store.

The comparisons I've done on DVXUser are to explore the limits. We all know that under normal/ideal conditions they all perform quite similarly. We proved that at the first shootout, and Chris & co. did so again at the Texas shootout. There's no need to show how similar they are under normal circumstances again. So I showed what can happen when things aren't so normal. When things get out of control. And the results are exactly what I posted, including posting the original .m2t file of the footage.

Every stitch of any comparison I've done has been documented thoroughly for methodology -- anyone is free to either duplicate the results, or point out errors in methodology. That extraction was from a comparison where I took the two cams onto the Las Vegas strip and pointed them at traffic and at the Wynn hotel. Settings used were Tim Dashwood's Cine-Like-D emulation setting for the HD100, matching them for comparable edge enhancement, setting the HVX on cinelike-D gamma, so the attempt was to make them look as similar as possible. Iris was wide open on both, and they were both focused on infinity, and they were both set for an equivalent field of view, letting the chips fall where they may. There was nothing unusual about that shot at all, it was basically a locked-down shot exploring the comparative sharpness of the two products. Later on I pushed them to their limits, but that particular shot was a very simple how-do-they-look-side-by-side-in-wide-angle shot. The original full frames are here:
http://www.fiftv.com/HVX200/HD100-n-...00-Strip-1.JPG
http://www.fiftv.com/HVX200/HD100-n-...VX-Strip-1.JPG

and

http://www.fiftv.com/HVX200/HD100-n-...00-Strip-2.JPG
http://www.fiftv.com/HVX200/HD100-n-...VX-Strip-2.JPG

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Jarred Land

The last thing is durability.. I would like to bet, but am not about to test it myself, is that the HVX would survive alot more beating than the JVC. I could be wrong though there.. thats just a wild guess.

Obviously, I'd have to agree. I don't think anyone with half a thought is strapping a removeable, longer focal structure lens to the forks of a dirtbike. Which is why the A1 is perfect for this, but back to topic; the question isn't about putting a cam on a bike.

[Jarred Land]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

Obviously, I'd have to agree. I don't think anyone with half a thought is strapping a removeable, longer focal structure lens to the forks of a dirtbike. Which is why the A1 is perfect for this, but back to topic; the question isn't about putting a cam on a bike.

actually.. it was. Shooting "xtreme" action sports usually leads to putting the camera on the "talent".. at least the better shooters put the camera where the money is.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Jarred Land

About the time thing.. two 8gb cards gives you 40 minutes in 720pn mode.. sure thats a bit far from 60 minutes on tape, but later this summer when the 16gb cards come out (probally at the same price the 8gb are now) it gives you 80 minutes of non stop record.. so it will beat Tape. period.

Hmmm - all true, except that now means 24fps shooting, and for the subject being talked about it's the 720p/60 mode of the HVX that would seem to make it preferable (IMO) to the 24/30 only HD100. But then using the HVX 60p means back to square one with runtimes on the P2 cards of course - 16mins for 2x4GB cards, and 32mins with 8GB. Which is why waiting for the JVC HD200 may give the best of both worlds?

A lot of filming action sport is surely done showing the action, rather than being part of it, though the POV shots can be an important part. For these, I wouldn't consider either the HD100 or HVX to be too suitable for bolting onto bikes or whatever - too expensive to risk, and maybe a bit big and heavy?

[Stephan Ahonen]

I'm not spending $2000 on P2 to get the same recording capacity I get out of a $10 MiniDV tape. I'm confused as to the thought process that actually goes into this. What's the upside? Recording high bitrate DVCPro that throws away a quarter of your resolution? Though I suppose DVCPro res is still higher than the res of the chips in the first place. Note to Panasonic: If I wanted to shoot SD, I'd have bought an XL2.

In terms of shooting any kind of sports, you will be doing a lot of handheld shooting, and the JVC's on-the-shoulder ENG form factor is unquestionably better for handheld shooting. I don't want to imagine trying to hold a tiny camcorder at arm's length for an entire sporting event. The full manual lens also offers greater control and flexibility for shooting unpredictable events in the field, and you can shoot a lot tighter than the HVX if you're farther from the action. And here's the kicker, if you don't like the stock lens, you can replace it.

at least the better shooters put the camera where the money is.

And the money isn't necessarily always on the guy's helmet. You can see the world going upside down, maybe, but you don't see tricks he's doing with his hands and feet. It's like the net cams in hockey, you see the puck coming into the goal, but you don't see the play that put it there, which is far more important. Having that view is nice, but only if you have the big picture covered elsewhere. If you only have one camera shooting the event, I'd rather have it on the ground.

[Ash Greyson]

I think everyone is right in some way on this, the HVX will certainly be EASIER IMHO. One thing about the cost of P2 is that you much factor in proper archiving and back-up. Any money you save on $3 60 minute DV tapes is quickly eaten up by the time it takes to back-up and the proper RAID5, DVD-R, etc. solution.

It is my personal feeling that while tape might indeed be on the way out, it will be replaced by other media, be it solid state or laser, that is NON-DESTRUCTIVE. Unless you are doing local news, it just makes no sense at all to have valuable data living on moving platters...


ash =o)

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by David Heath

Hmmm - all true, except that now means 24fps shooting, and for the subject being talked about it's the 720p/60 mode of the HVX that would seem to make it preferable (IMO) to the 24/30 only HD100. But then using the HVX 60p means back to square one with runtimes on the P2 cards of course - 16mins for 2x4GB cards, and 32mins with 8GB. Which is why waiting for the JVC HD200 may give the best of both worlds?

A lot of filming action sport is surely done showing the action, rather than being part of it, though the POV shots can be an important part. For these, I wouldn't consider either the HD100 or HVX to be too suitable for bolting onto bikes or whatever - too expensive to risk, and maybe a bit big and heavy?

Actually at 60p the p2 cards use the same full 100mb/s rate as 1080i HD so 2x8 GB cards only gives you 16 minutes of record time compared to 60 minutes.


Also if you buy the firestore and a few p2 cards the price of the camera will go over $10,000.00 whereas the JVC HD200 with 60p is cheaper than that.

Eventually if you fill up the firestore or use only p2 cards you will also need to bring along a laptop with plenty of extra hard drives to dump the footage to.

HVX200 + 2 p2 cards + firestore + laptop + external hard drives could almost run you double the cost of a HD200.

[Jarred Land]

its called native mode.. if you shoot 60p for the slow motion effect, the HVX can drop that down on a 24frame timeline on the fly (not like the varicam) and you get your extended run times of the P2 cards.

As for the price of the P2 cards.. like i said its only a 100 tapes and they are paid for. Some people shoot 6 tapes a day, so that becomes profit sooner for some than others.

Of course, if you only shoot 1 tape a day, it will take you 100 days to pay off that p2 card.

and you dont need a laptop to dump cards.. you can use a $100 external drive to offload the cards too directly from the camera.

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Jarred Land

back to the topic.. not that resolution isn't important but its kinda not.

Actually, the topic would be more how does it handle footage and use under these circumstances, and rather then avoiding the issue, what problems with resolutions, and how is 100Mb/s supposed to be worse then 19Mb/s for that sort of extreme movement (unless you lock it off and let them fly past, and not attempt to vary the footage with close tracking shoots of them whizzing past and going down the track). But I'm done.

Barry, the cameras look like they have two different exposures, and two different colour setups. The colour on the HVX looks over saturated, the yellow side light look wrong color compared to the JVC (which might be a bit understated) unless that is the colour they have in the states. The lights on the cars in the JVC appear to be more glary because of more exposure, which is why you can seem more road detail then the HVX (might also be affecting saturation levels). Is this best both cameras could render the shot? Otherwise, for now, the HVX looks better. Don't get me wrong, I prefer the idea of the HVX just because under extreme conditions (low light+lots of noise, lots of movement) that 100Mb/s DV, should hold up better then 19Mb/s Mpeg2, I know it should not let me down very much. Now, on the other hand, what Douglas said is also very relevant as to how much to expect from each camera.

Thanks and have a good day.


.

[Stephan Ahonen]

Except you don't have to buy a new tape every time you need to shoot some footage. You can reuse the same tape dozens, even hundreds of times, meaning I'd have to shoot tens of thousands of hours of footage before a P2 card will pay for itself, by which point I'll have bought a new camera anyway.

[Ash Greyson]

Originally Posted by Jarred Land

As for the price of the P2 cards.. like i said its only a 100 tapes and they are paid for. Some people shoot 6 tapes a day, so that becomes profit sooner for some than others.

Of course, if you only shoot 1 tape a day, it will take you 100 days to pay off that p2 card.

60 minute DV tapes are $3... last time I checked 8gb P2 cards were $600. You also must factor the extra back-up, archiving, etc. that must be done with destructive media. I have people all the time ask me for content from a tape that is months or even years old. Like I said, destructive media is NOT the future and certain nothing like film. Tape and film are their OWN back-ups...




ash =o)

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Jarred Land

its called native mode.. if you shoot 60p for the slow motion effect, the HVX can drop that down on a 24frame timeline on the fly (not like the varicam) and you get your extended run times of the P2 cards.

As for the price of the P2 cards.. like i said its only a 100 tapes and they are paid for. Some people shoot 6 tapes a day, so that becomes profit sooner for some than others.

Of course, if you only shoot 1 tape a day, it will take you 100 days to pay off that p2 card.

and you dont need a laptop to dump cards.. you can use a $100 external drive to offload the cards too directly from the camera.

you will need to invest in a lot of external hard drives to keep all of your footage or still bring that laptop to start burning small chunks of clips onto DVD's.

That 100 tapes worth would equal a major butt load of hard drives at around $100 each or an insane amount of DVD's (4.7 minutes of 60p per disk = 13 disks per hour tape) sitting on a shelf.

I'm sure in the case of rock climbing the dude isn't going to climb back down every time to burn a few disks or take the time to hook up a hard drive. That might be a neat trick to try while white water rafting as well.

To say 100 tapes equal a P2 card doesn't really matter since you have to build in the archive costs. Those hard drives, DVD's, HD-DVD's or Blu-ray's will add to the cost and keep adding to the cost.

[Thomas Smet]

This is for 60p or 1080i on P2.

External bus powered 2.5" hard drive costs:

2x 8 GB p2 cards = $1,200.00 = 16 minutes of video.
400x DV tapes = $1,200.00 = 24,000 minutes of video.

P2 route storage onto hard drives = 60 GB = 60 minutes at roughly $110.00(according to Newegg) per drive.

Backup costs for p2 = 60 x 400 = 110 x 400 = $44,000.00 for backup.

$44,000.00 compared to $1,200.00 in terms of backup costs.

oops I forgot to add the $1,200.00 for the P2 cards.

$45,200.00 for P2 compared to the same amount of video on DV tapes costing $1,200.00.

Wow I could shoot over 15,000.00 DV tapes to equal that cost!

Now if you wanted to you could transfer to desktop hard drives and get 3x the space for around the same cost cutting the $45,000.00 to around $15,000.00 but that is still much higher than $1,200.00

DVD DL backup costs:

$3.00 per DL disk. 8x3 = roughly 60 minutes with a little extra to spare = $24.00 per 60 minutes.

400x24 = $9,600 + $1,200 = $10,800.00 compared to $1,200.00.

For this option you will have to sit there and wait and burn 8.5 minutes of video at a time to backup.


Blu-Ray costs:

$20.00 per disk holding 25 GB or 25 minutes. Every 60 minutes will need 2.4 disks.
2.4x20 = $48.00 per 60 minutes = 48x400 = $19,200.00 + $1,200.00 = $20,400.00 compared to $1,200.00 for tapes.


While the costs of some of these backup methods will go down so will the price of tapes. By the time the price of hard drives or Blu-ray disks fall down to a point for P2 backup to equal the current cost of tapes the HVX200 will be replaced by the ultra HD cameras.

For 30p shooting cut the totals for P2 in half.

[Dean Sensui]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

You can reuse the same tape dozens, even hundreds of times...

We don't. For us, tapes (MiniDVCam) are single pass only. The only tapes that ever get into our cameras are the ones that just came out of their cellophane wrappers. It's not worth the minor savings to risk a shoot on a tape that may exhibit a problem from repeated passes.

When I eventually start shooting in HD it'll most likely be on a tapeless system. The only tape system I'd trust right now is Varicam or HDCam, and those are well beyond my budget.

And, unfortunately, hard drive capacity and DVCPro HD tapes are about the same in terms of cost per minute, about 50 cents per minute. Except with hard drives you don't have to buy a deck for $25,000.