GY for broadcast TV?

[Runar Ingi]

Well i've been looking around for THE right camera for our project. So the project is motorsports. Thats rally, gokart, rallycross, drag racing and so on.

All this of course means speed!

We won't be filming in HDV just simple SD but in 16:9 not 4:3. Many of the shots will be multicam so the "free run" tc mode really is impressing for this setup. All editing will be done in FCP on a G5 and outputed to a DVCAM master.

So my question is: Does the GY qualify as a broadcast SD camera? Does it show noise when in 0db? Do you know anyone using it for broadcast?

And one more. All these types of the same camera is really confusing. OK the 100 is the first one and the 110 has the "super encoder" and the 200 has?

Hope you guys can help me out here :)

[Stephan Ahonen]

Fox Sports Net North uses an HD100 to shoot sports highlights and interviews in SD with no problems.

HD200 is the lowest model number with the super-encoder built in, though the HD encoder (I believe) does not affect SD performance.

[Carl Hicks]

Originally Posted by Runar Ingi

Well i've been looking around for THE right camera for our project. So the project is motorsports. Thats rally, gokart, rallycross, drag racing and so on.

All this of course means speed!

We won't be filming in HDV just simple SD but in 16:9 not 4:3. Many of the shots will be multicam so the "free run" tc mode really is impressing for this setup. All editing will be done in FCP on a G5 and outputed to a DVCAM master.

So my question is: Does the GY qualify as a broadcast SD camera? Does it show noise when in 0db? Do you know anyone using it for broadcast?

And one more. All these types of the same camera is really confusing. OK the 100 is the first one and the 110 has the "super encoder" and the 200 has?

Hope you guys can help me out here :)

Hi Runar,

A number of broadcasters are using the GY-HD series cameras, both at a local level and network level (ABC).

The best signal will be from the HD200 or HD250, but they are all very clean and quiet. See this page for a comparison of the three models:

http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/HD...amcorders.html

Regards,

[Werner Wesp]

You could opt for a GY-DV700 (secondhand perhaps), but since the sports you'll be shooting won't be in low light, there might be no advantage in the 2/3 inch CCD's.

The GY-HD will really surprise you, giving sharp en clear 16/9 SD images... You might even consider shooting 16/9 SD MPEG-2 50p, so you can make those super smooth and sharp half speed slo-mo's...

Frankly - apart from perhaps the DV700 I woudn't know what else to opt for... This cam has native 16/9 ccd's with (more than) enough resolution... a 1/2 inch 4/3 cam won't cut it in comparison... (such as sony dsr300 or GY-DV500, ...)

[Runar Ingi]

Thanks for the tips.

I will than most likely go for the HD200 or HD250. But I am located in europe so the recordings has to be done in PAL not NTSC.

Can you switch formats or are there different models?
If so, what are the names of the PAL models?

[Steve Oakley]

I've been cutting together a new shooting reel. I've got 35mm, 16, betaSP shot on D30, D600, 537a, ect. and HDcam/F900 downconverted to betaSP. HD100 its just amazing in comparison to all of those. The HDV placed into the NTSC TL is the sharpest and cleanest image of all of it, period. Carl you can quite me on this :)

I'm very happy to not be owning a F900 right now. What I do hope is that JVC delivers a 1920X1080 native camera with full res mpeg2 images like the consumer camera in a pro size body with pro features. I'd picture it would most likely use 1/2" CCDs and record direct to HD paks, which would be all good with me. I'm sure it won't be in the same price range as the HD110/2x0, but I'm sure it would be very competitive to the F350 which I think has one big problem, its limited 35mbit/sec recording rate. for the price I'd expect/want 50mbit/sec, but if it looked as good as or better than HDcam in post... well that would not be good for selling the 4X more expensive HDcam gear which has been replaced with SR.

There is 0 reason to shoot SD. Shoot HD, and downconvert. you can get 16:9 native, 4:3 letterbox, or 4:3 centercut with all the video cards these days. Then of course HDV is a lower data rate than DV, as icing on the cake.


Steve Oakley

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Steve Oakley

I've been cutting together a new shooting reel. I've got 35mm, 16, betaSP shot on D30, D600, 537a, ect. and HDcam/F900 downconverted to betaSP. HD100 its just amazing in comparison to all of those. The HDV placed into the NTSC TL is the sharpest and cleanest image of all of it, period. Carl you can quite me on this :)

Is your reel on DVD?

How could an HD100 beat 16mm let alone 35mm? That couldn't be.

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Brian Luce

Is your reel on DVD?

How could an HD100 beat 16mm let alone 35mm? That couldn't be.

why not ? its technology circa 2004/5 ( when they started designing it ) as opposed to technology thats basically 100+ years old.

so I'll say it again, HD100 vs 35mm or 16mm in SD/betaSP transfer, the HD100 wins hands down.

HD100 wins for being sharper and lower noise (grain), both have excellent color and dynamic range and are quite comparable. the HD100 has a lot of subtlety in color thats really surprising *if* you have good exposure and have good camera settings. I've been using my own recipe that started with trucolor3, but then I've adjusted a bit from there on most of the settings.

as for the 16mm->SD betacamSP, not even in the ball park. its like comparing VHS to digitbeta.... really.

16mm just doesn't have the res people claim it does in the real world. While you can scan it at 2K, it simply doesn't resolve that kind of info. you're just scanning grain where two or three scan pixels = 1 film grain with faster speed films. there are a lot of factors from film speed, lens, exposure, telecine, transfer format, ect. Quickly said, unless you shoot with ISO64 film, have perfect to slighly over exposed ( to increase contrast/saturation ) and have new recent glass, 16 is lucky to get to SD res. if you shoot something like 250ISO or faster which is common, are using 20-30 year old glass ( very typical ), especially a zoom, are using a older rank or bosch to transfer because its cheaper, you'll find 16 is far from what theory says it should be. Ask the guys who tried to shoot S16 for HD and found it coming up short, with top of the line telecine to HDcam. its not like this hasn't been done before and abandoned because it was just not here. then underexpose a little and watch the grain come up and the loss of dynamic range. compare this to 1280X720p camera -> 1280X720p tape -> SD and the HD just pops off the screen. Likewise, even 35 transfered to SD has already been limited to 720X480(486) by the tape format. in contrast, the HD based material is over res, and while its still being reduced to 720X480, its just very sharp and clean.

its not to say the 35 doesn't look good, it does, it just doesn't look as good. At least not what I've got. All shots where done in a supervised sesion, not a best light or single light transfer. when you consider that many features are shot on 500T, even outdoors to match the interiors, it gets noisy. I've also worked with 35->HDcam and have been disapointed in some respects with what was really there. 35 does hold up much better than 16 in HD, but once you get it into SD, it all changes. at point, the HD100 is looking better.
when you get 16 in HD, you can pretty much see its limitations pretty easily and how a video camera can do better. and BTW I've been shooting for 20 years startin with 16 and a ITC-730

Steve Oakley

[Brian Luce]

Was the HD100 footage in the comparison viewed on beta SP?

[Steve Oakley]

DVD and Kona LH feeding component to 19" sony broadcast monitor. regardless of where its viewed, the HD stands out.

TL is uncompressed NTSC 8bit, as are the captured clips from tape, haven't tried 10bit. didn't try dumping it to betaSP yet and watching, but I could try it.
I'd expect it to look close to the kona outputs, although I usually find watching betaSP after seeing the video card out dissapointing.

Steve Oakley

[Keith Winstein]

Originally Posted by Steve Oakley

as for the 16mm->SD betacamSP, not even in the ball park.

16mm just doesn't have the res people claim it does in the real world.

Quickly said, unless you shoot with ISO64 film, have perfect to slighly over exposed ( to increase contrast/saturation ) and have new recent glass, 16 is lucky to get to SD res. if you shoot something like 250ISO or faster which is common, are using 20-30 year old glass ( very typical ), especially a zoom, are using a older rank or bosch to transfer because its cheaper, you'll find 16 is far from what theory says it should be. Ask the guys who tried to shoot S16 for HD and found it coming up short, with top of the line telecine to HDcam.

I agree the HD100 is a wonderful camera (we have four of them), but aren't you selling 16mm a bit short? As far as I've seen, high-end 16mm productions can still beat the pants off anything from the HD100.

Just look at the "Studio 60" pilot -- shot on 16mm Vision2 500T with the ARRI SR3, HD telecined, and broadcast over-the-air by NBC in 1080p/24 (using the "repeat flags" to build up a 60i sequence) at only 14.5 Mbps. And it looked phenomenal.

Of course if you use bad lenses you might get poor results -- that's true of any camera. The HD100's 1-year-old stock lens has problems too. And yes, a top-of-the-line HD telecine session with a colorist is very expensive, but in HD100 world, like any 8-bit BT.709 format, you're stuck with the recorded palette of fewer than 2.8 million colors (unless you record 10-bit component output).

Anyway, I like our HD100s too, but professional 16mm material, broadcast in 1080p (even at less than 15 Mbps) still can look absolutely stunning, and I think probably better than anything we've seen so far from the HD100.

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Keith Winstein

I agree the HD100 is a wonderful camera (we have four of them), but aren't you selling 16mm a bit short? As far as I've seen, high-end 16mm productions can still beat the pants off anything from the HD100.

no because most ( NOT ALL ! ) of the HD100 stuff I've seen was not well produced. Yes there have been a few well shot/lit things I've seen here but there has been a lot that wasn't. The thing with shooting film is that you tend to use better lighting and are more careful about shooting. If you apply the same lighting and care with the HD100, theres not much difference and I think the hd100 does better. with film people take a lot more care - they will meter their light ratios because they have to because you can't see your results at the shoot with film running through the camera at $35-$50/minute (film,process,single light xfer). with video, that tends to go out the window and people just say " well its video "it doesn't have the range" tends to be the battle cry rather than properly controling light ratios. to do so at the very least requires time and a modest amount of gear. sometimes its as simple as gelling a window or two, or simply getting out enough nets and flags to do the job. other times its just larger lights or HMI's. personally, I shoot video just like film in most respects. that just doesn't include controling light ratios, but also color temp. I'll usually use 3200k or 5600k presets, then gel the lights as needed to the correct temp which is much easier than trying to WB the camera until it "looks ok". sometimes, I might cheat a little and get the camera to WB at 4300k. working this way means being able to warm or cool the image as needed in a predictable consistant way. its the same way film is shot because its the only way you can shoot film. if you've never shot film, this is all new of thinking and working.
difference emulsions have different lattitude, and one should simply consider the HD100 another emulsion in some respects and try to handle it that way.

Originally Posted by Keith Winstein

And yes, a top-of-the-line HD telecine session with a colorist is very expensive, but in HD100 world, like any 8-bit BT.709 format, you're stuck with the recorded palette of fewer than 2.8 million colors (unless you record 10-bit component output).

well I don't have a spec for 709 colorspace in front of me... but - first if you transfer film to tape, your in the same color space. the other is that with the HD100 set to 108% clip, and 0 blacks, thats a lot more range than 601 space of 16-235.

if 100IRE=235, then 108 IRE=253RGB, therefore 253*253*253=16.2 million colors so I'm not sure about that statement of 2.8m colors. to get so little color you'd have to be limited to around 145 values per channel from back to 100 white.

what the HD100 does not give you is film's fudge factor and forgive over exposure. you really have to be 90% in camera with the hd100. sure if you shoot with something like the viper or dalsa to HD paks in a RAW data format you've got lots of play in post, but thats a whole lot more money and effort to work that way. another thing about any HD format is that when you shoot, its framing is pretty much what you get. with 35, there;s a much larger slop factor in framing. in film to tape, you can rotate a crooked image in seconds, and easily reframe a shot tighter by a factor of almost 50% before the grain becomes noticable, at least in SD. you can take a wide and get a medium pretty easily and no one would know. it depends on the speed of the film you shot how far you can go in. with HD, you can blow up a little bit, but not like you can with 35.

Steve Oakley

[Mark Bournes]

To answer your question, yes. The camera is used on "off the hook" a fishing show on OLN.

[Stephan Ahonen]

I'm sure what you described works just great when you're in a controlled lighting situation, but what about those of us who are shooting in locations where we don't have control of the lights?

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

I'm sure what you described works just great when you're in a controlled lighting situation, but what about those of us who are shooting in locations where we don't have control of the lights?

Shooting HD should not be any different than film. just because you aren't throwing $75/minute away with film doesn't mean that you should treat HD any less. I've shot 16mm run & gun for some docs and it looks like what it looks like, less than great. that doesn't mean bad, just not optimum. even under these circumstances there are ways of getting some control, and if you can't at all, maybe you shouldn't be shooting it, at least not significant amounts material. I do mean that quite seriously - if you can't have some control over what you are shooting, why are you shooting it ? news,combat and unique historical events that just happen aside of course, if you where shooting film you'd make every attempt, so why not with HD ?

that aside, its not like you get garbage without any lights or light control. sometimes you have great available light and not need to do anything or you simply need to enhance it a bit. the hd100 still makes very nice images, just not optimum ones, just like any other camera/format. under less than ideal circumstances, you really have to get to know the camera, and dial in settings as needed. black stretch and gamma can really turn an image around when its dark. so can gamma and knee in bright hi contrast scenes. the hard part is simply stopping and making those adjustments. other times you may need to decide on exposing for the sky or overall scene vs. faces, it depends on whats most important, whats the most prominent part of the shot. this is true for both film or HD. both have limits of dynamic range. within film, various emulsions have different responses plus you can combine that with different lab processes like pushing/pulling flashing,bleach bypass, ect.

so don't think you're stuck with available light, but its generally not the best image you can make regardless of format. instead, you should look at how you can control the light to make it better.

Steve Oakley