HD101 clips now available from (H)DV Info Net

[Chris Hurd]

Many thanks to Scott Webster for submitting these. You'll need QuickTime 7 to view the two video clips. Mac users should have no problem, but if you're on a PC then you'll need the QuickTime 7 for Windows Public Preview 2 software which you can download from Apple at:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/preview/

A note from Marty Hudzik: "Quicktime 7 preview 2 is not recommended on production machines as its integration with many other applications is not final. This is a known issue of the beta. I thought I should forewarn anyone using Premiere Pro and Quicktime that there may be issues."

Download the following clips to your local hard drive and rename them.
Rename the .tifx extensions to .tif and the .movx extensions to .mov

http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/rocketn...1arttight.tifx
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/rocketn...boatscity.tifx
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/rocketn...ranenight.tifx
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/rocketn...citynight.tifx
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/rocketn...1skytower.tifx

and

http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/rocketn...landsmall.movx
http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/rocketn...ightsmall.movx

Obviously these were shot in and around Auckland, New Zealand with a new a new JVC GY-HD101E. Scott reports that since they are using Final Cut Pro 5, the video clips had to be done in 720p30. No motion smoother applied to video. They were unable to test 24p/25p due to the limitations of FCP5.

What do you think?

[Scott Webster]

Hi Guys

I shot the footage. Please take this into account when viewing them:

1. I'm not a professional cameraman or enthusiastic amatuer
2. All under/over exposed/soft focus footage is my fault
3. I am not getting to grips with the VF very well
4. All 'wobble cam' is my fault
5. Camera is factory set
6. I am not shooting the general public and putting them on the net without their consent, so sorry no skin tones.

The color palette of the JVC seems to be somewhat less rich/saturated than the Z1, somewhat muted. There is noise there too which is not on the Z1 and a sort of matte effect.

The shots of the bridge and boats was taken on dying batteries. This meant I had to quickly find the shot, focus, -camera would die. Power up and hit record before camera dies again.

To make things hard for myself I used a Manfrotto 501 tripod. Never again.

I will try and get to a skate/bmx park to get shots in 30p with 'motion smooth' on

I'm not giving up my day job.

[John M Burkhart]

Looks pretty good all in all.

Some comments:

There is some noticable banding in the sky in the marina shots on the auklandsmall clip. During sunset it looks like, with subtle sky colors that just aren't going to come out.

The shots of the graffiti covered overpass are very vibrant, saturated and clear.

Pretty severe banding in the skies in the night footage. Not so great at twighlight and for subtle color differences.

Based on this footage, I probably wouldn't want to use this camera in low/no-light situations. But the jury is still out until I try one myself.

EDIT: AH! just noticed that these clips have been recompressed in Apples H.264 codec. Which might account for the banding. Not really a useful judge of the footage I'm afraid unless we can get a short clip that is still in it's original HDV format. Any chance of that?

[Scott Webster]

Originally Posted by John M Burkhart

EDIT: AH! just noticed that these clips have been recompressed in Apples H.264 codec. Which might account for the banding. Not really a useful judge of the footage I'm afraid unless we can get a short clip that is still in it's original HDV format. Any chance of that?

The problem we had (and I'll confirm with the editor) is we chose the FCP codec '720 p30' (or it could have been a blackmagic choice)

We don't know what it was doing to the footage off the HD101 but we didn't have any problem bringing it in by firewire. Chose the H.264 as we were editing in FCP and it seemed a good choice to allow the most universal ability to playback the files.

If anyone has any other suggestions as what the FCP5 setting should be to bring in the footage, we would love to have them. We had no joy with prohd 720/25p material.

[Alex Leith]

Thanks Scott for sharing this footage and Chris for hosting it.

I agree with John that the graffiti shots looks great.

Looking at the tiffs the sky looks a little noisy in all the other pics (both night and day)... but it's a bit difficult to tell from the H.264 clips if that's gain style noise or fixed pattern noise (mentioned in another thread).

Judging by the tiffs there looks like a tiny bit of banding in the night shots, but it's hard to tell.

Not quite the 70mm film-a-like I was hoping for, but then I have very high standards and a very small wallet. :D

[John M Burkhart]

Hi Scott,

If I didn't say it before, thanks very much for sharing these clips with us. No need for the disclaimer at the front, I happen to think the shots are very nicely composed.

Well, I also have FCP5 and could view the clips as the direct .mov files you captured, (but that doesn't help anyone that doesn't have fcp5). As FCP won't capture a .m2t file, but puts it's own quicktime wrapper on things.

The files you have now are instructive in a way. Seeing as how the upcoming Blue-Ray DVD's will be using h.264 as the format for compressing HD signals. It gives us a look at what the results might be if we delivered on the new HD capable DVDs.

But judging the footage like that is kind of like trying to judge the quality of a DigiBeta master by looking at a mpeg2 DVD. Still the vibrancy and saturation of the colors seem to hold up very well, but honestly it needs some work I think, with the banding.

Since you've actually used it, what's your gut reaction? How did it feel, was battery life an issue (I believe you alluded to that). What was annoying with it? Inquiring minds want to know!

[Christopher C. Murphy]

Thanks very much for posting the clips.

On my XP laptop (I have a 16x9 screen) just now I personally thought the clips looked like the HD10U. It's a step up, but it's not that much better in my opinion. I'll have to look on my G5 later on...hopefully, it'll look tons better.

Anyone else notice the street lights? Also, the chroma still looks weird like a HD10U. The daylight shots look very good, but so did the HD10U.

[Martin Costa]

Thanks for the clips Scott! I messed about with the MOV with the boats in shake, and was able to pull a decent key on the sky. I'm impressed.

[Thomas Smet]

Thank you for the images and video. It is great to finally get a chance to see what this camera can do.

The camera isn't perfect from what I can tell so far but it also looks very good. I wouldn't say it looks any better or worse than any other current 1/3" HDV camera out there. It just looks different. Different doesn't make it good or bad however. For months now we kind of have it burned into our minds that the Z1 is how HDV should look.

The banding issue is very interesting. I see it in the Tifs as well so it isn't an extra compression thing. If this banding is from the camera JVC really needs to look into this.

The clear blue sky shots were very helpfull for us to check how well keying would work. There is some edge enhancement going on but there should be enough contorls on the camera to reduce that.

It sure is nice to have clean progressive footage at this resolution.

I didn't notice the noise as much as other people. I have always thought JVC had a certain level of grain to their video. Again I think this is just a different look and not really all that bad.

I can't wait to see footage from a Z1 and HD100 side by side. That will be very interesting.

Hopefully Somebody will address the lack of 24p and 25p capture soon.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Christopher C. Murphy

Anyone else notice the street lights? Also, the chroma still looks weird like a HD10U. The daylight shots look very good, but so did the HD10U.

I noticed the street lights as well - it could be an exposure/gamma curve thing due to clipping (hopefully). The chroma still looks off to me as well, but you would need some carefully white balanced and correctly exposed shots to verify.

[Christopher C. Murphy]

Ok, I've now looked at the footage on both an XP and Mac G5 machine with Cinema Display.

I hate to say this, but the image looks like an improved HD10U. Unfortunately, it doesn't look greatly improved either. It looks less compressed (grainy), but I still see chroma issues. It's definately cleaner, but it looks like a cleaner HD10U to me.

If anyone sees the same thing please let me know. I wouldn't say it's a bad image or a great image...it's a nice HDV image.

Maybe my excitement level isn't what it used to be? If this camera were the one put out instead of the HD10U...back then I would have flipped out.

[Dave Ferdinand]

First, thanks to Chris and Scott for posting this files.

I must say I'm quite disappointed with the footage, hopefully this is just how it looks with default settings and you'll be able to do much better.

I thought the footage looked a lot like stuff I've seen from the FX1/Z1 pair.

Even with Shapness turned off, it still seems to me the camera will have a 'fuzzy' image, too smooth for sharp HD. The shots with the tower and harbour in the distance show the limits of a 1/3" lens.

In the graffiti medium shot all looked very FX1 like, maybe slightly better. Very sharp and clean, very nice rich colors.

It's good, but not great. Hopefully results with a 1/2" will improve significantly.

[Michael Struthers]

Hmm. My first thought is...

...it's about the same as the Sony. I'd like to see some human faces if possible.

Thanks for posting the clips!

[Mikael Widerberg]

Thanks for all the images Scott. I was hoping that the first clips from this camera would have been more impressive.

Seams to be somthing wrong whith the sky, there are some blocks there. And also, the contrast looks bad on all the pictures.

The pictures looks plain dead and not good at all.


If it depends on the shooter or the camera itself, I dont now, but I get the feeling my Canon XM1 (GL1 NTSC), on full auto settings, would perform better, exept for the resolution.

Maybe you need to have wery controled lightning for this camera to perform well?


Excuse my spelling.
Mikael from Sweden

[Douglas Villalba]

I think that the camera can do a lot better. Have you ever seen what a 1/2 DV does on full auto?
No difference here, the test has to be done under full control of the camera. This camera is sure not made for an amateurs. I think that potential is there, with HD you need a monitor just to focus the thing and control peeking.
The shot of the marina looks like it was done with a different camera.