4 camera shoot-out
 

You all might want to check-out a super thread on all the new HD camcorders at:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=43409

The posts that are most relevant are the first several and the latter posts where Barry votes for his personal choice. Given that "dvxuser" is all about Panasonic products you won't have to read his post to know which he likes best.

But, what's important are his reasons. I agree with these two:

1) He likes the fact you can enable AF when needed. I completely agree with him this. When shooting in the bight sun of India a few weeks ago -- a momentary touch of the AF button on a first gen. JVC -- certainly was better than trying to see an image while you were nearly blind from the light.

2) He is very taken with all the formats and frame-rates offered by the Panasonic. I agree that being able to shoot at 1080i -- even though the rez. isn't really anything like what the Canon offers -- having a 1080i option is great for most of who can only afford one camcorder.


In fact, his comments all seem well considered except:

1) He claims you can't capture "reality" with the HD100 -- without stating why he makes this astounding claim. I assume he believes 720p30 has too low a temporal frame-rate. Now while I agree that 720p60 is the best -- 720p30 with the Motion Filter comes close in that it eliminates the strobe look of the old 30p. Moreover, I find that an increase in saturation gets one reasonably close to the Moster Gargage look -- which is actually 1080i. But, I'll be very happy when JVC pops in a 60p encoder.

2) He is very troubled by CA and SSE. Yet, neither seem to be big deals to those who are shooting with the HD100. Likewise, he is convinced MPEG audio is unuseable for anything but dialog. Dah! Isn't that usually what is recorded on a camcorder?

3) He likes P2. If you read the posts a bit further along you'll see that on this issue he gets the most flack. One person calculates that he would need to buy $75,000 in P2 media for a $6,000 camcorder. While that is a bit extream, the fact is that while Panasonic joyfully points-out it is time for the world to have a new workflow -- IMHO the P2 workflow is not it. XDCAM comes far closer to what we MAY need which is why Sony is selling XDCAM at rates that far exceed P2. We'll get the numbers at NAB.

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What's important to note is that the reported tests were NOT based upon playback of recorded video. This, of course, is where some expect the Panasonic to shine because it doesn't use HDV. And, here's where everyone needs to be very careful. The majority of those using HDV are shooting 1080i given the sheer volume of Sony camcorders sold. What these folks see and report can no more be compared to 720p HDV than DVCPRO25 and be compared to DVCPRO50. Same name, but very different quality levels.

And, of course, the same BS about HDV drop-outs are brought-out to show why P2 is better.

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My take on this test was that the first part should have been a detailed cost analysis of shooting P2 today! By cost I not only mean $$$ but the time to archieve P2 media. I love the post that says he'll just copy a 4GB card to a DVD-R. Like I'm going to do this on location in India?

Moreover, Panasonic's solution is it's thousands of dollar 60GB disk drive at a time when an iPod has 60GB for $400. If Panasonic were serious it would -- at this price -- use a pair 300GB drives in a RAID 1 (mirrored) config. Now one could really archieve a whole day in the field.

ONLY after a favorable cost analysis of using P2 should the HVX200 be considered. I'm convinced once you do such an anaysis, any P2 camcorder will be rejected by the majority of folks.

Once media cost is factored in, those REAL advantages of the HVX200, simply get swamped by total cost and we are back to choosing between the three HDV camcorders.

Now it gets much harder to choose a "best." Berry's comments on the Canon lens CONTROL system -- if true -- rule it out for me. Plus, I still can't see why it should cost so much, be from Canon, and possibly have it's weakest feature be its lens. That's bizarre! And, a repeat of the XL1 lens fiasco. And, that's not evenconsidering its horrible ergonomics.

That leaves Sony and JVC. To me that choice is dictated by HOW you shoot. Note, I didn't say for WHAT. While it's obvious that 24p is far "better" for going to film -- there has been a decade of 60i HD being converted to 24fps film -- so if you need to shoot "fast and furious" there is no reason the Z1 shouldn't be used.

If your logic matches mine -- then you'll be most interested in the comments on the JVC and Sony camcorders. And, you'll need to wait for the playback tests report to see how the two flavors of HDV perform.

I am honestly most interested in the Z1/FX1 and HD100 so those parts of the test will be the most interesting.

So some reason I burst out laughing when I read "Berry" lol. Such a small typo but I just can't stop laughing...

[1) agreed

"2) He is very troubled by CA and SSE. Yet, neither seem to be big deals to those who are shooting with the HD100. "
Sure its a concern to me too, but these don't come anywhere near the difficulties and costs that P2 introduces to shooting with the HVX. Both are show stoppers for my needs, but JVC have a much better chance of improving the HD100 with a better stock lens and an improved processing design to eliminate SSE in a future model than Panasonic have for dropping P2 price and increasing capacity to be able to record an hour of HD anywhere near fast enough to be practical.

"he is convinced MPEG audio is unuseable for anything but dialog. Dah! Isn't that usually what is recorded on a camcorder?"
Has he actually tried it??? MPEG audio at 384KBps is not very compressed as far as audio compression goes. I wish someone with decent audio skills could do a true comparison of HDVs audio vs uncompressed.

"3)... IMHO the P2 workflow is not it. XDCAM comes far closer to what we MAY need which is why Sony is selling XDCAM at rates that far exceed P2. We'll get the numbers at NAB."

I love the concept of P2 but the cost simply kills it (maybe in 5 years it will be practical, maybe), next best to me is XDCAM, shame there is no HD XDCAM version of the Z1 etc One of our rental agents said Sony indicated to them XDCAM (and HD XDCAM) are only a short term format and won't last. I find that very hard to believe. Have you heard anything to support either side of the discussion?

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Would you believe this attitude. The same guys in this rental agency (one of Australia's biggest) arn't getting any HD100s because:

1: They want to avoid tape transports due to the maintainence costs:
Yet: They happily rent Z1's, and will have to spend a large fortune outfitting HVX rental kits with P2 memory.

2: They have heard many HD100 owners have too much trouble ingesting HDV into their suites. Lets blame the camera for the user's stupidity! So what do they all do according to them? They all have to go out via analogue component to SDI and capture via SDI....

3: According to them, if you want a film look, you use a F900 and post process...

Then consider how many NLEs support DVCPro HD compared to HDV.

I can't see their HVX's renting very much, it is too much of a niche camera, and those in that nieche might as well buy one. It might impact the rentals of their Varicams though...

What Steve is saying all makes sense. I'll just add two small points:

1. The lens and its AF functions; if the camera uses a broadcast of film style lens, it's common that they don't usually offer AF. Most shooters are used to that and don't even think about it. The reason why it is a topic for a discussion comes out of the fact that there are many new users that are coming from the world of DV cameras such as the VX2000, DSR150 and DVX100 and in many cases it's their first encounter with this kind of a lens. The work around seeing the focus in a situation like the one Steve described (bright light) is to use the markings on the lens and measure/guess the distance. Of course, the usual practice is to 'zoom-in for focus'.

2. The P2 workflow; we keep hearing that this is a paradigm shift, we shoot, dump to hard drive, empty the card and shoot again. "The P2 card is like a film mag." Well, not really. With film, you always have the film that you can go back to. Some argue that the cost of hard drives is so low that we can just keep dumping material on them and keep buying more. Well, no. Not in the real production world. The cost of tapes (or disks - XDCAM) is marginal in the perspective of the whole production. We practically never re-record over acqusition tapes. Why? Because the higher risk of dropouts, but more importantly, we could go back to the footage in the future if needed. Yes, formats change and in 10 or 20 years we may have a hard time finding a DV/HDV or whatever else player. Maybe. But not really. If there is footage that's needed and it sits on a 2" Ampex, there are still places today that can tranfer it to our current production format. Had that footage been stored on a hard drive (those 20 years ago), where would it be today? Hard drives are simply not stable enough to be used as a long term archival storage medium. Tapes and XDCAM disks are. (And for the purists out there, film is even better...:-)

I should add, once the cost of P2 goes WAY down and capacity WAY up, solid state media may and probably will become an option for archiving acquisition footage but not in its current version.

I think that is not the primary reason. The fact is that the LCD and VF on almost all HD cameras simply do not enable one to SEE focus. Bright light only compunds this situation. So zooming-in doesn't work.

When one could actually SEE focus become correct, it was fast because the eye fed information directly to your fingers -- if you were practiced. It was like driving.

The various focus assist systems simply present you with INFORMATION that the brain must comprehend. The reality is that servo focus systems are so fast that by the time you even comprehend the information in your brain -- the servo would have achieved focus.

AF doesn't mean point-and-shoot. You still have to point the center of the lens at the subject, press FOCUS, wait a second, and then reframe. Just like a modern AF SLR. I'm certainly not advocating leaving AF on as a VX2100 user might.

Given the hyper critical focus needed for HD I'm not sure I would trust a guess at the distance.

The point is that the super high rez. CCDs give the AF computer such accurate information it is pointless to not use them. Which is why the Z1/FX1 works so well for me in the field.

GUY -- "One of our rental agents said Sony indicated to them XDCAM (and HD XDCAM) are only a short term format and won't last. I find that very hard to believe. Have you heard anything to support either side of the discussion?"

Sony has told me three things:

1) They will move entirely to MPEG as they see 70Mbps VBR MPEG-2 as more than equal to HDCAM. (HDCAM SR is already MPEG-4.) This will come with double-density XDCAM discs -- 2006-2007.

2) WHEN solid-state becomes cost effective -- they will use their Memory Stick technology. In short, the moment P2 becomes poised to become popular -- they'll just add MS to their line-up. In the mean time, they'll let Panasonic spend the money on marketing solid-state and lose camcorder market share to XDCAM and HDV. Then when there are real profits to be made -- they'll simply swoop in and take the money.

But such a move is years away because it requires solid state memory to drop to an hour of HD for about $25 as then it will become self-archieving like tape and XDCAM.

Of course, were Sony to switch to MPEG-4 (AVC/H.264) the 70Mbps could drop to about 25MBps. Hmmm! That would mean one would need a 16MB Memory Stick for $25. When might we see that?

And the 30Mbps XDCAM HD would require only an 8MB stick.

And, yes -- someone should test MP2 audio before making claims. Are you really going to record a symphony orchestra on your camcorder?

Hi Steve! First, late thanks for all your useful information over the years.

Not to be a pain, but I really don't follow your math here... I assume you mean "GB" for the memory sticks... but why would 30Mbps require half the storage of 25Mbps?

Actually, I've done it, in a pinch. A concert tour of Mexico where power and setup time sometimes turned out to be a problem... nice to have the option in a pinch; with some good external preamps and a DVX100, it came out pretty nice!

-Barry

Thanks for pointing out the thread, I hope people can benefit from some observations; Nate Weaver and Jay Nemeth have also posted some perceptions, and Adam Wilt is writing up an article about the event for DV.com and DV Magazine.

But I think my words may not have been accurately portrayed in your quotes though, so let me please clarify:
But that's not what I said. What I said was that it can't make the "reality" look -- meaning, it can't deliver the "video" look in HD. 30P doesn't deliver the fluid motion look that people have come to expect when watching sports and news and things like that. And I disagree about motion smoothing, I think "motion smoothing" is a bad gimmick that doesn't deliver the look of 60P.

Obviously you can shoot live events at 30P, nobody's saying you can't. But 30P can't deliver the "video" look people expect, and that's an issue. MTV was roundly criticized for airing their Video Music Awards in 24P; it just looked "wrong." The audience expects 60i for that, or 60p.

Agreed on that! It's been my #1 concern about the camera since it was announced, and hopefully they'll have it soon.

I do not like the lens, and I do not trust the SSE. Those are both true. I had one, and I did not like those at all. The newer HD100s do seem better though. SSE does still happen, but not as much.

Those are your words, not mine. Did I ever say it was "unuseable"? I said uncompressed beats the daylights out of compressed, yes -- and I really doubt anyone would disagree with that, would they? But to say that I said it's "unuseable" is not a fair representation at all. I think it's basically acceptable, but not more than that. And I don't really understand why it has to be compressed 4:1 anyway -- it's not like audio takes up a whole lot of bandwidth, especially on the JVC where they almost implemented true uncompressed PCM.
Remember, this was the OPINION part of the discussion... Heck yes I like P2, I think it's fantastic. And I can point you to probably half a dozen different reviews where each person got their HVX and included a statement basically like this line: "one thing's for certain, I never want to see a tape again." Tapeless is absolutely better, and it's addictive. There's a lot to like about P2, just like there's a lot to like about the FireStore and the XDCAM system. I think as more people try it and see what it brings to the table, we'll have a lot less knee-jerk reactions like "he would need to buy $75,000 in P2 media for a $6,000 camcorder." I mean, that has no bearing in reality at all; that's like saying you'd have to buy 10 different cars to drive across the country because each car can only travel 300 miles before it's out of gas.

Agreed entirely. Lots of folks out there will say "1080i is better than 720p -- 1080 is a bigger number than 720." Well, the side-by-side showed that the 720-only JVC more than held its own against the 1080i-only Sony, and compared competitively, resolution-wise, against the 1080p HVX and 1080/24F Canon. You simply cannot judge just by the numbers.

It *is* better. Surely you wouldn't argue against the idea that dropouts are a bad thing, and avoiding dropouts is a good thing, right? You don't have to agree, but those of us hit with dropouts and who now will never see a dropout again are certainly entitled to be happy about that, aren't we? No more rewinding, no more fast forwarding, no more end-searching, no more accidentally taping over stuff, no more capturing, no more "dropped frames" on capture, and no dropouts. Those are all reasons that tapeless is better. May not suit your particular workflow needs better, but it does handle all those issues better.

How much of the average shooter's shooting gets done in India? Is there some epidemic of backpacking-across-Malaysia documentaries going on that I didn't know about? :) That's a very fringe niche. And for that niche, I wouldn't recommend P2 yet (someday when there's 128gb cards maybe, but not now).

Someone put up a thread asking about how to make the existing HVX/P2 workflow work for them in the outskirts of Africa, and I told 'em: wrong tool for the job right now. The HVX is a great choice for studio shoots or commercials or indie films or basically any project that could have been shot on film before. If you could have made it work with film, you can make it work with P2. But for the inconveniences that one would put up with in lesser-developed countries, there may be better choices for that job. It's easier to haul around a box of tapes than it is to find a power outlet in the Sahara. But a lot of us don't shoot there, and P2 works just fine for us here.

Panasonic may or may not do it, but others will. I really don't understand the pricing on the P2 Store either. $1800? At $400 I think it'd be a dynamite tool, but $1800 makes no sense. The CinePorter will have 240GB in RAID configurations though.

Well, they're true in that they are my subjective opinion, and I can point you to others who agree. Of course, others will disagree too! But I have no patience for vague lens controls. I found the Canon extraordinarily difficult to focus or zoom with precision. Framing up the res chart on the Canon was an exercise in sheer frustration. Others will disagree, as is their right, but I had no patience for it.

The lens choices on the Canon XL series have always been "bizarre" to me -- it's like no lens does everything you need. You can have a 14x manual lens with real iris control, but no ND filters built in(!) and no power zoom! Then they improve on that by the 16x lens, with power zoom and ND filters -- but they take away the manual iris ring! Why? And no AF or OIS on either, so you have to get the 16x auto (or 20x auto) for that but now you've got the irritating servo controls... Drives me batty. But, I guess it helps 'em sell lenses.

Some people are complaining about the glass on the XLH1, but I'm not one of 'em, I thought Canon did an extraordinary job with the glass from what little time I've spent with it. Yes it has some CA/fringing, but usually only at the long end of the zoom, and it has a long, long, long zoom! The fact that it's as clean as it is at those telephoto ranges is impressive. But I haven't tested it in a variety of circumstances either.

I'll say this about the JVC: if they had just spent a little more to make a better lens for that darn thing (and there was no HVX around with its tapeless recording and variable frame rates and all that) -- I'd be really tempted to buy another HD100. I do not like HDV, but if I had to choose an HDV camera, the JVC may be the best of the HDV offerings. I don't like SSE, but it can be worked around in many situations. The sharpness was surprisingly competitive against the 1080 alternatives, the filmlike feel is there, the codec is quite robust, and now with the free IDX battery promotion, it makes a very good case for itself. If they'd just spent another thousand dollars on the lens and fixed its issues... a $6,000 HD100 with IDX batteries and no breathing and less CA... that would be a mighty competitive package. Using this HD100 again reminded me of why I bought one in the first place.

If someone needs a tape-based solution, then the HVX isn't for them. The HVX is a phenomenal tool, and it's easily my favorite for all the reasons I listed, but not for everyone's circumstances, and if a job simply NEEDS tape, then you may do better to look elsewhere. The little JVC really acquitted itself well though. And with the free battery deal, that goes a long way towards rectifying one of its deficiencies (the stock batteries just aren't a practical, workable solution). I'd say if you don't need the "video" look or autofocus or OIS, and you HAVE to have tape, and you don't have money to burn, the JVC is the pick of the three. The Canon is a very nice camera indeed, but if you don't need HD-SDI or TC IN/OUT or 60i, why spend double for it? But if you NEED those things, you wouldn't be considering the JVC anyway, right?

"But that's not what I said. What I said was that it can't make the "reality" look -- meaning, it can't deliver the "video" look in HD."

That was exactly MY meaning since it would have been bizzare for me to have meant you claimed the HD100 could only shoot "non-reality." Of course, you meant the "realistic look of video." I really doubt anyone could have read my rendition of your words any differently.

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Those are your words, not mine. Did I ever say it was "unuseable"? I said uncompressed beats the daylights out of compressed, yes -- and I really doubt anyone would disagree with that, would they?

Barry, if all you meant was A is better than B but A is fully useable -- then why even list it as a reason not to use the camcorder that uses A. My sense was you meant A is so much worse than B, that you would only want to "use" a camcorder that uses B. It was given as a reason for you choosing the HVX200.

But, now that you have clarified your words -- the issue still remains why choose something because a feature is "better" when the fact of its being better makes no significant difference?

But the real issue is that no amount of "better" can overcome the cost and hassle of using P2. There was nothing wrong with DVCPRO HD to tape. I loved the entire Panasonic series of DVCPRO HD! Or, maybe I should say there was nothing so wrong as to justify the cost of P2 media to hold a full day shooting because I sure would not erase my media in the field.

BOTH Panasonic and Sony are pushing expensive new technology to solve a problem their marketing departments are busy telling us we have. And, the reason is to lock us in to buying media that only they make. Tape is not a problem for the us -- it is a problem for them because it is a commodity they can't make a huge profit on.

I agree that adding a hard-drive solves my problems with P2. But once you even think of going down this path you've got to get very pissed at Panasonic for not using hard-drives rather than P2. P2 could have been the extra-cost option for certain jobs. I do not want to Velcro a drive to my camcorder. It should be removable drive. Price-out how many 160GB drives you could buy for the cost of one P2 card!

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The lens choices on the Canon XL series have always been "bizarre" to me -- it's like no lens does everything you need. You can have a 14x manual lens with real iris control, but no ND filters built in(!) and no power zoom! Then they improve on that by the 16x lens, with power zoom and ND filters -- but they take away the manual iris ring! Why? And no AF or OIS on either, so you have to get the 16x auto (or 20x auto) for that but now you've got the irritating servo controls... Drives me batty. But, I guess it helps 'em sell lenses.


From Day 1 of the XLR series I too could never understand Canon's logic. I suspect they OEM them from smaller companies. None of these companies has all the technology do an ideal lens. So each builds what it can and Canon markets them as "choices." Almost no Japanese product is made by the company themselves. They work somewhat like a cross between Dell and Apple. Sometimes they do the R&D and put the design out for manufacturing (Apple). Sometimes they simply choose products brought to them (Dell). Whoever builds the product, boxes it with the appropriate label.

Anyway -- the really important thing is that you guys put in the hard work to do the tests. Thank you!

I screwed up my words!!!

If 70Mbps mpeg-2 was replaced by 30Mbps mpeg-4, we would be at a rate somewhat greater than DV that requires about 13Gbytes per hour. Thus 16GB of RAM.

If 35Mbps mpeg-2 (XDCAM HD) was replaced by 15Mbps mpeg-4, we would only need 8GB of RAM.

How much was a 1GB CF card 5 years ago?

We are just starting to see 16GB CF cards now at extraordinary prices (so high you don't even see them advertised after the press releases...).

How much do you think they will be in 5 years?

I don't mind my Flash media costing 10x more per hour than tape as long as I can afford to shoot for a day and not erase until I am able to safely ensure I have a few backups in the office, then I can erase it for the next day.

100Mbps= 1024Kbps = 86x CF speed rating (1x = 150KBps)

80x CF cards are standard now, with 100 and 120x entering the market, so CF card throughput shouldn't be a problem.

It may not be CF, but CF has the advantage of size, it doesn't try to be so dam tiny like MemoryStick and SD etc What you can do with these smaller formats you will always be able to do bigger with CF...

Long live CF ;-)

PS: I do prefer Flash over HDD, no moving parts means less chance of failures.

Absolutely, one of the main problems is that there a LOT of physical steps. The DTE solution takes quite a bit of the "work" out of P2. The rationale that P2 is like a film mag's workflow has some truth but who wouldn't want a longer run time on a film mag and to not have to change it as often?

I wish the P2 early adopters all the best, but no-one in the circles I run in can afford P2 (not the cards per se but the overall workflow). It cost $$$$$ to setup a decent P2 workflow. There has been alot of hype and rationalization about P2. I attempted to open some eyes last year over on DVXuser.com by posting the P2 workflow as Panasonic publishes it and how they've designed it. The indie crowd may get away with cutting corners (not many) but production houses can not. They'll need the full P2 workflow to do day in/day out production, and it cost!

On to the JVC. The ProHD solution is very cost effective particularly if your group has an NLE that can handle HDV. Basically the purchase of the camera will get anyone up and running in HD. It mimics the DV25 workflow but at HD resolution.

have fun guys and gals.

I saw some sample footage from the HD100U that JVC was showing at the WEVA Expo last year, and it looked "stuttery" to me in several scenes. This non-natural motion effect of 30p video is very distracting to me, so I'd investigate that carefully if I was considering buying this camera.

Regarding P2 memory costs and workflow issues, it's obvious that anyone buying the HVX200 is going to have to use a DTE recorder if they plan to shoot more than a few minutes of video at a time -- and even the DTE recorders aren't cheap. I've estimated it will be at least five years before P2 memory drops in price and increases in capacity enough to be useful for long-form videography, but hopefully everyone understands that by now.

It's interesting that each of the low-cost HD cameras is so significantly different from the others, and that makes it fairly easy to make a choice between them based on budget, ergonomics, workflow, etc.

We had a HVX200 on order. We cancelled this week.

We now have two Sony Z1Us. The reason is simple: the P2 workflow is great as a technology.

However, we didn't perceive a clear, unencumbered way to deliver the footage with that workflow.

In other words, how is that footage delivered once is was edited was our primary question.

And apart from clear workarounds needed when acquiring anything more than 15 minutes in the field, we felt we's let the market shake out the problems while we made money.

Steve,

Looking for cheap flash memory! About the year 2000, I bought a 64MB card for about $200. I recently bought a 1GB card for $50. If that trend holds, you'll have your 16GB (I guess that's what you meant - not MB) for $12.50 by about 2010-2012.

People keep saying that uncompressed is better! Give me an infinite resolution and framerate source. Then give me your objective data rate for transmission or storage, and compressed will beat uncompressed every time.

The problem with such a report is that we have no idea if the shooter had turned-on the Motion Filter when shooting. Since you found the stutter very visible -- I'm VERY sure it was NOT turned ON.

Unless shooting 24fps -- it should be ON.