HV20 vs HG10 - Video quality?
 

So which of these stores the video in a higher quality format? And does the HG10 do 24p?

Chris
http://dewde.com/videos

yes it does 24p. Still unclear how the pull down is addressed though. I know this one goes at a higher Mbps than other AVCHD cameras, but I still can't get a clear answer on whether its "better" than mpeg-2. From what I read, I tend to believe it is better, or will be better soon.

I'm gonna wait a couple years and let all the problems get ironed out before I go to AVCHD.

I don't think you'd be able to see a visual "quality" difference between HDV and AVCHD with all other aspects of the camcorder pretty much the same (as they are between the HV20 and HG10). It's more a question of how established the HDV format is, and the relative ease with which you can edit, as opposed to how new the AVCHD format is and the level of NLE support it still needs to get.

So no, it's not a "quality" issue so much as it is a workflow issue.

Yikes. When I first read that Canon announced an HD *and* HDD camcorder I was thinking "CRAP!" because I just purchased the HV20 a month ago and I prefer a HDD over MiniDV.

But to hear that AVCHD is presently a more complicated workflow than HDV puts my mind at ease. I'm just now getting my sea legs with HDV and I'd hate to start over.

Also, it doesn't look like the HG10 has a focus wheel.

also, take into account that if you wanted to back up all that HDD footage, you would need a big external drive, or tons of DVDs. I'd prefer just archiving them on DV tapes that I don't tape over. that's a factor to me. I'll wait for the HV40 or 50, haha.

I was trying to find all the stuff I read when first trying to determine if I wanted to go with the HV20 or one of the AVCHD cameras. But from what I read online, AVCHD as it currently is implemented was actually a slightly more inferior video quality format. Perhaps others have read differently - but I could have swore there were some articles about this showing still capture examples on some websites. I just can't find those websites at this moment. I say "as it's currently implemented" because one article I read said that the codecs used for AVCHD could always be tweaked and improved for better quality. But there were some other technical issues at work as well, but I'm drawing a blank here.

Well, a good test for that will be to directly compare the HV20 against the HG10 (when it becomes available), since they share the same optics, the same sensor and the same processor. You'd have an ideal "all other factors equal" baseline with which to pit AVCHD against HDV.

That's not so much of an issue for me. Tapes are nice as a pre-archive... don't get me wrong. But I have a 1 TB MyBook set to Raid 1 (mirror). And I plan to just keep adding more of those as I need the archive storage.

Excellent point, Chris! I can't wait to see the results.

I agree, storage isn't an issue really with hard drives getting cheaper and cheaper... not to mention burning to a disc. I also don't want to save every single thing I film.

I hate to wait until October to see some comparisons between this and the HV20 though :( !

I suppose if I saw a short film made with AVCHD that was good enough for film festivals (or HD displays) I'd be totally sold. There's just not enough examples online of footage that's been through highly skilled hands, because pros just spend more money on higher end cameras. I understand that it'd take a lot of post production to doctor AVCHD's image, but if it can be done it seems like the easiest workflow to stay completely digital. With the new era of internet filmmakers and shows like On the Lot, I hope that the consumer HD cameras get the attention they deserve for the budget filmmaker.

I have a about a terabyte of space over three or four drives right now, all with different projects on them, and space is getting pretty low.... With an hour running a about 13 gig in HDV, and things like the Cineform intermediate over 30 gigs an hour to do decent editing, your 1 terabyte will disappear very fast if you are doing any kind of volume at all.

Well it compresses at 15Mbps instead of 25MBps so in theory you could see inferior image in fast moving scenes (i.e. waterfall). 15Mbits though is not bad and at least better than the 12Mbps in some previous models.

I do see one potential huge improvement though and that is sound quality. In theory you shouldn't hear that tape motor... Unless it's a noisy HDD....
I do wonder why Canon (neither does Sony) doesn't offer also recordings to flash drive. I noticed the HV20 is very quiet if you remove the tape...

In my case it was an easy decision as I still needed to convert my old DVD mini-dv tapes.

Thats exactly what i was thinking. With the cineform codecs, i could fill up a terabyte drive every couple months. i guess it comes down to the volume of material you shoot.

Not necessarily -- you're comparing apples to oranges. H.264 is purportedly a more efficient codec than MPEG-2.

The higher data rate might have been intended to accommodate the HG10's greater horizontal resolution (1,920 vs 1,440).

It should be clearly understood that a simple examination of just the bit rate itself, i.e. 25mbps vs. 15mbps, is not a valid comparison. Far too many people seem to think that bit rate equals image quality, and that a higher bit rate is somehow "better." It is not. As Lawrence points out above, quality is determined by the efficiency of the codec, and it's entirely possible for a lower bit rate of one codec to produce a better image than the higher bit rate of another codec.

Lawrence said it best: H.264 is purportedly a more efficient codec than MPEG-2. And yes, AVCHD to HDV is very much an apples-to-oranges comparison.