Higher bit rate for JVC HD200u

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Jason McCormy

I have read in a few of the posts on the board how badly the compression artifacts and other problems are with the JVC HD200u when shooting in either 720p60 or 720p50.

Jason, word of advice: shoot some stuff in 60P and see if it works for YOU and your company.

I shoot 60P exclusively because of the fluidness of motion. I don't slow it down to 24P (and I understand how the compression artifacts could completely become more visible), so I can't speak to that but we ALL have our opinions and there certainly is a debate about what looks "better" 24P, 30P or 60P.

To put it all in perspective: I'm a broadcast guy and I've used some VERY nice cameras over the years and I bought 2 HD200u's for my business model. Does it have it's limitations? Sure. Bang for the buck? Excellent. Can you get better for the money? Depends on your wants and needs.

Tim Dashwood is one of the best ambassadors for the JVCs and he uses all sorts of imaging choices from the JVCs to Sony XDCam EX stuff to film. The camera is only a tool. Don't worry so much and spend some time field testing the camera to see what works for you.

[Alex Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Jason McCormy

Alex,

Thank you very much for your post. You have cheered me up greatly. My boss does not film, other than for a goof around bit, so when he told me I could use the camera just research it and pick one, I jumped at the chance and chose the JVC. Since then, all I seem to read is how deficient it is at one thing or another and the end result is I spend time wondering if I really wasted this opportunity. So far, I've only had one real problem with it ( a tape that has so many dropouts it totally ruined a once in a life time shoot), but that problem is starting to really phase me. Now, my boss is sending me on some shoots to act as a b roll camera man and I'm just really stressed I picked the wrong thing. Perhaps I didn't.

I am looking forward to this new attachment. I will buy it for sure when it comes out. Do you know if it plugs into the fire wire port? I hate that firewire port. It isn't very secure and I read all the reports of 2 thousand dollar repair jobs for it.

Jason, sorry I missed your post last night! Stick with 1 brand of tape, (I use JVC since it makes since the tape division and the camcorder division would probably talk at some point over the years and compare notes over coffee at some point vs using TDK in a Canon for instance) I use for most things the cheap JVC tapes as backup and have hard mounted a Focus Enhancements DTE drive hard mounted to my IDX battery system on the back of the camera. Nothing moves, nothing jiggles. Record around 10 hours of HDV footage (24fps). Love it. If I have an issue I have tape as backup. Now for bigger (higher paying projects/once in a lifetime events) I always use the JVC PRO-HD tapes. maybe $9 a tape when bought in boxes of 10 or more. Everyone says they are better. I find the biggest issue was swapping brands around. It's true. Mixing sony/fuji/jvc/panasonic on a shoot where they were supplying tapes I got a "Dirty Head" message where presumably the lubricants of 2 or more tapes where reacting to each other. Pulled out the JVC tape cleaner tape... 2 minutes later, no issues. Even with the cheap Walmart JVC tapes I get 1 drop out every 2 tapes on average. the odds of my DTE drive AND my tape having an issue AT THE SAME TIME is remote... About as remote as a P2 hardware failure. They happen, just not that often. I've seen film fail far more often than a P2 card fail, and operator error 10x more than that. Hell, on TITANIC we were 5 miles off the coast of Mexico with 200 extras on life boats and a barge for the cameras, and then we realized the van with the Panaflex cameras was broken down 2 hours back on the highway................ Can you imagine the screaming at $100,000 an hour in lost production time? So yeah, things happen. Don't worry too much. Be a good Quarterback. Learn from the mistake and move on.

Philip Burns from JVC emailed me to let me know he has asked "Doug ???" to verify how it works before he tells me. So hopefully I will know later today and I'll of course pass it on.

It still looks like a better unit than the FE HD100 DTE drive, though I have no issues with mine except for 115'f + days in direct sunlight. Then again, I always power off the camera and the unit if I have to remove it (almost never) and power down the DTE unit before plugging/unplugging the firewire into the computer for file transfers. I would NEVER think about a DTE that wasn't mounted on the camera. To much to go wrong without the unit bolted to the camera with some sort of mount.

[Jason McCormy]

Thank you very much for your responses guys.

I think my issue is getting psyched out by the camera. My boss just laughs at me and says that if I think this is an issue, I should try shooting with 35mm.

But the first time I went out with the camera, without a backup and just on guy to help, I used the JVC pro tape (the 9 or 10 dollar stuff from B&H). After I was done, I ended up with 100 or so dropouts in about 48 minutes of footage. Obviously, it ruined the shoot. And the shoot was, while maybe not once in a lifetime, the opportunity to shoot it again could be deadly to me and I don't think I have that many balls when it comes down to it.

So I got kind of psyched out about the camera. Then, with a lot of reading, I see all the other problems and I ended up going from kind of psyched out to totally psyched out and thinking I had mad the wrong decision.

But, it is a super cool camera, and baring anymore dropouts takes really good footage. Especially now that I am really following Tims brilliant DVD.

So thank you for all the words of wisdom with the camera. I'm going to take a fresh try with it and really pay attention to what I'm doing, and hope like hell I don't get any more bad tape.

I am really looking forward to the SxS car adapter. And I really hope it doesn't use the firewire slot. That would be GREAT. So I hope that you get a response soon from them.

Once again, thank you for all the help.

[Alex Humphrey]

Are you meaning issues with your NLE? Are you using Final Cut Pro? If that's the case, it's not the camera.

[Jason McCormy]

Interesting.

I've copied over 15 or 16 tapes and have only had it happen with one. And this one did it in Final Cut and in Sony Vegas Pro.

Do you think they are doing something?

The footage on the tape is dark, cramped, and lit with just the on camera light and their was a bit of bumping (not hard though) of the camera as I adjusted around the really cramped conditions.

[Alex Humphrey]

Weird. Well if someone is near you that has a DTE drive meet up over coffee and buy them lunch and let it capture away and see what happens. Everything I read, (I'm running FCS1 FCP5 so I'm not a good beta tester for you) is that if you have FCS2 FCP6 you should try capturing apple's ProRes422 or whatever it's called. I haven't used Sony so I can't comment on their software. It's also maybe you just had a bum tape and it was bad from the factory or some piece of lint landed on the tape surface and rolled like a tumble weed between your heads. Personally I bet (hope) it's the over twitchy apple's capture issue. Try capturing with imovie when you are bored and see what happens. Yeah I know... imovie.... but you've got nothing to lose while watching TV tonight. Let it roll and see if it works.. if it does, export it to FCP for this project.

For me, before I got the DTE drive, a tape would capture differently each time I tried, and the drop outs at different times and locations. Nothing was ever repeatable. I thought briefly about returning my JVC and getting a canon and shoot 1080i 24f and deal with longer rendering times and Canon's quirks, though I hated the idea of going back to a handy-cam form factor, but decided to get the FE DTE drive. It works on both cameras so it wasn't throwing money away if I changed my mind on cameras. It worked as advertised, I didn't sell my JVC. It's stupid that it natively doesn't seem to marry well between Apple and JVC, but the DTE does. I put 90% of the issue with Apple in this case, though I have nothing to back up that statement. The unrepeatability of each drop out and error makes me think it has more to do with software than hardware.

where do you live?

[Jason McCormy]

Alex,

Thank you very much for your input and advice. I'm going to buy the harddrive module.