Side by side test HD101, Z1, HC1, HDX400

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by David Slingerland

Checking the menu there are several option (pal-version) 25 and 50 HD and the frame rate can be ntsc 30/60 or 25/50 for pal but there is also 24?? Its obviously ntsc..It does not say so on the manual but my multiformat jvc monitor calls it that, maybe I am missing the point here.... The camera is very much ntsc/pal switchable except for when you shoot in DV....Then it is a pal camera...

HD is neither NTSC nor PAL, it is HD. NTSC refers specifically to standard-def interlaced video. HD is not NTSC, nor is it PAL. People seem to be using the terminology to differentiate territories, but it's not an accurate way to describe it.

720/24p, as implemented on the JVC, is actually 720/60p. It is recorded on tape as a 60p data stream. It's not NTSC. Now, if you had the HD100 set to downconvert to standard-def, yes it would be appropriate to output the 720/24p through a standard-def NTSC signal.

There is no PAL mode on the US HD100. There is an HDV 576/50p mode, which would make for a good transfer to PAL, but it in and of itself isn't PAL.

[David Slingerland]

importing the material into FCP 5 is turning out to be a problem. Just using HDV as capture source will let me control the camera but I see nothing...strange? What settings should I use when using the camera for fcp?

[Barry Green]

Spent a lot of time with the HD100 today, but not in a controlled environment, it was on the show floor at the WEVA expo. Got some footage in 30p w/wo motion smoothing, and also 24p, but I don't think I'll have any way to capture it.

The camera, as a camera, is very very nice. The amount of image control is extremely impressive. For those who are complaining about the muted color palette, have no fear -- you can crank up the chroma level until you get eye-poppingly-saturated colors. Their default "cinema mode" looks terrible, but that's because their implementation of Cinema Matrix is pretty much a flat super-low-saturation color palette. I can't imagine anyone thinking that it looks filmlike, unless you're strictly going for the low-color bleach bypass look maybe. But the Cinema Gamma options were flexible and could make for a very nice looking picture if you used the standard gamma.

The lens doesn't go wide, but it sure does go tele -- it's as long as the XL2's original 16x lens. Shallow DOF effects were pretty easy to pull off as long as you could get a long way away from your subject. The "focus assist" works well, it's basically a colored peaking tool and it was easy to get repeatable sharp focus.

Noisy? Oh yeah it's noisy. The default 0db picture has some noise in it, the 18db picture will make you think you're filming a swarm of bees. I think I'd rather underexpose my footage than go using the 12db or 18db of gain that the camera offers -- it's really noisy.

They had some demo footage playing, and it was rather a conundrum. They went to a zoo or park or someplace and shot some very nice looking footage. They had some plasmas facing the Sony booth, and I've got to say, the footage on the plasmas was weak. JVC should never be allowed to show their footage on those plasmas again. I thought it looked pale, lame, blocky, noisy, and with extremely blown-out highlights. Then you walk around the corner and see the identical footage playing on a CRT, and you say "now that's what I'm talkin' about!" Much, much better. Mirrors my impressions of the footage at NAB -- the live CRT looked good, the plasma playback-from-tape looked dismal. Well, they did it again. So if anyone wants to watch the HD100 footage, if you're at a trade show or somewhere, *don't* judge it off the plasmas, they just put on a lousy presentation. What looked like horribly-clipped highlights on the plasmas looked like nicely-rendered images on the CRT. JVC should hire a tech to figure out why their plasma displays look so bad.

Reservations? Many. JVC has a problem with dead pixels. There have been multiple reports of dead pixels on the web already. I have a borrowed HD1 here that has a dead pixel that glows green throughout every shot. Well, right there on JVC's demo footage of the HD100, that nice-looking zoo footage, there's a glowing green dead pixel in every frame. Even on their show demo footage there's a dead pixel! You'd think they'd get that right, but obviously there's a problem. Other problems included at least one obvious dropout (freeze-up for 1/4 second), and some shots with *severe* macroblocking -- I think it was a shot of a duck or a penguin, some waterfowl, and some sections of the water looked like a flippin' quilt, they were so macroblocked.

So JVC can talk all they want about how their version of HDV doesn't have motion artifacts, isn't bit-starved, doesn't have dropouts, etc. All I can say is "bullpucky", because it's clearly evident even in their demo footage. Not any worse than the Z1, so if you're happy with the Z1 you'd be happy with the HD100 footage too. But it's not better than the Z1 either -- it's about equivalent, as far as quilting, macroblocking, loss of detail under motion, and dropouts (actually on dropouts it's better because of the shorter GOP; dropouts on the JVC last half as long as dropouts on the Z1).

There's strong chroma noise throughout the images, it really does look like they're using the same CCD from the HD1/HD10. I have no factual inside-knowledge basis to say that, but the images look very HD1-like, they have similar noise to the HD1, similar dead pixels to the HD1... I'd bet a nickel that JVC has put three HD1 CCDs into the HD100.

Overall the camera is nicely built, nice to use, feels good, looks good, and produces a pretty good image. The HDV format is, as always, disappointing -- easily the weakest element in the chain. But I kind of feel like Adam Wilt when he said "long-form GOP is the devil, but maybe it's time to start dealing with the devil". I believe I will go ahead and get one, especially after seeing the level of image control that's available. I think it would make a decent companion to the HVX. But: JVC had better have one heck of a warranty/repair policy on those dead pixels, or they will have more grief than they can handle. I don't mind dead pixels on the viewfinder/lcd so much, but when they're on the CCD and there's glowing green dots in every frame of footage you shoot -- well, that's an issue worth returning the camera over. So I do hope for their sake they have the ability to mask dead pixels (I saw no evidence of such in the menu system) or that they have a very liberal, very customer-friendly repair policy for dead pixels.

[David Slingerland]

yes your right but the monitor got me confused pal/ntsc are different from HD. Nevertheless when you put the frame rate in to 30/60 (ntsc for sure...)
you can change the recording mode to HDV-HD30 or 60P. So you somehow do set the HD for an output compatible with ntsc? Making the cam switchable but not in SD

....The HD output formats are very confusing to me as there are so many...correct me if I am wrong but there seems to be no 1080i recording only output...or is that the 24 mode output?

[Barry Green]

There is no 1080i recording of any type. The only concession to 1080i in this camera is that you can cross-convert the 720p signal to output 1080i on the analog outputs. So, for example, if you were using a 1080i-only monitor, something that couldn't display a 720p signal, you could have the HD100 convert its 720p signal to 1080i for use with that monitor.

[Scott Webster]

Originally Posted by Barry Green

Overall the camera is nicely built, nice to use, feels good, looks good, and produces a pretty good image. The HDV format is, as always, disappointing -- easily the weakest element in the chain. But I kind of feel like Adam Wilt when he said "long-form GOP is the devil, but maybe it's time to start dealing with the devil". I believe I will go ahead and get one, especially after seeing the level of image control that's available. I think it would make a decent companion to the HVX. But: JVC had better have one heck of a warranty/repair policy on those dead pixels, or they will have more grief than they can handle. I don't mind dead pixels on the viewfinder/lcd so much, but when they're on the CCD and there's glowing green dots in every frame of footage you shoot -- well, that's an issue worth returning the camera over. So I do hope for their sake they have the ability to mask dead pixels (I saw no evidence of such in the menu system) or that they have a very liberal, very customer-friendly repair policy for dead pixels.

Praise the camera gods, another opinion! I'm glad our findings, stack up with what you've seen Barry.

I have a camera, I've used the camera, I've spent 9 years renting cameras, am I missing something with this camera?

I was begining to think I was going mad.

How did you find the viewfinder and LCD?

[Barry Green]

LCD's a little low-res but I really like that they moved most of the clutter out of the main display area, occupying mostly the letterbox bar area. And I love that it has a one-touch button to make all that stuff go away.

The camera I used was bolted to the tripod so I didn't really even bother with the viewfinder very much -- but of what I used, I thought it worked well. The focus assist seemed much more usable than the last time I experimented with it. Overall I think it's quite usable.

However, having just captured the footage, I can say this: DEAD PIXELS. I thought the particular camera I was using didn't have any, but I was wrong -- there's one that glows through every frame I shot, and another that shows up in the close-the-iris-crank-the-gain test.

JVC has a serious problem with these dead pixels.

[Wayne Morellini]

Am I right in thinking, the quality of the picture (noise/grain and chroma problems) is like that of a $1K to $2K camera?

I guess it answers the question about the CCD, definitely not what would be expected from the new 1/3inch Altasens chip, but the HD1 chip.

I was waiting to see what the other single chip HD1/HD10 replacement was going to be like, I think I needn't bother. I admire JVC for the GY-DV500/5000, truly an effort in the right direction for us in it's time, but the HD lineup seems more like the GR-5000/GY-300 times.

It is unbelievable that they would do this after the HD1 problems, are they trying to shoot their reputation again? Do we have to boycott their products if the finale "Pro" test results prove this to be all true (mind you the Sony and Pana are less than ideal too)? I definitely am not going to lay down that sort of money for these sort of problems. They didn't even make 24/25p into a 25Mb/s stream. If we could only record the uncompressed output to another codec on hard drive, that would help the Pana and Sony in resolution and compression artifacts. I understand that cineform is looking at hardware codec solutions.

Looks like the market for $10K-40K cameras is secure for some time, to think we waited years for this.

What do you think Chris?

[Chris Hurd]

Wayne, I think it's still very, very early to be reaching any conclusions. It's a mistake to pass judgement based on such a small handful of data such as that which we've acquired so far. Barry had his hands on a "market test" MT sample, in other words a pre-production demo unit, not 100% complete, very typical and common at trade shows. Let's get some more reports, especially when the final version of the camera starts to ship. It's far too soon right now.

[Barry Green]

Normally I'd agree with Chris -- but I made a point of asking them how complete the camera was, and they told me it was a production model. Not a market-test or prototype version, they said it was representative of the off-the-shelf, retail-ready production model.

I'm worried about the dead pixel thing because every report I've read, from Italy and England and New Zealand and now the US, has mentioned it. And those are all released-to-customer models (or, in the case of the US one, a camera that's supposed to be the same as what will be released). JVC's own demo footage had a dead pixel on it. And the camera on the floor had it.

I know dead pixels "happen". If you can mask it electronically, it's not such a big deal -- may be no big deal at all, may even become a non-issue. Where I'm concerned is that it seems to be common, and I just want to know that it won't be an ongoing problem before plunking down $6000 for the camera.

I don't know if Z1's and FX1's are having a similar issue or not. It stands to reason that the more pixels you pack onto a chip, the more chances there are for something to go wrong.

I liked the HD100. I am almost definitely buying it. I'm just saying that there are multiple corroborating reports of dead pixels, and that's something that needs to be addressed.

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Wayne,
Let's get some more reports, especially when the final version of the camera starts to ship. It's far too soon right now.

I have been reading posts of people talking about instances of the same thing in production cameras in the Pal markets. But my question was related to Pro testing eventually actually confirming this.

This leaves only a few full definition quality high end formats for us to record with. That is direct from component recording from the Sony/Pana HD cameras, and cameras like we are seeking in alternative imaging (sumix being the only affordable one of the horizon) that are not suitable for Eng/normal work. This is disappointing. Bring on the testing.

Thanks

Wayne.

[David Slingerland]

I have one for a test...I cant see any faulty pixels on mine.....I am sure the one you got has the problem but mine doesn't so its widespread but not all camera's have it...

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by David Slingerland

I have one for a test...I cant see any faulty pixels on mine.....I am sure the one you got has the problem but mine doesn't so its widespread but not all camera's have it...

That's actually worse - it all the cameras have one, then you can relax and buy one knowing it may have one or so dead pixels. But it if some do and some don't, it becomes much more an adventure on purchase especially JVC and dealer policy for repair/replacement just like LCD panels.

[Jacques Mersereau]

<<<[QUOTE=Greg Boston]I think many folks underestimate the quality of glass that Canon provides. Even the original 16X IS auto lens that the XL-1 came with was rated at over 600 lines of resolution while the format only calls for a max of around 570.>>>

No to change threads or lead it in a different direction, BUT . . .
I simply don't believe the 16X lens resolves over
250 lines. If it did, then there should be no apparent resolution
gain when switching over to 35mm glass. There is a HUGE
resolution gain when you compare the XL1's 16X to 35mm without a doubt.

Where did you hear the 16X was rated that high? Whoever says
so is _very_ suspect imo.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

There a numerous sources I believe who say that about the 16x lens. One of them is Canon. I don't think they would lie and just double the actual lines of resolution.