Little Frog in High Def

Ooooh, nasty!
XDCAM HD’s 35 Mb/s is so much nicer, much harder to break.

I never worked with HDV, thankfully, but I understand what you mean about standards lowering. I hate watching TV anymore. It all looks like crap.

Those screenshots look worse than my miniDV footage. I feel like everyone thinks HDV is OK because we’ve all been looking at SD for so long. Since HDV is a higher res people think it looks nice even though it looks like crap. Does that make sense? It’s like comparing a crappy, hardly-working sports car to a Honda Civic and thinking the sports car is better just because it’s a sports car.

And when the Sony EX1 first came out, I was really excited – really, really excited. It seemed perfect. But then I read about the effects of the rolling shutter, and now I would never buy an EX1 or EX3.

I just hope that when I get a real job, I won’t have to work with HDV.

Yeah, XDCAM, from what I have seen, doesn’t have this issue at all. MUCH cleaner. This is definitely an HDV thing.

This is something you don’t see in static shots or ones with slow moves. So in those cases the format looks great. Really good. Unless you start pushing things in Color Correction (ProRes capture or no, there is just a lot of information missing).

Rob, don’t knock the EX cameras. The rolling shutter on them isn’t all that bad. I have seen worse. But yeah, I won’t personally use them for that reason. Yeah, the images are sharp as HELL, and look great. But movement looks odd when you do fast pans and zooms. If you don’t…that is a fantastic camera.

Now, get an HV30 and you are in a world of hurt. Rolling shutter and HDV…BAD rolling shutter. I returned my HV20 after owning it for 8 hours. I hated that focus knob! WAY consumer.

Thank you for this. Your post is now in my bookmarks so I can show it to clients who insist that HDV is the superior format.
I’ve had decent enough results with it when the deliverable is web or DVD. But when it’s for real HD or projection, not so great.
Like you said, color correction can really show the problems quickly. Since Colorista and Looks is a necessary step in my process, this is a big problem.
HDV has a good image, but I agree, it’s not the best.

I know the EX cameras aren’t that bad, but just the idea that there is a possibility to seeing the rolling shutter artifacts turns me off. Who wants to drop all that money on a camera knowing there is a chance you could come back with unusable footage? I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t say for sure that I won’t be doing any fast pans or shoot anything that’s moving fast, or won’t be exposed to flash photography. And I don’t have the money to buy multiple cameras – each for a different purpose.

I get that XDCam is better than HDV, but I personally wouldn’t want to take any chances.

gday…having test footage at your disposal always helps too. Best to have the camera master and a camera or deck that can play frame by frame, so they clients don’t think that somehow those glitches are made when capturing the footage. Because they aren’t.

Sadly in a world where more importance is put on having the new (most hyped) gear/format rather than actually doing proper testing before shooting projects footage like this is just going to be an ongoing problem.

I recently turned down a DP job where the producer wanted to shoot with the new Ikonoskop camera (a camera I might add that has great potential and which I am waiting for with great anticipation) which is for all practical purposes still vaporware. But because it has a certain “BUZZ” the producer wants to commit a production (three months,sixteen countries)to an untried and untested format and camera.

Madness…

R.L. Wise SOC

Why are our standards getting worse? Because of the bottom line. Most people will easily sacrifice quality for a cheaper price. It happens on every level, from the top down to the consumers. It’s a frustrating race to the bottom.

Marketing plays a big part in this. The pixel count is much easier to market and compare than other factors like compression ratio, color sampling, data rate, lens quality, etc.

So because something has more pixels it is perceived to be better (at least on paper). But not many people think about the sacrifices necessary to fit HD footage onto DV tape.

And Shane, I don’t think HDV has any fans ;) – I’ve certainly never heard it defended in the professional world.

I was having a chat with a vendor recently about purchasing decisions.

He said, “A client will always be willing to pay a little less to get a little less.”

This is especially true when the “little less” is in an area the client does not understand.

Well, one thing I hear all the time is “They use HDV for SURVIVORMAN and DEADLIEST CATCH, so it MUST be a professional format.” Seeing that both of those are Discovery shows, and that Discovery actually certified HDV for Bronze level programming…it is considered a professional format.

Survivorman I get…it is one guy with 4 cameras, no crew. So they want HD, small that he can carry many cameras, and easy swapping of tapes. Deadliest Catch…well, they could shoot something else, like XDCAM to disk. But again, circumstances dictate the shooting format. Small boat, tossing and turning. Not much room, need to go into tight spaces.

But on the show I am on, this format makes ZERO sense. Controlled environment, shooting recreations and interviews. For that we should be shooting a better format. HDV should be an option, I can see. But one used sparingly…and only when the circumstances dictate.

I think the bottom line at this point is that standards are dictated by what a given company can make money off of at a given time, i.e, there aren’t really standards. And the viewing public seems strangely unconcerned about it, especially given that the equipment they are viewing shows on are advancing in quality.

Curious as to your take, Shane, on the HPX300 with the CMOS sensor. 20 bit processor to help correct for the sensor artifacts?

Craig, when it comes to cameras and all the technology buried in them, I am not the guy to ask. I left doing camera work a while ago…15 years. I know a little bit, but not enough to really say anything. I like the 300, other than the CMOS chips and rolling shutter…that all CMOS chips have. I am not a fan of CMOS.

Horses for courses, IMO. If you know the limits of HDV, or any format for that matter, and shoot w/in them you won’t be pulling your hair out down the road. Will it be the best looking stuff on Earth? No, but you can get good results w/hdv, IMO.

As Shane mentioned there are compelling reasons why some shows have gone w/HDV. It might not be their first choice in terms of image quality but other budgetary and/or logistical factors have to be considered as well.

From what I’ve heard most of the cameras on DEADLIEST CATCH don’t come back alive so it makes since that Discovery doesn’t want to throw away tons of money on cameras that most likely won’t last a season, and some ‘storming the beach’ shots from FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS were shot w/HDV cameras. They originally wanted to use the HVX200 but the recording times were too short at the time.

-Andrew

Long-GOP means there are frames which do not contain all pixel information, they just contains differences calculated from I-frames.

Change the pixel information fast enough and you break every Long-GOP compression.

Shane: I had doubts about color correcting HDV material too, but I noticed -and wiser editors will tell- that especially secondaries are best keyed using only the luma information in HDV. That gets rid of the chroma blockiness. Especially skies are very "blocky" in HDV chroma, luma information has all the sharpness needed to pull a key.

Most of the time color correcting HDV was no different to SD video in my experience, except when using FCP's desaturate black controls: One should put them BEFORE any primary correction, not after everything like you usually would. Otherwise you'll end up with horrible block artifacts on darker colored parts that you try to mute. Using desat. black before 3-way gives sharp and smooth blacks, oddly.

I think the reason why broadcasters and producers are using HDV, is the fact that most television market is still SD, and you can get away with pretty rough motion compression and artifacts when the material is downscaled to regular NTSC & PAL size eventually.