JY-HD1OU New Footage etc.

[Paul Mogg]

HI folks, I hope you're all well.
I have quite a lot of clips from the JY-HD1OU that I filmed yesterday that I think show off it's capabliities (and problems) quite well. Including one shot of the Golden Gate Bridge that I deliberately framed to be close to identical to a shot made by a high end HD camera (CineAlta or Varicam, I don't know which) that is available on the internet for viewing. (I will find the link for this and post it) This will enable people to do a cursory image quality comparison for themselves. If anyone has a server I can upload these to where everyone can see them, please let me know They range in size between 24mb and 70mb. They are straight out of the camera and unedited.
Some further observations:

1) The shutter/iris non-manual control problem seems to be the same on the HD1OU as I see reported on the GR-HD1, I have not been able to make both the shutter and the iris independently locked and set at the same time. JVC need to adress this problem urgently IMHO as it will be a deal killer for many if not most people. I tried Steve Mullen's suggested tips on this but couldn't get them to work.
Steve, are you making these suggestions from just reading the manual or have you actually got them to work on a camera you have in your hands?

2) Manual white balancing with this camera is a MUST, as it should be with any well shot video, but with this camera it is even more important as it seems to radically affect how the CCD interprets color. My images improved 50% after manual white balancing.

3) I think you will need to carry a full range of ND and polarizing filters around with this camera to make it work it's best. It blows out whites easily and adapts verys slowly to changing lighting conditions, and as it doesn't seem possible to lock it down, seems like you're stuck with it. The thing is, under extremely bright lighting conditions the camera seems incapable of shutting down the iris sufficiently, and as it won't let you do this manually you will have to use ND filters. I haven't been able to get hold of any yet but I bought a polarizing filter yesterday and will try it out shortly.

4) The MPEg studio Pro LE program that comes with the camera is a complete waste of time. I spent half the night last night just trying to trim and output a few clips as a short movie, and it kept crashing and wouldn't even load half the clips from the camera.

5)My impressions about this camera's image quality remain the same after further shooting experience. That is, it is possible to get images with this camera that are of a quality level way above anything you can film with an SD DV camera (of any model or price range), and that the images can be extremely film-like in quality This camera has a lot of very very serious flaws, but I will keep it just for the image quality and hope that JVC will come up with a way to fix the manual shutter problem for me.

6) I would not reccomend this camera to anyone who can only afford the one camera and is hoping it will do everything for them, especially the casual home user You've got to know what you're doing to some extent to get decent stuff out of it. I think it will be a niche camera that will be of interest to serious film and videographers who are into image quality or people making low budget films, who can take the time to work around it's many problems and test light and shoot everything first to see if it works.

7) How do the the VAricam/CineAlta clip of the GG ridge and my clip compare? Well I've only viewed them on a PC monitor at HD res so far, but from what I see I'd say that the JVC has a lot more compression picture noise, especially visible in mid-tones on larger flat areas of color. But overall, I'd say the that for me, or for the average casual viewer, the difference is not as great as you would imagine it would be for the $115,00 difference in price it costs to get that image. Is it worth paying the $115,000 difference in price to get that quality? Most definately YES, if you have that kind of cash handy. Personally I don't have that kind of money, so I'm very happy with my "$3,500 crippled Varicam wannabee" till something better comes along. It's got big problems, but I'm in love with the image already, you could do some "art" on this thing I think!!


8) I will not be selling my IKegami HLDV7W any time shortly. If you're trying to do profesional video you need a tool that you can dial in accurately and predicably to deliver constistenly high quality. The JY-HD1OU is not that camera, nor did I expect or hope it to be, and nor has JVC tried to sell it as such. I think that for the price, it'ds quite amazing what IS possible with this camera though.


All the best

[Michael Pappas]

Ask Chris Hurd if he will host these clips for you!

Michael Pappas

[Michael Pappas]

<<<<Steve mullen, are you making these suggestions from just reading the manual or have you actually got them to work on a camera you have in your hands? >>>>

I wondered the same thing. Steve you have pushed the 101, but what you have said has not worked. Why is this? Have you gotten your hands on the camera yet or did JVC tell you this?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I can also confirm that the MC 101 methods from Steve do not work. I've spent over 10 hours working with an HD1 and there is nothing on the camera that is full-manual. I'm sure the HD10U is essentially the same, if not identical. I will know for sure tomorrow afternoon as I have found one to go look at and take for a test drive.

But I found with the HD1 that even locking the shutter or iris, which it will let one or the other to be set, it won't hold the setting in a lot of situations. It seems that if lighting conditions change too rapidly or drastically, the camera will jump back to auto mode and my guess is it does this to maintain bit-rate and compression levels. It's as if it jumps to full auto as a "fail safe" if the DSP starts to choke.

My DSL should be fixed tuesday and I'll try to post some clips/images then.

Also, I'm demoing a Panasonic DVX100 and I'm seriously thinking of keeping it instead of purchasing the JVC HD unit. So far, the Panasonic is a very impressive camera. It is producing much clearer video than my XL1s and richer color! And its progressive scan abilities are excellent.

The edge enhancement MPEG2 mosaics/artifacting on the JVC will make compositing and animation and effects (a lot of what I do) very difficult, if not impossible. The clarity of the 30p and 24p video out of the DVX100 is astounding for a DV camera.

I've done some quick tests with upconverting frames and clips off the DVX100 to 1280x720 and also cropping them to 16:9 and re-scaling to anamorphic 720x480. Both give superior results to the JVC HD camera's HD and SD resolutions in terms of artifacting and color range!

The ability to work natively in 24p will also be a godsend. Just like 24FPS for film is an economic issue, so is 24p for 3D animation. When it takes a 2GHz CPU several minutes to render a single frame of 3D animation, this adds up, even with multiple CPUs/systems. I usually render to 24p and then convert to 60i to match with DV video it's being combined with. But If I can also shoot in 24p and continue the 24p workflow all the way to the DVD output stage, that would be a wonderful thing. If I were to purchase the HD1/HD10U, I would be buying for its native 16:9 and 480p60 mode, not so much the 720p30 mode.

My mind is pretty well made up, but I'm still going to take a look at the HD10U. If the controls are identical to the HD1, then I probably won't even do more than play with it at the camera shop a bit. I just also want to confirm that the picture quality is the same, which I'm sure it is, but I can't get a definitive answer about that.

[Paul Mogg]

As far as the shutter/iris problem, it is exactly the same on the JY-HD1OU as is being reported on the GR-HD1. You cannot lock the shutter/iris independently of each other, and the camera insists on compensating by changing the shutter speed if you lock the iris, and visa versa. The AE mode, where you can lock the "Exposure" / iris to a setting is only available in manual mode, and is mutually exclusive to the S/A mode, so what Steve Mullen reoprted as a possible fix, in fact does not work.
JVC really need to adress this problem and report back if it is fixable or not or just a planned feature of the camera, it seems crazy that a camera would have a "manual" mode that in fact is not manual at all..
Though I have not done tests myself, I do not believe that the DVX100 would have an equal picture quality (in terms of resolution) to the JVC, when blown up to 1280*720 and viewed on a large HI-def monitor. I have seen footage from the DVX100 blown up to 35mm and projected on a 40' screen, and it looked downright horrendous. The pixelation and artifacting were very evident, and that is why I would never consider this camera if my ultimate goal were to project on a large screen. However, if your ultimate target is standard def television, I'm sure the DVX100 does a reasonable job on the small screen.
One thing that has become evident to me is how consumer and prosumer DV camcorders "taint" the coloration of the picture electronically, usually giving the picture much more color saturation than in real life, to the eye this is very pleasing, and i think a lot of people have got used to it and regard anything that is not super-saturated to be "bad" or "muted" color. I much prefer the colors on the JVC cam to any DV cam that I've seen for this reason, I prefer to have non-electronically tainted colors in my original, then add the look I want by color correction in post.

p.s. for Chris Hurd. Can I post some footage on your site please?

Just my 3 1/2 cents.

[Michael Pappas]

After my post earlier I went back and double checked the JVC HD cam. I took Steve Mullens post with me (repsost below) and followed it to every degree. It does not work. I guess what frustrates me is that this was spoken as gospel. Telling me that I was doing it wrong, implying Steve has done it before and knows matter of fact. I have made many trips back and forth. -->

Sorry, but you and others kept saying what the camera wouldn't do -- but never said what you did.

I posted MC 101 a full week ago and it wasn't until Friday night some finally posted they had tried it.

Once I could see they were doing what I thought was correct, I knew it wouldn't work.

The manual, which I was going by, does NOT not say the EC dial can not be used with the S/A control. This omission by JVC is going to cause the lots of pre- and post sales problems! Just as it has here.

[Michael Pappas]

<<<-- Yeah I thought the same thing. It has a manual mode on the dial. M for manual, but the camera is not truly manual. -- >>>

You are right. The M really means NOT FULLY AUTO. Which should have been stated in the manual.

[Mitch Gould]

Paul Mogg said, "the JVC has a lot more compression picture noise, especially visible in mid-tones on larger flat areas of color. "

I've been researching whether there are filters for the Discrete Cosine Transfer (DCT) artifacts you're talking about. Many mathematical studies on this, including sometimes source code in C, turn up on the Web.

I queried both Sonic Foundry (Vegas Video) and Cineform, who are making a Transport Stream plugin so Adobe Premiere can edit the HD MPEG2. Neither has anything--yet--for this issue, which is a pity, considering that DV, Motion JPEG, and MPEG video are all affected by the limitations of DCT.

Is there any product today for Windows that makes a dent in this? Well, here goes one crazy idea--but it's a stretch! Starting with Version 7, the wonderful Paint Shop Pro from JASC started offering a JPEG artifact filter. I recently did a quick test and found that it works quite well.

Now, it just so happens that the new Paint Shop Pro version 8 has assimilated another of their older products, Image Robot. This means that the program is scriptable, and can automatically perform the same operations on a series of images.

If you have no other alternative on the short term, maybe you can export your footage in short sections as JPEGS and clean them. Sure, it would be tedious and would consume a lot of disk space and your precious time, but....

Oh well, maybe there are better filters on platforms I don't know.

[Paul Mogg]

Thank you for the info on the compression arifacts processsing, that's interesting.
I just wanted to let people know that I tried a circular Polarizing filter on the JY-HD1OU today on a beach in the bright sun, and at first look it seems to have helped a great deal the problems with the whites blowing out in bright conditions. Just an observation.
Haven't tried straight ND filters yet as I don't have any 52mm thread types.

Cheers

[Steve Mullen]

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : As far as the shutter/iris problem, you cannot lock the shutter/iris independently of each other, and the camera insists on compensating by changing the shutter speed if you lock the iris, and visa versa. --->

The camera is operating exactly as it should. Once you set aperature or speed, the camera MUST do what it does!

If you MUST lock the speed you set it.

If you need a certain F-stop, you set it.

THIS IS NOT MANUAL MODE -- even if you are in M mode. (M is like Sony's non-Green mode.) The camera is in Aperature or Shutter Priority AE mode. You are still in AUTO!

In the JVC's Priorty AE modes you are forced to accept the AE exposure. With-out the EC dial to bias the exposure one is going to have blown high-lights -- which is what you have found! UNLESS, one can also set SPOTLIGHT mode. Can the camera do this? This will stop down 1-stop. Can you set Spotlight after locking the the shutter-speed?


<--- The AE mode, where you can lock the "Exposure" to a setting is mutually exclusive to the S/A mode, so what Steve Mullen reoprted as a possible fix, in fact does not work. --->


Unfortunately, the manual does not point-out this SERIOUS limitation. Which means my method cannot work! BUT, now that I have thought about it more -- there may be a way around this limitation. But it will be clumsy. I'll post in EC 102 when I get time.

[Steve Mullen]

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : I think you will need to carry a full range of ND and polarizing filters around with this camera to make it work it's best. It blows out whites easily and adapts verys slowly to changing lighting conditions, and as it doesn't seem possible to lock it down, seems like you're stuck with it. The thing is, under extremely bright lighting conditions the camera seems incapable of shutting down the iris sufficiently, and as it won't let you do this manually you will have to use ND filters. -->>>

Paul, when you say the iris cannot stop down enough -- are you saying this because the overall scene becomes washed-out, or because high-lights blow-out?

These problems are caused by very different things!

[Paul Mogg]

In bright conditions, with the iiris shut down as much as possible, i.e, at f22 (p.s. you cannot close the iris) the whites blow out while the mid-tones are not blown out.

SORRY PAUL -- hit edit not quote. Can you repost.

[Steve Mullen]

<-- In bright conditions, with the iiris shut down as much as possible, i.e, at f22 (p.s. you cannot close the iris) the whites blow out while the mid-tones are not blown out. --->

When very bright light falls on tiny CCDs with over 1M pixels, high-light areas overload and blow out to white. This is what you are seeing!

An 4X ND will help move the iris setting back to about F8. An F5.6 to F11 stop will help the CCD from overloading. It will also offer better pix quality. So, use a 4X ND.

But to really prevent overloading you may need to go to an 8X ND. Anyway you can try both -- plus a 16ND?


The CCD has very low light latitude which I wrote about in March. All small chips with over a M pixels have -- and will have -- this problem.

The bright light allows scene CONTRAST to get very high. The AE system aims for the mid-point. But the range will be greater than the CCD and/or DSP can handle. To solve this, one must bias the exposure darker by 1 to 3 stops. (The DVX100 builds in a 1-stop bias.)

This is what the EC dial should do AFTER you add the ND filter.

[Craig Jones]

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Mullen : Can you set Spotlight after locking the the shutter-speed?
-->>>

No. You get a choice of Program AE, backlight, EC, or S/A. Any one of those. The backlight and EC controls will be locked out by the S/A control. Otherwise, activating one control will override existing settings.

[Steve Mullen]

<<<-- No. You get a choice of Program AE, backlight, EC, or S/A. Any one of those. The backlight and EC controls will be locked out by the S/A control. Otherwise, activating one control will override existing settings. -->>>

Somehow i thought that was going to be the case. Darn!

That means the ND needs to do the job. Now that's not surprising given even the VX1000 had one. But JVC should have included one!!!

But, that may not get the exposure right in high-contrast situations. That means the EC dial will need to be used, but that will allow the shutter to head above 1/60th. Which i think explains all the strobing some get, but others don't.

Thus a 8ND would be best since it would keep exposure down around F4 so the camera wouldn't alter shutter-speed from 1/60th.

By the way -- the correct shutter spedd is one-half the frame rate. For 24fps (1/24th S for each) the speed is 1/48th. For 30fps (1/30th S for each) the speed is 1/60th. Thus our goal is to keep speed at 1/60th (or 1/50th in 50Hz countries).