HDV vs. HD

[Laurence Kingston]

Originally Posted by Steve Crisdale

I hate to pour cold water on their parades, but for the majority of people, HD stuff from these HD/HDV camcorders is gonna be watched on (at best) HDTV screens of 50" and less.

Yes that's true, and that is why I'm so thrilled with my HVR-A1. It looks just incredible on even the biggest home TVs, and yet cost me less than $3000! Yeah, I could get a better picture if I rented a varicam, but I'd be scared to do the things I do with my A1 like shooting from ultralights, powerboats and rollerblades! With an H1 mounted in a Fig Rig with a decent shotgun mic clamped onto the circle, you can get quality like this for under two grand! The high end HD cameras are fine and at a certain level of production you need this kind of tool, but for the regular TV set projection that most of us watch anyway, you can get most of the way there for a whole lot less!

[Craig Weinstein]

There is also the 4:4:4 Uncompressed Andromeda mod for the older DVX100, whenever Reel Stream is ready to start taking orders.

[Mark Donnell]

Reading through this thread has been interesting, but I have a question relating to David Newman's post (page one, sixth post). I was unaware the the resolution is different for 720 HDV and 720 DVCPRO HD. He quoted it as 960x720 for the HVX-200 using DVCPRO HD, versus 1280x720 for HDV. Can someone expand upon this and its significance ?

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Mark Donnell

I was unaware the the resolution is different for 720 HDV and 720 DVCPRO HD. He quoted it as 960x720 for the HVX-200 using DVCPRO HD, versus 1280x720 for HDV. Can someone expand upon this and its significance ?

Yes, DVCProHD uses non-square pixels to record and output a 16x9 image using 960x720 pixels for 720p and 1280x1080 pixels for 1080i/p. This means the pixels are "squished" horizontally for recording and then "stretched" to yield the proper display ratio at output, so the image ends up looking normal when it's displayed. This is similar to what happens if you use a widescreen project setting for an SD DVD, which has 720x480 pixels regardless of whether it's widescreen or not.

The point of doing this is to reduce the number of data points being recorded to help squeeze an HD image into the amount of available recording bandwidth, which is just a small fraction of full uncompressed HD. HDV uses compression between frames to cut the data rate still further, but in the process manages to reduce the need for the sort of horizontal compression used by DVCProHD. One consequence of this is that DVCProHD has a lower theoretical maximum horizontal resolution compared to HDV, which helps explain why the HVX200 is reportedly yielding less measured resolution in camera comparisons than the Canon XLH1. But there are a variety of complicating factors in all of this, so it's not a simple matter of counting pixels to determine resolution.

[Matt Duke]

Its been awhile since this thread was posted to...

How does XDCAM compare to HDV? ie: Between the Sony EX1 (XDCAM HD) and the Z7 (HDV)?

Is there much difference, especially when using it for consumers Hi-Def TVs?

Could either be used for film?

[David Beisner]

Just wanted to add some links to this sticky--been researching HDV vs. DVCProHD the last few days and figure other folks could benefit from these articles I've been reading.

These two articles compare four prosumer cameras (two HDV, one DVCProHD, and one DVCAM) against each other and the more expensive CineAlta and Varicam cameras.
http://www.adamwilt.com/HD/4cams-part1.html
http://www.adamwilt.com/HD/4cams-part2.html

This article deals specifically with pixel shifting technology but has some good tables comparing the various different video formats.
http://www.martin-doppelbauer.de/video/indexEN.htm

This article is specifically related to DVCProHD and the HVX200A
http://www.dv.com/columns/columns_it...leId=193001363