HV 30 for B roll, run and gun, and formats
 

Greetings,

We are using an HV 30 for run and gun with a doc we are shooting. The primary cameras are JVC HD GY-200u's. I have not yet used the HV 30 and have a few questions so I can look like I know what I'm about next week when I start with it.

We shoot 720p60 with the JVC's as it looks great with motion and can convert easily to 24 p. I know the HV 30 shoots 24p (or something like it) but does it shoot 720p60? If it only shoots 1080, what format do you recommend for capturing motion and converting later?

Also, I understand that with white balance tweaking, the HV 30 can look amazing. Can I do a custom white balance with WB cards, or is it all presets?

Thank you for any input you can give.

Hi Jason

I have a HV30 and yes you can manually white balance and there are some image controls as well. Also recommend shooting in Cine mode as the camera tries to use the least amount of Gain to expose the image and also you get a cine like gamma curve so in editing you have more range to play with as you'll see more variance in the mid-tones and flattened shadows.

It only does SD or HD @ 1080i/p so I would recommend that you capture at the resolution and then down convert on your export to 720p. Because of the F rather P format you may have issues capturing it as some NLE's don't recognise that its progressive but it all depends which one you are using.

The NTSC version also has 30p option (I am PAL so only 25p)

What Peter says is true.
The HV30 can only record in 1080i /p format.

Cheers

Thank you for the advice. So it will shoot in 1080/60i? I wonder how that looks converted to 24?

We apparently bought three of these cameras. Apparently for a one chip small camera, they are AMAZING, so I'm looking forward to trying it out. Are there any funny things about them that I should be careful of? I will have roughly 10 or 15 minutes to play with it before I'm on a ride along filming.

Hi Jason,

First the good news: You are correct that the HV30 produces very beautiful images; as others have stated, shoot in cinemode (to reduce gain) and give you room to tweak later in post. It isn't too bad either in certain low light situations (I've shot just after sunset with street lights as ambient lighting).

The bad news: The HV30 is very limited in manual controls. If you know about, or read about trying to control exposure, then you know that it can be a bit, um, tricky, to say the least (especially if you're not familiar with the cam).

Also, you might want to buy (it's not necessary, but will make your life very, very easy :) mini SD cards for your HV30s. As per the tutorial, the mini SD cards will let you know what shutter speed and aperture you're currently shooting. (You might want to pick up a few extra batteries; as the batt that comes with the cam doesn't last that long.)

Even after a few months (albeit with limited shooting experience; we mainly shoot with the XL2), I've still yet to lock down aperture, while adjusting shutter speed, or vice versa.

Best,

An easy way to lock shutter speed then set the iris:

Choose Tv mode then lock a shutter speed (cine mode I believe is still automatic shutter speed). To set the iris, use the joystick to find "EXP" (exposure). Push up to switch it to manual mode and you have a window of control for the Iris most of the time between +11 and -11 (not the full range though). This adjusts the iris. I recommend turning on zebra peaking to gauge how much of the picture is peaking and adjust accordingly. Exposure is always never saved after power down (unlike Sony cameras that save it for a max of 12 hours after shutdown) so you will have to restart and set the exposure again if you turn it off then on. In bright places, the camera might choose a higher shutter speed such as going from 60 after turning it off to 100 after turning it on again. just set it back to 60 in case this happens.

This camera shoots 24p. Everyone gets involved in arguments as to whether it is true 24p. It is 24p in a 1080 60i wrapper. You can readily convert in to editable 24p using Cineform's NeoHDV. It does a fantastic job. You can try it out by down loading Cineform's trial. In Cineforms HDLink, you can also capture and down rez to 720 24p.

Thank you very much for the information you have given me. What kind of luck have you had converting 1080i to 24p?