Posted by Smarty on 06/27/07 14:30

Ty, et al,

The "rabid" HDV supporters have not entirely left the building.

HDV has its' place in the panorama of tools available for doing video, and I
think most people would agree that a prosumer format in the range of a
thousand to a few thousand dollars cannot and should not be strictly ranked
by comparison to much more expensive pro HD equipment nor should it be
doomed to failure because it is not entirely suitable for professional use.

The fact that a particular HDV camera fails to live up to someone's audio or
video expectations is not an indictment of the HDV format so much as an
example of a weak camera design. Rolling off the audio at the bass end is a
good example:

The HDV format does not restrict low frequency audio content in its'
sampling and format. As an electrical engineer and former hardware designer,
I can see no economic reason to roll off the bass, and, in fact, doing so
would likely add cost, either in the form of capacitance/inductance as a
high pass filter, active analog circuitry / op amps or more DSP code if done
digitally. The low frequency recording capabilities come for free with the
possible exception of a foam wind filter to reduce low frequency noise. Sony
happens to make a camera with poor low frequency response. This is NOT an
HDV limitation.

Similarly, HDV does, by its' inherent design, use MPEG2 compression, which,
as those of you who have ever watched HDTV, DVDs, or any other modern HD
delivery method will acknowledge is capable of truly beautiful video without
artifacts. It is indeed true that ***SOME*** HDV cameras have codecs which
can become overwhelmed under some conditions, but the temptation to conflate
the specific Sony camera faults with HDV format limitations is entirely
erroneous.

HDV does, as a result of its use of MPEG2, cause post processing and work
flow alterations to handle the format properly, but the format inherently
can and does deliver excellent quality. None of this video equipment is
perfect. None of it is even close to perfect. And there is a damn good
reason why Red and other higher megapixel video is being developed.

The Directory of Photography for the TV series 24 has some very worthwhile
opinions and comments about HDV in general and about the Sony Z1 in
particular and which he used in doing some of the 24 TV series filming. See:

http://www.showreel.org/memberarea/article.php?141

I specifically liked the Sony Z1 quote from the DP which states:

"The two directors were impressed by the images. Brad in particular, fresh
from his recent HD experience, was interested in the compactness and the
quality. There appeared to be a soft filmic quality to the images,compared
to either the F900 or the Genesis, but what was more interesting was that
the much-coveted 35mm shallow DOF was obtainable with the Z1 using a static
ground glass cine adaptor (the Guerrilla35) with Nikon SLR lenses. "


I think it is grossly unfair to run around with "the sky is falling" type of
Chicken Little notion that HDV is dead or dying, that the format itself is
the problem, or that Sony is the only player in HDV. I owned 2 Sony HDV
camcorders myself until Canon did some impressive things that moved me to
their products.

Smarty


"Ty Ford" <tyreeford@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:-IGdncQa3_6IzB_bnZ2dnUVZ_hKdnZ2d@comcast.com...
> On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 03:59:42 -0400, Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote
> (in article <ONogi.4210$M92.1067@fe02.news.easynews.com>):
>
>> I've started a small site with example footage and stills taken from an
>> HDV
>> camera, the Sony HVR-V1U. Aside from it's terrible audio, the camera
>> produces decent images in sunlit environments, but there are a number of
>> artifacts which are changing in a distracting temporal manner, as the
>> camera
>> pans across scenes.
>>
>> I put some examples up here:
>>
>> http://www.basspig.com/hvrv1u_HDV_artifacts.htm
>>
>> HDV is really severely compressed and breaks down badly with imager
>> noise,
>> so in low light situations, the CODEC is overstressed and picture quality
>> nosedives. This is also true with busy images, like a pan across a grassy
>> field (the grass shimmers because the imager resolves individual blades
>> of
>> grass, and the HDV CODEC can't handle all that high frequency detail
>> without
>> generating spurious color information that shows up temporaly as a
>> shimmering effect.
>> I suspect that the color palette of HDV is less than 24 bit, because at
>> times, the picture shows striated bands of color, like a GIF image when
>> too
>> many diverse colors are present. Ironically, the noisy imagers in this
>> camera should 'dither' the image and eliminate the banding, but it does
>> not.
>>
>>
>
> Where were you last year when rabid HDV supporters were beating their
> chests
> and wailing about how wonderful the picture was?
>
> I was just out with a crew with 4 Sony HDV cameras shooting a documentary
> at
> a sporting event. I asked them about panned moves and compression
> artifacts.
> I took their "no problem" answer at face value.
>
> As with audio, apparently, some people are pickier than others.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ty Ford
>
>
> --Audio Equipment Reviews Audio Production Services
> Acting and Voiceover Demos http://www.tyford.com
> Guitar player?:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RZJ9MptZmU
>

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