I have posted 8 clips to DVinfo.net

[Mitch Gould]

Eric wrote:

EBil_V-guit.m2t / f2, 1/30, polariser filter. flythrough of a guitar.


Hi Eric...

Thanks very much for the clips and thanks to the board for hosting them.

So far, I have only looked at the guitar clip.

I was able to kinda-sorta view it in Vegas 4, and with a good deal of finagling, was able to export it to DV format to actually run the video.

This clip was well composed and colorful (ahem!), but I thought it was too blurry to use in an actual project.

Can you tell us whether it's feasible, given enough trail and error, to do this shot without so much blur? Maybe as a result of a slower camera movement?

PS I would also try to get a little more convincing "playing" behavior out of my talent...

[Mike Eby]

I posted a couple of short clips here.

http://www.advancedcomputerdesigns.com/hd1demo.m2t

http://www.advancedcomputerdesigns.com/hd1demo2.m2t

This is just home movie type stuff but it shows what the camera can do by just locking the shutter @ 1/60 of a second in manual mode. The second clip was taken very close to dusk so there is a lot of shadows. BTW my camera is the non-pro HD1.

Mike

[Eric Bilodeau]

The blurry effect comes from the 1/30th shutter speed mostly. I now tend to use 1/60th for moving camera... :)

As for the convincing playing... I was so close to the guitar with the camera that I doubt he could have done better.

[Eric Bilodeau]

Mitch Gould wrote:
"This clip was well composed and colorful (ahem!)"

Well, as I pointed out in my review (head to head with the DVX100), the HD10 has good colors but less saturated than the DVX, so in my humble opinion it had a better film look because colors are too high to my taste on the DVX (as it is on most 3ccd's miniDVs). I believe colors react pretty similarily to good DV but slightly less saturated.

Oh, by the way, VLC is a good player to see these images: http://www.videolan.org

Let me know your opinion on the other shots ;)

[Eric Bilodeau]

Well done Mike! I have worked a little with the HD1 and I thought the edge artefacts where very bad but in your case they where less apparent than I would have imagined. The flower shot is very nice, not much chroma compression artefacts, very good indeed. You seem to know how to handle your baby. Though I still prefer the HD10 I think you improved a lot my opinion on the HD1.

[Mike Eby]

Thanks Eric,
I also used a circular polarizer on both clips however I probably should have taken it off on the boat clip because of the lighting conditions. The polarizer does also seem to cut down some of the crush in the highlights and reduces EE effect caused by over exposing in bright, high contrast conditions. If you don’t use the polarizer to remove glair it seems like it can be used as a kind of adjustable ND filter. I think the filter also slightly improves color saturation.

Like others I almost sent the camera back because of the default auto shutter being so fast causing the jitter that everyone complains about. Then I found out here the suggestions to lock the camera @ 1/60 and life will be good and they were right.

I think JVC should consider making a firmware change and re-evaluate the algorithm used to determine shutter speed in full auto-mode because using the camera fully automatic is simply unacceptable with any kind of motion and I am sure have resulted in lost sales.

I come from a still camera background prior to all automatic everything so it does not bother me to adjust the camera manually although the I do agree with others this cameras idea of manual is not what I consider full manual. Manual focus is bit weird the way it works but once you get the hang of it I can deal with it.

I project the image with a NEC XG CRT projector on a 110" diagonal screen and have actually NOT bored the neighbors to death with the home movies they have stared in. I frequently have neighborhood movie night in my home theater and during the winter with a foot of snow on the ground it will be fun to play some of the summer shot.

Mike

[Eric Bilodeau]

Yeah, I had guessed you might have used a polariser. Of course, as the edge artefacts appear in too contrasted bright areas, the polariser would help a lot lowering them. I think that 1/60th is the right speed for most situations because there is a blurry effect on the 1/30th.

[Eric Bilodeau]

Mitch, by the way, the blurry effect on the guitar shot is not that present when the clip is seen on a monitor (HD or SD). It looks pretty well.

[Kevin A. Sturges]

Eric, sorry for my confusion here: did you take those shots with an HD1 or the HD10U? They look fantastic. I almost think I like the slight added sharpening if it's an HD1.

[Eric Bilodeau]

It was a HD10,

Thanks for the comments Kevin.

[Basem Elsokary]

i downloaded the videolan app, and i get errors when trying to open any of the sample m2t files posted...is there something i need to know about using this program?

[Eric Bilodeau]

I normally open the app, drag the files in the opened playlist (the button with two arrows, one up and one down on a macintosh) of VLC and play them without problem, it does not recognise them on drag and drop though. The other possibility is to rename them to .m2v and drag them on the app's icon.

[Basem Elsokary]

thanks for your help...I tried both methods, tried renaming them...basically I downloaded the .m2t files, and tried both renaming, and just keeping as is and dragging to the playlist...in both cases, it starts to open a window, and then crashes with the following error:

"The instruction at "0x0051e59f" referenced memory at "0x035a3000". The memory could not be "written".

this crashes the entire program...

[Eric Bilodeau]

VLC is a very complex program since it can be programmed in many ways. You might have done someting in the prefs or else, I suggest flushing it and reinstalling it. I had a similar problem at the beginning and it worked out fine after reinstallation.

[Eric Bilodeau]

Just a quick reply to put the threads (on Paul Mogg's footage and mine) up so people searching for sequences can look at them. It seems lately, only stills are available...