Need some camera suggestions for weddings.

[Kevin Shaw]

Peter: I'm using Edius to edit HDV footage converted to the Canopus HQ format, then outputting directly from the timeline to whatever delivery format I need using Procoder Express. Workflow on a dual-core computer running at 3 GHz is basically the same as DV, including SD MPEG2 output for DVDs, and the only thing which takes time is rendering to HD formats like Windows Media. If you were starting from scratch today you could shoot and edit HDV for about the same price most of us have spent to produce DV, so in the long run there may not be much of a price premium. But I agree that for now we should all be charging something extra for HDV, and the trick is figuring out what customers are willing to pay.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Tommy James

Steve Mullen claims that the JVC 720p format is twice as easy to edit as the Sony 1080i format. Perhaps a wedding videographer could shoot 720p at no extra charge but charge more for higher resolutions like 1080i.

720p footage requires less processing power to edit effectively than 1080i, but that's quickly becoming irrelevant with the introduction of affordable dual-core processors. I doubt most customers would pay extra for one format over the other and would prefer not to be bothered with such details, but chances are 1080i will have a little more appeal because most people will assume the higher primary resolution of 1080i makes it a better format. (Whether that's true or not.)

[Diogo Athouguia]

Originally Posted by Tommy James

Steve Mullen claims that the JVC 720p format is twice as easy to edit as the Sony 1080i format. Perhaps a wedding videographer could shoot 720p at no extra charge but charge more for higher resolutions like 1080i.

Resolution isn't everything, 720p is less resolution but better quality, it works with full frames and it has no artifacts. So would you extra charge for better resolution or for better quality? I'd go for the quality and film look of progressive scan.

If you don't know how it works, take a look at this:
http://www.avdeals.ca/classroom/Proscanexplained.htm
:)

[Dave Largent]

For anyone who has seen both 720p and 1080i:
Does the 720 have the "film look", similar to
what the DVX100 has?

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Diogo Athouguia

Resolution isn't everything, 720p is less resolution but better quality, it works with full frames and it has no artifacts.

Douglas Spotted Eagle has reported that he's finding 720p HDV to be inadequate for display on high-end 1080p HDTVs. Something to test before you settle on one format or the other.

[Diogo Athouguia]

Maybe 720p isn't the best format but it's the one that is being adopted by major broadcasters. Of course the best format to display on a 1080p HDTV is 1080p, but I've seen some 720p footage of an HD100 displayed on a high-end big professional HDTV and the image was incredibly good, didn't seem inadequate to me or to the 12 directors of photography and camera operators that were also there for the first presentation of the camera in Portugal. I think inadequated is not the correct word, he should say 720p is not the best format to be displayed on a 1080p HDTV, but 1080i isn't certainly better than 720p.

"The argument that 1080x1920, 30 frames/sec interlaced (1080I) will give better picture quality than 720x1280, 60 frames/sec progressive (720P) because it has twice as many picture elements (pixels) per frame is the most recent erroneous idea put forth by those who have been pushing the NHK 1125/60 system for years as a world-wide production standard. The earlier arguments all turned out to be incorrect; this new one is but the latest attempt to foist off this obsolete technology on the American broadcasting industry. In fact, the vertical resolution actually achieved in 1080I is lower han that actually achieved in 720P, while the horizontal resolution is considerably less than 1920 pixels, as clearly shown by objective tests carried out at ATTC. Subjective tests carried out by ATEL showed that the perceived picture quality of the two systems was comparable...

The idea that 1080I has higher resolution than 720P has been shown to be false. The resolution actually achieved in the interlaced system is far below the nominal 1080x1920. The reduction in vertical resolution is due to the need to lessen the interline flicker that would otherwise be present. The reduction in horizontal resolution is partly a camera problem and partly a limitation of the MPEG compression system. These limitations are inherent; they cannot be removed within the given transmission data rate. There was a time when these matters were not fully understood, but that time is long past. There is now a mountain of evidence that shows that there is no advantage whatsoever to using interlace in digital TV broadcasting except to the manufacturers of interlaced production equipment. The fact that some interlace advocates are still pushing this obsolete technology shows that their viewpoint cannot be based on facts, but is almost surely due only to their last-ditch attempt to make the already developed 1125-line production equipment the appropriate equipment to use as HDTV broadcasting is initiated."

by William F. Schreiber,
Prof. Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, MIT