HD10 vs. Varicam! It starts Friday! And need help...

[Brad Hawkins]

Heath wrote:

"This is my friend shooting, not me, in NYC.

He's using his DVX100 in two weeks with the HD10, but NO Varicam, sorry."

What do you mean no Varicam? I thought the whole point of this thing was to compare the HD10 with the Varicam. Please straighten me out here.

Brad

[Christopher Toderman]

The Varicam records 60 fps. The footage has to go through a rate converter where frames are discarted to arive at 30p or 24p. So at 24p the effective rate is mere 40 Mbps. The recorded rate is irrelevant.

DVX in progressive outputs true progressive pictures. If it records one frame in two parts does not matter.

Of course the JVC should be compared to the Varicam. Both are 720p. The JVC is more compressed. So what? DV is many times more compressed than DigiBeta and it is usable for TV. The picture of DigiBeta is not EXTREMELY much better than DV. Why exaggurate quality of the Varicam.

It is is sad that Varicam is more compressed than DV.

[Heath McKnight]

Though interesting, this has gotten off topic.

hwm

[Ken Hodson]

One request.
When the clips are compiled, if you could put the different cam shots in one clip (ala the HD1 vs DVX) that would great. The back and forth flipping between the two (or more) cams in the same clip gives the best comparison by far.

[Don Berube]

>>>>The picture of DigiBeta is not EXTREMELY much better than >>>>DV. Why exaggurate quality of the Varicam


Christopher,

Could you please tell us a little about yourself and your background? I'm curious as to what extent you have actually utilized an HD10 or 10U? Or even a Panasonic VariCam for that matter? Have you ever worked with any VariCam footage at all? If so, please elaborate as to what degree - perhaps that might help to qualify your commments - even perhaps just a little bit.

It is not "exaggurating" to state that the Panasonic VariCam 27 outputs *significantly* better quality pixels than the HD10 or HD10U, hands down.

I'm talking about the actual image here, ok? Not just what you perceive the effective file size to be. That means color space, color detail, bit rate, dithering, chroma noise, interleaving, anti aliasing, lattitude, etc...

Let's keep it real here and remember that this is not denigrating the HD10U by pointing out that the quality of recorded pixels generated by the single, smaller 1/3" CCD of the HD10U in no way compares to the output of the 2/3" CCD's of the Panasonic VariCam.

Sure, you can converge reality into the equation and state that for under $4000, the JVC HD10U is at least appealing to those who do not have the means to work with the higher-end professional High Definition Television format. It would also be very accurate to state that the HD10U gives us a very tangible example of the constraints and limitations of the extremely compressed recording format that the JVC HD10U relies on. Even if JVC had actually produced an HDV camera with a lens mount to allow better glass and real, tangible professional-level manual control, we would still be limited by that single 1/3" CCD and the extremely compressed JVC HDV recording format.

Hey, this is not denigrating JVC at all by pointing out this truth,,, they certainly have raised the bar of performance for the consumer format.

- don

[Christopher Toderman]

Worked mainly with CineAlta lately, DigiBeta prior to that, plus film. I have no high opinion of the JVC; have seen some footage, have tried the camera. Have seen plenty of Varicam stuff and tried the camera. The JVC is piece of ...... when compared to Varicam. So is the image. But I disagree with this comment that was made in this thread: "The VariCam picture is EXTREMELY much better than the JVC."

The HDV format is promising, if the camera head is right and the processing is right. The JVC CCD does not even put out full HD resolution. The effective horizontal pixels are only about 960, not 1280, per Steve Mullen's teport in Video Systems. The vertical resolution is not full either. HDV compression is more efficient, or rather has the potential of being more efficient, than that of Varicam, or CineAlta. Of course the JVC is not Varicam, just as Varicam is not CineAlta, although a number of falk who own Varicam claim that Varicam, because of its 4:2:2 is more of a cinema camera than CineAlta. That too is false. They claim that the color is better because it is less compressed. Because it is more compressed than even DV, it is naturally not. Unfortunately in this forum there were tests that compared the JVC favorably to CineAlta and the past moderator supported this motion, which was ridiculous. Anyway, Heath is right, this has gotten off topic, as he says. So I'll rest my case. Still the Varicam is a lot closer in quality to CineAlta than the JVC is to Varicam, naturally. The past moderator also staed in this forum the new Panasonic 900 has a lot better picture than the JVC. I've seen the same thing. Unfortunately later on he supported the oposite of this opinion, which I think was ridiculous too. One day we'll see a high quality HDV camera. It will be probably first from Canon. The day is not too far away. The JVC is not this type of camera. It definitely is not a professional one. Adding pro mic jacks don't cut it. Still I believe that the shootout against Varicam will bring us some interesting imageas. None should be better than the ones from the Varicam. But some stationary ones, where the contrast is flat and lighting level is high, will look good. It should be especially in the middle of the lens zoom, where it is probably sharpest.

[Les Dit]

While we are a bit off topic ...
I am only interested in the JVC for home-hobby-art use. I use film at work, in a digital form.
The examples of the JVC blow away any DV stuff I've seen, the sharpness reminds me more of film than video.
For the foo foo video folks, the so called high end HD cams are all video toys as well, as long as they give you 8 bit images.
Sorry, but 256 levels just dosn't cut it, and I certainly hope that major feature films don't dumb down the visuals to that blown out video look.
Now I did see "Our Lady of the Assassins" on film, shot in HD, and it looked pretty good.
I also know that when Lucas shoots HD, they dump the uncompressed video to drive arrays. They only use the tape for cases that the camera could not be hooked to the drives for motion reasons. The tape was for bakup mostly.

I did hear that some HD cams make 10 bit video files. Now you can color correct a bit more, and still have a good image.

-Les

[Ken Hodson]

Christopher-"The effective horizontal pixels are only about 960, not 1280, per Steve Mullen's teport in Video Systems."

You have made this statement often enough to have prompted me to start this thread-
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16421

Steve Mullen and others clarify the situation in that thread. The bottom line is the HD10 is closer to true 720HD resolution, then say the XL1 is to true DV resolution. Yet no one harps that the XL1 isn't a true DV cam!
Ken

[Heath McKnight]

<<<-- Originally posted by Brad Hawkins : Heath wrote:

"This is my friend shooting, not me, in NYC.

He's using his DVX100 in two weeks with the HD10, but NO Varicam, sorry."

What do you mean no Varicam? I thought the whole point of this thing was to compare the HD10 with the Varicam. Please straighten me out here.

Brad -->>>

No, it's no Varicam when the DVX100 comes back in, and Jon does the tests. The Varicam is being used right now. I think I posted it in that last post.

heath

[Heath McKnight]

<<<-- Originally posted by Don Berube : >>>>The picture of DigiBeta is not EXTREMELY much better than >>>>DV. Why exaggurate quality of the Varicam


Christopher,

HD10 or HD10U. -->>>

Don,

The HD10 IS the HD10u--JY-HD10U. Do you mean the GR-1?

heath

[Christopher Toderman]

Ken Hodson Wrote: "The bottom line is the HD10 is closer to true 720HD resolution, then say the XL1 is to true DV resolution. Yet no one harps that the XL1 isn't a true DV cam!"

Answer to Ken Hodson: Of course XL1 is a true DV, and its horizontal resolution is excellent. HD10's horizontal resolution lies exactly half-way between DV and 720p. Please read the previous moderator's report in Video Systems, which was well referenced in this forum. The ex moderator later on aparently forgot what he discovered and described, very scientifically, in Video Systems.

We should be accurate in our statements. There is no need to exaggurate quality of a camera, claim that HD10's picture quality is close to CineAlta, or that Varicam is better than CineAlta, etc., as Varicam owners claim, just because they can't afford CineAlta. Major motion pictures were made with CineAlta. None with Varicam. There is a very good reason. And the JVC is no Varicam, but falls at best between the DVX and Varicam. If you'd stand on that line connecting quality of Varicam and DVX, at the point where is the JVC, you'd be too close from the DVX and too far from the Varicam. CineAlta will be just as distant from the Varicam as the Varicam is from the DVX. That is what I saw myself.

[Frank Granovski]

Christopher Toderman wrote:

Of course XL1 is a true DV, and its horizontal resolution is excellent.

Excellent, meaning what? The maximum resolution of what miniDV is capable of? That would be 540 horizontal lines. The XL1 plays back 460 lines.

We should be accurate in our statements. There is no need to exaggurate quality of a camera....

[Christopher Toderman]

The JVC is 25% off, 1/2 way between SD and the lowest level of HD. I rest my case.

[Eric Bilodeau]

You seem to forget that 25% off HD720 is much less noticeable than 25% off SD. As for the pixel count of both the XL1 and the HD10 the ratio is not 25% less for the HD10, it is 0,91:1 (840,000:921,600), horizontal lines is a bizare way to state definition, especially with progressive scan. The XL1 falls very short 0,72:1 (250,000:345,600), especially in 16:9 stretched. I used the XL1 a lot and the image is good but not very sharp. Compared to the DVX or even the GL2, it lacks a lot of sharpness and you can see that without fancy material. I also tested the HD10 with the Varicam and it is close, so close that we where not able to tell the difference in definition (I did this test with and for people that have been working with HD for years). Test it, you will see how close it is, you really don't need all this "techno babbel", what you see is what you get. All I see is a lot of theory without bothering to test as it was when miniDV came out, the VX1000 was bombarded by techs all over the place telling it was not good, not equivalent, unusable, crap etc... While those people where arguing, some people took the damn thing and made history with it. You either fear it or use it but there is potential, oh yes...

[Jeff Donald]

Resolution does not double as image size doubles. Resolution is usually measured as line pairs per millimeter. It is a linear scale. Doubling the pixels will only result in 1.4x improvement in resolution.