Various posts concerning GR-HD1U and JY-HD10U

[David Kennett]

I borrowed a friends Audio Technica 822 several years ago, and was very impressed. I recently bought one, unable to find anything comparable for the money. It has XLR connector with adapter to plug directly into camcorder, as well as cable to split it into separate lo-Z (1/4") plugs. A standard XLR mike extension cable can be used with the provided adapter to use the mike away from the camera - in stereo even!

[Gabriele Sartori]

I was very happy since I bought my HD1, I kept the output at 1080i in order to avoid compatibility problem with many TV. Recently though I went to a friend's home, he has a DLP TV from Samsung and the quality wasn't too good with the HD1. Since the DLP has a native resolution of 720P I switched to no-conversion and the quality became just INCREDIBLE. Evidently the double passage of up-conversion and down-conversion wasn't doing too good.
Today I decided to try on my Panasonic RPTV. I never tested at 720P since my Panasonic has native support for 720P but it was never used at such resolution and the convergence was totally out for millimeters on each gun.
I patiently spent two hours trying to make the best possible convergence at the native 720P and I finally attacched the HD1. WOW what a quality. THe resolution and the color dept increased 20-30% . Evidently the internal upscaler is OK but not outstanding. From now on I will always see my tapes at 720P. I could have done this before but my HDTV STB convert everything at 1080i so the few programs at 720 are actually visualized at 1080. Too bad newer TV don't support real native 720P anymore while the DLPs do support it but at the expenses of 1080i...

Gabriele

[Bryan Suthard]

Gabriele,

I have found the same thing on my Sanyo PLV-Z2 and DVHS or HD1 camera attached. If there is a setting in the equipment to put it to 720P, then that is definitely the way to go for the quality!

[Will Lau]

Anyone know if one exists? I just got a dvd that has dvi out and it gives a great image. Just wondering if anyone makes an adapter for JVC's d-terminal cable from the HD-1 to a DVI.

Cheers

[Troy Lamont]

Will,

There aren't any component to DVI convertors that I'm aware of. Typically there would be some type of 'transcoding' involved because DVI is digital and has a different 'colorspace' than analog component video (which is what the D-Terminal output is).

You could do a component (D-Terminal) to VGA to DVI conversion, but you'd probably lose some resolution and color clarity in the process.

The camera uses firewire as it's digital connection and there are a lot of components out there that can accept and or convert this format to analog component such as the Samsung SIR-T165 and the JVC HM-DH3000/DH40000 D-VHS VCRs and the LG LST-3410a HD recorder. This option would run you at minimum about $400-$500 dollars.

A lot of newer HDTVs accept firewire natively and will display the 720p signal in 1080i in it's digital format and some will actually display it natively at 720p (the RCA and Sony DLP & LCD HDTVs). Some of these sets include ones from Mitisubishi, Pioneer, RCA & Sony.

My Mits set has the capability to be upgraded to accept a firewire connection but it would cost me $1000! I could probably sell my old set and use that money towards a newer Mits with firewire and still come out ahead vs spending $1000 for the upgrade.

Hope this helps.

Troy

[Will Lau]

Thanks Troy for the info. I guess what ever I do it will cost me a bunch of coin. Not really worth it for a nominal improvement.

Thanks again!

[Ed Hill]

Hi,

I just finished shooting and editing a PR video for a new recording artist. Here are some short notes on what I've learned from shooting with the HD10.

1) We shot outdoors in bright sunlight, under overcast and indoors. We overcome the lack of Manual exposure control using
ND filters. We set the camera to manual shutter speed Mode and the shutter speed to 1/60 in most cases. Then enough ND filters are added so that the shutter is forced open to the neighborhood of F2.0-F4. This does not give direct control but it limits the range of F stop to a known amount. Obviously by moving the lights back away from the subject you can get the same effect indoors (force the auto aperture open to F2 or F4) without using ND filters indoors.

2) This decreases depth of field and forces the viewer's eye to focus in the focused plane where my main subject resides. We got a nice depth of field effect outdoors by keeping the camera zoomed to medium or longer focal length and keeping the camera further away from the subject. With the tiny CCD chip in these cameras middle to wide angle focal length makes everything in focus from nearly the front of lens to infinity which is irritating because of lack of control over focus.

3) Overall the colors seem less saturated than a 3 chip camera, but outdoors with overcast clouds the colors seem more saturated in a way that reminds me of some 16mm film stocks.

4) Shooting indoors this camera seems to crush some black values and also some highlight values even if you are careful with clothing and skin colors in the shot & how you light them. But this played to our advantage shooting indoors in a tiny recording studio.

The singer was facing into a silver recording studio mic with textured black sound absorbing panels on the wall behind her.
In the tiny studio I lit her face with a single lowel softlight for key and used a hard Tyvek reflector for fill light to soften the shadows.

I angled the softlight down to lessen light falling on the black wall behind her. I found myself wishing I had brought french flags to shield the wall behind her from the light and give a black limbo lighting effect. In the LCD the black textured walls looked a very ugly gray.

Surprise. When we edited the video, in almost all the shots the recording studio walls looked almost dead black like the limbo effect I wanted.

In this case the HD-10's limited contrast range gave an awesome look. If I had wanted the walls to be visible, I would have to dump more light on them, or use a different color background wall.

5) Setting the manual shutter speed to 1/30 gives a very cool motion blur that reminds me of film. This looks great shooting low light sources at night. You have to be careful to use a tripod and pan or tilt slowly like with film.

6) We used the tripod or Steady Tracker gizmo for everything. But some hand held shots, looked very cool. For this I zoomed wide, got close to the subject to minimize the unsteadyness of handheld, and moved the camera slowly around the subject to give that cool 3D look of the moving camera. The steady tracker shots looked good, but I am praying that the next project has a large enough budget for dolly & grip truck rental.

7) Naturally we shoot only overcast conditions or put a scrim over the subjects head to soften the sunlight and contrast for close ups. When trapped in direct sunlight conditions, we put the sun
behind the subject to act like a back light. Then we fill the face with sunlight from Tyvek hard reflectors (Hardware store $ 7.00).

8) Another cool effect is to have 1 hard reflector on the face from a distance, scrim overhead to lessen contrast in direct sun, plus another hard reflector behind the subject to give a slightly exaggerated backlight effect, which looks very nice for a woman with long hair.

Ed Hill

[Mark Paschke]

This type of info is whakes this forum so great.

Thanks for taking time to type these informational goodies (being a newbie , I really love it)

I did an HD wedding yesterday and found when I used the "backlight" button on the HD10 it made my overcast skyed Bride shots in a Gazebo come alive and with all the white surounding her it made her face look surreal, I was really impressed everytime I hit that button

[Lynne Whelden]

Does anyone know if JVC's "edit control cable" is the same as Sony's LANC? In other words, would I be able to hook the edit control cable to a Sony DV deck's LANC input and perform cuts between camera and deck? Or is this some proprietary thing that only works with other JVC equipment?

[Ken Hodson]

JVC uses Jlip.
Do a search in this forum and you can check out Jlip specifics.

[Ken Hodson]

http://www.pluginz.com/news/2162?

Article links to JVC site for more pics.

[Ben Buie]

Come on Ken,

Don't you know by now that HDV (i.e., HD encoded at a "low" bit-rate of 19 or 25Mbps) isn't "real" HD?

:)

I'm being sarcastic of course.

I've always thought the HDCAM and DVCPROHD formats were overkill when your final destination is going to be HDTV.

As a film alternative (i.e., going to the big screen), HDCAM and DVCPROHD are obviously superior to HDV, but for HDTV they are pretty close to being equal (in terms of format, obviously the Varicam and Cinealta are better cameras than the HD10 for many other reasons).

Anyway, thanks for the update.

Oh yeah, I wonder if this means networks like HDNET and DiscoveryHD will lift their informal "ban" on HD10 originated footage? I've heard those networks will reject HD10 footage, although if I submitted something I would just tell them it was 720p and give it to them on HDCAM and not tell them what I shot it on :)

Ben

[Ken Hodson]

Yes I know it wasn't shot on HD10's but I thought it interesting and groundbreaking, being it was the first time it was done.
JVC has been promoting a complete to broadcast mpeg2 solution of which the DM-JV600U high definition (HD) MPEG-2 encoder and DM-4600UC 4:2:0-4:2:2 MPEG-2 decoder are front and center. My point is that the 720p HD10 is a good fit for the future.

"Oh yeah, I wonder if this means networks like HDNET and DiscoveryHD will lift their informal "ban" on HD10 originated footage? I've heard those networks will reject HD10 footage, although if I submitted something I would just tell them it was 720p and give it to them on HDCAM and not tell them what I shot it on :)"

Exactly. What they don't know won't hurt them ;>)
I don't know of any broadcast stations that accept submissions on miniDV tapes. Give it to them on the format they demand and there won't be a problem. Although I wouldn't go in braging it was done on a HD10 as your work will be prejudged out of contention. Collect the fat cheque then shove it in their face :)

[Mark Paschke]

I am welding together an aluminum framed crane and am to the point where I need the monitor stand figured out .

I think the only way to accomplish this would be firewire if its possible at all but I have found no settings on camera or VH1 that would need to be set for this to happen.

Anybody try this?

[Graham Hickling]

Well the camera certainly outputs a real-time signal through the firewire port - for example a firewire-equipped PC laptop running VLC software works fine as an external monitor.

So the issue will be whether the VH1u (which I'm not familiar with) can display that signal.