HVX UPDATE: Jarred and Barry go to Hollywood

mmm.. it will be interesting to see if the new ipods on tuesday will be faster.. they are getting ready for video so it might just work.
 
Hey Jarred and Barry, thanks very much as usual !
I'm so thrilled to see those nice photos and HVX looks much prettier than I thought, which was a relief.

One quick question.
On one of the photos I see "SAFETY ZONE" menu under "DISPLAY SETUP".
Is that something you can turn on and off title and action safe markings on LCD and viewfinder ? Though that's good, did you guys find much needed underscan feature ??
 
Jenga said:
1. There were very definite green and magenta color fringes/chroma abberations.
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I looked far & wide for 'em, and didn't see 'em. Where did you see them? I thought there may have been a hint of it on one of the amsterdam shots, but it was so subtle as compared to the other cameras that I couldn't say for sure that it was or wasn't.

2. The detail was quite soft in comparison to the XL-H1 (the only other new HD camera out front).
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Sure didn't look soft on what I saw. Where did you compare the footage -- on the bigscreen projection, or at the booths? The footage looked incredibly razor sharp on the LCD, and then you have to factor in two things: 1) we were watching 1080i, which isn't as sharp as 1080p will be, and 2) the LCD monitor they were showing it on was scaling the footage down to 1280x720.

If you saw the Canon on a CRT, then there's no comparison -- CRTs look much better, much much better, than LCDs do. If you saw uncompressed HD-SDI into a 1080-native CRT, that's going to look better than anything being displayed on a 720p-native LCD, no doubt. But that's not the camera doing the talking, that's the monitor.

Eventually we'll get a chance to put all these cameras on the same monitor and see what they're capable of delivering.

The canon was more finished, had a cinegamma curve, almost NO chroma aberration and was running in the mysterious 24f mode (better than i worse that p) on a nice sony HD CRT Professional Monitor. This doesn't constitute a fair comparison but it looked sharper, richer and had better latitude...
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Again, I'd suggest the difference was more due to the monitor you were viewing it on. No doubt the Canon was more finished, that's for sure. And the lens is very clean, in the clilps I've been downloading off DVInfo it's very difficult to discern any chromatic aberration whatsoever. The notion of it having more latitude is new though; most of the complaints about XL1H footage is that it has quite narrow latitude (although others point out that perhaps the footage is just overexposed...)
 
I think the Canon will have a sharper image. It's a guess, but seeing a transfered version of the Z1, I can say that the HD lenses in those cameras are not up to the task of projected HD. And the Canon glass is substantially more expensive, so I'd guess that.
 
I'm sure the H1 is one decent camera. I had considered buying it, but HDV does not interest me...not to mention it's format is not compatible with other exsisting HDV formats.

Of course, the HD-SDI output is the way to go, but after investing in the HD-deck, this initial cost ($8,000.00 +) will be a MUCH smaller percentage of your total hardware investment.

Steve
 
Can anyone say what the drawbacks are to dumping via 1394 to an external drive might be? I mean, the benefits seem obvious enough, but surely there has to be some sacrifice made for not caputuring to P2 or a more expensive Firestore option.

Oh, and as a new user who has been following these threads for several months, thanks Barry and Jarred and everybody else. This is a killer resource!
 
1. There were very definite green and magenta color fringes/chroma abberations. Just like the DVX100 (my biggest qualm with it's otherwise OUTSTANDING price/performance image quality).
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I don't believe I've ever seen chromatic aberration from my DVX. Maybe at night on bright lights but that's more related to overexposure I believe than the lens. Maybe I'm just not looking carefully enough?

It should also be mentioned that if the HVX can compare in latitude with the DVX then we are in a good place! No other HDV camera comes close (that I have seen) and it would take some skill to increase pixel count while simultaneously decreasing image noise and retaining latitude.
 
davetronic said:
Can anyone say what the drawbacks are to dumping via 1394 to an external drive might be? I mean, the benefits seem obvious enough, but surely there has to be some sacrifice made for not caputuring to P2 or a more expensive Firestore option.
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You CAN'T record directly into an off-the-shelf Firewire Hard Disk. You can record footage into P2 cards or the Firestore.

What you CAN do is, once you've recorded to P2 cards, connect an off-the-shelf Firewire hard disk to the HVX and TRANSFER the footage from the P2 cards directly into the Hard disk. This only works if you've recorded to the P2 cards in the first place.

The benefit of this workflow is you get the reliability of the P2 cards (no dropouts, etc.) and then you can archive it to regular cheap firewire drives, in a ready-to-edit format. No laptop required. But, you still have to buy at least one 4GB P2 card for this to work. Fill up the card, plug in the hard disk, dump from P2 to Hard disk. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

The Firestore allows you to record DIRECTLY to its built-in hard disk, which is great for long record times when stopping to transfer from P2 to regular hard disk is impossible. But, of course, the Firestore isn't cheap, either.
 
I believe it's been confirmed by Jarred that the Firewire drive will need either AC power or it's own battery power. The Firewire port on the HVX is 4-pin, so it won't power a drive by itself.:cry:
 
jrv3034 said:
You CAN'T record directly into an off-the-shelf Firewire Hard Disk. You can record footage into P2 cards or the Firestore.

What you CAN do is, once you've recorded to P2 cards, connect an off-the-shelf Firewire hard disk to the HVX and TRANSFER the footage from the P2 cards directly into the Hard disk. This only works if you've recorded to the P2 cards in the first place.
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Thanks for the clarification. I remember a thread that discussed transfer times from P2, but can't recall it now. Nonetheless, for doc filmmaking with a small crew, it would appear the best method for HD of those discussed remains the Firestore.
 
jrv3034 said:
I believe it's been confirmed by Jarred that the Firewire drive will need either AC power or it's own battery power. The Firewire port on the HVX is 4-pin, so it won't power a drive by itself.:cry:
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While that isn't the best case scenario, ipods and battery powered HDD enclosures exist. You can get an 80GB lithium ion powered 2.5" HDD for under $200.
 
For doc. and events I still belive you would want the Firestore unless you will have an assistant, two to three 8G P2 cards and a laptop with you.
This is really big news for film. All you need is one 4G P2 and your iPod (or your friend's). The only compromise is the shot length unless iPods take too long to take the 4Gs, but then all you need to solve that delay is a $200 drive... This will make the wait for the cheap 8G or even 16G P2s really easy for film makers.
I will probably go the P2 way right from the start now instead of getting the Firestore. Later on I'll add to my stuff a bigger P2 (or two) and hoefully the next generation of Firestores with bigger capasities unless they take for ever to come out with them.
 
USLatinContent said:
The only compromise is the shot length unless iPods take too long to take the 4Gs, but then all you need to solve that delay is a $200 drive... .
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What is the longest dramatic take you ever shot? I know mine is probally closer to a minute than 5.. I think having 5 minutes is a good number for entire scenes.. well at least one angle. While the DP is changing lighting thats time for the offload.
 
Keep in mind the drive speed of an ipod you may be looking at less than (DVCPRO-HD @ 100Mbits) real time transfer which may take awhile. Hey I'm a big fan of the ipod idea I'm just not sure if the speed is going to be there.
 
Even if an ipod had the required performance for DVCProHD, the real costs of production (sweat equity or real dollars) are in getting the crew, talent, equipment, location etc., do you trust a ~$300 consumer product to be the keeper of the data?

Panasonic offers the AJ-PCS060G data repository for $1800.
 
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