IBC: Sony announces HVR-V1e

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Very similar to Panasonic's HVX200, which has a sensor size of 960x540, and shoots 960x720p and 1280x1080i.

Sort of, but perhaps not. See the prior post. The HVX doesn't "shoot" 960x720 or 1280x1080, it scans its chips using spatial offset into a 1920x1080 matrix, and then downsamples it to the recording format (either 1280x1080 US or 1440x1080 EU, or 960x720, or 720x576 (EU) or 720x480 (US). But the spatial offset technique takes advantage of the way that CCDs are read as analog signals and processed into the YUV space.

CMOS isn't quite the same, it's a discrete digital pixel well. Each pixel in a CMOS chip is individually addressable (which is not possible in a CCD; a CCD is an analog device that outputs an analog signal).

So it's two different approaches. I don't know what to say about the end results until we see 'em side by side. Both units are claiming 1920x1080 internal signal processing, one does so from CCDs using spatial offset, the other does so through CMOS but I don't know how they get from 960x1080 up to 1920x1080; I would suspect it's a digital up-rez.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Marvin Emms

The card will not capture HDCP protected material, it's exactly what the spec is designed to prevent.

Yes, but. The BM mentions capture from settop box. Which means HDMI does not ITSELF protect media transfer. As I understand it, it simply ensures the receiving device performs a digital handshake. Which is performed by a chip.

The contents are protected by, if I remember right, "5C." Thus, the program orginator turns on various levels of protection. This is already the case with FireWire transfer to D-VHS.

Anything sent by PBS, for example, can't be prevented from being recorded. Supposedly anything sent via OTA is supposed to be able to be able to be copied. But, CBS fought hard to prevent this with HD. No matter the law, the state of the what comes out of a settop box sometimes works as it should and sometimes doesn't.

I assume the 5C is also handled by a chip. Probably, the HDMI chip. Much more on the AVSFORUM.

-------------------------
Steve Mullen
My "Sony HDV Handbook" is available at:
www.mindspring.com/~d-v-c

[Marvin Emms]

HDMI does not itself protect media transfer but HDCP does. This is manditory in all Blu-ray/HD-DVD players and is turned on for media that require it. If a HDCP device is connected to a non HDCP device when enabled the link will fail, no video data will be transfered, and the HDCP complient device will have to act on this. Usually the response to a non HDCP complient devices is to scale down, to say 540p and then not engage HDCP. A compromise for early HDTV buyers.

I cannot speak for US satellite, but in the UK the boxes' HDMI ports are protected by HDCP, this is not switched on for all channels/programming but when it is, the response to a non HDCP complient TV is just an error message and no picture.

5C may be a higher level of management but as far as HDCP it is either on or off, so a HDMI capture card by design of the HDCP protocol will not be much use recording protected content.

Barry,

"Anything we speculate on is nothing but speculation until real-world results are seen."

There is no spoon.

"Apparently Sony is willing to go on record to say that in bright light/sunny conditions this FX7/V1E will look noticeably sharper than the FX1/Z1U"

I have no doubt of this, but resolution is not the same thing as sharpness so this tells us nothing. To make an image look sharp, Sony increase the default value of the sharpening algorithm until it looks sharper. Job done. When moving from the HC1 to the HC3, clearvid delivered less total resolution. We can only assume the new colour pattern did not perform as well as expected to offset the fewer lit pixels and Sony responded by using more agressive sharpening. Clearly having made the statement Sony will increase the level of sharpening until it does look sharper regardless of actual resolution. The question I would want to make them answer is - 2 years on, why arn't they blowing the 1Mpixel resolution offerings clean away?

"Whereas with CMOS you're talking about discrete pixel transfer,"

CCD and CMOS both use discrete pixel transfer, and they both capture an analog quantity at the raw pixel level. The only practical difference for a modern camera is that CMOS is capable of fabbing an ADC on the same die as the sensor array, the CCD process cannot do this and the ADC must be attached as a seperate chip.

clearvid probably requires a significant amount of digital processing to get any sort of acceptable signal anyway. Taking the clearvid raster at face value, each pixel contains a contribution from several neighboring pixels as far as a conventional X/Y grid display device is concerned, it may well be that the deconvolution algorithm has been designed to output a full 1920x1080 image and this sets the resolution of the sensor array. I'm not sure it is even meaningful to quote 960x1080 as a resolution but it is certainly meaningful to remeber 1Mpixel as the overall amount of information being fed into the engine. I have failed to find any confirmation on the site of the number of pixels.

Like clearvid, pixel shift is just another sort of compromise obscured by a snakeoil explanation. While the salesman's interpretation seems to gain the amount of overall information read from the device in proportion to the number of overlapping zones created, the amount of real data hasn't changed. 3 x 1Mpixel sensors have enough information to produce a 1Mpixel image at 4:4:4. Moving the green sensor does not increase the total amount of information coming from the device, so to take advantage of those half or quarter pixel overlaps to get a higher luma resolution you have to make assumptions about the way the colourspace behaves, which reduces the accuracy and resolution of the colour. In the best digital case this gets you a picture that does visually look sharper and actually has higher resolution, but may not be as good for things like chroma key, in the worst analog case this just gets you colour fringing.

clearvid and pixel shift are performance tradeoffs wrapped in snakeoil explanations. In this case a pixel shift would be genuinly useful, in that noone uses high resolution colour information, and the camera doesn't record it anyway, but clearvid desperatly needs increased resolution on the diagonals which could be achieved by placing the center of the green pixels at the middle of the cross of the other two colours. Equivalent to a movement of half a pixel in both directions on a normal system.

[Bob Zimmerman]

Blackmagic has announced a cross-platform expansion card that enables capture from HDMI enabled camcorders, and output/monitoring via HDMI.

Guess which company just released two HDV camcorders that sport shiny new HDMI output ports? I'll give you a hint...the manufacturer's name starts with an "S" and it ryhmes with "pony"...

Now, we still don't know if the HDR-FX7 and HVR-V1E camcorders output HDMI before HDV compression. But if I had to speculate randomly at this point, I'd guess that Sony got it right and spits out a beautiful uncompressed image from the HDMI port. I seriously doubt that this oh-so-conveniently-timed announcement is just coincidence.
"With Intensity, you can now capture and playback full resolution HDTV uncompressed video...Totally eliminate HDV & DV compression quality problems, and render much cleaner graphics while retaining deeper color and image detail. If you need lower data rate editing, you can also select from a range of professional compressed video capture modes."
Folks, it sounds to me like you can HDMI tether a camcorder to your PC or MAC with the Blackmagic card installed, and ingest straight-up uncompressed HD. Nifty.

The new card is scheduled to be available October 15th and will cost you around $250.

[Bob Zimmerman]

I also read this camera has a 60 GB internal hardrive. But it still has tape right?

If this camera ends up really having 24p here and is not priced at $5,800 it will be a good seller.
I'd like to see it under $4,000

[Krystian Ramlogan]

Why would anyone want this camera instead of the Canon A1?

CMOS sensors may give a more organic look to the images, but the Canon seems to have this beat - academicaly speaking, in terms of manual controls, specs, etc.

So, am I missing something?

K.

[Heath McKnight]

Originally Posted by Krystian Ramlogan

Why would anyone want this camera instead of the Canon A1?

CMOS sensors may give a more organic look to the images, but the Canon seems to have this beat - academicaly speaking, in terms of manual controls, specs, etc.

So, am I missing something?

K.

Canon isn't true progressive, CMOS in some ways seems to be superior to CCD, as far as I can tell the V1e has total manual controls.

heath

[Heath McKnight]

Originally Posted by Bob Zimmerman

I also read this camera has a 60 GB internal hardrive. But it still has tape right?

If this camera ends up really having 24p here and is not priced at $5,800 it will be a good seller.
I'd like to see it under $4,000

I still think the American version will have 24p and 30p, because of the CMOS chips and true progressive recording. (And the fact that HDV now includes 24p in the spec, and all the other sub-$10,000 HDV and HD cameras are 24p/f.)

As for the Sony drive, yes, you can still record to tape as a back-up while recording to disk. A 60 gb drive can hold a whole heckuva lot of HDV footage.

heath

[Krystian Ramlogan]

I'm sure I've seen enough posts about 24p vs 24f which indicate the difference is imperceptible; especially by Chris who's gone to great pains to eliminate any misinformation or misconception about it, so that's a moot point I think.

The main thing I see is the image of the Sony CMOS vs the Canon CCD; the Sony is not native 1440 x 1080 whearas the Canon is native 1440 x 1080.

I'd like to see a comparision chart between the two and of course, we'll all need to see actual footage to make a real comparison. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say!

K.

[Heath McKnight]

I've used the Canon XL H1 on many occasions and the "f" does indeed look like progressive. My point was that this is the first Sony sub-$10,000 HD(V) progressive-scan camera.

Also, to my eye, 30f and 24f in the Canon HDV camera(s) looks a lot like Sony's 60i/CineFrame 30 and, believe it or not, 50i/CF25.

heath

[Bob Zimmerman]

I wonder how long before we get some USA news on the V1e?

I'm on a waiting list for the Canon A1, but I want to see more on the Sony and the Canon.

[Heath McKnight]

Bob,

My guess would be in the next month or so. I'm thinking back to Canon's showing of the XL H1 at 2005's IBC, then within a couple of weeks, the XL H1 make its big announcement. Then again, that's Canon.

heath

[Bob Zimmerman]

Since they already announce it over there, why wait? I don't know either!

[Heath McKnight]

Because it was IBC and they want to make a big splash in America? Or something. I honestly have no clue.

heath

[Paulo Teixeira]

The FX7 already has a US retail price of $3,499.00.
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...efinitionVideo
This would mean that the retail price for the V1 is anywhere from 4,000 to 4,500 dollars.