Big Screen Wow from a Cynic

O

oogabooga

Member
I own an HVX-200 and have been pretty happy with it. I must say however that old grain/noise issue bothered me. I looked at my stuff on plasma and lcd and was always a little dissapointed....

I also always felt a little cynical about all the raving about the camera here.

RIght now I am a master's student working as a research assistant. We ar shooting a documentary on a Sony Cinealta F900. Last night using a Cinealta 4k Projector we screened a comparison between the HVX, the Cine-Alta and a Sony HDV (I forget the model number but an older/smaller one).

The projection was at least 30' wide on the diagonal.

I was truly blown away. Noise was not an issue in the least.

Sorry Barry for not believeing you when you said it- but its true- the HVX produced less noise than what Ive seen from 35mm- definately blew away 16mm at that size.

It intercut almost seemlessly with the F-900. For sure there was a little extra sharpness and a little better skin tones with the F-900 but not $100,000 dollars worth.

What it came down to is that the image held up with no artifacting or anything on a giant projection.

And just to stay fair - the Sony HDV didnt do bad either but it was noticeably softer and more grainy.

Anyhow...hopefully that was worth sharing.
 
Thanks for sharing that. It takes character to publicly admit that one was wrong. :thumbsup:
 
How did your footage look on a plasma or LCD? I'm just wondering why there's such a big difference when projected.
 
funny... He's right.. as I see a huge difference between my Del 2405.. which has been talked to death.. and a really nice Plasma even. I did get to project it on a 12x16 screen with a true HD projection and it looked awesome. The best image the projectionist had see as he mostly does SD Imag with the projector and not a lot of HD.. but I think that'll be changing
 
What is the cheapest way to project an HD movie?
from a PC? a Bluray player? Sorry oogabooga for jumping your thread, but I am, too, very interested to see how you projected?
 
Hey oogabooga, thanks for coming in and sharing that. I know exactly what you're saying; people come to the HD BootCamps saying "but what about all the noise?" and we show them HVX footage on a 10' screen and their jaws drop and they say "wow"... for $5,000 this really is a flat-out amazing tool.

We usually project off of a DLP projector, and the resulting image is razor-sharp and crystal-clear; Evin Grant put together the reel and it features some stuff intercut with the Viper, and it just looks fantastic. There are hundreds and hundreds of BootCamp graduates who've seen it and I think most would agree.

Little cheap LCD monitors are doing your footage no favors, that's for sure.
 
dwstudio said:
What is the cheapest way to project an HD movie?
from a PC? a Bluray player? Sorry oogabooga for jumping your thread, but I am, too, very interested to see how you projected?
Click to expand...

VGA out from PC to DLP. It works. I have one, and I have yet to try it with HVX footage outside of projecting the MIDNIGHT CHRONICLES TRAILER which looked pretty damned good blown up like that.
 
I second the comments on how it looks blown up - I saw footage from a multi-HVX shoot I was a Rover cam for projected on a 40-foot screen (full-size theatre with about 4-500 seats). All the footage looked amazing, even though it was all shot with no setting changes from factory settings - I couldn't find any noticable grain, even in the shadows. Despite being an HVX owner it by far exceeded my expectations, as I'm sure it will yours. Just wait until more movies come out using this camera (I personally am preparing to DP one now, so will let you all know whenever/wherever it gets released)
 
Okay scientists, what is going on here? why is there noise on small HD screens and none on big screens? is it because the big screen is softer and deficiencies are not as noticeable?
 
The footage was all captured uncompressed 4:2:2 on an Avid Nitris and output to HDCAM at 23.98fps. The HVX had to go through Final Cut because avid is too lame to have a 1080 24pa pulldown. The Sony HDV had to be converted to 23.98.

My HVX was in Cine-D Detail -2 Detail Coring +3


I noticed that 1080 is significantly sharper than a 720 blowup. There is undoubtably a marked difference. I know the whole HVX chip technology seems wonky but it looks like its working. If I were to shoot for a large screen projection I would be cautious not to lower my detail setting too much in 720p.
- As noise was really not a problem and with a smidge of sharpness the 720p could pass nicely on such a large projection.

And just to clarify- the footage was of senior citizens under low fluorescent lights. There were plenty of dull tones to produce noise but really virtualy nothing showed up.

I have no idea why the image isnt as good on lcd/plasma. And these are good monitors- an Apple Cinema Display and a Panasonic 42" HD PLasma.

Even on smaller projectors I've noticed a better image.

Anyhow- the next test is the M2 on the big screen. We'll see how that goes.
 
Barry_Green said:
Hey oogabooga, thanks for coming in and sharing that. I know exactly what you're saying; people come to the HD BootCamps saying "but what about all the noise?" and we show them HVX footage on a 10' screen and their jaws drop and they say "wow"... for $5,000 this really is a flat-out amazing tool.

We usually project off of a DLP projector, and the resulting image is razor-sharp and crystal-clear; Evin Grant put together the reel and it features some stuff intercut with the Viper, and it just looks fantastic. There are hundreds and hundreds of BootCamp graduates who've seen it and I think most would agree.
Click to expand...

I was one of the many that were at the first HVX Bootcamp in LA. The projection of Evin's reel (as well as other DVXUser members' footage) gave me a great deal of assurance that I made the right purchase. The images were outstanding.

Barry_Green said:
Little cheap LCD monitors are doing your footage no favors, that's for sure.
Click to expand...

Ain't that the truth!
 
oogabooga said:
The footage was all captured uncompressed 4:2:2 on an Avid Nitris and output to HDCAM at 23.98fps. The HVX had to go through Final Cut because avid is too lame to have a 1080 24pa pulldown. The Sony HDV had to be converted to 23.98.

My HVX was in Cine-D Detail -2 Detail Coring +3


I noticed that 1080 is significantly sharper than a 720 blowup. There is undoubtably a marked difference. I know the whole HVX chip technology seems wonky but it looks like its working. If I were to shoot for a large screen projection I would be cautious not to lower my detail setting too much in 720p.
- As noise was really not a problem and with a smidge of sharpness the 720p could pass nicely on such a large projection.

And just to clarify- the footage was of senior citizens under low fluorescent lights. There were plenty of dull tones to produce noise but really virtualy nothing showed up.

I have no idea why the image isnt as good on lcd/plasma. And these are good monitors- an Apple Cinema Display and a Panasonic 42" HD PLasma.

Even on smaller projectors I've noticed a better image.

Anyhow- the next test is the M2 on the big screen. We'll see how that goes.
Click to expand...

Because LCDs and Plasmas are NOT as good in the field of quality as CRTs yet, and I don't think (I might be wrong) projectors are either. When I view footage direct from the camera out to my HD CRT it looks pretty damned good.

Not to mention, I've seen compressed files from the HVX out in sunlight output to my HD CRT via DVI and it looks very nice.

I too have viewed footage on my Apple Cinema HD (23 and 30) and noticed that the quality was "meh". On another plane, have you tried to burn your footage to DVD to see how it played on a Standard Definition television set? Mom's house? Friends? That's the kind of distribution most of us will see anyway.
 
I second the fact that good CRTs look better than other monitors when displaying HVX footage. But to be honest I find it much less interesting than projected quality.

The fact the image stands up so well in big screen situations makes this a viable cinema tool and not just a really nice camcorder.
 
OT, but what kind of research do you do? Just curious because I'm coming to video production from a science/ engineering background too.
--Jeremy
 
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alpi69 said:
What are CRT-HD monitors you look at? Household Samsung or only $ 4.000 production screens?
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Both. I've viewed footage on a JVC HD production monitor and my Samsung 32" HD CRT. They're both better quality than LCD's.
 
The explanation for the lack of noise might be really easy to explain actually :)

Most projectors and video processors these days have noise reduction and sharpening of some sort built in as well as circuitry to eleminate blockyness. It could be that the projector/processor is doing quite a bit.
 
Kholi said:
Both. I've viewed footage on a JVC HD production monitor and my Samsung 32" HD CRT. They're both better quality than LCD's.
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sorry for the hijack:
I read in a review the homevideo HD-CRTs from Philips and Samsung are good screens, but lack the wow-effect. I would like to use such a tool in the office, because they so much more affordable. But will they show the clients what they will see. In my town I was not able to find one HD-CRT. All LCD and plasma, which is silly, because for the majority people watch PAL on them.
 
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