Any new updates with JVC?

[Jerry Porter]

Originally Posted by Sean Adair

Now we face some prohibitive licensing fees for Blu-ray, and short-run production (as opposed to burning individual discs) is going to be a major downer for the niche and smaller HD video producers.

slap slap, back on track....

Where do you see the fees coming in? I know that Premier Pro CS3 will already encode to the blu-ray codec.

[Sean Adair]

Jerry, let's take this OT thread to the HD disc forum... before we get chided.
License fees will apply to short run manufacturing which is only at "licensed" facilities, but encoding or burning individual discs isn't a problem. Burnt discs do still have some compatibility issues with many players.

To thrust this more back on track...
It was smart of JVC to stay out of the HD disc format war, but what many people don't realize is that they were really the first to present a movie distribution format and player - D-VHS. Some movies were released on this recording capable product when it came out several years ahead of the high capacity discs. It used the same compression format as our cameras, on special 1/2" tape in a conventional VHS shell.

I think it suffered from association with VHS tape which was considered obsolete in the age of recordable dvd's. I nearly bought a cheap used one as a presentation tool. I might still consider one.

The move to larger 3 hour tapes would be logical, much as the proDV line evolved. The BR-50 deck is ready for them, and the dual format transport mechanism is already developed. It's only useful to certain users though, and mini tapes are a far more established standard, so I'd only use longer tapes when required.

I think it's unlikely that JVC will release a 1/2" chip, 1080p, solid state recording pro camera for under 10k. If they incorporate these features, it would be for a scaled up higher end broadcast formed camera, which they do well. It would be competitive with HDCAM and Varicams, not "prosumer" units like the EX. It would have to be in the $15K region at least. It wouldn't be HDV of course. Higher bandwidth signal onto cards would make sense, but honestly, I think many needs are not well addressed by the flash memory workflow currently, although it gains strength continually.

It does seem likely a 3rd party will come up with a SDI driven remote portable hardware solution for chip recording. That will be interesting...

The EX is great on paper, but I don't think it's a replacement for much of the professional work we are engaged in. That's another story too....

In the end, number comparisons have to be considered very carefully. Just because a camera has chips of a certain resolution, doesn't mean that it's end product is more subjectively detailed. Significant factors on both sides from the lens to the DSP and compression are if anything MORE important. The jump to 1080p I believe is only justified with a truly high-end approach. 720p upscales very well to 1080p in both encoding and live hardware presentation.

So I expect that to be around for awhile, and the 1/3" chips with the lenses that are being made for this camera, also makes sense to keep around.

Better low-light processing would be appreciated by many.

Overall, I'm hoping for continued support for our present format for a few more years. I hope we simply get refinements and improvements to the existing 720p, HDV, 1/3" chip concept - bringing in new blood who appreciate the broadcast features and form factors