question about grabs and quality

TimurCivan

TimurCivan

Director of Photography
Staff member
i went to B&H, brought along a tape, ans shot test footage with DVX, XL2, VX2100, HC100, Gl2. i viewed the footage on my TRV70, trhough Svideo on my sony trinitron TV. everythign looked good in thestore. except the vx2100, it may have been dammaged. it really looked bad.

they all look like **** except the DVX andXL2 but only in 24p.

the 60i stuff looked awful. all the cameras were aliasing liek crazy, they looked like the footagemy TRV70 shoots..... is this because of the VTR in the sony???? if so, does that mean if i use the Sony as a capture deck will it degrade all my footage??? i will post grabs soon so you can see what im talkng about, i'm not home right now.

now i know that the footage you see on the monitors is not whats recorded on the tape, but there is a GIGANTIC difference in this case. There are also variables like Dirty heads, slightly broken floormodels, settings all out of wack. etc.... but i was more concerned with the VTR of my camera and whether it makes adifference, or degrades footage, i don think it should, but after this test i dont know. i was planning on using itas a deck.

What do you guys think?
 
Re: question about grabs and quality

Whats the question? What do we think about what camera to purchase or what to use as a deck? Did you merely 'turn on' each camera out of the box for comparison or were you able to adjust and tinker with the settings?

If your looking to purchase a camera I think the anser is obvious:

DVX

or

XL2

I could imagine even considering another choice at this time (surely not a GL2) What are your plans? weddings? films? docs? I am stoked the DVX has other modes other than 24p but I have never shot in those modes (the first week I owned it to see what it looked like).
 
Re: question about grabs and quality

hmm i misphrased the subject heading sorry. I tried my best to revert the cameras t otheir origional state. turn it off turn it on, auto white balance, no gain, auto iris, 60th shutter, or 1/48th on xl2 1/50th n dvx, manual focus, 60i on all cams, and 60i + 24p on the ones that offered it. im sure somone had messed withthe finer attributes of the xl2 and dvx, Knee settings etc.... things i couldnt readjust cause i didint know what the standard setting was, but my Question was more ofa puzzled moment. THe footage i shot looked great on the viewing monitor, crisp, clean and very little aliasing. but very poor on the Tape when played back. Is this the nature of degredation of the camera puttng images to tape, or degredation by the VTR. ( again i reiterate other circumstances could have effected teh outcome, Floormodels with damage, or dirty recoding componenets) .


so maybe it is a 2 part question. does the VTR of a consumer cam degrade footage, or do the cameras them selves have a gap between what you see on a monitor and whats put on tape. I ve seen some grabs here, especailly ones by Disjecta, that look like 1Megapixel photographs. so im kinda just wonder ng whatsup?


I am already sold o nthe DVX. its not a question of which do i get... i justwantedt o see teh difference between, all the popular prosume rmodels avaialble in the store.

I am using for pretty much everythign actually. i got signed on to a film this spring, weddings, parties, annd for my own art purposes.
 
Re: question about grabs and quality

The "miracle" of DV cameras is that what you record is exactly what you get back. There is absolutely *no* degradation, it's digital recording, bit-for-bit accurate.

So if you were seeing a difference, that means something's broken somewhere. DV tapes will play back identically to how they were recorded.
 
Re: question about grabs and quality

Hmmm, ok. it must be a problem with my camera then. im gonna post some screenshots i na few minutes so you guys can see whati mean.
 
Re: question about grabs and quality

ok problem found. it was my camera. the head may be worn. I need to get it serviced. It started dropping frames and the audi owas cuttng out like crazy whe i tried to captur the video into Vegas. cleaning tapes didint work. it must be the camera.
 
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