JVC HM600 Sample Footage/Thoughts

[Jody Arnott]

Hi all,

I decided to start a new thread for this. I cut together a few clips that I shot on my new HM600 over the past couple of days. Excuse the amateur camera work, it's my first professional video camera (aside from my XA10) so I'm still getting used to all of the manual controls.

Enjoy!

JVC HM600 Test Footage - YouTube

I've also quoted some initial thoughts about the camera that I posted in my other thread:

Originally Posted by Jody Arnott

Some thoughts so far.

Build quality:
- Seems good for the most part, the camera feels solid and well-built. However...
- SD Card door is really weak and flimsy
- When I pull out the LCD screen, it feels very weak, and it creaks when moved
- The plastic near the handhold strap creaks, which annoys me. It feels hollow and cheap

Rings:
- Focus ring is rubberised plastic and it's HUGE, so it's really easy to find and use without looking
- Zoom ring is servo driven. It's quite responsive, there doesn't seem to be any lag unless you pull it really fast, then the lens has to catch up. Otherwise it's really nice to use
- Iris ring is very thin, as on most cameras I think, but easy enough to find and grip so no issues

Auto focus:
- I'm on the fence so far... Sometimes it's fast and accurate and other times it takes a while to start auto focusing. Sometimes it even hunts back and forth to find an accurate focus, making the footage unusable
I'll need more time with the camera to really make a decision though. I do a lot of sports videography so auto focus is important to me. However

Image stabilisation:
- Not really impressed, the stabilisation on my XA10 is better. Then again, I'm not used to holding big cameras like this so it may just be a matter of personal technique. Default setting is "normal" but you can go into the menu and set it to "high" which I think may introduce some form of software stabilisation. It doesn't seem to make a huge difference.

LCD screen:
- Resolution is good, it's reasonably crisp and sharp. Easy to focus on, but very reflective in the light.
- The EVF is extremely good, it's huge and really sharp which makes it easy to focus on. Unfortunately the colours are terrible, very washed out, dull, and not very accurate.

Other stuff:
- Zoom lever is massive and really nice to use
- 3 record buttons, very ergonomically placed
- Fan noise can be heard on the internal mic in quiet environments
- Having trouble getting the .mp4 and .mov media into Avid MC 6.5
- I had to update the firmware as 25p mode was coming out interlaced. No further issues after the update.

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Jody Arnott

I cut together a few clips that I shot on my new HM600 over the past couple of days.

Looks fun to shoot with!

The long zoom starting at 1:22 and ending at 1:46 is impressive. I see some chromatic abberation on the automobile at full zoom. I know the camera was in full auto, but do you have any idea what the aperture was at that point? Did you have the ND filter engaged? Was the aperture full open?

You said you were having trouble ingesting the .mp4 and .mov files. Is there a way you could post the native files from the camera for a 2 second clip in each format? I am interested how they work with my system.

[Jody Arnott]

Originally Posted by Eric Olson

Looks fun to shoot with!

The long zoom starting at 1:22 and ending at 1:46 is impressive. I see some chromatic abberation on the automobile at full zoom. I know the camera was in full auto, but do you have any idea what the aperture was at that point? Did you have the ND filter engaged? Was the aperture full open?

You said you were having trouble ingesting the .mp4 and .mov files. Is there a way you could post the native files from the camera for a 2 second clip in each format? I am interested how they work with my system.

Sorry, I didn't take note of the aperture during that zoom. I did that at my home so I'll do it again tomorrow using manual settings and upload the footage.

I've uploaded some native clips, you should be able to download them from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b0xvpqw6p4od23c/TNhK3_liCp

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Jody Arnott

I've uploaded some native clips, you should be able to download them from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b0xvpqw6p4od23c/TNhK3_liCp

Thanks! The .MOV file works well. For the record mediainfo reports the following:

General
Complete name                            : QUICKTIME_MPEG2.MOV
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format_Commercial_IfAny                  : XDCAM EX 35
Format profile                           : QuickTime
Codec ID                                 : qt  
File size                                : 22.4 MiB
Duration                                 : 5s 280ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 35.6 Mbps
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06
Tagged date                              : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format_Commercial_IfAny                  : XDCAM EX 35
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : Main@High
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Format settings, GOP                     : M=3, N=12
Codec ID                                 : xdve
Duration                                 : 5s 280ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 33.7 Mbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 35.0 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 888 pixels
Original width                           : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 062 pixels
Original height                          : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 25.000 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.673
Stream size                              : 21.2 MiB (95%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06
Tagged date                              : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Format settings, Sign                    : Signed
Codec ID                                 : twos
Duration                                 : 5s 280ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 990 KiB (4%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06
Tagged date                              : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06

Menu
ID                                       : 3
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06
Tagged date                              : UTC 2012-01-23 10:11:06
Bit rate mode                            : CBR

[Jody Arnott]

Originally Posted by Eric Olson

Thanks! The .MOV file works well. For the record mediainfo reports the following:

Interesting, what NLE are you using? Media Composer 6.5 won't let me import the .MOV or .MP4. I can AMA the .MOV but then I have transcode issues which I can get around by doing a video mix down but it seems like a long way of doings things.

[Mike Squires]

.MP4 imports just fine in Premiere Pro CS6 also.

[Rod Pike]

Thanks for sharing Jody.
Rod

[Petter Flink]

Originally Posted by Eric Olson

Looks fun to shoot with!

The long zoom starting at 1:22 and ending at 1:46 is impressive. I see some chromatic abberation on the automobile at full zoom. I know the camera was in full auto, but do you have any idea what the aperture was at that point? Did you have the ND filter engaged? Was the aperture full open?

Thanks for the test shot Jody.

Eric, I noticed the CA as well.
Overall it looks a bit soft. It takes quite a while during zoom out before the softness and CA disappears.
It almost looks like some of those zoomed in shots of the early/pre release version which JVC quickly fixed.

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Jody Arnott

Interesting, what NLE are you using? Media Composer 6.5 won't let me import the .MOV or .MP4. I can AMA the .MOV but then I have transcode issues which I can get around by doing a video mix down but it seems like a long way of doings things.

I can load the .mp4 file into Sony Vegas without trouble. For what it's worth, I can also losslessly remultiplex the .mov files into an .mxf container using ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i QUICKTIME_MPEG2.MOV -vcodec copy -acodec pcm_s16le -y source.mxf

and then load the resulting file into Cinelerra. With mpeg2 video and pcm audio there is not much that anyone would expect to go wrong and it is nice to see that it just works.

With the chromatic abberation, does it go away if you stop the lens down a little?

[Jody Arnott]

Originally Posted by Petter Flink

Thanks for the test shot Jody.

Eric, I noticed the CA as well.
Overall it looks a bit soft. It takes quite a while during zoom out before the softness and CA disappears.
It almost looks like some of those zoomed in shots of the early/pre release version which JVC quickly fixed.

The softness may have been my error.

I'll get a few more zoomed in shots today and see if I can eliminate the softness and CA.

edit:

Here's another one. F3.2, 1/50, -6dB, ND 1/64, auto white balance, manual focus on the houses
Quicktime MPEG2 compressed to H.264 MP4, 8mbit

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jg4ushsxqxo2p15/ZoomTest.mp4

[Michael Warren]

Thanks for posting these Samples, Jody. Some observations:

The "CA" that can be seen on the white car and is also on the edges on the trees looks more like the bleed that will often happen on edges where over exposure is occurring. This is not chromatic aberration from the lens, but rather too much light triggering adjacent red and blue pixels. This can be fixed in post without too much trouble if it's troublesome, but I'm not sure anyone but us pixel-peepers will notice.

Try to avoid using negative gain. The data from the sensor will still be clipped and would likely exaggerate the purple fringing.

Looking at the Monarch butterfly clip, it looks like it can focus quite close.

Regarding the noise test you posted earlier, as Noa said, a comparison is only meaningful if you get the brightness levels the same between the 2 cameras being tested. A small chip is less sensitive so the gain setting won't track. I examined a still frame from both and noticed that there is much poorer dynamic range and more obvious noise reduction on the XA10.

[Leon Kolenda]

Originally Posted by Jody Arnott

Sorry, I didn't take note of the aperture during that zoom. I did that at my home so I'll do it again tomorrow using manual settings and upload the footage.

I've uploaded some native clips, you should be able to download them from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b0xvpqw6p4od23c/TNhK3_liCp

Jody, thanks for posting all the video and info!

In the last scene of the pan of the river, it seems pretty soft, did you just have that out of focus. That lens seems awesome to me, except for some of that purple CA, Can that be taken out in post? Is it a pain to do.

I'm close to pulling the trigger.

Southerndude-USA

[Jody Arnott]

Originally Posted by Leon Kolenda

Jody, thanks for posting all the video and info!

In the last scene of the pan of the river, it seems pretty soft, did you just have that out of focus. That lens seems awesome to me, except for some of that purple CA, Can that be taken out in post? Is it a pain to do.

I'm close to pulling the trigger.

Southerndude-USA

Probably soft. The duck was moving so I was trying to keep up.

And not too sure about the CA, I haven't had much experience with it.

Loving the camera so far though. My only concern is that it's a lot noisier in low light than I thought it would be.

[Jody Arnott]

Hmm, this is interesting.

I did a time lapse using the interval record function tonight. All manual settings, and manual focus. At the start of the time lapse, the focus was perfect. But as the sun went down and the sky got darker, the focus went soft.

Focus was definitely set to manual.

Any thoughts as to why this would happen? I'm at the beach tonight but will upload the video tomorrow.

[Michael Warren]

Did you need to open the aperture as the recording progressed?