I saw a swarm of mosquitos on some of my footage the very first time I used the camera back in early may. I about an hour of footage at a local springtime tulip festival in bright daylight. The footage was gorgeous but mosquitos were dancing around everywhere, especially around the edges of leaves, flowers etc". surprisingly none were present while shooting in shady areas or later while the sun was setting. I was using a sony digital master tape, and my camera was set to factory defaults. For my next tryout I used JVC HD tapes and tweaked the settings a bit, lowered detail a bit and shot some more tests in bright sunny daylight this time in new york city. I did not see any more mosquitos on this or any of the subsequent footage I shot to date. I dont know if the Sony tape was the culprit or the detail setting or the camera being brand new or too much light ( although I had the ND filter on ). Since then I've stuck to JVC tapes and detail at -2 and an additional external ND filter. You should experiment a bit before buying a whole new TV. If the mosquitos are there you will see them on each and every TV. I dont have a HD TV yet but hope to pick one up in a couple a weeks time. I hope to take my HD 100 to the store and hook it up to a few TV's in my price range and play some footage , and buy the best one in my budget. You may consider this strategy as well.

I hope this was helpfull.

Jay

"I dont know if the Sony tape was the culprit or the detail setting or the camera being brand new or too much light ( although I had the ND filter on ). "

The tape only records the 1's and zero's sent to it by the camera's encoder. If you got nothing on the tape, then blaming the tape might follow, but I don't think mosquitos are a tape issue...

[QUOTE=I use the Dell 24" LCD to view the footage via component. This LCD has a resolution greater than 1080 and scales the image pixel for pixel. [/QUOTE]

Mark, does your dell have compenent jacks on it? How do you hook it up? We've been going back and forth on monitoring HD via Apple Cinema displays, Dells, or the Panasonic BT-LH series.

From what I've read it seems that the computer LCDs can't produce the correct colorometry of Pro HDTV monitors like the the BT-LH series.

I havent seen them side by side but it's tempting becuase I can buy three Apple Cinema Displays, or Dell Displays for the price of one HDTV monitor.

I have hooked it up directly via component and it looked great. The dell has component, DVI / vga and the other regular analog ins.

We capture the footage in HDV, edit in fcp and display it on the Dell through a blackmagic design multibridge extreme via DVI-D. Internally it maps 1080 or 720 pixel for pixel to any Dell or Apple 24"-30" display. The image is near flawless, though a little bright, but thats what LCD's of this era do. We don't use if for color correction as the multibridge can hardware downconvert to SD in realtime to our sony pro monitor with smpte c phosphors.

anyone should be able to plug any hdv camera with component out to a 24" LCD with component in and get a decent clean image if it was shot well.
I first heard this from someone who had a Sony FX1 and HP LCD.

IMO the Dell monitors are the best because you get the performance of the apple cinema display for less dollars.

My 2 cents on this -

Here's the thing - if other things look great in standard def on your HD set (and let's say they do), say like a DVD of STAR WARS, it would stand to reason that any additional grain you see on the set from the camera is a a byproduct of the camera - a camera which in theory is putting out a superior signal than a DVD could muster.

I am using a 50 inch LG/Zenith consumer plasma set and have experienced things along these lines - a bit of noise - but that's the tradeoff.

As I've said in other threads, I think the grain structure is very similar to that of well shot/developed 16 mm film if the camera is dialed in and working properly. You shoot in broad daylight at a field, and you're not going to have that much noise. You shoot a room lit with one candle and you're going to see a lot of grain. It's a bit frustrating that the image is so close to 35 mm but not quite there - but for a $6 grand camera it's pretty dang amazing.

Consumer sets can work - It's the only practical way for me to see if I have a dead pixel, for instance. It is a way to judge how well the camera's colors compare to other things you are familar with - say shows shot/broadcast in HD - not a perfect system, granted, but it is a way "eyeball" how well the camera's performing.

I do agree that if your set is underwhelming then upgrade. But, to my mind, if other things look great on the set, and there are proper imputs on the set (I use composites), by all means use them if that's what you have. Remember, even pro sets can be off-kilter and must be calibrated...

But don't expect the camera to be noise-less. Every test I've read (including the big 4 camera shotout a ways back) and my own experience tells me that one can not expect zero grain. But a vast amount of noise doesn't ring true either - it must be the cam or your set, one or the other. Do a little bit more testing before making a final judgment and good luck!
john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

Every manufacturer has a different components going into their set lines. The Samsung works great with anything coming into the HDMI inputs. My son's Xbox360 normally uses the component inputs and it looks pretty good but I haven't looked for artifacts closely. I ran an edit directly from my MacBookPro into the set thru the VGA input and I was very impressed but it wasn't the same footage as I played from the camera so I'm not sure. The only footage that had noticable artifacts was shot in a forest so that wasn't surprising.

Grain, however, I recognize and haven't been disturbed by it. A low light image with the dBs up is going to look that way.

I'm sure some LCD brands have better analog/digital conversions and some worse.

The LG set in question has a resolution of 1,366x768.

SD DVDs look great even thru composite.

I consider that the bare minumum as far as flat panel resolution.

So wouldn't this monitor be one of the best and most affordable options for HDV monitoring?

http://www.benq.com/products/LCD/?product=812

Even better than a Dell, that has been criticized in many forums for banding problems and else?

Price is $800 at Newegg.

You're certain your camcorder out wasn't set to 1080i? I imagine that would cause a serious drop in quality.

I've never seen that bad quality on my LCD, but I compared the screens intensively at the store to choose the best one, and it is also a JVC - I didn't have the camcorder at that time, but it gave the best image overall - it was also twice the price of some of the other brand LCD's of the same dimension (and over 1,5 times the price of the LG that my father bought, perhaps something is in the price...). Since you have the camcorder already, the nice thing is you can easily take such a compact camcorder to the store and hook it up to some screens...

On the other hand, I've recently watched my HD recordings on the LG 32" LCD that my father has (I also used a component to DVI convertorbox to connect my HD101) - and although I feel like the pictures on my JVC are better, the LCD doesn't perform all that bad. I've seen no musquito's whatsoever standing about 3 to 5 feet away...

Werner
I didn't know I could do this. Is there a setting in the menus for this?

Andrew

I don't know that its better than the Dell. It seems to be pound for pound the same specs as the Dell. Its only a few bucks cheaper too.

Who is critisizing the Dell for banding? Any LCD out there is going to have banding as its an 8-bit display. It also depends on the quality of footage, you'd certainly notice it quicker from an 8-bit source as opposed to a 10-bit or higher source. A lot of what I do is 10-bit and I can't say that banding is a problem for me or my clients viewing on the Dell.

Yep, there is, I believe it is the 'HDV PB OUTPUT'. Make sure that is set to 'native'... Perhaps that's it?

I don't remember the forum, but it was one for Dell products, and the stories were hair-rising. At least for me that I can't get back anything to Dell if it's not working properly.

It's almost a question of luck to get a unit withouth banding, and lately things seem to have improved, but the problem is still there. Sometimes people seem to return several units until they get a good one. And as you know you don't really get a new unit when you get it back, but a refurbished one.

Believe me I did want a Dell, which seemed to be the better deal and I didn't want to buy an Apple monitor.

The question is still pending for me.

Ah, I understand.

I had not heard of that issue before. Was it with the 24" model?

I have heard nothing but praise from anyone owning the 24" model.

We've had ours a year now and its still perfect, with no hot pixels.