Posted by Smarty on 07/18/07 13:19

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" <mweissX294@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:pSgni.54525$LA1.7210@fe02.news.easynews.com...
> Granted, different CODECs handle the compression task with a variety of
> tradeoffs, some more visible to some people than others.
> But the problem here is that while 25mb/s was "acceptable" for a 345,000
> pixel SD video image, the idea of shoving four times as much information
> into a stream of the same bandwidth is inviting a big decrease in image
> quality by the drastic increase in quantizing errors. Now granted CODEC
> technology is improving steadily, but I think HDV is an overly big leap.
> HD
> content to the home is not what I call HD. It is garbage. Every time I see
> so-called "HD content" in the big box stores on plasma and LCD displays,
> all
> I see is macroblocks--invariably, the fools who program these channels in
> the stores always seem to have high-action footage running, which
> exacerbates the problem. Seeing such video, if I did not know better, I
> would never have bought an HDTV. Of course HDV is a hundred times
> better-looking than that, but unlike DV, it has rather blatently-intrusive
> visual artifacts that I can't ignore. I could watch DV footage and rarely
> see an artifact that bothered me, but these HDV cams remind me of the
> first
> DVD that I made, with shareware MPEG compression software--in short, it
> looked like garbage.

Since you categorically consider HD delivered to the home as being "garbage"
and "not HD", I see that your sentiment is way more pervasive than I
originally thought. I will make no further attempt to defend HD systems of
any type to you, HDV included, since your standards are considerably higher
than mine and perhaps of most other people. To my eyes, which are admitedly
older and not as acute perhaps as yours, HD is a vast improvement over
standard definition, and only the poor choice of technique by the producer
is at fault rather than the delivery technology itself. And yes, I would
fully admit that an eventual "ultra HD" system with much higher resolution
and bandwidth will eventually be introduced, thereby obsoleting whatever
systems we now consider "high" resolution.

>> The reality of the matter is that HDV video with 25 MB/sec video need not
>> show any visible artifacts ***IF** the real-time encoder has enough
>> horsepower. I will fully admit that many HDV camcorders, perhaps most of
>> them, are marginal in this regard, and can indeed be stressed to show
>> this
>> flaw in some circumstances.
> I have both the Canon HV20 and two Sony V1Us. The former produces a soft
> picture and the HDV has fewer artifacts. The Sony produces an almost
> razor-sharp image, and things like individual blades of grass resolve and
> that just overloads the CODEC to the point where "shimmering" artifacts
> appear as the camera pans across a football field, for example. This
> happened in one of my outdoor shots with the V1U, whereas to a lesser
> extent
> with the HV20, as it didn't resolve individual blades of grass.
> I think it's hard to pin the problem on the CODEC without using the same
> CODEC to take the output from two different camera heads. One could
> erroneously observe that Canon has a better CODEC, when in fact, it has
> only
> less work to do, due to the integration effect on the picture signal.

Since the codec needs to be chosen to have adequate performance to encode
whatever high frequency detail the sensor is capable of achieving, then the
codec performance ultimately determines whether artifacts are present or
absent. My original point is not that one codec is better than another, nor
is it that a lesser resolution sensor demands a lesser codec. It is merely
that the presence of visible artifacts is NOT inherent in HDV but rather is
a camera-specific defect, nominally a flaw in the codec performance.

> Yes, but isn't HDV supposed to be on the same playing field as DV? DV had
> far fewer artifacts, yet it was a consumer format. HDV is loaded with
> artifacts, and is also a consumer format, but being used in some pro
> applications.
>
>> It should not take a brilliant insight to realize that Sony and others
> make
>> very deliberate market segmentation decisions when choosing whether to
> make
>> a $2000 consumer HDV camcorder work as well or as poorly as it does.
>
> That they do. But at what point does one draw the line between consumer
> and
> pro? At $103,000 for an HDW-F900? It seems most of what Sony offers below
> that is consumer quality.
>
HDV is a consumer format, and has only been adopted on occasion by
professional users since it does indeed offer a level of performance and
portability which allow it to be used succesfully in some professional
applicatons. HDV cameras have improved dramatically in the few short years
they have been on the market, and I personally find their picture quality in
most cases to be excellent, superior to standard DV by a wide margin. DV has
been around for over a decade, and I have no doubt that HDV cameras will
also improve with time in the coming years as they also become less
expensive, despite Sony's preferences to keep the markets stratified. The
inherent strength of the HDV format has already showed itself, and will
continue to survive with cameras using better encoders to reduce artifacts
for those like yourself who see them everyplace.

>> I think it is comical therefore to waste a lot of your breath on how poor
>> HDV is, and especially to falsely conflate and confuse specific camera
>> defects with the HDV format in general.
>>
>> Smarty
>
> I agree that is IS a waste, but we tend to enjoy debating the pros and
> cons
> of each formate, do we not? Lest we'd be elswhere than sitting at these
> PCs
> and typing messages back and forth on USEnet. :-)
> Best Regards,
>
You are indeed correct Mark, and we all take perverse delight in dragging
out our soap-boxes for round after round of pontification. I am most
certainly guilty of this behaviour.

My best regards to you as well Mark,

Smarty
>
> Mark A. Weiss, P.E.
> www.mwcomms.com
> -
>
>

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