Who's Editing HDV and with what software & success?

Alex Raskin · October 1st, 2003, 07:51 PM

Andre, forgot to ask: why was it necessary to glue the OIS in your camera - isn't it enough to turn OIS off in the menu?

Kindly advise.

Andre Jesmanowicz · October 1st, 2003, 08:24 PM

Alex, as an easy test of vibrations try this: 1) wide angle, 2) lay the camera on a flat, rigid table and film something 5 feet away, 3) knock with your finger the top of the focus ring and at the same time firmly push the camera to the table so it doesn't move. 4) observe!
In my case the image vibrated vertically up and down and it didn't matter if the OIS was on or off. I found that OIS works only in half to full zoom. Before modification, when I made a steep turn under a conopy, the image moved up by a quarter of its size and stayed there till I stopped the turn.
I know how the OIS is constructed, I disassembled an optic block to glue the floating lens in place. There is a large sping there, 3/4 inch long and 3/4 inch in dia. It is compressed and push the floating lens block against few tiny balls on the plate to reduce friction and keep the lens centered. It has own resonance and vibrates like crazy.
When in freefal or on the step outside an airplane, I filemed by accident the sun, I had, a charcteristic for a single chip, a verical geen line. Before OIS was glued, this line looked like a snake with quite a large vibration amplitude. Now this line is straight like a mast!
So be so kind and make the vibration test on your HD10 and mail me the results, please.
Thanks in advance,

Alex Raskin · October 1st, 2003, 09:05 PM

this is very comforting, as I thought it's just me going crazy and imagining the resonance of the OIS.

I discovered that while the cam was mounted on a car's hood.

First off, picture was much better with OIS off than on. With OIS on, it seemed like there's an additional vibrational added - which is what I call OIS resonance for the lack of better definition.

Now, I did notice the effect you are referring to - the cam seems to be super-sensitive to any slight pushes even when mounted on a tripod. This time, however, I had OIS on at all times, so can't compare if it'd better with it off or not.

Also, mine is HD10.

I'm going to great lengths to stabilize the camera, including my own construction of suspended gyro platform. If gluing the OIS will provide additional help, then I'm all for it.

Questions:

- Would you recommend OIS fix to everyone, or only when the camera is used to film extreme sports?

- What are up/downsides of the fix?

- If OIS is switched ON via menu after you glue it, will something overheat/break?

- For a complete dummy in camera optics like me, how hard would it be to apply your fix without killing the camera?

Thanks!

Andre Jesmanowicz · October 1st, 2003, 10:14 PM

Alex, no problem with gluing. To move the floating lens up-down, left-right, there are "linear" actuator coils (very small) with Hall effect as a feedback. At least this is what I figured out from diagrams. When jumping and with the OIS on, the vibrations excede the level of stabilization and nothing breaks. So what a heck? From my tests, I found that even when OIS is on, there is NO stabilization action for a wide angle zoom positon. I did the test this way: glue a tiny peace of masking tape (.040 inch dia) to an old :-) UV filter and film. The spot is visible even when zooming. It goes slightly out of focus, but it is still visible. When the spot moves and picture is steady then the OIS works! Otherwise spot is stable and image moves.
Gluing: 1) you loose waranty !!!! 2) you have to diassemble the whole camera to have access to the right srew that keeps the focus ring assy in place. 3) If you ever repaired an old style watch, you can succeed.
In my case I bought a brand new optical block ($300) and worked on it first, had no problem, and later replaced it. The drawback: I had to mount a CCD sensor to the new block. You need a practice with desoldering about 20 pins and soldering them back. Reason: the last two screws are under printed circuit board. Not a wise construction!
You can risk and redo an actual optical block. There is tiny advantage - there is an extra lens in front of a CCD sensor so dust will not fall on it.
.... And most important part! I am an experimental physicist. In past I modified optic of a 16 mm camera so I could use it for skydiving. Later I made BW camera, from scratch, and used it for skydiving with a transmitter (satelite type) to record jumps on the ground. Then, in 80s, video recorders were too heavy to skydive with.
As you see, the story is not very optimistic, but I had no choice. Or I waisted $3500, or modified the camera. I sent a letter to JVC in Japan showing the results of few tests (jumps included) with the tiny spot on a UV filter. They answered, that when there is a problem with an optic, they change the whole block. Da that! They were faaaaaassssst. Before I had an answer, I made over 40 jumps with a new, modified optical block.
How good is the camera now? When I jumped with movie 16mm I had NO stabilizer. The same with few video cameras. So I have practice. Neverthless I liked my Sony comcorders with a stabilizer. I don't like them now! The HDTV is much better than DV, and JVC delivers quite a good picture without brightness flicker like eg. 3CCD PD-100 (obviously in freefal :-). The iris control inside a JVC optical block is done much better than the OIS. It is not affecter by inertia or gravitational forces. It should be faster - and it can be - but I thing, the problem is in the software.
If only the editing of HD was as fast as DV. No mercy :-)

Alex Raskin · October 1st, 2003, 11:17 PM

Andre, Thank you for the fast reply and for the superbly interesting post.

I was fixing home electronics (tape players etc.) since I was in my early teens, sometimes without the schematics; and I even managed to publish a small article in radio amateur mag when I was 18.

But that was 20 years ago :)

I have to admit that modifications you described do exceed both the level of risk I'm willing to take with the $3K cam, and my level of expertise at this time.

I'm also betting that my rigs will indeed stabilize the (unmodified) camera to the extent that I need for my short films... no extreme sport shots here... so far test are encouraging, I'll post some photos when it's done...

Once again, kudos for your courage - both as a skydiver, and camera modifier! :)

And, I especially liked your satellite-type transmitter for the free-falling optical block thing! In a recent indie short, a group of enthusiasts filmed the free fall from the plane and into the ground. They suspended 2 Eluras in the head of, essentially, a wooden bomb that was dropped from the plane. One camera was still working and miniDV footage was recovered fine after the impact. The most impressive part of the short was preparations.

Also, you wrote:
"If only the editing of HD was as fast as DV."

But it is... I convert all video into HYFFYUV-compressed AVIs (still lossless quality) and edit with Adobe Premiere Pro. Fast, painless, including real-time previews. Can't say what people do on Mac platform - i believe Steve Mullen is an expert on that...

Dave Largent · October 2nd, 2003, 01:43 AM

Alex, or anyone in the know, how does the file size of a HUFFYUV compressed AVI compare to uncompressed AVI? From my experimentation using Vegas to decompress m2t files, an hours worth of decompressed m2t would take up 435GB of space!

Dale Anthony Smith · October 2nd, 2003, 01:30 PM

I recently did an HD production and edited it at Greene HD in Arlington TX. I wanted to edit my offline for my inexpensive hundreds of hours at home and was concerned with translation errors between the FAST system I had been using for years (it will export CMX or any EDL format but we didn't know if all my fine tuning would translate. Being on a deadline, I couldn't afford errors - so I asked them what they were editing on-line with. They are using the In-Sync Speedrazor to control BOXX HD so I called In-Sync and wound up buying BLADE which is their DV version of the same software. I had the HD dubbed to Beta SP with matching time code and we opened up my BLADE project file in Speedrazor and simply did a conforming job with the original HD footage. A big bonus for me is that BLADE is optimized for the DVX 100 and is also resolution independent.. which means that theoretically you could edit HD or any size image on it. I really like the interface (now that I've undergone the learning curve). It has unlimited layers of both video and audio and some nice transparency controls for layers... all in all the best DV (or any) edit choice IMHO.

Andre Jesmanowicz · October 2nd, 2003, 07:52 PM

Dave, huffyuv makes HD avis 123 GB per hour.

Alex Raskin · October 2nd, 2003, 11:44 PM

I think your mileage will vary, as always, depending on the video's content.

I'm now getting 1280x720p30 HUFFYUV-compressed AVIs to the tune of 85Gb per hour with stereo sound.

So you need about 120Gb size hard drive to hold 1 hour of HYFYUV-compressed AVI video, to be sure. (This does NOT account for the temporary drive space required by your NLE during editing/conversions/output etc. Have a *separate* drive for all your applications' Temp folders; I do.)

Christopher C. Murphy · October 3rd, 2003, 01:40 AM

I've bought the 4HDV, but it's not working for me.

I can't seem to get one 3rd party plugin to work - MoreMissingTools. If I could get that to work...maybe I could edit something in FCP and post a full review.

But, I've had the 4HDV a few weeks and haven't gotten it to work.

Steve Nunez · October 3rd, 2003, 08:00 AM

Great- just the news I didn't want to hear......I guess I'll just pick up a PDX10 and call it a day!
16:9 out of the box- standard DV.....just works in NLE's! Not quite HDV but it seems FCP can't deal with that JVC for the moment.

Thanks for the words.

Darren Kelly · October 4th, 2003, 12:42 PM

I started this thread and to get the answer decided to create the Ultimate Resource for this camera nd Workflow.

The Jumpstart Guide to HDV Acquisition and Production will show you how to edit this in both PC and Mac formats. In addition you'll get about $300 in freebees.

For more info, visit my web site. We have a special going on now.

Cheers

October 1st, 2003, 08:24 PM	#17
Andre Jesmanowicz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Milwaukee WI Posts: 36	Alex, as an easy test of vibrations try this: 1) wide angle, 2) lay the camera on a flat, rigid table and film something 5 feet away, 3) knock with your finger the top of the focus ring and at the same time firmly push the camera to the table so it doesn't move. 4) observe! In my case the image vibrated vertically up and down and it didn't matter if the OIS was on or off. I found that OIS works only in half to full zoom. Before modification, when I made a steep turn under a conopy, the image moved up by a quarter of its size and stayed there till I stopped the turn. I know how the OIS is constructed, I disassembled an optic block to glue the floating lens in place. There is a large sping there, 3/4 inch long and 3/4 inch in dia. It is compressed and push the floating lens block against few tiny balls on the plate to reduce friction and keep the lens centered. It has own resonance and vibrates like crazy. When in freefal or on the step outside an airplane, I filemed by accident the sun, I had, a charcteristic for a single chip, a verical geen line. Before OIS was glued, this line looked like a snake with quite a large vibration amplitude. Now this line is straight like a mast! So be so kind and make the vibration test on your HD10 and mail me the results, please. Thanks in advance, __________________ Andre

October 1st, 2003, 10:14 PM	#19
Andre Jesmanowicz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Milwaukee WI Posts: 36	Alex, no problem with gluing. To move the floating lens up-down, left-right, there are "linear" actuator coils (very small) with Hall effect as a feedback. At least this is what I figured out from diagrams. When jumping and with the OIS on, the vibrations excede the level of stabilization and nothing breaks. So what a heck? From my tests, I found that even when OIS is on, there is NO stabilization action for a wide angle zoom positon. I did the test this way: glue a tiny peace of masking tape (.040 inch dia) to an old :-) UV filter and film. The spot is visible even when zooming. It goes slightly out of focus, but it is still visible. When the spot moves and picture is steady then the OIS works! Otherwise spot is stable and image moves. Gluing: 1) you loose waranty !!!! 2) you have to diassemble the whole camera to have access to the right srew that keeps the focus ring assy in place. 3) If you ever repaired an old style watch, you can succeed. In my case I bought a brand new optical block ($300) and worked on it first, had no problem, and later replaced it. The drawback: I had to mount a CCD sensor to the new block. You need a practice with desoldering about 20 pins and soldering them back. Reason: the last two screws are under printed circuit board. Not a wise construction! You can risk and redo an actual optical block. There is tiny advantage - there is an extra lens in front of a CCD sensor so dust will not fall on it. .... And most important part! I am an experimental physicist. In past I modified optic of a 16 mm camera so I could use it for skydiving. Later I made BW camera, from scratch, and used it for skydiving with a transmitter (satelite type) to record jumps on the ground. Then, in 80s, video recorders were too heavy to skydive with. As you see, the story is not very optimistic, but I had no choice. Or I waisted $3500, or modified the camera. I sent a letter to JVC in Japan showing the results of few tests (jumps included) with the tiny spot on a UV filter. They answered, that when there is a problem with an optic, they change the whole block. Da that! They were faaaaaassssst. Before I had an answer, I made over 40 jumps with a new, modified optical block. How good is the camera now? When I jumped with movie 16mm I had NO stabilizer. The same with few video cameras. So I have practice. Neverthless I liked my Sony comcorders with a stabilizer. I don't like them now! The HDTV is much better than DV, and JVC delivers quite a good picture without brightness flicker like eg. 3CCD PD-100 (obviously in freefal :-). The iris control inside a JVC optical block is done much better than the OIS. It is not affecter by inertia or gravitational forces. It should be faster - and it can be - but I thing, the problem is in the software. If only the editing of HD was as fast as DV. No mercy :-) __________________ Andre

October 2nd, 2003, 01:30 PM	#22
Dale Anthony Smith Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: New Orleans Posts: 44	I recently did an HD production and edited it at Greene HD in Arlington TX. I wanted to edit my offline for my inexpensive hundreds of hours at home and was concerned with translation errors between the FAST system I had been using for years (it will export CMX or any EDL format but we didn't know if all my fine tuning would translate. Being on a deadline, I couldn't afford errors - so I asked them what they were editing on-line with. They are using the In-Sync Speedrazor to control BOXX HD so I called In-Sync and wound up buying BLADE which is their DV version of the same software. I had the HD dubbed to Beta SP with matching time code and we opened up my BLADE project file in Speedrazor and simply did a conforming job with the original HD footage. A big bonus for me is that BLADE is optimized for the DVX 100 and is also resolution independent.. which means that theoretically you could edit HD or any size image on it. I really like the interface (now that I've undergone the learning curve). It has unlimited layers of both video and audio and some nice transparency controls for layers... all in all the best DV (or any) edit choice IMHO. __________________ Multi-Media

October 2nd, 2003, 07:52 PM	#23
Andre Jesmanowicz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Milwaukee WI Posts: 36	Dave, huffyuv makes HD avis 123 GB per hour. __________________ Andre

October 3rd, 2003, 08:00 AM	#26
Steve Nunez Trustee Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Pembroke Pines, Florida Posts: 1,418	Great- just the news I didn't want to hear......I guess I'll just pick up a PDX10 and call it a day! 16:9 out of the box- standard DV.....just works in NLE's! Not quite HDV but it seems FCP can't deal with that JVC for the moment. Thanks for the words. __________________ Steve Nunez-New York City www.stevenunez.com

October 1st, 2003, 07:51 PM	#16
Alex Raskin Trustee Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,435	Andre, forgot to ask: why was it necessary to glue the OIS in your camera - isn't it enough to turn OIS off in the menu? Kindly advise.

October 1st, 2003, 09:05 PM	#18
Alex Raskin Trustee Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,435	this is very comforting, as I thought it's just me going crazy and imagining the resonance of the OIS. I discovered that while the cam was mounted on a car's hood. First off, picture was much better with OIS off than on. With OIS on, it seemed like there's an additional vibrational added - which is what I call OIS resonance for the lack of better definition. Now, I did notice the effect you are referring to - the cam seems to be super-sensitive to any slight pushes even when mounted on a tripod. This time, however, I had OIS on at all times, so can't compare if it'd better with it off or not. Also, mine is HD10. I'm going to great lengths to stabilize the camera, including my own construction of suspended gyro platform. If gluing the OIS will provide additional help, then I'm all for it. Questions: - Would you recommend OIS fix to everyone, or only when the camera is used to film extreme sports? - What are up/downsides of the fix? - If OIS is switched ON via menu after you glue it, will something overheat/break? - For a complete dummy in camera optics like me, how hard would it be to apply your fix without killing the camera? Thanks!

October 1st, 2003, 11:17 PM	#20
Alex Raskin Trustee Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,435	Andre, Thank you for the fast reply and for the superbly interesting post. I was fixing home electronics (tape players etc.) since I was in my early teens, sometimes without the schematics; and I even managed to publish a small article in radio amateur mag when I was 18. But that was 20 years ago :) I have to admit that modifications you described do exceed both the level of risk I'm willing to take with the $3K cam, and my level of expertise at this time. I'm also betting that my rigs will indeed stabilize the (unmodified) camera to the extent that I need for my short films... no extreme sport shots here... so far test are encouraging, I'll post some photos when it's done... Once again, kudos for your courage - both as a skydiver, and camera modifier! :) And, I especially liked your satellite-type transmitter for the free-falling optical block thing! In a recent indie short, a group of enthusiasts filmed the free fall from the plane and into the ground. They suspended 2 Eluras in the head of, essentially, a wooden bomb that was dropped from the plane. One camera was still working and miniDV footage was recovered fine after the impact. The most impressive part of the short was preparations. Also, you wrote: "If only the editing of HD was as fast as DV." But it is... I convert all video into HYFFYUV-compressed AVIs (still lossless quality) and edit with Adobe Premiere Pro. Fast, painless, including real-time previews. Can't say what people do on Mac platform - i believe Steve Mullen is an expert on that...

October 2nd, 2003, 01:43 AM	#21
Dave Largent Trustee Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 1,483	Alex, or anyone in the know, how does the file size of a HUFFYUV compressed AVI compare to uncompressed AVI? From my experimentation using Vegas to decompress m2t files, an hours worth of decompressed m2t would take up 435GB of space!

October 2nd, 2003, 11:44 PM	#24
Alex Raskin Trustee Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,435	I think your mileage will vary, as always, depending on the video's content. I'm now getting 1280x720p30 HUFFYUV-compressed AVIs to the tune of 85Gb per hour with stereo sound. So you need about 120Gb size hard drive to hold 1 hour of HYFYUV-compressed AVI video, to be sure. (This does NOT account for the temporary drive space required by your NLE during editing/conversions/output etc. Have a separate drive for all your applications' Temp folders; I do.)

October 3rd, 2003, 01:40 AM	#25
Christopher C. Murphy Trustee Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 1,707	I've bought the 4HDV, but it's not working for me. I can't seem to get one 3rd party plugin to work - MoreMissingTools. If I could get that to work...maybe I could edit something in FCP and post a full review. But, I've had the 4HDV a few weeks and haven't gotten it to work.

October 4th, 2003, 12:42 PM	#27
Darren Kelly Major Player Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Vancouver Posts: 351	I started this thread and to get the answer decided to create the Ultimate Resource for this camera nd Workflow. The Jumpstart Guide to HDV Acquisition and Production will show you how to edit this in both PC and Mac formats. In addition you'll get about $300 in freebees. For more info, visit my web site. We have a special going on now. Cheers __________________ Darren Kelly