Happy camper - 200 to 150

A

arrestthisman

Well-known member
Ok, sorry in advance since this is just a "love my new cam" post...

But, I sold my HVX to buy the HMC for a lot of reasons, one being low light performance.

So up until now I've been using my comp, and just looking at footage on my LCD monitors... tonight I put it up on the 42" plasma. I was nervous as hell, because one of the reasons I sold my HVX was because the noise was unbearable. Bad enough on my comp, but once it hit my plasma screen, my jaw dropped at how grainy it was.

Well, not anymore. I took some similar footage of my bedroom just with available light, and at that, I used my Xbox 360 to watch it so I had to compress it down to 9Mbits/sec. (Down from PH mode 21-24.) I was floored! It looked so amazing. I was expecting to see an improved version of the noise soup I got with the HVX (which was a great tool at the time, but I do so much low light work, it was almost a step down from the DVX)...

Instead it was just plain gorgeous! It not only met the "good enough for me" point, it really exceeded it. It was shot in 24fps 1080p, and once again was compressed down for the XBOX. The HVX footage was off the comp in its native DVCPRO HD (also in 1080p). I just can't believe the difference. On top of that this was no doubt sharper. I know it's supposed to have the same rez, but I saw a noticeable improvement.

So I am a really happy guy right now, I can't even imagine how good it would look at full PH, right off the cam or a comp, let alone color corrected and noise reduced. (Although I could barely see any noise to begin with. That was so surprising.)

It's one thing to look at your calibrated LCD during editing, and another to look at an HDTV, where it's indicative of your delivery (with all of the machinations that go on re-processing the image in the TV). I have a lot more confidence now; just VERY happy with my purchase. I find that DLP projectors are really good to footage and can mask some nasty stuff, LCDs are not great but not terrible, but large plasmas can really torture.

Everybody has their threshold for "good enough" for their taste. The DVX made me happy, even though it was soft. The HVX did not make me happy. Now I'm happy again, and I'm really at a point where the quality meets my taste and I'm no longer looking around for "the next cam." And I'm sorry to say I'm the type where I am a bit obsessed with the gear and always looking to the next step up. This is kind of like buying that car that just fits perfect, so you stop looking at the mags and drooling over the new models. It's a nice feeling when you have something that satisfies you enough that if you never upgraded again, you'd be happy.

I'm sure there are a lot more people out there happy like I am. And feel free to bury this post, I just wanted to share my excitement, that's all.
 
If your happy, Im happy , prepare to get some more happy . I dare to say I sometimes feel sorry for the guys that bought the hpx 300 muhamwhahahahaaaha.
Flame on !
 
I share the same excitement you share buddy.. and I've had my camera for months now. You can imagine my change in perspective from coming from an HV20
 
arrestthisman said:
I just can't believe the difference.
Click to expand...
Huge improvement in noise, I know. So can you imagine my frustration when we saw a whole bunch of "why is the HPX170/HMC150 so noisy" threads? I was like WHAT are you guys seeing?!?!

On top of that this was no doubt sharper. I know it's supposed to have the same rez, but I saw a noticeable improvement.
Click to expand...
Recorded footage will be sharper, especially in 720. The HVX's chipset can produce easily more than the required 1280x720, but the recording format prefiltered down to 960x720. The HMC150 stores the full 1280x720.

In 1080 mode, it's not much of a difference, the full chipset res is about 1440x810, so the 1280x1080 stores just about all that the chips can deliver anyway. You might see a little sharpness difference but you'd probably have to pixel-peep to see it. But the HVX/HPX cams are going to have more color resolution and be immune to long-GoP issues, if any crop up.

The HPX170 and HMC150 were also tuned to deliver a slightly sharper picture than the HVX200A, even though all use the same chipset. The revisions in the HPX170/HMC150 make the image about 40 lines sharper or so, at the expense of a whit of more noise, which can be compensated for by raising the coring up by +1 to +2 points over the HVX.

So your eyes aren't deceiving you, it is slightly sharper, both due to the tuning of the chips/processing and also the full-raster recording format.
 
and not only is there much less noise- the noise that is there is much "smoother"- to my eyes anyway. :love4: my 150
 
Recorded footage will be sharper, especially in 720. The HVX's chipset can produce easily more than the required 1280x720, but the recording format prefiltered down to 960x720. The HMC150 stores the full 1280x720

Barry are you saying that the hpx170's codec in 720p, is only 960x720 and the hmc150 is 1280x720?
 
male_man said:
YIKES! What is deal with that?
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DVCProHD doesn't use square pixels, but ones with a 1.33 ratio (I think that's the ratio). Not really much different than HDV using 1440x1080. Not sure what the logic is though (probably to save space).

BUT... in this price range, once you factor in the pixel shifted CCD's of the HPX170 and HVX200, it's not like you're losing all that much over 1920x1080 and 1280x720.
 
male_man said:
YIKES! What is deal with that?
Click to expand...
That's just the way it's always been. Until very recently no HD format stored the full image size. XDCAM-HD is 1440x1080. HDCAM is 1440x1080. HDV is 1440x1080. And DVCPRO-HD is 1440x1080 (at 50Hz) or 1280x1080 (at 60Hz).

That's just how it works; shaving off the very highest-frequency details (called "prefiltering") is a way to compress the HD data signal.

The very newest codecs, AVCHD and AVC-Intra and XDCAM-EX and XDCAM MPEG422 all can store 1920x1080. But the prior generation just don't.
 
I hate to interrupt right after Barry but i agree. I LOVE THE HMC150! got mine a few hours ago!! went from A1 to 150, happier than ever can be. *sigh* okay you guys continue your chat. My apologies ;)

-Ryan
 
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