OK, is there a A/B compare of HD1 vs 3chip DV?

[Les Dit]

I viewed the uploaded clips from the JVC, and they look very good to me. Honestly, they look like pictures from a $100 one megapixel still camera, but they are in 30fps motion !
I am still holding off my purchase, because I don't think I've seen a similar clip from a VX2000, or other 3 chip DV in the same ballpark price range. So far, in comparison to the HD stuff, the DV stuff looks like a $10 web cam in quality.
Where can I see a few seconds of outdoor footage from a good DV?

The night shot footage by the JVC looks good enough for me, and the chroma noise on the guys facial hair is a non issue as well. I mean, at least I can *see* the hairs !

Can anyone point me to some 3 chip DV online material?

Thanks!
-Les

[Darren Kelly]

We will be doing a side by side on the DVD. Visit the links below

DBK

[Barry Green]

Here are two clips, showing the DVX100 and the JVC HD1.

Both cameras were pointing at the same subject in the same lighting at the same time, so the frames are nearly identical, differing only in relative position of the cameras (which were side-by-side).

The DVX shot in progressive, thin line detail, anamorphic adapter. The JVC was of course in HD 720/30p mode.

Now, it's a little tough to compare them directly, since one is HD and one is SD, so I made two clips: one with the JVC downsampled to SD resolution, and the other where the DVX was upsampled to HD resolution.

Each clip shows about three seconds of footage: first the DVX, then the JVC. The three seconds are of the same footage from each camera.

The footage is direct from the camera, untouched, no color correction or anything else was done to it -- just firewire'd in, found a few seconds that match, and then rendered out.

The resizing was done in Vegas 4.0. All I did was import the two clips, then export as NTSC Widescreen DV (for the DV clip) and as MainConcept MPG2 (using HD 720P/30 preset). I don't know how adequate Vegas' resizing is; I've used it for stretching letterbox footage to anamorphic and been very pleased with the results, but I don't know if stretching between hi-def and standard-def is asking too much of it...

Anyway, here are the files. Save them on your hard disk, then download them through the firewire so you can watch them on a television, as that's the only way to see what they really look like.

Standard-def DV .AVI:
http://66.78.26.9/~fiercely/DVXvsJVC/DVXvsJVC.avi

HD-res MPG2:
http://66.78.26.9/~fiercely/DVXvsJVC/DVXvsJVC.mpg

[Les Dit]

Thanks !!!
That sure tells me a lot. The DV footage looks *so* bad when cut together with the JVC.
I'm done with my lores days, it's the JVC ( or similar ) for me.
The difference is stunning.
People nitpicking about chroma-noise are high.

So this footage was the non-'pro' model, the HD1, with the increased edge enhancing? It dosn't look too over done, really.

-Thanks Again
-Les

[Ken Hodson]

The motion of the DV shot seems gimped up.
Can someone else post a similar clip combo?
It's an excellent way to compare.
Ken

[Adrian Douglas]

After downloading and watching the clips I have to say I prefered the look of the DVX. Sure there was a definate difference between the DVX and the JVC but I really prefered the DVX, it had a more pleasing look. The JVC looked a little harsh, better res, but it had that harsh HD look. Upconverted to HD the JVC won hands down but it's not really a fair competition as if you were shooting for HD why would you use DV. For the average shooter here who is shooting for SD TV, cable, web, etc then I would say go with the DVX.

In the end it all depends on the look you are after. Those clips were good examples of how different cameras produce different looks.

[Troy Lamont]

After downloading and watching the clips I have to say I prefered the look of the DVX. Sure there was a definate difference between the DVX and the JVC but I really prefered the DVX, it had a more pleasing look. The JVC looked a little harsh, better res, but it had that harsh HD look. Upconverted to HD the JVC won hands down but it's not really a fair competition as if you were shooting for HD why would you use DV. For the average shooter here who is shooting for SD TV, cable, web, etc then I would say go with the DVX.

It seems to me that you're not the cutting edge type of person, but someone that's more at home with fuzzy lo-res video. I'm not sure what your definition of harsh is, but those clips looked far from harsh to my eyes. The resolution difference is astonishing to say the least and with the way the clips were presented, it amazes me that someone could actually prefer the standard DV to HDV! Maybe you're just not used to viewing HD footage or ready for the jump in resolution.

I'm not sure what the posters intentions on use are, but as evident in the downconversion to standard DV, HDV still beats DV because you're capturing much more resolution from the start. I'd say go with HDV (the JVC).

Also as was pointed out by Barry, both shots were not setup and if you've been following posts here, you'd know that with a little time and preparation, you can get an even better quality of shot with the JVC. No matter how good you set up a standard DV camcorder, it won't do justice against a pre-prepped shot from the JVC except for maybe chroma noise.

We are eagerly awaiting the comparison between the JVC and the Varicam, which I feel is a better measure of how the JVC stacks up. Standard DV....what's that? :)

My $.02 worth.

Troy

[Heath McKnight]

<<<-- Originally posted by Troy LaMont : We are eagerly awaiting the comparison between the JVC and the Varicam, which I feel is a better measure of how the JVC stacks up. Standard DV....what's that? :)

My $.02 worth.

Troy -->>>

I'm going to email Jon and ask him to break out his DVX100, too, so I can get at least a couple of shots with the HD10, the DVX100 and the Varicam.

heath

[Ken Hodson]

Adrian- the HDV clips were done on a JVC HD1 which uses edge ehancement. The HD10 would be a little softer. You could also use any number of filters on the cam or in post.

"For the average shooter here who is shooting for SD TV, cable, web, etc then I would say go with the DVX."

Are you looking at the same clip? Anyone who's goal is SD resolution can clearly see the benefits. It's like putting on glasses for the first time!
Ken

[Les Dit]

Wasn't the A/B footage a DVX100 for the DV side?
Barry, who did the test, said "DVX".
I guess you mean more different types of shots, that makes sense.

For the other comment, the guy that liked the blurry footage, sure, it looks ok if you are shooting for a web page. So your ceiling on sharpness would be web cam quality, or just a bit higher.
If you want the DV cam look, you can apply a big fat gausian blur on the HD footage in your edit! That will remove all that unneeded high frequency detail the HD recorded.

I would like to see how different the extra edge enhancement looks on the HD1, Is it a big difference? I did not really see any ringing artifacts on the HD sample, but it did look 'sharpened'.

Something to note about the fuss about the glass on these video cameras: This demo shows that it really does not make that much difference on DV cams. Sure , it's fashionable to sport expensive pro looking glass on your DV cam, but it's not the glass that's the bottle neck to image quality.
A cheap lens can resolve 1000 lines, just look at a good disposible still camera, that lens gets over 1000 lines, and costs a buck.
I like the way this JVC HD! has upset the apple cart on the DV weenies:)


-Les



<<<-- Originally posted by Heath McKnight : <<<-- Originally
Troy -->>>

I'm going to email Jon and ask him to break out his DVX100, too, so I can get at least a couple of shots with the HD10, the DVX100 and the Varicam.

heath -->>>

[Graeme Nattress]

Thanks for taking the time to make this interesting comparison available to us.

I can say, however, that I don't like the look of the HD. The edge enhancement was way over the top, the colour looked washed out, and the blacks looked crushed. It certainly looks to be of higher resolution

The DVX provided a more natural looking image, which seemed to suffer badly from the up-rez. On the DVX as DV, every 6th frame looked interlaced - what frame rate did you shoot it at?

Comparing both on the DV sample, again the DVX looked superior, with better colour and the resolution of the HD was marred by the excessive ringing and sharpness enhancement.

There's some definate mpeggyness on the HD footage on both HD and DV. Is this as it is in the source footage?

Thanks again for providing the footage.

[Les Dit]

I looked at the clip several more times, and do not agree with the comment that it is way over enhanced. Maybe just a bit over sharpened, but not by much.
But I don't come from a DV world, I come from a 35mm film world.
I think if you look at DV day in and day out, you get so used to the low spacial resolution, that anything with more detail looks strange and odd.
Comparing the HD footage with, say a still of the Kodak Marci girl head, it looks about right.
Part of my business is motion picture film scanning, at 2048 res, Cineon images. I'm used to looking at those images, not the closer to web cam images the DV format makes.

I'm trying to find a sample of the less edge enhanced JVC footage, I would still prefer to do my own post process sharpening.

Just for kicks, I loaded a still from both DV and HD into Photoshop.
A Gaussian blur of 1.9 pixels made the image look very close to the DV, as in blurry. A little Saturation started making it look candy coated, like the DV stuff.
-Les

[Barry Green]

For who asked about the cameras, yes it was the Panasonic AG-DVX100 and the JVC HD1.

As far as the "out of focus" comment, when we were conducting the shot we were using the same monitor and an a/b switch, and every time we switched back to the DVX I would grab for the focus ring to try to make sure the DVX was as sharp as possible. Yes, as I said in my original post about this footage months ago, the HDV makes the DVX look like it's out of focus.

As for sharpening, keep in mind that this was the HD1 (known for excessive edge enhancement) versus the DVX with edge enhancement completely turned down. If we jacked up the sharpening on the DVX it might change the perception somewhat. (might make for an interesting test...)

As for the shot not being "set up", it most definitely was. We spent quite a bit of time getting it to look as good as possible before shooting. The lighting was aimed mainly at making the JVC look as good as possible. I think that if we conducted a separate test trying to show off the range of the DVX, the JVC would not look as strong in comparison.

As for the motion and the interlaced frame, the DVX was probably on 24P Advanced mode, which puts out four pure frames followed by one blended frame. We shot in so many different ways that I probably have a 30P vs. 30P shot somewhere, but I don't necessarily want to wade through all that footage again...

As far as the poster who said he preferred the "look" of the DVX, well, so did I. I thought the JVC looked "plasticky", like the lady was a mannequin or something. The DVX was warmer and richer. But, much softer. And it's not a DVX problem: we conducted a similar side-by-side and included a DVW700 Digital Betacam in the mix -- the DigiBeta looked just as out of focus. I am very much looking forward to the future HDV offerings -- if they offer a camera with the image quality and controls of the DVX, but the resolution of the JVC, then I am sold!

As for exterior shots: we also recently shot a commercial with all exterior shots, an Old West-style "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" type of spot, and we double-shot the DVX and JVC. Again the DVX was shooting 24PA and anamorphic. I'll try to get ahold of some of the JVC footage and post similar clips.

[Paul Mogg]

That's a pretty amazing comparison of the two cameras, I'm amazed how even at SD resolutions, side by side, the DVX100 really does look out of focus compared to the JVC. But I'm finding this myself now, as I have to edit SD quite a lot, that after looking at the JVC footage I start looking for details in the SD footage that just isn't there! I guess we all just got used to that low resolution and thought it was as good as it gets.

[Yang Wen]

Saw.. the footages.. the JVC looks sharper in both vids(to be expected). However the DVX captured the color much better than the JVC (to be expected). The resolution advantage of the JVC when downsized to SD is just not worth it for me at the cost of flater color range. Besides, the difference between the two cameras at SD resolution is unnoticable if you don't intercut between these two cameras in the same project.