HDV?!

[sn-films]

Canon joins Sony and JVC in the wonderful world of HDV with their new XL H1. Somewhere in the world, a gadget-freak just peed himself a little bit.

Has anyone on this board had a chance to work with HDV footage? Any thoughts or opinions on the format?

Based on some articles and reviews I've read, the difference in quality between HDV and standard DV are barely noticable by the time the footage gets onto a DVD. Until a wider distribution infrastructure is in place, is the whole HDV format just hype?

[Nigel]

Hype...Serious hype.

Why shot "HD" that then uses MPEG-2 compression which strops color and makes for fucked up motion??

If you are chomping at the bit to get an HD camera get the new Panasonic.

Good Luck

[Chance1234]

theyve just got a XL and painted it black

[miker]

seems like hype, but it is the shape of things to come.

right now no-one can afford the screens to watch HDV in their homes so it's pretty pointless as an acquisition format right now. add to that the immature workflow and workarounds and miniDV seems a lot more sensible for a production workflow straight to DVD.

IMO if MPEG2 is encoded correctly VBR then it's totally acceptable quality. some broadcasters (notable NTL it seems) seem to use 2MB/s which artifacts as Nigel describes. However, the format supports up to 8MB/s IIRC and at that bandwidth you will never see artefacting.

also, doesn't HDV use H.264 which is a more scalable and extensible successor to MPEG4?

what HDV is going through now reminds me exactly of what miniDV was going through circa 1997. the big difference is that miniDV basically sucks when projected although it is tolerable IMO ... with HDV there's a hope of it looking 'ok'.

[jb_617]

Originally posted by miker:
right now no-one can afford the screens to watch HDV in their homes

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Speak for yourself.


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Pikey.

[Nigel]

You can get tha Panasonic and from what I understand you can then go directly to a harddrive at 1080P with 4:4:4 color.

Then again you could just shoot film and get a better image than any video camera out there...

Good Luck

[assyrix]

You may spend ?3K on a HDV camera and get angry at the inability to key properly or to get non-jerky movements when recording fast action. That is the downside of "prosumer" gear.

Or you might spend a little bit more and get a fully professional entry level proper HD camera with 4:2:2 sampling at ?4K -?5K - the Panasonic AG-HVX200.

http://panasonic-broadcast.com/index...D=69&PID=11481

Don't be fooled by its appearance - this is a proper pro camera shooting DVCPro HD if required. Should I get that news contract I am bartering for I will immediately acquire four of those for the ENG and EFP work and sell my Sony DVW-700WSP.

See the discussion here:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...order-with.htm

[sn-films]

I definitely agree that the Panasonic has a much better HD solution, and I guess I'm just surprised that Canon is jumping on the HDV band wagon and following Sony and JVC instead of instead of trying to utilize a more robust HD format like Panasonic. I've been reading on some other forums that users with HDV cameras are experiencing wicked problems with artifacting in high-motion scenes. Based on what I've been reading, HDV is fine for talking-head documentaries, but you wouldn't want to shoot an action movie using the format. What was Canon thinking?

For years, the XL1 and XL2 were regarded as some of the best prosumer cameras on the market when it came to image quality. Its going to be odd having a conversation with someone about image quality and NOT recomending that they look into Canon's XL-family of products because they are inferior to other products in the same price range.

[Nigel]

The reason that Canon went HDV is because they can't get a full HD signal onto a MiniDV tape. Even Panasonic can't. The only reason that Panasonic has the tape side is for SD recording only. For full HD you have to use the P2 cards or straight to Hard Disk.

Good Luck