The HVX's Supposed New Competition

[BobDiaz]

The EX1 is a prosumer style camcorder of a similar size and weight to Sony's own popular Z1 camcorder. It comes equipped with two slots for SxS Express Memory cards, which in 16gb capacities will give you approximately 50 minutes of recording time per card at the cameras highest quality setting of 35Mbits/sec VBR MPEG2.

While it's not impossible to edit MPEG-2 native mode, it's not a good idea. Thus, with this camera you will need to transcode to a different format in order to edit.

It would be interesting to see a side by side test against the HVX-200. My guess and this is only a guess on my part, is that the Sony may be a sightly higher resolution, but the HVX will reproduce far richer colors than the Sony.


Bob Diaz

 

[THoff]

While it's not impossible to edit MPEG-2 native mode, it's not a good idea. Thus, with this camera you will need to transcode to a different format in order to edit.

One important thing to keep in mind when talking about transcoding is that unless you are going to an uncompressed or losslessly compressed format, you WILL lose detail in the process, no matter how good the codec you are going to is.

No two codecs produce the same output given the same input, so while what you get in your editing codec may look very good, it won't be what the camera recorded -- there will be many minute differences.

 

[Elton]

While it's not impossible to edit MPEG-2 native mode, it's not a good idea. Thus, with this camera you will need to transcode to a different format in order to edit.

I think a blanket statement such as "it's not a good idea" is a little presumptuous and possibly misleading. IMO, it depends on the final delivery format. XDCAM users nearly always output back to XDCAM decks, and it's a similar scenario for a majority of HDV users. If you need to go back to a native deck, you will at some point need to render to the native format, which if you had already edited in say, an XDCAM FCP timeline, you'd be ready to output.

In FCP, it's also fairly easy to offline in HDV or XDCAM, and then nest that sequence into a more robust ProRes timeline and only render your actual edit to ProRes, bypassing the need to transcode all original media to the intermediate format. That saves a lot of disk space and yields the same results in the end.

Everyone agrees that intraframe codecs are generally better to edit with, but if the edit is fairly straightforward and not terribly fx-intensive, HDV or XDCAM aren't nearly as bad as many would think. (and in this case, if heavy multi-stream RT is needed, even DVCPRO HD can choke a system fairly quickly)

 

[harddrive]

It would be interesting to see a side by side test against the HVX-200. My guess and this is only a guess on my part, is that the Sony may be a sightly higher resolution, but the HVX will reproduce far richer colors than the Sony.

Well, I'll certainly agree with the first sentence. Who's going to be the first to organise such a shootout!?!

I can't help feeling that the CAMERA differences are far more significant than the CODEC differences, and whilst all this debate about codecs, colourspace etc may have some validity, the front end differences will be far more significant than what happens in the edit suite.

As for differences, specs promise the EX to be substantially sharper than than the HVX, but whether it's more pleasing remains to be seen. Good light performance is one thing though - I'd be amazed if it doesn't substantially outperform the HVX (or any other 1/3" camera) in lower light levels, and to many users that is far more relevant and significant than the codec differences.

But let's see an independent shootout.

 

[Barry_Green]

Why would you expect it to substantially outperform the HVX or other 1/3" cameras? It has twice the pixel density as the V1U, which would make it a stop slower (all things being equal). But it has 4x the surface area, which should make it 2 stops faster than the V1U, so net gain = about a stop faster than the V1U. Yet the V1U is already two stops slower than the majority of the 1/3" HD camcorders. And CMOS cameras don't do so well in low light; when Sony introduced the V1U they even said the CCD-based FX1/Z1 would produce a better picture in lower light conditions than the CMOS-based V1U.

So I'd expect the EX to be maybe comparable to the 1/3" camcorders, but I'd be amazed if it substantially outperformed any of the 1/3" cameras when it comes to lower light levels. But we'll see.

 

[Stevet]

Well,
Barry, you're in for a surprise than.

Have you ever used a Sony XDCAM F350?
Is it as good as the F350. My guess is no, but I've heard it's
real close.

The EX also uses 1/2" with full 1920x1080 raster.
Initial pretests show its close to a 1000 lines. That sounds dang good to me.

One tester used two EX cams with an F350 for concert footage.
He mention during one scene he had to open the F350 all the way up, but the
EX still had a stop or more to go.

You right though.... It's not until one has it in their hands that they really know the story. This has been true with every camera.

 

[Noel Evans]

You right though.... It's not until one has it in their hands that they really know the story. This has been true with every camera.

And this is the only point I wanted to make after reading others comments. But I can tell you, if what Stevet said is true about the f350 comparison, well then would have to be a top performer.

The whole MPEG, Long GOP etc argument I dont enter into on forums anymore because theres just too much misinformation, and weather John Smith doesnt buy or like camera x because of y is nothing to do with me.

 

[Stevet]

The whole MPEG, Long GOP etc argument I dont enter into on forums anymore because theres just too much misinformation, and weather John Smith doesnt buy or like camera x because of y is nothing to do with me.

Well put !

 

[cardmaverick]

I have two words to say about this debate:

Signal Processing....

Many of you here know I work regularly with a DVX Andromeda. I have also shot and color corrected Varicam. Which one would I choose?

Andromeda!

Why? Because I have total control over the signal processing. The varicam could have the worlds best HD prime lens strapped onto it, shinning beautiful images onto its larger sensors, but at the end of the day, that gorgeous signal gets put threw a data grinder and out the other end comes 8 bit DVCPRO HD I can't do crap with in post, macroblocks like crazy when trying to create intense styles, banding, etc..

As I've said before, "You reach a point where great lenses and bigger chips simply don't add up when you put the resulting signal thru processing hell....."

All the cool stuff I like to do with my images simply can't be done in camera either...

The HVX might have a better codec, but if the Sony has better overall signal processing prior to compression... I think you get where I'm going with this.

As for this debate, the "winner" really depends on what you're looking for.

For me it was being able to take total control over my HD images... finally!

I certainly don't regret it