HVX hungry

Great insight - After seeing the JVC (with and without the Redrock M2 setup) and the Sony camera's I felt that the Panasonic (the camera I purchased by the way) was not quite as "sharp" as the others. The Sony really looked sharp. But the Sony booth was setup in a much better way to showcase their camera's. I'd have loved to have seem my HVX in the Sony booth :)

But DVCProHD and MXF support is what really sold me. We just got back from shooting some footage for a school here in Los Angeles. The footage was shot in Downtown LA at the Immigration demonstrations going on here. I'm SOOO impressed with the HVX and 1080i, it's really amazing. Rich vibrant colors.

We would stop at Starbucks to pull out the laptop and dump the footage. 2 4gig cards dumped and formatted before we finished our Grande Frappachinno's.
 
I am a owner of the JVC HD100 as of May 5 this year, and I do love the camera, but I am having remorse.

I am really feeling like I was drawn into the higher Res, and better cosmetics of the HD100 like the Focus Assist and just how the camera is set up.

The fact is I will not be able to afford the extra lenses so the interchangable lenses are out for me. I really am seriously considering selling it for a HVX. I really only want to do Indie movies, and the Codec alone with P2 is worth it.

I am going to wait until the Anton Bauer Battery comes in so I can sell it for more. Does anyone have any suggestions of where to sell it best?
 
I have shot XLH straight to a 1200HD deck and it looks terrific. The only really terrible about HDV is editing, you really need to capture it another way. DVCproHD is good, not great for editing, once you add a couple filters and CC it falls apart pretty fast.

Neither camera is "better" they are different. Neither camera is more suitable for Discovery, etc. Just because one sells more doesnt mean it is better and just because one has more resolution doesnt mean it is better.

It is about the operator and the preferred workflow IMHO.



ash =o)
 
Area, DVCproHD is a noisy codec to begin with. Even the Vari with its big chips can get really noisy in some colors. It has great color though. Sony/Canon tend to be more CLEAN but the colors more flat... and editing in HDV is just suck...


ash =o)
 
Your words are sacred, AshG!!!

By the way, noise is noise... And it gets even noisier when you do a film-out or a DVD HD compression.
 
I get to look at footage from all the cameras everyday. Properly lit and exposed HD video is the name of the game. You cannot expect any video to look good without enough light. The biggest problem with the HDV footage is the Mpeg artifacts. What would have been fantastic footage with an HVX becomes unusable when submitted as HDV. I would rather have a little noise than totally unusable footage.
 
I want a easy workflow and don't want to have to convert every piece of footage of HDV. The AIC Codec isn't bad on import though. I was originally going for the DR-HD100 to go with my JVC, but am waiting because they are not supportive of the 720/24P yet since FCP does not support it either.

I do love the JVC, but I just think the HVX has a better Codec, better audio, and the variable Frame Rates. I also love the P2 idea, and I am tired of Tape workflows. You might call be crazy for buying the JVC then, but again I was going for a Firestore device.
 
You're right HVXguy, but I've been comparing the two cameras (Z1 and HVX) in fairly well lit setups (a 35mm movie setup to say it all), and HVX was a clear loser in terms of both noise, and resolution.
I haven't got the opportunity to encounter a MPEG Artifact so far. Would someone be able to post a freeze frame of Mpeg-corrupted HDV?
 
KingsReign said:
I want a easy workflow and don't want to have to convert every piece of footage of HDV. The AIC Codec isn't bad on import though. I was originally going for the DR-HD100 to go with my JVC, but am waiting because they are not supportive of the 720/24P yet since FCP does not support it either.

I do love the JVC, but I just think the HVX has a better Codec, better audio, and the variable Frame Rates. I also love the P2 idea, and I am tired of Tape workflows. You might call be crazy for buying the JVC then, but again I was going for a Firestore device.
Click to expand...

I agree, sound on HVX is GREAT!!!
But I thougth you wanted to use your camera for feature filmmaking, didn't you?
Well, in that case you're not using your camera to get audio, unles you want to start a fight with your sound engineer...
 
area said:
I agree, sound on HVX is GREAT!!!
But I thougth you wanted to use your camera for feature filmmaking, didn't you?
Well, in that case you're not using your camera to get audio, unles you want to start a fight with your sound engineer...
Click to expand...

Not that advanced yet. I am doing sound in camera. I am only a student in college right now.

But does anyone know the best place to sell/trade towards a HVX?
 
Area, you've posted the pixel resolution of the HVX wrong, I also believe that besides choosing to use your old camera afterall because it better suits your needs or whatever, stating that the Z1 is better after color correcting on Davinci or whatever other high-end color correcting process is a moot point. By the way I've seen color corrected Z1 footage on the BBC and it really looks nothing to the footage I get by looking at footage I shot myself without any CC or post process, maybe that's why the BBC is getting alot of HVX's?

If you don't like the HVX there's nothing to prove and I don't think that anyone here liking the HVX needs to show you HDV artifacts (Though it has been done) to make you switch, unless you're not sure of the choice you made and you're trying to prove it to yourself.
 
Pixel resolution of HVX 200 is 960X540... (950X549 for PAL models).
Then, a pixel shift is applied, that causes noise, noise... noise again.
That's all I don't like about this camera.
 
ARGGHHHH - the noise issue again - ITS NOT AN ISSUE.

Go to the theater and watch a film on the big screen - its noisy as heck - really noisy. Or is that film grain - who cares - cause it looks great

The HVX noise is not a problem - and it MOST CERTAINLY does NOT get worse when you do a film out. Area - have you done a film out test with the HVX? The noise issue becomes lost in the transfer between the softening of the process and the film grain. It just isnt an issue in practical situations.

Of course if you want to examine the image for noise you will see it - cause its there - just like film grain is there. But look at the totality of the image - The HVX puts out a beautiful one.

And to state that the HVX is an SD cam with integrated upconverter is just an uneducation statement . The pixels are offset allowing pixel shift algorithms to gain resolution without the increase in issues that you get with packing more pixels into a 1/3 chip. While there is an upper limit to what these algorithms can resolve - it is most certainly HD. Pixel shift does not increase noise - its a tradeoff that decreases the noise by allowing less pixels on a chip - less pixels means larger pixels - larger pixels means less noise.
 
area said:
I agree, sound on HVX is GREAT!!!
But I thougth you wanted to use your camera for feature filmmaking, didn't you?
Well, in that case you're not using your camera to get audio, unles you want to start a fight with your sound engineer...
Click to expand...


And why is this - just let your engineer use mixers before recording to camera while monitoring sound out of camera - that way you can have your audio synced and ready to go in the edit room while the engineer can still make his/her adjustements. Saves time and saves money which is worth everything to an indie filmmaker.
 
You don't understand how spatial offset works, the resolution of the HVX is the same as or better than the Sony.


3-Cams-Charts.JPG


As for HDV artifacts, there are dozens of examples on the web, it all depends on what you're shooting. It's not going to show up when shooting a static headshot; under those circumstances HDV can look great. It's when a lot of stuff changes in the frame (and not just from panning, but from light changing or something like that -- strobelights, flashes, smoke, etc) that HDV can totally fall apart. Here are a couple of threads that show HDV choking badly:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=50288

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=45342

These are worst-case examples, designed to explore just how bad it can get. These are not representative of normal/typical situations, obviously.
 
smelni said:
And why is this - just let your engineer use mixers before recording to camera while monitoring sound out of camera - that way you can have your audio synced and ready to go in the edit room while the engineer can still make his/her adjustements. Saves time and saves money which is worth everything to an indie filmmaker.
Click to expand...

I see no problem with the HVX200 with audio, especially since it records uncompressed PCM. That is one of the reasons I am probably switching over the the HVX from the HD100. Like I said it is a great camera, but the DVCPRO HD and P2 seem to be better than the other features that are better on the JVC.
 
hey barry - I beat you to this one :)

But of course you showed the hard evidence - do you save these links in a list to post quickly :)
 
Didn't mean to get anybody angry (especially you Barry, I do know and appreciate your work very much).
By the way, I surely did some laser 35mm film outs, comparing HVX and Z1 footage (same shots, very expressive light setup with a lot of light/shadow contrast - as most modern films I'd say).
The result, after proper DaVinci CC, and laser film out, showed clearly that Film noise/grain was just added to HVX noise in the shadows (they're two completely different kind of noise, and you could tell there were two layers of such diverse noise). Furthermore, resolution looked pretty lower than Z1's (maybe because of the amount of noise that filled the shadows and spilled also on much of more luminous areas).
Z1 was surely a loser in terms of color information before CC, then we transcoded HDV to DVCPro HD, edited, exported for CC, and it looked great on film too.
Just my experience...

About sound, I really hope you don't want to get your final audio streight into the camera for feature filmmaking. You can surely get the audio out of your sound engineer's mixer into the camera for a quick reference, but final sound MUST be recorded on a different media (maybe another camera, why not), but surely not the one that cameraman, focus puller, and a lot of other people are interacting with during the shot... maybe very far from the action, involving long cables or radio-mics... not good!
 
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area said:
Didn't mean to get anybody angry (especially you Barry, I do know and appreciate your work very much).
By the way, I surely did some laser 35mm film outs, comparing HVX and Z1 footage (same shots, very expressive light setup with a lot of light/shadow contrast - as most modern films I'd say).
The result, after proper DaVinci CC, and laser film out, showed clearly that Film noise/grain was just added to HVX noise in the shadows (they're two completely different kind of noise, and you could tell there were two layers of such diverse noise). Furthermore, resolution looked pretty lower than Z1's (maybe because of the amount of noise that filled the shadows and spilled also on much of more luminous areas).
Z1 was surely a loser in terms of color information before CC, then we transcoded HDV to DVCPro HD, edited, exported for CC, and it looked great on film too.
Just my experience...
Click to expand...

I the DV article, I remember that the Z1 had the lowest Noise of the cameras, didn't it?
 
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