DV camera discussion

[Nigel]

Are you talking about HD or HDV??

Because every HDV camera is under 50,000 and looks like crap.

HD...That is another story.

Good Luck

[Mafishus]

There is actually an informative article by a couple of cinematographers working on the set of the tv show 24 about using HDV cameras.
hdv on the set of 24 pt.1
hdv on the set of 24 pt.2

Either the JVC GY-HD100 and the Canon XL H1 would work great for the needs you outlined. I have actually used both, and they are really good cameras. I expected to like the JVC better, but ended up liking the Canon better. HD SDI aside - especially since it requires being tethered to a deck or computer if you want to capture in uncompressed HD formats, which doesn't work well for most documentry style shoots - the canon was more forgiving of my inadequecies as a camera operator. The JVC was not as intutive to me when I wanted to tweak the settings for the different situations I was shooting in. I have read good reviews of it, including the links above, I just wasn't able to get out of it what I expected - again probably due to my own inexperience. Another thing to note is that it is a very light camera which can be a good thing for extended run-n-gun sessions, but strangley enough I found myself wishing it had a little more weight for stabilitys sake when I used in shoulder mount position. Anyway, I hope thais helps some.

[mattias]

I have yet to see an "HD" cam under $50,000 that was worth its weight in crap.

have you tried the xdcam hd? it's amazing, although the imx version does produce a slightly better looking image in sd.

/matt

[mattias]

here's something i shot on the xdcam imx btw. easily the best price performance you can get in sd, in my opinion.

http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/lalaland.mp4

(private link. please don't distribute)

/matt

[MovieStuff]

I have yet to see an "HD" cam under $50,000 that was worth its weight in crap. They have very low dynamic range, ...

Well, yes and no. Video, in general, has a low dynamic range whether you are talking about HD or SD. That said, so does Kodachrome. If not handled carefully, you'll get bottomless blacks and burned out whites with HD, SD or Kodachrome. So the trick there is simply to learn to work with the medium within its limitations. Not convenient but hardly impossible.

...LOTS of compression which makes the images fall apart during editing etc....

Yeah, I used to think that as well. But then I started really looking at the various editing systems and found that it makes a huge difference what system you are using. If you are using a low end pro-sumer system then the de-compression/re-compression just slaughters the HD image. I had an HD system made by Premier that touted the Cineform codec and, while it was okay, it wasn't anything close to professional image quality. Then I looked into the Matrox RTX2HD system. Holy shit what a piece of magic that is. Unbelievably sharp and artifact free. I played with the demo unit in the computer shop that builds my editing systems and took a piece of footage and exported it through multiple generations and then put each generation on the timeline with a split screen next to the original clip. I swear you absolutely could not see any difference until you got to the fourth generation and, even then, there were no typical compression artifacts that you would expect. The 4th generation clip was merely a bit softer but still looked incredible quite usable. All the generations before that looked virtually identical to the original clip.

So I bought the system and it freakin' rocks. I shoot with the Sony Z1U and edit with the Matrox and the quality easily looks as good as anything I regularly see on HD Discovery. Just unbelievably sharp and artifact free. I am in the process of moving my edit suite around but I'll try to post some stills next week after I get it set back up.

But, in general, I agree that low cost HD can look like crap but it can also look just great. Unlike SD, which can pretty much look the same on any edit system, HD really requires a top notch edit suite to keep it looking good. I don't know what smoke and mirrors that Matrox is using but it's good Ju-Ju.

Roger

[flatwood]

.....an HD system made by Premier that touted the Cineform codec and, while it was okay, it wasn't anything close to professional image quality. Then I looked into the Matrox RTX2HD system. Holy shit what a piece of ....

Are you still using Premiere or have you gone to another software with your new video card?

[mattias]

you should not use hdv for your final rendering even if you're going back to hdv tape. you will lose one generation when the i-frames are recreated during editing, another when your effects and color correction is applied, and believe it or not another when going back to tape since most systems don't edit in the same long gop format so even if you're using an hdv timeline it has to recreate i-frames again for output. if you do your final rendering on an uncompressed timeline it will look much better. i simply copy everything from my master offline hdv timeline, paste it into an uncompressed timeline, render, and create my dvd's, quicktimes, dv outs and so on from that. this is in fcp of course, but i'm sure all editing software works basically the same.

any feedback on that imx clip btw? you obviously can't tell the "quality" from a compressed version, but i was very pleased with how nice the colors were and how much latitude i got, compared to most video cameras except maybe the highest end digibetas. and this is from a $20,000 camera.

/matt

[wado1942]

HD Discovery doesn't look that good either. I'm sorry but 6Mbps just isn't enough to take advantage of 1.5Gbps of information. The only time I've seen HD look good is directly from hard drive using 4:1 or less compresison. 248:1 compression just takes all the life & beauty out of the picture and sound for that matter. HDV is substantially better than HDTV broadcasting but it's still a far cry from HD Cam. Anyways, I've seen some amazingly sharp stuff come from DVPro-50 systems which cost around the same as a better "HD" camera. There's no weird flickering & twitching in the dark areas, there's no weird motion, there's no DCT artifacting, no parts of fine details disappearing into a solid block of color and reappearing later. I can't stand to watch soccer or whatever in HD because the grass keeps turning into blobs of green paint for split seconds. Compositing is a snap on DV-50 systems too. Now if you go as far as DigiBeta, there's an image that'll blow anybody away but that's far more expensive than we're talking here.
Anyways, if you get a top notch editor, you can only hope to preserve what was comming off of the camera media which has already lost tons of detail. I'd rather get the best SD camera I can afford and know it'll look good no matter where I am. As for dynamic range, cramming 2.67 times the pixels into the same size CCD block drastically reduces the dynamic range. I just engineered the sound track for a movie shot on one of the so-called "better" HD camera systems (forget which model) and the dynamic range was LESS than the $4,000 DVX100. The images on the video monitor was pretty nice but then, we built the sets using colors that would fall within the dynamic range of the camera. We had to build the sets specially to work right with that camera. I saw a TV commercial shot with the same camera that's been playing in my area where the sets weren't designed for the camera and it looked like it was shot on a GL1. Of course they were using a cheap crap lens so that was part of the problem too. Regardless, just because it has more pixels, doesn't mean it's better. Super-8 can resolve 700-800 lines in theory and SD-8 can resolve over 900 lines. Yet it yields a softer looking image than video which only resolves around 400-500 lines. But what seems to win people's hearts on these formats is dynamic range and good lenses available for cheap prices.

[mattias]

i agree with most of the things you say, but most of it seems a little off topic and it would be cool if you could comment on the other posts in the thread. discussion is always more interesting than a one way flow of information and opinions.

to follow my own advice, have you looked at h.264 compression, which seems to be becoming the standard for distribution and consumer acquisition of hd. it looks at least as good as mpeg-2 at only half the bitrate. mpeg-2 at 6mbit simply isn't enough, as you say, but with h.264 we might get hdv quality at least?

/matt

[MovieStuff]

.....an HD system made by Premier that touted the Cineform codec and, while it was okay, it wasn't anything close to professional image quality. Then I looked into the Matrox RTX2HD system. Holy shit what a piece of ....

Are you still using Premiere or have you gone to another software with your new video card?

Well, Premier 2.0 comes bundled with the Matrox HD edit suite and it looks just great but it isn't using the Cineform codec but a proprietary Matrox codec.

HD Discovery doesn't look that good either

If HD Discovery is coming in too compressed on your HD service, then I would have a serious talk with your HD provider because the image from HD Discovery should really be sparkling. They have very high standards and their HD footage is always first rate. If their quality doesn't satisfy you, then you'd be hard pressed to find HD productions that are going to be better, IMO.

Roger

[mattias]

oh, and as for the artifacts of hdv, all the ones you describe are there for sure, but there are lots of ways to avoid/minimize them. lighting the shadows a bit more and crushing them in post works very well, and with sharpness turned down as well as gain you don't only get a smoother, more film like image, but also much fewer dct artifacts. what do you mean by weird motion? i've never seen any of that and i've shot around 200 hours of hdv. i have seen it in digital broadcasts though, but i always thought those were glitches and drop outs, not results of the compression.

/matt

[steve hyde]

..the camera I am considering is actually the JVC HD 100 because a used one can be had for around 3500 - 4500. USD The newer HD 250 (with the HD-SDI out) is about 11K (way our of our range for what it is)

So what is the big deal about HD - SDI? I am under the impression the HD -SDI allows recording to external hard drive, but doesn't it record the same HDV signal? Does the hard drive capture more information than the tape?

Video is so confusing. I wish I could afford to shoot everything on color negative...but I can't.

Fortunately, people have come to expect mixed media from documentary filmmakers so I think I can get away with mixing up formats as long as the audio-visual differences serve the stories.

..one more question: How does the JVC camera compare to Beta SP? I have seen some documentaries recently that used Beta SP and the look was fine.

Thanks for all the input!...I'll check the links you guys posted.

Steve

[steve hyde]

here's something i shot on the xdcam imx btw. easily the best price performance you can get in sd, in my opinion.

http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/lalaland.mp4

(private link. please don't distribute)

/matt

...it looks great. If I can get a look close to this, I'll be stoked.

Steve

[Nigel]

Steve--

You get full HD out of the HD SDI--Not HDV or an HDV signal.

So, it really is a great option. If you can afford it.

Good Luck

[steve hyde]

That is beautifully shot. I have made a 30 second picture like this too. Lots of creative possibilities with this look, but it is only fun for a short period of time, then the audience wants to close their eyes or vomit.

Steve

Well, this is just an example of what can be done. I believe the 20D can film up to 5 FPS, the highest I've heard to date is 14. Still, it only makes me wonder how long it will be before someone makes a DSLR that can film at 24 FPS. It can't be too much longer...

...yeah, one already exists. It's the Panavision Genesis and it shoots up to 60 fps (I think) at 12.5 megapixles per frame - has a 35mm size sensor and speaks the language of 35mm lenses.

and rents for 10K / week after you get on a waiting list.

Steve