No HVX for me

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Take a look at the Huntington Beach Pier file at PappasArts site shot on a JVC HD100:

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/... BLACK & WHITE- &templatefn=FileSharing1.html

Granted, it's black and white, but look how sharp the pier is in the distance. There are some other shots he took of some smokestacks that are really sharp and that's what I'm looking for to render horizon lines with trees, etc. in a coherent fashion. I'm so tired of SD just making that a blob.

I've looked at a lot of footage posted on this site from the HVX and I am seeing what looks to me like a bigger DVX frame. I mean, it kind of is that anyway but I'm still seeing that mush on the horizon and there is a softness that is not pleasing to my eye from the footage in general. Close ups are fine, just like in SD but it's small detail I want to jump out.

The detail on the Canon HD camera is stunning although I wouldn't want to get that with the pseudo 24 fps and difficulty in acquisition of the footage plus the spectacular price tag.

I want the optics of the Canon with the functionality of the HVX...is that so wrong?

I'm not completely sold on any of the HD cameras right now because they all fall down in one place or another and sometimes you just have to say, okay, I can live with this "flaw".

I'll probably rent the HVX to see what I can squeeze out of it. Before I bought the DVX I had also seen some pretty bad and noisy footage but when I shot with it myself, I was able to get a beautiful picture out of it.

So I'll continue to keep an open mind but I would love if you guys would post more full res footage challenging the perceived resolution of the HVX. Show me something I can believe.

My mom is arriving from Ireland for a 3 week visit this weekend so I can't be at the Bootcamp but I wouldn't have missed it otherwise.
 
k Dis

Ive been shooting a doc for a week now in an icecream place. The kitchen isilluminated by those nasty blueish white lights but the rest of the place is soft yellowish lighting. While shooting with the outside lights turned as high as they can go, u do see noise, however when set to 25pn or 1080 25p you realy dont focus on it, i think in many ways it enhances the image. However with any dv cam it will be hard to keep the blacks black inside the camera so when a section is barely lit you will see noise. However im going into collage today to edit this stuff, and i think i will be blown away. I was filming him making icecream in a small kitchen using HVX and figrig. I was on 1080 25p setting dumping the P2 cards whenever he stopped doing something interesting. I only have 2 4 gig cards. But so far its been ok, ive been taking my laptop to the place. I can understand how that will not work for you, however there are on the go storage solutions such as the firestore on the way.

If I were you i would rent em both, i think you would love the vari frames and in daylight the HVX is fine. Stick a 35mil adaptor on there and your cookin. Pluss I think while shooting docs the camera is best not looking like the JVC if you want people to have that natural i dont know im behing filmed look.

Il try post some of my footage online, if i ever figure out how.

Cya
 
I think its pretty important that you of all people pick the right camera, you were the one that sent me down the DVX road, but when considering the pros and cons i moved up to the HVX. I watched that tutorial vid about photozoom over and over amazed at the quality change. Also that movie in the woods was funny, oooh zombies!!!
 
HVXguy said:
Have you edited HDV footage yet?? It is a major PITA.
Go rent first and pretend like you are going to edit a 15 min
project.

my friend edits jvc footage with edius, he says it's no problema amigo. i'm not sure if that's a good criteria to base the decision on.

i think the hvx is awesome but went with the jvc cuz the p2 thing is too expensive and the short record times liimiting.
Click to expand...
 
I think the key for a manufacturer would be to iuncorporate P2 technology, and scrapping the SD format, for a tape deck that is HDV only. so u get, HDV and DVCPRO. Now that would be fun.
 
It is funny in a way, how we all interpret the footage differently. Disjecta wants things to be really sharp in the distance. While someone who responded to my footage took a frame and blurred it to give the foreground less sharpness, In the end you have to please youself. One thing for sure; don't make your buying decision from the footage you see on this site or any other. there are just too many variables ( compression, lighting, camera settings, monitor profile ,etc. ) that obscure the true image. Rent or look over someones shoulder and then make a decision based on your needs and your esthetic.
Have you noticed the huge reduction in issues on this site since a lot of people have gotten and started using their cameras ? The HVX is just flat outy an awesome piece of equipment.
Aloha
-A
 
disjecta said:
. It's significantly sharper and the temporal cadence of film at 24p is spot on.
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that is a totally cool way of expressing the look of the JVC. of course i have no idea what it means. can someone explain?
 
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Ya gotta buy what you gotta buy. No Camera, Car or celll phone is perfect for everybody.
As others said, try before you buy. We demoed ours for a week before buying the HVX.
I wish you luck!
 
I know one thing... That JVC looks damn sexy! I hate the HDV format though and refuse to invest in it. I'll most likely end up renting what I need until the dust settles on the HVX and who knows by that time maybe another amazing camera will be out to meet my needs. Meanwhile I plan to invest in better lighting, audio, AE training, production monitor, generator, and other things that raise the production value of any camera I use. I know a lot of people in this forum including myself look up to your opinions Disjecta, so make sure you do the research and let us know what you find.

-Kevin

I hope the author of this doesn't mind me posting it. The link I had for the original post isn't working...

"This situation is worse than you can imagine. NOBODY can play back the tape and upload it. Canon's apparently gone and made their own, completely incompatible format!

I'm sitting here with a tape of 24F footage from the XL H1 right now. It will not play in any HDV gear in existence. It will not play in the HD100. It will not play in the HD1. It will not play in the FX1. It will not play in the new HC1. I really, really expected it to work in the Sony gear (after all, 1080i HDV is 1080i HDV, right?) but no, Canon's gone and made it incompatible.

If you want to play 1080/24F, there's only one piece of gear that can play it: a Canon XL H1. If you were thinking you could buy the Canon and then get a cheap Sony HC1 to use as a "deck", think again -- it won't work.

This "HDV" thing is starting to really irritate me. I mean, if you had a VHS tape, you'd expect you could play it in a VHS deck, right? And you can. What if you had a BetaSP tape? Would you expect that your BetaSP tape can only be played back in an Ampex deck, and not in a Sony deck? Or what if you recorded that BetaSP tape in a Sony deck -- would it play back in an Ampex? Of COURSE it would!

I can record a tape on a PD170 in DVCAM mode and play it back on a JVC BR-DV3000 DV deck.

But you cannot play a Sony HDV tape in a JVC HDV deck.
You cannot play a Canon HDV tape in a JVC HDV camera or deck.
You cannot play a Canon 1080/24F HDV tape in a Sony camera or deck.
You cannot play a JVC HDV tape in a Canon camera.

You *may* be able to play a Sony tape in the Canon camera, but I wouldn't bet on it and after today's trials, I most definitely would *not* make that assumption.

You basically have three almost completely incompatible formats, all calling themselves "HDV" and all recording on the same tape. It's asinine. It's stupid. It's a boondoggle -- who's in charge of the "HDV Consortium" anyway - FEMA?

Basically, if you shoot HDV to tape, you're screwed. You'd better hope and pray that whoever you give that tape to is using the exact same gear you are, or they're hosed. You can't even give a JVC 24P HDV tape to a JVC HDV user unless they have an HD100 -- it won't play back in the CU1 deck or the HD1 or HD10! And that's JVC to JVC!

This HDV thing is probably the biggest argument for "tape is dead" that I've ever seen. The only way you can have a prayer of compatibility is to forget the tape and just shoot straight to the FireStore. That way you can use the files in your computer and actually USE them! (well, sort of ... of course FCP claims to edit HDV, but it has no support for 24P HDV... and you can bet your tuckus that FCP won't work with 1080/24F now, if the Sony camera can't even work with it!)

Well, sorry for the tirade, but after three hours searching for a confounded FX1 just so I could digitize and post this footage, and finding out that it won't work and that THE THREE 'HDV' FORMATS ARE ALL INCOMPATIBLE WITH EACH OTHER, (and to rub it in, I've got a $5500 piece of HDV equipment here that won't work with this tape), well...

It's just insane. If someone thinks they're going to buy an HDV camera and get hired to shoot HDV footage for other companies, they're dreaming. You'd better hope and pray that whoever's hiring you is using the EXACT SAME equipment, or your tape will be totally useless to them. First time you hand someone a tape and they try to play it and it says "unable to read tape format", well, you can expect that'll be the LAST time you get hired by that client...

Okay, tirade off -- back to your regularly-scheduled programming..."
 
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the canon is the worst as far as hdv deck compatibility. the jvc isn't half bad. several deck options and i think the early generation hdv cameras might provide a solution.
 
disjecta said:
(Bite your tongue if you believe HDV is not real HD, I've heard it before)
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It is not about HDV not beeing real HD, it's about HDV being crap quality. It's a nice marketing gag to use the cheap miniDV tapes, but apart from non-moving images the picture just falls apart.
 
First time you hand someone a tape and they try to play it and it says "unable to read tape format", well, you can expect that'll be the LAST time you get hired by that client...
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A very, very, very sobering thought!
I do multi-camera shoots and if my camera-men all have different hdvs then that would be a major PITA.
I still haven't decided which way to go but it's good to have all the information.
There's no such thing as a universal HDV deck??
 
Pascal, consensus points to this only being an issue in the most extreme situations.

Disjecta, regarding the threat of split screen - is this not a concern for the type of shooting you do?
 
Pascal_Parvex said:
It is not about HDV not beeing real HD, it's about HDV being crap quality. It's a nice marketing gag to use the cheap miniDV tapes, but apart from non-moving images the picture just falls apart.
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Errr... have you ever used a HD100?

You can get a bit of macroblocking if you try really hard.
 
mmm said:
Errr... have you ever used a HD100?

You can get a bit of macroblocking if you try really hard.
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The camera may deliver a superb image, but it will be crushed by the bitrate of only 25 MB/s.
 
Pascal_Parvex said:
The camera may deliver a superb image, but it will be crushed by the bitrate of only 25 MB/s.
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Hi Pascal, I don't mean to be a school mum here but on the JVC it is 19Mbs. It is a shorter GOP in the JVC as it is 720. The problem I see is that every one seems to make their decisions on the Camera E-E. Unfortunately no one gets paid for that E-E signal. It has to be recorded on something, edited somewhere and then delivered. NASA jus did an extensives set of tests on the HDV cameras and the HVX, and their initial reaction was the same as disjecta, but after making recordins and then analyzing the recordings, they will be purchasing the HVX, and a bunch of them. Their final words were that it seemed to be the only camera that was designed to perfectly match its recording medium.

Best to all,

Jan
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
Hi Pascal, I don't mean to be a school mum here but on the JVC it is 19Mbs.
Click to expand...

Uh, that's bad. I thought that HDV is always 25 MB/s? And for what does E-E stand for? Uncompressed output? Same question for ENG, as I keep reading it, but don't know what it means.
 
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