Mixing HVX footage with HV20?

M

mobius

New member
I'm traveling over the holidays and would prefer to travel light. But I also want to take advantage of a situation where I could grab some stock footage (for myself). Would it work to shoot footage with a smaller camera like the Canon HV20 and then mix it in with HVX footage? It'd be awesome if I only had to pack a small camera and pull it out whenever I see an opportunity. I trolled the HV20 section of this forum and couldn't find the answer. Thanks for any input.
 
If your final product was SD, most people would see little difference in the footage, all other things being equal.
In HD you're going to notice, no way around it. Plus having the flexibility of a "real" cam in the field, in theory, would give you the opportunity to shoot more compelling and stunning video. Your only question should be "is the HV20's quality enough?" If it works for your project, use it. If I was paying for stock footage, I wouldn't buy anthing shot on the HV20, personally.
 
Thanks. My question was really 2-fold: 1) can you merge the two clips into one sequence and 2) will it look okay? It sounds like you're saying yes to #1 and no to #2 (in HD).

Someone in the HV20 forum said he thought the HV20 quality can be as good as the HVX's so it got my hopes up. If anyone knows of a solution where I can opportunistically grab footage with a smaller camera while I'm doing the cars, trains, planes thing over the crowded holidays and later be able to merge it with HVX footage, I sure would love to hear about it. Thanks!
 
BTW, I'm talking about inserting maybe 10 second clips from the smaller camera. Obviously, if there's a big difference in quality, it'll be noticeable but maybe if the quality isn't too different, it'll be okay for short clips? I was also hoping maybe I could composite the two different footage but I guess I was dreaming on that one...
 
Why would the quality be different? In what way?

Mobious I really don't think you have anything to worry about. The HV20 spits out beautiful pictures. It does not have the "in-cam" tweakability like the HVX...but there is "no" reason why you can't match up the footage in post.
 
Ian-T said:
Why would the quality be different? In what way?
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Well the HV20 has a smaller sensor, so you're going do have more depth of field in most shots. It is a single sesor cam, and in that class of single-sensor you're going to have less faithful color reproduction, plus I think the HV20 has seen some rolling shutter problems.
The glass in front of the sensor is not as high-grade, and you may find more CA than the HVX (although the HVX isn't amazing with CA either).
The HDV codec isn't the 4:2:2 color space that DVCProHD supports. Detailed and colorful scenes will suffer for it. You are using about 25% of the data bandwidth after all.
Low-light performance could go either way, I guess.

If you had to composite a HVX-shot subject in front of a HV20 background, I'd expect you'd have to make some tweaks to the HVX footage to get it to match.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is the wrong camera for your application. Just don't expect identical footage from a $1000 and a $5000 camcorder.
 
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Hi Mobius,

Actually I'm doing the same- filming a documentary to be broadcasted on national television with HVX-200 using DVCPRO50 and HV20 HD (cine-mode). What I have found until now is that it's quiet a nice combination. For instance I am now able to record an interview using two camera's. In postproduction one wil have to slightly adjust the colour balance.

Hope to hear from you about your results.
 
hv20 performance in low light condition -even being 1000 instead of 4000 dollars- is much better than hvx-200, i am sorry to say.
 
davidje said:
hv20 performance in low light condition -even being 1000 instead of 4000 dollars- is much better than hvx-200, i am sorry to say.
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Not only would you be "sorry to say it", you'd be dead wrong. The HV20 is abysmal in low light. Its base sensitivity is about 80 ISO, the HVX200 is 320 ISO. The HV20 needs about 27dB of gain to even be competitive, and at those levels of gain it's a snowy grainstorm.
 
davidje said:
hv20 performance in low light condition -even being 1000 instead of 4000 dollars- is much better than hvx-200, i am sorry to say.
Click to expand...

Single chipers are always better than 3 chip.. but that's the only advantage.. besides price and small form factor. Was same for SD cameras.. But that's the only thing that they have an advantage on. It's a nice camera for the price, but it can't compare with the HVX.. and I have some evidence and experience with this. We shot a free music video for a buddy and the HV20 didn't cut the mustard. It was only used for a couple of shots and in relation it's so flat and muddy and muted colors.. even after increasing the color saturation 25 percent. Still didn't look good... to the point of really being so very noticable. You can't expect a thousand dollar cam to compete. Now the canon A1 is a lot better and looks a lot closer and is appealing..

The HV20 is not a good cam to intercut with HVX. It's ok by itself without match cuts and when it's not using mixing within a scene.... Ya get what you pay for... I hoped that it would look as good.. believe me I want too buy 2 of them but they are really only good for home video stuff and garbage in.. garbage out low light weddings.. cheers


I can post the music video if people are interested.. J
 
Wow, thanks for all the input. Yes, I'd love to see the mixed cuts of HVX and HV20 if either of Jusyn and Davidji are up for it. I have the HVX but haven't bought an HV20 so I'm still at the stage where I'm wondering if there's a good solution to travel + casual shoot. I do narratives rather than docs in case that makes a difference. Thanks, guys!
 
Maybe one of you guys can help me out with this? I shot a doc using my HVX. About 70 hours of footage at 720PN 24. I had a HV20 as a B camera and I have about 14 hours of footage from it shot at 1080 24.

Now I'm editing in FCP on a DVCProHD 720 24f timeline and I need to get the HV20 footage into the computer.

I inputed the HDV footage through the latest Imovie at a full 1080. I never use Imovie but then I never use HDV either until now, but it seemed easy. I'm guessing Imovie is probably where my issues lie.

So I look at the HDV footage in my computer and its in AIC Format 1080 29.97. I thought it was 24P but maybe that's just with pulldown.

From there I put the the footage in a timeline and used the media manager to recompress the 1080 footage to Apple ProRes 720 24. FCP says it will keep the footage at 29.97 and recompresses. And when I put it on the DVCProHD timelime I get stutter and strobing.
Would anyone know the correct workflow for doing what I want to do?

Also, if you want to see the trailer to the doc you can see it here.
http://graphicplanet.blip.tv/

Thanks!
 
on the mac, there is a program that will convert the 1080 24p to 720 24p dvcprohd with great results. It is called JES deinterlacer. Sometimes it is a little finicky but usually works, its free, Google it.

I don't have my mac in front of me but there are a few custom settings I like to use. You will want to use the inverse telecine option in the program. It will take a clip or batch of clips and spit out new files so your originals are untouched.
 
Thanks Soar, does this program capture the footage from the camcorder or do I use it on the footage that is already captured? It seems strange that HDV would be out for years and there isn't a simple way to do this.
 
Here's a rough assembly of a video shoot. Done for free for some friends and done over a day. My buddy TJ edited this and see if you can spot the HV20 shots in comparrison.. I mean it does pretty well, but you can kind of see how flat it is and that.. Not the greatest content on video and we winged it.. but the guys were happy... Let me know what you all think andhow much you hate the song...? Lol

rude language, skanky chicks, questionable musical taste..

http://www.electriccowtheater.com/GETDAT/GetDat.mov
 
hey justyn thanks for the vidoe,i think if you shoot on cinemode and cc in post itll be very hard to tell the diffrence,even if you just shoot on tv mode.cuz the footage with hv20 needed some boost in contrast and saturation in my opinion
 
Nice vid...cool tune..

I agree with john818 however. It seemed the HV20 shots were flat (what was the other cam used??) In post you can add more contrast and saturation to match. Cinemode would be flat to begin with (but gives better latitude)..TV mode would have given you much more deeper colors (when turned up in cam)...

...now I can't get that hook outta my head.....

Edit: I have got to say, I have seen a ton of HV20 videos a lot more vivid looking than those scenes in this music video. If you are going to match to anything then you should probably stay away from Cinemode (which it looks like it was shot in). Cinemode has a very flat look and a lot less detail in its picture (its meant to look that way...sort of a stylized look). As mentioned above it is great for getting a bit more latitude in your shots than "normal" shooting.
 
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Yeah, you're better off shooting in Cinemode since you know you're going to be working the footage over anyway. Better to get all the details you can.
 
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