What camera do i need? help

[macgregor]

Hello.
I don´t need an HD camera because here in Spain we will not have HD tv for a while.
So all my work (shortfilms and car footage) will be at the end burnt in SD DVDs.

However i find dv compression sometimes anoying (i have a dvx100) and many times i do readjustments in the frame.

So having an HD camera would help me to get better quality images even when i would have to resample to PAL.

Now my question is:
- if i buy a HVX200 i could have better compression ratio (dvcpro) as well as HD. But i would need to buy lots of P2 cards which are not cheap. At the end i would spend around $15,000 or so.
- i could buy a JVC which i´m sure won´t have the comprssion quality as the panasonic, but it would be cheaper since it can record on tape. And even it is 4.2.0, would the image look better resized to PAL just because of the facts of having more pixels? Would i notice an image quality improvement (in terms of color and latitud versus the PAL DV(ie:dvx100)?

The question is again, even with the compression of standard DV (i understand the HDpro of JVC has more or less the same compression as standard DV - 4.2.0 or 4.1.1-), would a bigger image (720p of the JVC) finish in better images once it is reduce to 720x576 pixels?

Thanks!

[Barry_Green]

There is no way to know, without actually testing it. There are many factors at play, not the least of which is color space -- DV is 4:2:0, and DVD is 4:2:0, and HDV is 4:2:0, but they're not the *same* 4:2:0. I believe PAL DV and PAL DVD follow the same implementation of 4:2:0 (meaning, both color samples on the same line, no color samples on the following line) but HDV apparently follows a different implementation (meaning, red samples on one line, blue samples on the other). So how will that all scale together? People will throw numbers and specifications around, but that's all really just speculation. We will not know the facts until we get it and test it.

You also have to factor in motion compression issues, and mosquito noise, and all sorts of other things. Plus noise in the signal, and the effect of shrinking an image on the noise. Plus sensitivity and dynamic range -- the JVC HD1 had a minimum low-light rating of 35 lux, with extreme contrast and limited dynamic range. So even though it's HD resolution, the type of images it produces are very different than the type of images a DVX would produce.

In the end, comparing specs is meaningless -- you'll simply have to compare the footage for yourself to see which you prefer, and wait for the results of some independent testing to see how well resized images hold up.

[macgregor]

Thanks.
My question was more about the fact of achieving more quality (not just detail, dvx100 has enought detail) using HD resampled to SD than using standard DV. What do you think about it?