We are going to test one! ... your questions needed

[Jacques Mersereau]

Can you capture the analog component video output and compare it
to HDV?

How does the footage look projected on the big screen?

[Steve Gibby]

Tim,

Thanks for taking the time to help get test info to us! There has already been some excellent suggestions on this thread. If you are set up create an MTF chart for the Fujinon 16x lens and Fujinon 13x lens (if you also have that lens), that would be awesome. A side by side comparison of motion smoothed 30p and non-smoothed 30p would be great. If you have the .8 wide angle for the 16x, your impressions of the performance of that setup would be most appreciated. OpTex is based near you. Perhaps you could get them to bring over their lens conversion attachment and a Nikon 300 to test. Link: http://www.prohd.co.uk/

Could you please test the 1080i output from the camera. Is it output from the analog outputs only, via Firewire, or both?

Thanks!

[Joe Carney]

My concern is that I think some people are going to disapointed in the cam as an ENG cam. Fast pans at 24/25p are going to have similar limitations of any 24p camera (video or film). I have a feeling to get the best picture will require one to treat this like a 150 pound panavision setup. Just based on specs, using the HD100 for outdoor live sports shooting might no be very good, but then again we could all be surprised. That fact that you need to output 720 60p via the component outs is a negative for on site ENG work, too much equipment to haul around. But for shooting a feature and setting up the controversial 'video village' that might not be a problem.

[Steve Gibby]

Originally Posted by Joe Carney

My concern is that I think some people are going to disapointed in the cam as an ENG cam. Fast pans at 24/25p are going to have similar limitations of any 24p camera (video or film). I have a feeling to get the best picture will require one to treat this like a 150 pound panavision setup. Just based on specs, using the HD100 for outdoor live sports shooting might no be very good, but then again we could all be surprised. That fact that you need to output 720 60p via the component outs is a negative for on site ENG work, too much equipment to haul around. But for shooting a feature and setting up the controversial 'video village' that might not be a problem.

JVC claims that their new motion smoothing filter will sample at 60p and then reduce to 30p, 25p, 24p, etc., smoothing out judder. If it works as they claim, the camera could be surprisingly useful for ENG work, especially in 30p, 576p, and 480p, assuming that resolution is not significantly reduced by the motion smoothing filter. The camera should have excellent application for outdoor live action sports, hardlined into a truck or to microwave via analog 720p60 uncompressed output through an analog uncompressed to HD-SDI converter. Will it be long before a 720p60 Firestore-like HDD unit with a small analog uncompressed to HD-SDI to 720p60 converter hits the market to enable mobile ENG 720p60 field work? I think we'll see such setups quickly. There were groups of television network executives, from A&E, ABC, etc., at NAB grilling JVC about the camera. They're not looking for a 150 lb Panavision camera. They're looking at the HD100 as a potential hardlined 720p60 live event and on-the-spot news uplink camera, as a 24p documentary camera (in the case of A&E Networks and others), and, if the 720p30 motion smoothing filter works well, as a mobile ENG-style all-around field camera. Until it's thoroughly tested, I think it's way too early to write the HD100 off as a only a feature camera...

[Joe Carney]

Steve I was refering to a small field unit not hard wired into a truck or other expensive equipment. I was also referring to people who shoot extreme sports events with everything they need carried on their back. The fact that you have to output via the analog components will reduce it's desirability for remote shooting at 60p.

But I agree with you when you have a news team with a nice broadcast truck and all the equipment they need for live on the spot reporting. This could be a great camera for local ABC and FOX affiliates.

If the 100 proves to output great video then the upcoming hdv7000 will be even better and priced similar to the Panas' SDX900.

[Steve Gibby]

Joe, I understood what you were saying. The first part of my post was referring to non-hardwired mobile ENG style production. If the motion smoothing filter at 720p30 does a good job with judder, the camera could be quite excellent for mobile, non-hardlined, 720p production. Solid indications, that I posted today on another thread of this board, are that ABC network news and Good Morning America are planning to use the HD100 for exactly that - field acquisition of news and mobile network segments. I don't want to cross-post, so if you go back to the mani menu for the HD100 on this board, you'll find my post on ABC's intentions.

It think you're entirely right in saying that the HDV7000 could be interesting competition for the SDX900, both having 2/3" chips, both able to shoot 24p, the HDV7000 having higher resolution, if the HDV7000 has variable frame rates, 50 mbs, etc. It will be interesting...

[Steve Gibby]

Originally Posted by Steve Gibby

It think you're entirely right in saying that the HDV7000 could be interesting competition for the SDX900, both having 2/3" chips, both able to shoot 24p, the HDV7000 having higher resolution, if the HDV7000 has variable frame rates, 50 mbs, etc. It will be interesting...

Postscript: DVCPro50, which the SDX900 shoots, is a great format. I recently produced and directed nationally-airing, 10-camera coverage of a sports event, using DVCPro50. The footage looked amazing! In retrospect, all the DVCPro formats (25, 50, HD) are variants of the original DV codec - in essence, DV on steroids. When DV was first introduced, nobody thought the codec could grow into the diverse array of related codecs it is now and have such broad professional application. I view HDV the same now. It will evolve like DV did, and HDV50 in the HDV7000 will be a step farther into the professional use arena for HDV. HDV50, and future HDV100, will have to overcome some of the obvious drawbacks of long GOP MPEG2 encoding, but HDV should be around for a while as a professional, prosumer, and consumer format - the same path DV took.

Sorry for getting off-thread everyone...

[Tim R Young]

Hello All,

Just a quick note to let you know that I have just discovered that we are only going to have the camera for a relatively short amount of time today so I probably won't have time to answer all the questions which you have posted. However I hope to cover the major issues which several people want answered (MPEG Artifacts, Low Light, Live Output, Handling Issues). I will also try to get some shots up ... however considering that we don't have any post production equipment that can handle HDV yet .. they might only be SD!

Tim

[Tim R Young]

JVC hve just contacted us to say that the camera is stuck in customs ... and I am going away for the next week! However I've asked my colleagues to post here if they get the chance to reschedule the viewing for while I am away!

Tim

[Shannon Rawls]

it's always something.

[Tim R Young]

The camera might be here for us to try tomorrow .. so watch this space.

Tim

[Craig Donaldson]

got one here, now whaddaya all wanna know?
seams to do everything i expected and want it to do and then some.
will go shoot some stuff soon. whats the best way to about posting it?
quicktime h.264?

[Dylan Pank]

Craig, assuming you have a job and are busy, I would most like to see four types of shot:

• a close up of a face, to see how skin tones look.
• a static wide scenic shot, cityscape of rural doesn't matter, but as long as there's lots of detail.
• some sort of fast moving action shot. Kaku Ito, shot some mountain bikers, which seemed to be perfect for really punishing the MPEG2 codec.
• The other thing a lot of people here are interested in is the motion smoothing filter, so maybe a fourth shot would be a similar moving shot, this time with the

As for the format, I think many on this forum would prefer the pure HDV transport streams (.m2t files) so we can judge the footage direct from the cam.

(I have to say Kaku Ito's FX1 footage was great. I'm still using it for tests today, months later!)

[Thomas Smet]

I would also be happy with some uncompressed PNG still shots from the camera. It doesn't show motion but it would be a nice way to see what the image quality looks liike while not taking up huge amounts of space and bandwidth on the internet. Of course I would also love to see small M2t files maybe no longer than 10 seconds each.

Finally it would be nice to see some type of subject in front of a solid color. It can be any color. We all know what HDV chroma is like but every camera handles the way it captures high contrast color scenes in a different way and I would love to se what the camera is doing with the chroma and edge enhancement. It would be really great if you could shoot this scene with different levels of edge enhancement.

Thanks.

[Tim R Young]

OK. So we finally got to see the working camera yesterday. Unfortunately we don't have the facilities to provide the footage for you to look at, but I can give you our general thoughts.

Firstly the issue of MPEG2 recording. We recorded some fast moving / highly detailed subjects and it appeared to cope very well. However, when looking at a fast pan across a patch of grass there appeared to be a very slight softening. This could be a result of the progressive scan not being happy with the pan however (I have to say that I'm not particularly familiar with looking at progressive material). We were told by the JVC rep. that the MPG bitrate is very high and as such should retain quality. I would be particularly keen to see this through into a post production system and then onto output.

The general feel and handling of the camera was very good. Obviously it would feel even better with proper batteries on the back which actually had a bit of weight to balance out the lens. The JVC batteries which we used were not quite up to the job, and despite apparently being charged, ran out quite quickly.

The camera had good output options as far as I could see including a composite standard resolution picture whilst shooting HDV ... obviously very useful if you want to preview and don't have a HD monitor handy! We were told that the component HD output was actually superior to the recorded material. In other words 50 frames could be taken from the output when only 25 frames were recorded to the tape. The only problem we could find was when we put the camera up to 18db of gain one side of the screen was darker than the other and slightly discoloured ... maybe just a problem with this particular camera but might be worth watching out for??

Again I'm sorry that I can't provide screen shots but it seems that the cameras are arriving now so someone else should be able to do this soon I'm sure ...

Thanks,

Tim