GR-HD1 footage for dowload
 

I just dowloaded some footage that is supposedly footage from the GR-HD1 in MPEG2 TS format, it is posted at:

http://www.aquamonkey.com/gr-hd1_ts.zip

It looks pretty darned good to me, would love to hear others opinions, especially if they are able to view it on an HD televison, I could only watch it on a PC using the Elecard shareware player.
Appears to have a LOT of detail, as you would expect.
Finally we have something real to judge this camera by!

Paul

p.s. I did not post this footage, just found the link to it on another forum (camcorderinfo.com)

Re: GR-HD1 footage for dowload
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : I just dowloaded some footage that is supposedly footage from the GR-HD1 in MPEG2 TS format, it is posted at:

http://www.aquamonkey.com/gr-hd1_ts.zip

-->>>

The site you mention doesn't download anything. But Aqua Monkey is a site in Japan that sells aquariums. And they have great pix of fish swimming in their aquaium. Click to:

http://homepage3.nifty.com/AQUAMONKEY/index.html

Camcorderinfo is not a great site. They posted a story on the JVC that was stolen word for word from my site. One has to wonder is this a hoax.

>Camcorderinfo is not a great site.<

Robin started that site when she was just 17 or 18 years of age. I give her credit for that. (That was a couple of years ago.) I rather like her spunk, and she is always trying to make http://www.camcorderinfo.com better. Let her grow up a bit, then I'm sure her site will have matured also. I find lots of the latest news on her site. She informs her readers well. Vincent, one of our members, writes for her and does a fine job.

HD1 footage
 

The site seems to have stopped working, but if anybody is interested, I have the footage. It is in the right format to be from the HD1 so I don't doubt that it is. It's only 10mb in size. It's 4 seconds of fish swimming around in an aquarium, looks a bit washed out, but that's how it would look if filmed through glass and water. I'd certainly prefer some better examples if anyone finds any.

Paul

The first time I went to her site, it was obvious she knew nothing about technology. What/who let her think someone who knew nothing could/should advise others is nothing short of bizzare.

I'd have to say follow the money. How does someone in HS get the funds to start a site and to market it? Something sounds fishey to me.

When a google led me to her site last fall, she knew nothing more than the HD1 Japanese press release. If she had done some real reporting she could have learned more.

Later I went back and she was letting some wise ass publish a direct copy of something from the Video Systems website. That happens to be illegal, but I guess she's is too young to care about that.

On the other hand, there was a great review of the HD1 from PMA. I posted the link to it a month ago. And I posted a congratulations to the writer. But I did wonder why he published on that site rather than here.

I think the pop-ups are gone. But it still looks like AOL. :)

Send of TS file
 

I'd love a copy of the MPEG TS file.

I downloaded a number of Mac tools that I'd like to try on it.

Steve, your correct, but the thing about someone in highschool being able to not start a website, is false. I'm 14 and I can throw together a website that looks and functions 20x better then her's...I used to really make fun of her website for the same reasons myself -- she doesn't seem to know much, but tries to sound like she does in her words, and her reviews aren't even "real" half the time. By that, I mean it seems she doesn't even have the camera that she is "reviewing", and you can get more information off the box of the product then in her reviews...

<<<-- Originally posted by Alex Knappenberger : Steve, your correct, but the thing about someone in highschool being able to not start a website, is false. I'm 14 and I can throw together a website that looks and functions 20x better then her's. -->>>

You should note I never questioned HOW she did it. But how she funded a server, marketed her site to many companies, and kept herself in food and rent during the startup.

Creating a website is simple. Building a web business is expensive.

Steve

<< But I did wonder why he published on that site rather than here >>

Actually he came to me first, asked me if I was interested in his review and how much I would pay for it. I told him I was very interested, but that I don't have a budget for paying for submissions. I would have been happy to run it, but if I paid him then I'd have to pay everybody who submits material, and I haven't won the lottery yet to fund an operation of that kind of expense. Hope this helps,

<< But I did wonder why he published on that site rather than here >>
I can't find this reference in this thread.

Bryan

It's in the fifth paragraph, in the first of two back-to-back posts by Steve Mullen a little further up. Hope this helps,

While the file would not download to my Mac,it did -- slowly -- to my PC. The file plays fine on my 17" widescreen iMac -- at full-screen.

If I had an adapter cable I could feed my 16:9 projector.

Detail is very nice -- but I THINK I see luma and chroma noise. Which makes sense because the HD1 certainly has both.

Seems strange no one from Japan has posted a long file of more varied scenes.

Luma and chroma noise -- does anyone know about the scene lighting -- is it indoors, outdoors?

HD1 Footage
 

I'm not seeing any noise in the picture, quite grainless in fact, which is the most suprising thing about it, with DV I would definately be able to see SOME pixel noise, even in a fairly high end camera. It's not the best example though as the fact that it's filmed through glass and water makes it look washed out, and it's difficult to tell if there are any camera induced color artifacts because of the subject matter. there aren't any straight edges or camera movement either, that might show up problems.
Also I'm viewing it on my PC monitor, which is never a good idea with video. But I have to say that this footage makes me much more optimistic than I was, bearing in mind all the negativity written about this camera over the past few months. Personally it is the level of detail that appeals to me. Many color problems can be fixed in post, though of course that should be a last resort.

Paul

Steve Mullen said he sees chroma and luma noise. Steve, could you commet on it? Also, do you know what kind of changes/improvements is JVC plannig? Are they going o be upgrading the MPEG encoder processor, or what?

I saw at JVC's HD10 camera is slated for "next month." June now? I heard Steve M. mention July...

For my 2004 or 2005 film shoot (depending on how much money we get...), we may go with the latest mini-HD camera with a 35 mm lens adaptor and lens vs. a CineAlta. Depends on our budget and the final quality. But I keep hearing the Varicam is no better than higher-end DV cameras, like the new Panasonic 24 P DV camera and the Ikegami pal...CineAlta is TOO EXPENSIVE!

It's just a matter of how this camera looks and what the other companies offer.

heath
www.mpsdigital.com

Re: HD1 Footage
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : I'm not seeing any noise in the picture, quite grainless in fact, which is the most suprising thing about it, with DV I would definately be able to see SOME pixel noise, even in a fairly high end camera. It's not the best example though as the fact that it's filmed through glass and water makes it look washed out -->>>

A local Thai resturant has a huge fish tank. The fish colors are VERY bright. And the picture is very clear.

The first thing my wife said was, "why are the colors so pale?"

Which matches my finding that adding +15 saturation. When I do that with a still of the fish -- it looks much better.

Having seen footage shot on the HD1 at PMA I'm looking -- maybe too hard -- for any pattern that doesn't seem to belong. Look in the red grass -- do you see some moving chroma patterns?

The HD1 has/had losts of noise artifacts. However, these problems seem not to be from the chip. It is, it is claimed, from the MPEG2 encoding. Bright colors have the most noise artifacts. Broad areas of with no detal also have a noise artifacts. Don't look for blocking or mosquitos. Look for grunge.

Download VLC media play. It plays the TS file perfectly.

HD10 is now July.

Whoever says Varicam is no better -- I'd suggest you stop listening to this person.

Re: Re: HD1 Footage
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Mullen :

Whoever says Varicam is no better -- I'd suggest you stop listening to this person. -->>>

This was said, and I admit I shouldn't rely on hearsay, by a working pro using CineAltas, Varicams, Ikegamis, the mini-dv 24P and both XL-1's and GL-2's. He said a Varicam blown up to 1080i HD and an Ikegami blown up to 1080i HD look similar. Of course, I'm going on hearsay, but I trust this person. He wants me to save money on my film budget by renting Ikegami or the 24P Panasonic DV. He has no money or anything involved, nor does he own either the Ike or the soon-to-be released Panasonic. (He owns the mini dv 24p and a Sony 500 (?) Pal and his partner in his New York City company owns a CineAlta). I will admit that the Ikegami Beta is pretty good, as a Palm Beach County-based company I sometimes work for use them.

Of course, I won't make any final decisions until I test them myself. I'm awaiting a test on the Varicam and now a July test with the JVC, HD monitor and the D-VHS. Then I'll know for myself.

heath
www.mpsdigital.com

Question for Steve Mullen:

Does it appear hat the picture noise is related to insufficient lighting level?

I decompressed this HD footage today and messed with it in FCP (see thread above). Looking at it in the waveform monitor It looks like the Pedestal is set much too high. With some fairly quick adjustments in FCP's 3-way color corrector I was able to get quite stunning improvements in both the depth and color of the picture. It looks to me that this camera just needs some gamma adjustments to make it very very usable. I can't really comment on the chroma noise as I'm not able to view it through an HD monitor or television to make a good judgement.

My 2 cents.

Paul

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : I decompressed this HD footage today and messed with it in FCP (see thread above). -->>>

How did you get it into FCP?

The pedestal should be zero.

Wish we knew the details of the segment!

I used the mpgtx and mpeg2decx shareware utilities to demux and convert it to Quicktime uncompressed, then made a DV clone of the footage, did a DV offline edit and conform back to the uncompressed material. It seemed to work fine, please see my other thread for the details. but again I have to say it seems too simple to be without fault.

Paul

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : I used the mpgtx and mpeg2decx shareware utilities to demux and convert it to Quicktime uncompressed, then made a DV clone of the footage, did a DV offline edit and conform back to the uncompressed material. It seemed to work fine, please see my other thread for the details. but again I have to say it seems too simple to be without fault.

Paul -->>>

So, if I'm following you correctly, this was off the internet, but can you do the same thing with the shareware programs and FCP to edit the actual footage in Final Cut directly from the camera?

heath

ps-July can't come fast enough!!!! :-)

I can't get that footage to play on any of my players. Is it regular MPEG2? Do I need something special to play it?

My understanding is that you cannot and will not be able to edit the native MPEG2_TS file that this camera natively puts out, in FCP, until Apple or someone else comes up with a Quicktime codec for for MPEG2 Transport Stream, which I believe they are working on right now. But what I am talking about, if it works on larger files (and I see no reason why not), is in fact better (quality wise) than editing in that TS compressed format, because the compressed TS file only gets de-compressed the once. You then make a DV format copy of that same footage and edit that as you would any other DV footage. Then, once your editing in DV format is done, you just switch the source footage that your edits were referring to in the FCP sequence, back to the HD footage that is sitting on your hard drive, and render. That's it, and the quality of the source material should not be degraded as is might well be if editing natively in the TS format, which is what a lot have people have been complaining about in the choice of this format for this camera.
It would probably be even easier and take up less space if you used the OfflineRT format in FCP, but I've not tried that yet. The big problem here is of course that you need massive amounts of hard drive space to hold all of that uncompressed HD material, but only when you do your conform back to HD. But hard drives are pretty cheap, and you don't need an expensive SCSI array, or an HD deck, or a $10,000 HD PCI card for this.
Once again, I stress I've only tried this on the 4 second piece of footage from the HD1 that was posted on the internet. and it appeared to work fine at first attempt, I even color corrected the footage in FCP. I'm sure there may be may be major problems I'm not yet aware of, and hopefully others will try it and point those out if they exist.
If anyone knows of a shareware HD Mpeg2 encoder, I'd be very interested, as that seems to be the missing link in doing this affordably.

All the best

Paul

JVC DV5000 vs. HD1 stills:

http://www.etaiwannews.com/Business/...1051664220.htm

Are these stills or frame grabs?

Please recheck your link Joseph, it didn't seem to point to what you were referencing.

Thanks

http://ongen.econ-net.or.jp/hihyou/v...gashitsu-l.jpg

Sorry, these are grabs; above is the correct link

That's very interesting, the 45 degree roof line of the building says a lot, how the DV stair-stepping dissapears at higher pixel resolutions, and the smoothness of the curves on the half circle of the upper light colored brickwork.

Thanks

I think that the letters are most indicative of the increased resolution. Compare the two "Church" words.

Unfortunately the color on the HD1 looks like something from a 1-tube consumer camera from the period when man learned how to walk straight. A good match for the 35 Lux rating from the same era. Thumbs up to JVC for being consistent. Now all they have to do is match this thing to one of their old VHS recorders and claim that the price increase is consistent too -- with inflation. With the 100K viewfinder consistently reminding us of the same prehistoric era, they can call it Nostalgiacorder.

Hey JVC, this is 21st century. Wake up and if nothing else, fix up the color before releasing this thing in the US, before Consumer Reports get hold of one and will tell everybody that they will be a lot better off buying a $500 Digital 8 Sony, or worse, $250 Hi8 Canon. They already claim that your repair history is about as bad as can be among the DV camcorder brands.

1. unZIP file.

2. Use mpgtxwrap to DEMUX into audio and video clips.

3. Use iTunes to convert audio ",mp3" tp .aif

4. Startup FCP and New Sequence

5. Import .m2v file (trim off first 2 blank frames)

6. import .aif file

7. drag to new sequence, select A and V, and LINK. Drag back to Bin.

8. create new Sequence

9. Now you can use this trim this clip and create a new movie. Even color correct as Paul did.

10. now export as MPEG-4 movie.

11. you can play in QT player

So it looks like MAYBE FCP editing can be done.

I purchased an MPEG-2 encoder from Apple. Anyone know how to get it installed for use by FCP?

Steve, I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying you were able to import and/or edit an .m2v (mpeg2 Video) file directly in FCP somehow?
About the Apple Mpeg2 encoder. The only one I know of comes bundled with DVD Studio Pro but it only supports a maximum resolution of 720*480, so it won't do HD (unless you've found differently of course). The Heuris encoder supports HD resolutions but costs many thousands, if you find any shareware, or more affordable alternative, please post about it.
I posted on my local FCP group about my online/offline method of editing HD1 footage and some people with experience in HD editing seemed to think it was perfectly valid. I'm looking forward to trying it on a longer piece of footage if and when I can get my hands on some.

Good luck with this.

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : Steve, I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying you were able to import and/or edit an .m2v (mpeg2 Video) file directly in FCP somehow?
-->>>

After demuxing -- I Imported into FCP.

It won't play well in the Viewer, but you can scrub it to trim it.

I then render to MPEG-4 which is happy to do 1280x720. And no quality loss either. Although who can tell with 4S!

What CODEC do you call "uncompressed."

The audio file should be an .mp2 not .mp3. Did you get it to load into FCP?

Steve, what I found is that the mpgtx wrap utility decodes the .m2t file (transport stream file) into a .m2v file (Mpeg2 Video file). This will NOT directly load into FCP, at least I haven't been able to make it do so. (Is that what you're managing to do??)
I then run the .m2v file through the mpeg2decx utility which converts it to a Quicktime file, for the output compression settings I choose "None" as the compressor, and I assume this produces an uncompressed Quicktime file.( It is 350mb for a 4 sec file! ) While I'm in mpeg2decx I also output a DV format Quicktime file, which is what I actually edit before doing my conform to the uncompressed file for final output.
For my final output I also tried going to MPEG4, which plays, but does not play back smoothly through my system, that's why I'd like to convert back to an MPEG2 file for my final output, but I don't know of a MPEG2 encoder (apart from Heuris) that will handle 1280*720.

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : Steve, what I found is that the mpgtx wrap utility decodes the .m2t file (transport stream file) into a .m2v file (Mpeg2 Video file). This will NOT directly load into FCP, at least I haven't been able to make it do so. (Is that what you're managing to do??)
-->>>

Yes. Since i didn't know it couldn't be done -- i tried it.

It also can be played by the QT Player.

I find this so surprising I have to wonder if it really is MPEG-2. I note that in FCP, the codec is blank! But it certainly is 1280x720 at 29.97fps.

I even created a 1 minute movie from the 4 second clip.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to join the audio (change .mp3 to .mp2 -- which is what the audio really is) to the video in the QT Player. I've not really tried using QT Pro for editing.

I bought the MPEG-2 QT plug-in from apple.

That may be why I can use MPEG-2 in QT and FCP!

Look in X System folder, then Library, then QT. Do you have an MPEG2 Component?

However, in QT PRO I find I can't select either .mp2 or .m2v files so I can't join them together. Seems like I need to use FCP for this.

Thanks Steve, I didn't know about that plug-in, I'll have to look into it, maybe that's the start of Apple's MPEG-2 editing support. The mpeg2decx utility I mentioned will join together and split Mpeg-2 files I believe.