Here's a sample GR-HD1 clip in WMV-HD
 

Clip was encoded to WMV-HD 1280 x 720p, 2 pass VBR, 6492 kbs.

The file size is 5mb. You can download it HERE

"Right Click" on the above link, then "Save Target as..." to download the file to your computer.

Tom,
Why is the footage choppy? Was this a result of compression or the HD1's 30p? I ask because Im unsure as how this cam would perform when shooting surfing. Your advice will be greatly appreciated.

Jimmy

That's just what 30 fps is when there's hardly any motion blur.

Edit:
Although 30fps can seem choppy, that particular clip doesn't. It plays smooth and fluid for me. If it looks choppy, your PC may not be handling WMV9 well at high bit rates.

For surfing, I recommend .6 ND filter and a polarizer on bright sunny day, 1/60 sec shutter speed, shooting some of the footage in HD, and some of it in 16x9 SD, 480p60. Between the two modes, you can optimize for resolution, or frame rate for high motion.

Slowing the shutter speed introduces fluidity.

The OSX player has trouble with it fwiw. Windows Media for OSX actually really kinda sucks ;-(

It plays really good on the I-O Data LinkPlayer2. Maybe the bit-rate is too high for OSX. I'll try compressing it down further.

You are correct. The pc at work is not ready for wm9. At home Im an apple user, dual 2.5 with FCE. Im still waiting for my DV upgrade to a 3 chip like the VX2100 or canon gl2, or move to HD with the JVC. People at Camcorderinfo keep telling me to stay away from the HD1, but the stuff i keep seeing looks pretty damn good to me. Yes colors are not super staturated, but they are natural nevertheless. I find colors on the VX and Gl2 strong but artificial sometimes when over saturated. To me the HD1 has a good film look. My worry is motionj--waves and surfers all moving at the same time while panning on a high quality fluid head. Can anyone advise furthermore?

Thanks for the ND filters recommended. I write all this stuff down and will look for them once I make a decision. Often I get told wait longer for HD, but Hd is already here.

Same Clip, lower bit-rate
 

I've down-sampled the clip. It still looks very good, so I'm a bit concerned the bit rate, although it sounds low, is still too high for non-choppy playback.

If so, please let me know, and I'll reduce the bit rate even further.

As it is, the encoding is 2 pass CBR, 2942 kbs, and the file size has been reduced accordingly for faster download.

Download it HERE

"Right-Click" on the above link, then "Save As..." to download it to your PC.

Jaime "My worry is motionj--waves and surfers all moving at the same time while panning on a high quality fluid head"

The JVC HD10/1 do not have any motion capture problems due to compression if that is what you are asking. The cam doesn't care how many waves or surfers. The speed of your pan and the shutter/frame rate are what is important. On any progressive video or film, you have to adjust your pan speed to fit your settings. Pan too fast with a slow shutter and it will look choppy. Not the cams fault but the operators.

Here are two questions for you all:

First, Im aware that the camera is capable of amazing results while shooting on a good tripod. How would it perform shooting handheld with a housing while in the water near the impact zone?

Since Im an amateur with high inspirations and distribution is not really an issue for me right now, would you say that the HD1 could be a good tool for me to view some sick action at home?

I've viewed many samples of panoramic footage where nature utilized the high resolution capabilities of the cam, resulting in some awesome footage, and this is via internet, so I can't imagine uncompressed video. Another worry is how the high resolution will display the constant chop on the surface of the water.

"Another worry is how the high resolution will display the constant chop on the surface of the water."
I don't really know what your concern is exactly? Are you worried about compression artifacts or some such? If so read my post above.


As far asunderwater shooting (if that is what you are saying)would not be my favorite task with the HD10/1. The cam requires thought out setups and lighting adjustmentment. It isn't a set it and leave it beast, nor does it excell in low light. Underwater I would guess isn't always consistant or high in lighting? 30p also wouldn't be great for the "herky, jerky" movement of underwater filming. That said, if you are a competent videographer and can handle the HD10/1, then the 60p mode would be very nice due to its better low light and amazing motion capture. The 30p mode is HD and the 60p mode SD.
If you are inexperienced with cams, I would recomend one with better low light and a top notch auto mode. Of course you will be giving up 16:9, and progressive, (unless you choose the XL2) as well as HD resolution.
With everything being said I would not recommend this cam for what you want unless you really know what you are doing.

If you get it wrong, hit it again tomorrow!

Really, it just all depends on you. For what you want, its size is an advantage. The progressive frame images, 6 GOP mpeg compression structure, and fallback 16x9 480p60 mode has you covered one way or another for all high motion concerns. You have plenty of light, great scenery.

The polarizer and ND is a must.

Really, the most important addition is a better means of playing the video than hooking up the camcorder to a TV gets old fast. At least the IR remote control is there for that.

But a great addition is the I-O Data LinkPlayer2 (High-Def networked DVD player, WMV9 compatible), and TMPGEnc 3.0 Xpress to give you some basic editing, post tools, and encoding.

I'm looking forward to seeing Endless Summer III from you.

Also was watching "GET OUT" on HDNET. They were shooting an underwater shark sequence. I don't know what they used, but it sure looked like HD1/10 footage, 30fps. It would make sense to me they might not have been chancing hosing a $70,000 HDCAM. And the smaller sized means better handling.

I know that half the problem is making myself clear. Maybe what Im trying to clear is that I fear that the footage could be a little hard on the eyes if that makes any sence. I've seen scenic footage with water and woods, where some overexposed areas seem hard on the eyes. Also, I've seen the motion of a water fountain and it just looked different. Im sorry if im wasting your time, I know must of you guys are pros, but I surely appreciate all of your comments and advice.

I'm not a pro, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

But that's why you need the polarizer, to properly handle reflections off the water.

It's impossible to judge exactly what level of performance will satisfy you. You can only do so much when trying to make a $1600 camera imitate a $70,000 HDCAM.

I know that *I* would be delighted with the result, far beyond anything I would get even with a professional (but low resolution) SD cam with perfect latitude and 3 CCD, because I want it in High-Def! SD cams, no matter how perfect the exposure, lack the WOW factor.

That was funny Tom. Now coach me on this!
I'll need a polarizer, nd filter and a telephoto. Help me set this up the order they'll be attached to the camera's lens. If posible include some model recommendations. Would you worry about shooting through so much glass? That's why I hesitated so long. With the Gl2 I'll have a good zoom and nd filter, but of course no "wow" factor which really interests me. I just don't know how the whole set up will perform. Thank you.

I can't offer any help with the telephoto, except to acknowledge the unique long range challenge shooting surfing would represent.

But I will relate my knowledge to a 35mm SLR with a 400mm lens, is quite a challenge to use successfully, and that only represents an 8x magnification. The HD1/10 includes 10x optical magnification. A tripod is very important at long range (which you already acknowledged you will be using). If you are to add even more magnification, it's inherent that each additional piece of glass you put in front of the imaging sensor is incrementally going to have adverse consequences that again, only you can be the judge of. If you have to, you have to do what you have to do to get the shot, which sometimes means breaking the rules or thinking outside the box, so I'm not lecturing you.

You're going to have to experiment. For shutter speed, I would make an exception to the 1/60 second rule, and accept up to 1/125 second to try and capture some water droplets as opposed to having the wave droplets smearing at slower shutter speeds.

If you stack too many filters on, you'll get vignetting (darkening) at the corners of the image. The filters need to go on last, and the polarizer is always the last one on, because to use it, you have to rotate it so that it blocks incident light at 90 degrees. You just look through the viewfinder or LCD and rotate it until it gets darkest. You may find it helpful to lock the exposure while doing this to make the polarizing effect most obvious (because it's otherwise subtle and hard to notice through a viewfinder), and afterward unlock the exposure before shooting.

With so much glass, I'd avoid stacking ND, opting instead to choose the right value for just one, filter.

.3 = 1 f-stop
.6 = 2 f-stop
.9 = 3 f-stop

Each f-stop reduces the light admitted by 1/2, so a .9 ND is only admitting 1/8 the light, for example.

The polarizer also reduces light transmitted, so I'd carry (1) .3 ND, (1) .6 ND, using only one or the other at a time, in combination with the polarizer.

Clouds, time of day all affect which combination will be the best, but the object is to get the light filtered and polarized so that the total exposure will be around 1/125 second shutter at F-5.6-8.0.

If the aperture gets too small, (i.e. f-16-22) then diffraction will cause the image to get grainy and lose resolution, too large (i.e. f-2.0-4.0) causes a shallow depth of field. Either of those effects can sometimes be desired for special effects, or to control depth of field.

If too fast a shutter speed is used, (i.e. 1/250-1/500), the 30 fps video will lose fluidity, but can be desired again, for a special effect.

Use quality filters! Cheap glass is a mistake.

The GR-HD1/10 has very good quality aspherical glass lens by the way. It's popular to criticize this camera for it's small failings, but the fundamentals are good. And the glass is very good. Barrel distortion and pincushion is virtually non-existent. And the lens speed (f-2.0) is the same at maximum or minimum magnification. That is the hallmark of great zoom lens performance.

Tom, you just made me smarter and I thank you for it. Saving me money in knowledge is always a good thing and I always learn a lot from this forums. Your last msg will remain in my documents for review down the road. Right now I have no further question as you have answer my questions on the set up. I, however, posted a different forum under Mac editing asking about the WM9 conversion from Quicktime via a program called "Flip4mac". With the introduction of wm9 supporting DVD players, such as the Bravo D3, it has created a tool for distribution, limited, but alvailable nevertheless. PC users might have it easier.

PS. I guess I do have a question. For my objectives, sound is not important. Are there differences in optics between the HD1 and the HD10. I would prefer to save money with the HD1.

I don't know if this will help deciding if the HD1 will be good for shooting surfing or not, but I threw together some footage I had of waves/water/etc. Most of this footage was obtained from hand holding my HD10U, not tripod mounted (except for the Post Hurricane Ivan waves). I am sure much better footage can be obtained with proper setup and practice. The footage of the kite surfer was heavily color corrected (and unfortanetly not very sharp), as I accidentally had a red filter on when shooting the short clip. Anyways, for what it's worth, I hope this helps..

http://s2.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=31...V29LISHUJKW29C

I have two HD10's, and I think I have some handheld shots from Sunset and Waimea from about a week before The Eddie Aikau. They were shot without any filters as we were doing some underwater shooting that day and didn't have them with us. I will see if I can find them and post them to let you see what some crappy footage looks like. As for in the water, the Gates HD1 housing gives you full control of all of the settings so you can adjust on the fly. But the housing is about $5000 so that may be a deterrent. I will be in Hau'ula next December, and we plan on shooting some Surfing following the advise I am getting on this forum I am confident it will look awsome! That shark diving footage was from an HD10, we have gone out with those Guys in Hale'iwa .

The Bravo D3 never happened, however the I-O Data AVeL LinkPlayer2 did arrive, and sports the Sigma EM8620L WMV media processor, TCP/IP networking via ethernet, Xvid, WMV9, Divx, DVD-Video etc.

I-O Data Website


Windows Media 9 Player is available for Mac OSX operating system

Microsoft WMV Downloads

Thanks
 

Bobby, that's good enough for me. I can always exercise color correction but I'll never be able to reproduce resolution. Thank you.

David, I live in Honolulu, by Nimitz and the base. I would love to see your footage. If you ever need any help while in Oahu don't hesitate to drop me a note.

Tom, thank you for the update ton the Bravo D3. The Avel Link Player 2 is a most have for any HD enthusiast. Thanks you.

Thanks you all and keep the footage comming. High times for JVC with the new release due in April. Finally all the 24p junkies will get thiers. Can't wait to see some footage. I might sell my car and take the bus for one of them. j/k.

Jaime,
I found the footage on one of my DVHS tapes and will try to encode it and post it this week. I am sorry for the delay but I was in Hot Springs Arkansas visiting my Grandmother.

RGR
 

Roger David.
Stding by 4 footage.
Out.