The Winner of the best bang for HD Buck IS....

S

sonisfear

Well-known member
Well after much research and renting. The FX1 is the best buy.

Okay it doesn't have XLR inputs and separate volume control but ...do really nee it?

Imaging is great in both DV and HDV modes.
Lens zoom range is good with image stabilization and auto focus.
Decent stereo mic.
and the price wow...the price...

What else do you really need....?

Why people would by a regular DV cam these days when this is on the market is beyond me.

That's why I am picking up one as my second cam (HD100 is main cam).

Can anyone give me a good reason not to pick one up?
 
I agree. I've seen some footage with this camera that blew me away. The z1u has stuff like Pal mode as well as NTSC, but to get HDV footage, it seems FX1 is the clear winner.

I suppose there's a whole discussion here from people saying it's pseudo-hd, not real hd, and do you want to wait for the HVX, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum.

But the new JVC apparently is rife with problems. The HVX apparently needs p2 cards, etc, to really take advantage of the 6K or so you'll spend to get the camera. Otherwise you spent 6K for what a 3K camera can do.

So I'm with you on this one... the Z1U would be great to have, but it seems the FX1 will get you the same image, and any differences are minor or can be dealt with.
 
As far as bang-for-the-buck? No doubt, the FX1 is amazing. At just over $3,000 it delivers incredible value. If someone wants the interlaced high-def "wow" look, the FX1 is a great camera and unbelievably inexpensive.
 
sonisfear said:
Okay it doesn't have XLR inputs and separate volume control but ...do really nee it?
Click to expand...

If you're shooting anything other than a birthday party, yes, you do. Well, to be honest if you're recording your sound to a dedicated (and better) recorder than no, you don't.
 
as well.. if you don't want compressed audio none of the HDV products are the way too go... unless you are again recording to an external device... but seeing as this is mainly an indy site, I can see most people using on camera..
 
The HD100 apparently records uncompressed audio simultaneously with its HDV compressed audio. You'd need to capture your footage in two passes (once as HDV, once as regular DV) to get access to the uncompressed audio. I didn't get to verify this feature, and Steve Mullen reported only partial success with it, but the JVC guys I talked to are pretty sure it will work. Maybe Nate or Tim can figure it out and spell out the process.
 
seems like such an extra hassle..ugh..

why is it that the audio is compressed in the first place? it is my understanding that the uncompressed 16bit audio on DV is put to tape ontop of the already 25Mbps stream of video data.. what is preventing the HDV cameras from doing this? I thought HDV was a visual spec only..?
 
No, HDV specifies audio too, and 384kbit MPEG-1 Layer II is what HDV specifies. Want to wear the "HDV" badge? Then you have to supply compressed audio.

The 19 megabits is due to JVC wanting to keep compliance with broadcast HDTV, I am fairly certain.
 
I'd love to see the person who can identify the compression in most situations with their own ears. They probably would have issues with Kryptonite as well.
 
I do wish that the FX1 [NTSC] included the CF25 function. I think that there would be alot more happy people if it did....

/slaps CF24

Jesse
 
I'd like to get two of them to shoot weddings with..the z1us are nice but I don't know if it is really worth spending the extra cash because I'm sure Sony will have something better at NAB
 
Angrius said:
I hope this doesn't seem like a stupid question but...

The FX1 has no 4x3 safety lines..so if I was to shoot something for standard defintion, do I have to just guess? I assume the viewfinder would go out of 16x9 but i'm just curious. Thanks
Click to expand...

It has safety lines. You put it in DV mode then you take off the wide DV mode. then you get guides.
 
No the FX1 doesn't have any sort of progressive mode. It has a 30fps simulation, and a CineFrame 24 mode which doesn't work well at all. The Sony is an interlaced camera and produces some incredible results in interlaced mode. If you want 24p there are better choices out there.

The DVX is at least two stops faster than the FX1. The FX1 does produce a lot less noise though.
 
The FX1 is less sensitive, but the gain is very clean. I have compared the two and the FX1 is much better. Same exposure with a lot less noise. Different gain setting, but is this important if the noise is still less than the DVX?

One way to do real progressive with FX1 is to shift one field and create an extra frame out of it. This is true progressive and an equivalent 50p for a PAL FX1. The resolution is not half but just limited by the 540 vertical pixels of the 1440x540 output. Perhaps 20% less than the vertical resolution in interlaced mode. Makes very nice 720 50p actually. And still includes 540 vertical chroma pixels, a lot more than 720p HDV which is 360 chroma pixels.

I have compared this method to CF25 and CF25 apears to be the same resolution. But the compression is a lot more evident in the 50p output. The HDV algorithm appears to make a lot more of the algorithm when it only has to do only 25 half resolution frames/sec like in CF25. Field dropping still does all frames at full res like normal interlaced. I would only use field dropping if I REALLY needed a slow motion effect. Not many people know how to do this, so it's not very common anyway.

On the 6 cam shooutout the resolution of the HVX is 540 pixels so I don't mind 540resolution from dropping the field of interlaced or using CF25!

I think both CF25 and field dropping are true progressive since the image of each frame is gathered at the same time. Nothing like 24modes on FX1 or Canon which have artifacts and generally look bad. In Europe we use 25fps a lot.
 
macminialacool said:
Hey,

What do you mean best buy? It is getting heavy critcism form DVX owners. Check out the IMDB Boards...

Chris
Click to expand...

What do you mean? That on the imdb boards the fx1 is hated? How do you check that I though imdb's boards were just about movies? And from my experience everyone on imdb is a 14 year old fool, they act so stupidly.
 
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