You made it sound like comparing the pixel resolutions of cameras was a silly or irrelevant proposition .. which is clearly unreasonable (especially when the world is becoming fixated with 'high definition'). There are obviously a lot of factors which combine to deliver a perceived or measured image quality, and sensor resolution is certainly one of those factors.
HVX vs. the Canon XHA1
- Thread starter Jarred Land
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Barry_Green
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Well, to the vast majority of people, it *is* a silly and irrelevant proposition. Unless someone has the proper engineering background to understand how the imaging blocks work, and they understand how a Bayer pattern filter and the demosaic'ing process work, and they understand that CCD pixels are nearly totally unrelated to actual recorded frame pixels, and they understand that just about every three-chip camera is using "pixel shift", and they understand that pixel shift has nothing to do with actually "shifting pixels", then they don't actually have the technical skill or know-how to properly compare one method against another. So why get sidetracked into some highly technical camera engineering discussion, when all you have to do is look at the images?
It's getting nearly impossible to keep track of all this anyway: the new Sony uses 960x1080 in a diamond pattern from a progressive CMOS and uses digital interpolation to fill in the blanks, the older Sony uses 960x1080 in a traditional H/V pattern on an interlaced CCD with pixel shift to boost the resolution, the bigger Canons use 1440x1080 from an interlaced CCD and also use pixel shift, the new little Canon has twice as many pixels as the bigger canons(!) but it's a single progressive CMOS chip and thus has to use a bayer filter, which gives it the equivalent of about 1440x1080 in green and 720x540 in blue and red (which is less than the HVX), and speaking of red the RED also uses a bayer pattern so its "4K" resolution comes from almost 12 million black & white pixels in a bayer pattern, which means that if you want to look at raw chip count it's not really 4520x2540 color pixels, it's actually the vague equivalent of having one 2260x2540 green sensor and a 2260x1270 blue sensor and a 2260x1270 red sensor. Does "2260x1270" sound like 4K res to you? That's barely over regular high-def, right? It's only 1/4 of "true 4K" resolution. And yet, you can't even look at it like that, because those pixels wouldn't be full-size, there's a big gap between each of the red and blue pixels, each individual pixel is 1/4 the size of what it would be if it were a true 2260x1270. Yet it's all pointless and irrelevant, because by the time you run the bayered 4520x2540 image through a de-mosaic process, you end up with 4096x2560 color pixels. Proper 4K res, made from three "virtual" sensors: a half-res green and a quarter-res blue and a quarter-res red.
Point is, you can't look at it like "oooh the Red is only 2260x1270" -- that'd be a gross misinterpretation of what's actually happening! The Red delivers 4K resolution because you have to take the entire imaging block as a whole. Same with the HVX -- taken as an aggregate whole, it delivers in the neighborhood of 2K resolution, according to Juan Pertierra who's the engineer behind the Andromeda and Hydra ssytems and who understands spatial offset, pixel shift, and bayer demosaicing far better than probably anyone else on this board. You have to treat the imaging block as one comprehensive imaging block, you can't just look at each chip individually because that's not how it's read. That's not how it works; to look at it that way is to deceive yourself.
So I pose it again: why? Why does it matter to you, specifically, what the chip count is? Are you seeing a difference in the images? What I'm saying is: if you can't see a difference in the image, what does it matter how it gets there? There are people who get hung up on pixel count and think "it can't possibly be high-def, look at the chip count." Well, instead of looking at the specs on paper, why not look at the actual images? That's what counts, not some specification buried in the back of the manual that the extremely vast majority of us aren't qualified to even understand. Knowing what the chip count is may have some relevance for some users, but by and large it's relatively immaterial to the vast majority of users. If someone was to rule out an HVX because "oh, I heard it's only 960x540", they'd be making a misinformed decision based on a number that they probably do not understand.
So why worry about it? Look at the images. A 960x540 HVX delivers images that go toe-to-toe with a 960x1080 Sony, or a 1280x720 JVC, or a 1440x1080 Canon.
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Nik Manning
Well-known member
Yeah I don't care about imager improvements just use the same hvx technology and strip out some of the advanced features and slap a $2799 price tag on it. 
Sell it without the 8 gig P2 card for $2299. That would be major sweet. Hard drive space is getting way cheap so 4 times hdv data-rate isn't as big of an issue as it once was. Yes I know 720p24 isn't 4 times. 500 gig drives $150. I don't think there is any chance of a hard drive based hvx because the data-rate is to high. They would have to put in at least a 30 gig drive for 30 minutes and computer hard drives are to big and drain to much power. Also smaller hard drives would need to be raided together to sustain the 100 mb transfer so you are back to P2.
Sell it without the 8 gig P2 card for $2299. That would be major sweet. Hard drive space is getting way cheap so 4 times hdv data-rate isn't as big of an issue as it once was. Yes I know 720p24 isn't 4 times. 500 gig drives $150. I don't think there is any chance of a hard drive based hvx because the data-rate is to high. They would have to put in at least a 30 gig drive for 30 minutes and computer hard drives are to big and drain to much power. Also smaller hard drives would need to be raided together to sustain the 100 mb transfer so you are back to P2.Well Bayer me!
I do remember a similar debate on the DVX's capabilities in low light vs. competitors and ,despite what so many stated and whatever specs, it gave a good, less distorted picture than many others under those circumstances.
This is refreshing. I have not been among those who are into pixel counting, or counting in general, but rather interested in the end result. I should maybe have said that it worried my that in some reviews it is stated that the hvx is not as sharp as the A1 supposedly because of fewer pixels in its CCD. Bayer or no bayer.
Not being able to try those cameras hands on (no rental available here), and having to base a buying decision on web research, including very good information on this site, one has to try to fight through the statistical jungle.
Barry: you said: " What I'm saying is: if you can't see a difference in the image, what does it matter how it gets there?"
Doesn't this statement lay to rest all debate on why dvcpro hd is better than hdv?
I do remember a similar debate on the DVX's capabilities in low light vs. competitors and ,despite what so many stated and whatever specs, it gave a good, less distorted picture than many others under those circumstances.
This is refreshing. I have not been among those who are into pixel counting, or counting in general, but rather interested in the end result. I should maybe have said that it worried my that in some reviews it is stated that the hvx is not as sharp as the A1 supposedly because of fewer pixels in its CCD. Bayer or no bayer.
Not being able to try those cameras hands on (no rental available here), and having to base a buying decision on web research, including very good information on this site, one has to try to fight through the statistical jungle.
Barry: you said: " What I'm saying is: if you can't see a difference in the image, what does it matter how it gets there?"
Doesn't this statement lay to rest all debate on why dvcpro hd is better than hdv?
... because not all (recorded) pixels are created equal ... Red's 4K beyer may get close to 'true 4K' in lots of circumstances, and sure the image on disk will be "4K", but there will always be situations where a pure (3x)4K solution will be demonstratably better .. it's obvious. HD generated from a pure 3 chip native res imager will be superior in many ways to an image created through a bayer grid, or pixel-shifting three lower res chips... ideally of course you would have a super-sampling beyer chip, but then you're into tricky light-loss issues with your tiny 'buckets'.
I completely agree with your sentiment by the way- there is little that I disagree with here ... what matters is the end result, and the HVX can produce great looking stuff... but I feel that it should be stated that just because pixel-shifting a low-res chip *can* produce images that are in the ball-park of a native res imager, it doesn't mean that it is equal in all circumstances. Coming 'visually close' and standing toe-to-toe doesn't mean you can't point cameras at a tricky scene and point out where one camera suffers more than the other... in some rounds, colour-sampling might make one camera the champion .. in other rounds, raw resolution will make another camera the champion. So it becomes a personal decision.
Each camera in this range has pros and cons. I'd love to go for the HVX, as I envy it's 50p and 4:2:2 sampling, but it is completely a no-go for me ... for simple reasons:-
- HVX resolution and sharpness are weaker than the HD Canons which is very important for film-out. My XL2s with 576p really are not much lower res than the HVX, in my tests. And signal is cleaner.
- HVX noise and low-light performance are nowhere near good enough in run-and-gun and indoor situations, which is not good enough for my varied work. If my cine and music video work was all I did, it would be a tougher decision.
- I need tape archiving for the foreseeable future. Same as before- my varied work necessitates lots of footage, I really can't be storing it all as data right now, my tape wall is sticking around for the time being.
I completely agree with your sentiment by the way- there is little that I disagree with here ... what matters is the end result, and the HVX can produce great looking stuff... but I feel that it should be stated that just because pixel-shifting a low-res chip *can* produce images that are in the ball-park of a native res imager, it doesn't mean that it is equal in all circumstances. Coming 'visually close' and standing toe-to-toe doesn't mean you can't point cameras at a tricky scene and point out where one camera suffers more than the other... in some rounds, colour-sampling might make one camera the champion .. in other rounds, raw resolution will make another camera the champion. So it becomes a personal decision.
Each camera in this range has pros and cons. I'd love to go for the HVX, as I envy it's 50p and 4:2:2 sampling, but it is completely a no-go for me ... for simple reasons:-
- HVX resolution and sharpness are weaker than the HD Canons which is very important for film-out. My XL2s with 576p really are not much lower res than the HVX, in my tests. And signal is cleaner.
- HVX noise and low-light performance are nowhere near good enough in run-and-gun and indoor situations, which is not good enough for my varied work. If my cine and music video work was all I did, it would be a tougher decision.
- I need tape archiving for the foreseeable future. Same as before- my varied work necessitates lots of footage, I really can't be storing it all as data right now, my tape wall is sticking around for the time being.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Of course not; there you're talking about actual recorded resolution and variable image resolution between frames. The DVCPRO-HD format is significantly better than HDV in many ways. You have to separate out the argument though -- are you comparing DVCPRO-HD against HDV? Or HVX against XLH1? Because those are two very separate, very different arguments.dvxlover said:
We're talking about imager differences and how those imagers arrive at their results. The codecs take over once the results are arrived at. In fact, the codecs don't even need to work in concert with the cameras themselves, they can be used to encode existing video or still frames or animation or whatever. They're unrelated. And 4:2:2 will always triumph over 4:2:0, and frame-discrete will never suffer the image degradation that can happen on long-GOP.
The HVX vs XLH1 (etc) argument usually centers over whether the HVX is delivering enough resolution and color information to take advantage of what the recording format can record. And in that case, your perspective would come into play -- you're looking at final footage, regardless of how it got there, right? That can all be lumped together, insofar as you're evaluating one existing product against another. But to dismiss one recording format's obvious significant advantages over another's is to obfuscate the core issue there -- you can't say "coats kill plants, because when I put my plants in the closet for a week and check on them a week later, they're dead, and the only thing in my closet was my coats." That's a fallacious conclusion, it's not the coats that killed the plants, it was the dark.
As long as all is going well for HDV and it's not taxed too hard, it can deliver images directly comparable to what an HVX does on DVCPRO-HD. It's when things exceed the capability of HDV that things can go wrong very quickly, and it would be important for one to understand those circumstances so they know that they're picking an appropriate tool for the job. HDV does very very well in some circumstances, and not so well in others, and downright horribly in worst-case scenarios. DVCPRO-HD performs identically in just about all circumstances. The formats are not equivalent, even if (in average use) footage from one camcorder (like the XHA1/HDV) can look extremely like footage from another (HVX/DVCPRO-HD).
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Barry_Green
Moderator
And there are instances where a lower-res three-chip system will deliver demonstrably better performance than a 3x native solution too. It's obvious.epicedium said:
I fear you're lumping all video performance under one category, "resolution". Resolution is only one component of video performance, other equally important aspects would include signal-to-noise ratio, sensitivity, dynamic range, etc. And all of those elements perform BETTER from lower-res chips. Higher-res chips harm all three of those aspects. There's a see-saw of performance, with resolution sitting on one side, and contrast/dynamic range/snr etc sitting on the other side. You can't increase resolution without harming the others; you can't improve the others without harming resolution. And all those factors go into making a total video image.
So manufacturers choose different ways to balance this. Canon felt they had to go with high-res chips, which gave 'em lousy noise performance and terrible sensitivity. The only solution was to make it an interlaced chip; that gave them twice the sensitivity and lowered the noise in half, bringing it on par with what Panasonic got. Panasonic chose large pixels for better sensitivity etc., but they went with progressive scan and only progressive scan. That increased noise and lowered sensitivity. But the larger pixels all add up, so what's the end result -- you have about equivalent noise, equivalent sharpness, and equivalent dynamic range between them. Panasonic's progressive chip let it do variable frame rates; Canon's interlaced chip let it... well, brag about having native pixels, I guess. But they deliver a basically equivalent image as far as sharpness, noise, and dynamic range.
And HD generated from a lower-res pixel-shifted imager will be superior in many ways to HD generated from a pure 3 chip native res imager too. And both will beat a bayer sensor with all other things being equal, although CMOS is changing that dynamic as well.
I completely disagree. If there's a difference, in real world footage, it's in the order of maybe 5%. Just look at the pictures.
How can you say this though? The HVX in HD is night and day sharper and more detailed than any XL2.
As what -- as the Canon? Noise and low-light performance are roughly comparable, depending on whether or not you want to ruin your footage by using Canon's NR functions. If you don't use the NR functions, they end up about the same sensitivity and the same noise level, although with different patterns of noise. And if you drop the chroma saturation on the HVX to where it matches the Canon, you'll find that much of that chroma noise goes away too, making them even more directly comparable.
Well that right there is the type of factor one should be making this decision on, IMO. If this is the workflow that you need, this is where they greatly differ, and this is the kind of thing that you can easily decide between them on.
I just think the whole pixel-count-resolution-etc. issue is a complete red herring. All I can say, again, is: look at the pictures. Read the article. I spent a week with 'em, I put 'em in every conceivable circumstance. They're equally sharp, and basically equal as far as sensitivity and overall noise level. And the pixel count of one's chip has little (if anything) to do with how one should be deciding between these, because it makes little (if any) difference to the final image.
disjecta
Lucky Duck
Barry, I simply cannot agree with you on this one. The difference is significant, not minor. In my kind of shooting, detail is critical for me and the HVX is not even close to what the Canons can resolve. The difference is huge on a big screen TV. Of course this is less so on medium and almost imperceptible on closeups...but for wide angle stuff...no way.Barry_Green said:
i am totally, completely,and utterly happy with my HVX200. I havent been this pleased with anyhting i owned since my Ipod back in 2002. I think its "perfect".
Seriosuly guys, the "sharpness issue" really isnt one..... shoot some footage and watch it on a 1080P 50"+ screen. Its REMARKABLE. Small screens and LAptop screens ARE NOT doing your HVX's (or your Canons for that matter) justice.
EDIT: "after reading disjecta's post"
The trick to the HVX is to lower your Detial setting to about 0, +1. the Edge enhancement kills the way the footage looks. it makes it look mushy. try it. i find it makes the image looks like its made of tones and colores instead of "pixels". Very organic.
Seriosuly guys, the "sharpness issue" really isnt one..... shoot some footage and watch it on a 1080P 50"+ screen. Its REMARKABLE. Small screens and LAptop screens ARE NOT doing your HVX's (or your Canons for that matter) justice.
EDIT: "after reading disjecta's post"
The trick to the HVX is to lower your Detial setting to about 0, +1. the Edge enhancement kills the way the footage looks. it makes it look mushy. try it. i find it makes the image looks like its made of tones and colores instead of "pixels". Very organic.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Did you take an HVX out to the same areas and shoot the same stuff with it? I posted the pix I got, from wide shots and close shots, nature and buildings and everything, and to me they all look extremely comparable.
i get ya. i definintly agree the Canons are crisper. but you can make the HVX shine too.... with some tweaks of course.Barry_Green
Moderator
I don't want to create pixels, I want to create high-def footage. And the HVX is a high-def camera.disjecta said:You cannot create pixels that are not there
I'd like to see the results you get from putting an HVX through its paces in the same types of places you shoot with the Canon.
disjecta
Lucky Duck
This is a pointless discussion because there are clearly two camps. The thing is, I'm really happy with the resolution and detail I am getting from my Canon camera. I know the HVX is incapable of resolving detail on distant horizons. It doesn't really matter to me what anyone else thinks because they won't be able to convince me one way or the other. It will only matter to those who care about capturing such detail and, for most narrative filmmakers, it won't matter.
Both cameras are amazing so, to get back on track, it's not a battle of what camera is best, it's a question of what camera is best for the job.
I rest my case and my head.
Both cameras are amazing so, to get back on track, it's not a battle of what camera is best, it's a question of what camera is best for the job.
I rest my case and my head.
I basically agree with Disjecta- it really depends on the job at hand .. I only took exception to the idea that resolution isn't important-- the sharpness and measurable resolution of these cameras aren't identical, and should be weighed up with all of the other variables when making a decision.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Exactly -- but they should be weighed up based on actual observing of the footage, not based on some meaningless specification on paper that very few if any of us here are actually qualified to interpret. That's all I'm saying.
disjecta
Lucky Duck
Okay, and I'm going to say this one more time. When I originally was attracted to the Canon, it wasn't because of numbers in the specs, it was because of real world footage I was seeing that simply blew me away. Even now, after a year later, I'm still blown away based on what the Canon is capable of capturing. I see it in many owners' posted footage. I have never seen it even once in any HVX stuff that has been posted, including professionally shot landscape work. (and I'm talking about full rez stuff here, not anything that's been compressed to death)
Barry_Green
Moderator
Look through the shots I already posted; I shot with both of them side by side, in lots of different scenarios, maybe one of those shots will prove or disprove your query.
So what I'm hearing from you is that it sounds like you never tried an HVX shooting the type of stuff you do? I wish you would; that's what I'd like to see. It sounds like you're saying you made up your mind based on what other people shot and posted, but that you haven't taken the HVX into your same scenarios, right? I'd be very interested in seeing how it would stand up with you behind the wheel of both, trying to extract the most from both. You did amazing things with a DVX, and I dare say you could do amazing things with an HVX.
So what I'm hearing from you is that it sounds like you never tried an HVX shooting the type of stuff you do? I wish you would; that's what I'd like to see. It sounds like you're saying you made up your mind based on what other people shot and posted, but that you haven't taken the HVX into your same scenarios, right? I'd be very interested in seeing how it would stand up with you behind the wheel of both, trying to extract the most from both. You did amazing things with a DVX, and I dare say you could do amazing things with an HVX.
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