HVX200 vs Magic Bullet?

JaviBUSA08

JaviBUSA08

Well-known member
Ok so this is probably going to be a stupid question but I need to ask because someone brought it up to me. Ok, I currently have canon A1. I wanted to get a HVX200 to add to my gear. The main reason why I want the HVX200 is because of the 24pn and the different frame rate recordings. Now I had a friend tell me that I am wasting my money that I can just purchase Magic Bullet and get the same effect by converting my Canon A1 1080i 60i footage to 24pn. Is this correct? I have other reasons I like the hvx but that was one of the main ones.
 
I believe there are a lot of ways to get things converted between the various applications, but that's all post stuff. I've been really impressed with the time remapping stuff in Motion and twixtor(sp) and others so things have come a long long way.

The differences though are that you don't have to do any of this stuff in the HVX.. and that when a client wants to see something play back in slow-motion to make sure that I got what they wanted.. it's right there and they see it within a couple of seconds. Your buddy is right to an extent, but it's a process to get to approach what the HVX and now the EX does in the camera and to me that beats having to do stuff in post. That also applies to timelapse as recently I did a shoot for scientific research and they were so happy that they could see each individual frame and scrub through accordingly. Doing this in post would have resulted in blended frames and motion blur.. and that wouldn't have been acceptable. All in all though, I just love NEVER having to deal with tapes and digitize. In two years I've never had a dropped frame, tape glitch, timecode break or anything else that plagues the tape world....


You did pick a nice cam though bro and you have a much much better LCD than we do on the HVX.. so enjoy what you've got and do some testing and you'll get some nice results in post... Sorry I couldn't be more specific to magic bullet stuff..
 
thanks. well so it doesn't look the same. when you do it in post you get frame blending where as if you do it on camera it comes out TRUE native 24p. Right?
 
I believe, but having never done it.. that's somewhat up to dispute. I personally wouldn't want to have to do all that post, ya know? Maybe this might be best to post on a canon thread and see what kind of response you get..


cheers and let me know what you find out
 
I think Magic Bullet uses frame interpolation rather than blending, but I don't know the specifics. In theory it should calculate what the progressive frames should look like to match the timescale of your 60i footage and either extract those frames from your original footage or interpolate the missing frames to create entirely new ones. Seeing as how your framerate is going down, I doubt there will be any blended/interpolated frames if you use magic bullet to move from 60i to 24p. However, I don't know how it looks to reinterlace an interlaced video clip to make it progressive, so I can't comment on that.
 
1080i and Magic Bullet is a great way to go over the HVX if you don't care that much about your final image. :)

If you take interlaced 1080 and convert it to 24p, the vertical resolution will be less (in most cases) than that of native 720p.

Get it in camera. The results will be far superior, and it'll save you countless hours in post.

There are those who prefer to cheap out and live with lesser results, but I don't think it's a good way to go. In anything, really.
 
Well I can not capture it to the firestore. That's the first reason. And they have also told me it doesn't look as good as the HVX200. But I guess it would be comperable to doing it with magic bullet....
 
Magic Bullet does great things, but it can't compare to HVX variable frame rates.

If you were shooting a "300" clone and wanted half the movie in slowmo, it would be a good investment to go HVX. Most movies only have a few shots in slow motion anyway.

The HVX's slowmo footage will be clearer, definitely, but if you're budget concious, consider renting, since you've already got an A camera.
 
Also don't forge that if Magic Bullet gives you the potential to take 24p footage and make it look reasonably good at 60p, imagine how much slower motion you could do when your reference footage is already 60p!
 
Why can't you just use tape? I've seen 24F footage from the XH-A1 and it's noticeably cleaner and more detailed than HVX footage and the movement is fine.

If you need variable framerates and the benefits of solid state recording like instant playback, faster transfer to your computer, etc. then the HVX is more appealing. Also DVCPROHD is in theory a better codec than HDV. I say in theory because on paper it's definitely better, but the XH-A1 footage I have seen makes me realize that the benefits of DVCPROHD are only realized in certain scenarios (i.e. heavy color correction/chroma keying).


Marco
 
I have an HVX and Magic Bullet Looks. They compliment each other well. As far as converting all of your footage over, yes, you can but the render times with MBL can be quite heavy, especially if you are doing a lot of footage.

The HVX is a great camera, no denying. MBL is a great program but relying on converting all of your footage in post would be a PITA.

Dan
 
i would just try to put it more simply. if magic bullet did produce such miracle results and gave you a final image that looked just something hvx can put out, a lot less people would be investing in a hvx and going for the cheaper hd camera and just giving it the look in post. if you want the best image possible at a reasonable price, hvx is the way to go.
 
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