Saw an XDcam/XDcamHD demo... Not impressed

evinsky

evinsky

Well-known member
I went to the XDCAM seminar here at Sundance today and I have to say, I was not blown away. Granted the projected footage was SD not HD but I felt it was not significantly better in quality and sharpness to a DVX or HVX in SD to warrant the much higher price tag. The XDcamHD was especially interesting because despite being a 1/2 inch chip the DP said the sensitivity was about 320, the same as the HVX. Also, to my eyes it did not seem much cleaner than the HVX. The noise pattern was very pleasent though, I would have no problem shooting this system, it's built well, I would bet on it resolving a bit more than the HVX, especially with good Fujinon or Zeiss Digi-cinema lenses but at $60,000 for a complete package it seems too much for Mpeg compressed 4:2:0. Certainly it would be wise to wait till NAB to see what the Varicam II offers. Also the Sony reps there said a 4:2:2 version would be out in a year but it would cost around $60K for the body. Honestly this is a very good system but it's not 2/3" chips and does not benefit from it's 1/2" chip nearly as much as it's much more expensive sibling.

Bottom line, it's sharper and cleaner than an HVX.. but not by much and certainly not by $50,000. The SD version may not be cleaner or sharper at all. You guys can make the call if 1/2" and interchangeable lenses are worth it or not.
E.
 
Well, evinsky, I would've killed to see that demo. You know me, I'm all about the noise. And I'm not popping for the F350, I going for the cheapo F330, which I'm hoping will street price out at around $20K with the stock Canon glass. Despite the DP's ISO rating, I would still guess that the camera should be at least 1-stop faster than an HVX, and at least 6dB cleaner, if not more, in chroma SNR. I didn't expect it to be noticably sharper than an HVX, but you're telling me that it DIDN'T look significantly CLEANER than an HVX?
 
This is all subjective, I never thought the DVX was very noisy. I saw the XDCAM 350 in a dark room and it was displayed on a Sony 17" LCD. It was clean in the highs and upper mids but showed a little noise in the lows and shadows. I'd say 3-4db less at 0db.
But I did up it to 6db and I'd say it was the same as the HVX at 6db, no cleaner.

The real question is this worth $50K?
 
Thanks for the report evinsky....
Hmm... You would of thought a 1/2" CCD design, especially form Sony, would be clean.

NBC, it sounds like you might want to check it out to comfort yourself, but it appears it didn't light much fire with evinsky.

The HVX is no doubt a good buy.
 
evinsky said:
This is all subjective, I never thought the DVX was very noisy. I saw the XDCAM 350 in a dark room and it was displayed on a Sony 17" LCD. It was clean in the highs and upper mids but showed a little noise in the lows and shadows. I'd say 3-4db less at 0db.
But I did up it to 6db and I'd say it was the same as the HVX at 6db, no cleaner.

The real question is this worth $50K?
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No, I don't think ANY 1/2" camera is worth $50K. But I'm buying the $20K F330, which I think could be totally worth it. What kind of display were you watching it on? Was there a CRT in the room? You know how lame LCDs and plasmas make ANYTHING look!

evinsky said:
. . . it was displayed on a Sony 17" LCD. It was clean in the highs and upper mids but showed a little noise in the lows and shadows.
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Oh, duh. I just saw that. Need to check it out on a CRT. I guarantee you, a Varicam, F900, SDX900, DVW700 would look noisy on an LCD monitor. Those things just suck.
 
Stevet said:
Hmm... You would of thought a 1/2" CCD design, especially form Sony, would be clean.
Click to expand...

It is clean, but so is the HVX, at least in good light. I know NBC want's to shoot his "Streets of LA" film and has a specific reason to want a cleaner image, but I think most people here should stop whining about noise in the middle of the night shooting a black cat against asphalt. You guys need to learn the value and reality of lighting. Or use the look to your advantage and create using the pallete you have available.

I just saw a film here at Sundance called "Allegro", shot in Denmark, super 16, Grainy as hell. Gorgeous! I would never had thought to shoot super 16 at night, almost all available light, but these guys made it sing. I would be willing to bet the HVX would be cleaner than this super 16 film at 12db! Probably not sharper, but definately cleaner.

Noise is just part of the reality of electronic cinematography, it does not make it an imperfect medium, infact it makes it a more organic medium, more imortantly it makes it an interesting medium. If your prooject has merit, if it's good and demannds a perfectly clean image, you can raise the money to shoot on an F900 or Varicam. If your creative you can use the HVX/H1/HD100/Z1/FX1 to give your project the desired effect and use the stregths of your given tool to your advantage.

But no noiseless Wundercam will make a crappy DP good, or a awfull script great, or an untalented hack Daniel Day Lewis. We as nerds (Yes you, and me too) have a tendancy to project our own insecurities about filmmaking onto our equipment, mostly because they won't complain. The industry does it too. But this endless banter about Noise is not about noise it's an excuse to not get out there and shoot.

I'm trying to follow my own advice, so I'll shut up and go shoot something.
 
Sorry but you lost me when you said you didnt think the DVX was noisy. It has GREAT poppy colors but is by far the noisiest of the prosumer 3CCD cameras.

Where are you getting $50k? When you move up CCD size comparisons are all subjective. Is it worth it? Depends. Is a Porshe worth that much more than a souped up Civic? Just depends...



ash =o)
 
evinsky said:
...but at $60,000 for a complete package it seems too much for Mpeg compressed 4:2:0.
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Evin, I'm pissed that you got to see this. Dangit.

Just FYI, it's looking like the body will be around $23k street for the F350. Add a lens for $10-15 and you're still way short of $60k.

...just sayin.

I found out tonight (by digging on Japanese-language Sony pages) that there is a version of the 330 that comes with lens for 2,330,000 yen. That's a Sony Japan price, but it works out to about $21k. I'm guessing it's the Canon AF lens they keep picturing the cam with.
 
I've always thought the cost of the deck was the killer in that Sony disk thing.
As a cameraman I need a system that in universal, that any producer is ready for.
DV had that and there was a rapid adoption of DVCPro50, but how many producers want to drop 8 Grand on yet another format unless it really offers something big.
Great thing about the HVX is that totally bypasses all that investment.
Its universal - pop it into the NLE.
Its a tremendous advantage I think.
In comparison the P2 investment is minor.
 
Barry_Green said:
I'm assuming Evin's including the cost of the deck in his $60,000 estimate; the deck is around $8,000 to $13,000.
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Lenilenapi said:
I've always thought the cost of the deck was the killer in that Sony disk thing
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From what I can tell, a deck is not required with either the 330 or 350. There's a Firewire 400 connection on the back panel, Sony says it's for disk-mode access to the media. It appears all you need is the cam and you're set. No need to even sweat wear and tear on the cam, from what I can tell.

My problems with MPEG2 acquisition go away when you take tape out of the equation. All of the headaches with HDV I've ever had are because you have to pull off a tape, GOPs get truncated, batch captures are unreliable/unrepeatable, etc. Actually working with HDV media in FCP is painless, beyond those issues.

If the 35mbit mode does not fix some of the motion encoding issues though, I'm not so interested. I think this second generation HD/MPEG2 device, combined with the bitrate will help greatly, though. Can't wait to see.
 
Lenilenapi said:
Its universal - pop it into the NLE.
Its a tremendous advantage I think.
In comparison the P2 investment is minor.
Click to expand...

I think the workflow for ALL of the new lower-end cameras is going to involve portable firewire drives for either dumping while shooting (HVX), or dumping at the end of the day (Canon & Firestore combo, JVC & Firestore combo).

I think that the most popular camera by far in this new world is going to be the HVX. The portable drive that a producer gets to allow for working with that cam will allow work with other cams too, to put another way.
 
To break it down into a system capable of achieveing the same functionality and workflow ease of the HVX you would need.
The 350 (Variable frame rates) $25,000
A cinema series lens (Canon/Fujinon) $15,000
At least the NLE feeder deck $8,000
Battery system $2,000
So minimum $50,000

Nate, I disagree that the deck is not important. You could live without it for a while but if your working with this material constantly, loading, binning, online, offline, you need convienent access to your media. Pulling out the camera every time you need to find a shot is not pracrtical, and if you have the moneey to build this system right then the deck is only a small addition, same goes for the lens, yes you could put a $5000 coke bottle on this but why spend this much if not to get substantially better control, precision focus and sharp, abberation free footage.

Also, the 330 may be $10k less but it lacks the variable frame rate functions, this makes it less of a direct competitor to the HVX, but certainly a strong performer otherwise. My comparison tells me the mid range still has not matured. There is not enough of a difference in price between this package and a Varicam package. Where i am in my career I could not buy either. I may be able to rent them, but only on other peoples dime. The HVX I can own now, with all the neccesarry goodies to make it work. I could also see investing $25k-$30K into a system like XDcamHD if the images it produced were substantially better than the HVX. And I mean taken as a whole, sensitivity, sharpness, DOF and yes noise. From what I've seen today, that has yet to come. Maybe we'll see it soon though. Red maybe?
 
AshG said:
Sorry but you lost me when you said you didnt think the DVX was noisy. It has GREAT poppy colors but is by far the noisiest of the prosumer 3CCD cameras.
Click to expand...

The noisiest of the 3 chip cameras was able to fool producers at Chelsea Pictures into believeing it was 35mm. All camcorders will produce noise when not lit or exposed properly. You make it sound as if there were 12db difference between the XL2, DVX and PD-150.
There isin't, there is less than 2db difference in most situations. You can not qualitatively tell me that the difference in noise between any of the 1/3" cameras, HD or DV is substantial. I've shot concerts (with Nate Weaver) and other live events where I've intercut the DVX and XL2, I couldn't tell the difference except the Canon clipped the whites sooner.

So, sorry I "Lost you" but get some perspective, there is more to cinematography than S/N ratio.
 
evinsky said:
This endless banter about Noise is not about noise it's an excuse to not get out there and shoot.
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I love hearing this line from the people that actually have access to HVXs to use. :)

I've got the cash in hand this very minute to do my own testing and get shooting if Panasonic would like to sell me a camera!
 
Panasonic does indeed want to sell you a camera, but the unfettered access we've had here at DVXuser has given us a sense that were special, and indeed we are, the companny we support was very attentive to our wants and needs when they designed our camera. However they have a distribution pipeline that relies on a "just in time delivery" method and that requires a ramping of production. These are complex devices and they take time to build, test, package and ship. Panasonic does want your money, and they are working as fast as thier existing delivery chain will allow. Canon waits till thier system is at least at some capacity, good marketing, but the attention to customers is not there.
 
Thank evinsky.
Your info is greatly appreciated. It's good to hear a perspective from someone who has a lot of experience and actually owns an HVX.

I believe most of us understand there are tradeoffs between noise levels and other factors. The problem is some noise levels just scream cheap video cam.

Fortunately, as you mentioned, I'm sure the HVX200 noise is reasonable.
I'm hearing it has a more pleasing noise signature.
 
From reading this thread I gather that the Sony XDCAM/HD is not any better than the HVX in SD mode viewed on a 17" LCD monitor. I would think that the HVX in DVCPRO 50 would yield better results despite the 1/2" CCD's from the sony. I would be quite interested in viewing the Sony in 1080p vs. the HVX 1080p on a appropriate HD monitor. NAB 2006 should be fun.

Also it was my understanding that XDCAM required no deck to download-extract footage from the disks. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought it was as simple as hooking up firewire to a laptop or desktop and simply copying the file-footage. Am I wrong?

When comparing price between the HVX-XDCAM on a feature by feature basis. It's a no brainer, the HVX at let's say full retail of $6000, plus another $6000 (plenty of storage) of P2 cards, extra batteries $300, and misc. accessories at $700. At $13,000, I save a ton of money over the Sony XDCAM/HD.
 
nateweaver said:
I found out tonight (by digging on Japanese-language Sony pages) that there is a version of the 330 that comes with lens for 2,330,000 yen. That's a Sony Japan price, but it works out to about $21k. I'm guessing it's the Canon AF lens they keep picturing the cam with.
Click to expand...
AHA! Did I nail it or what?
 
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