1080i playback ??

[Dane Maxwell]

Right.....i'm seriously bummed about this 60p issue ! Can somene explain why JVC would come out with this bomb of a camera, but limit it to such an extent!! politics/money???? presumably.

I understand though that the camera can playback 1080i pictures ? is this correct and what does it essentially mean ? [does it have nothing to do with frame rate?]

Basically at the moment i freelance, do a fair bit of sports and events work all in SD. [i live south of africa, where interlaced is big in broadcast, and sony has a monopoly]

I am also from a film b/g working as a loader, and the ability to experiment with lenses and what not would be excellent.
Up untill today i was sold on the JVC, a month ago i would have smirked if someone mentioned a jvc camera. Then today i learnt of no 60p to tape, and then not even through firewire!!!!!

Heard somewhere someone refferd to "BAD BLOOD" from his HD10 experience ?
that freaked me out a bit, anyone know what was so bad about JVC's first little hdv cam ?

So many questions, so little time!!!! Z1 or HD101 ? I keep comming back to jvc. aaaaaagh

just been proofing a dvd of mine shot in progressive [canon xm1] and it looks absolutely beautiful. is that a sign ? progressive till the end !!
i hate shoooting sports ne way, hahaha

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Dane Maxwell

Right.....i'm seriously bummed about this 60p issue ! Can somene explain why JVC would come out with this bomb of a camera, but limit it to such an extent!! politics/money???? presumably.

Surely neither. The understanding I have is that it's a hardware limitation; Adam Wilt told me that the MPEG encoder chip that JVC is using cannot handle a 60p data rate.

I understand though that the camera can playback 1080i pictures ? is this correct and what does it essentially mean ?

It means that you could put in a Sony HDV tape and the camera could play it (although only to the analog outputs, not to the firewire). Also it has the ability to cross-convert its 720p image into a 1080i signal. This doesn't mean you'll gain any of the resolution or frame rate of the 1080i signal, it just conforms the existing 720/30p image to fit within a 1080i stream (so the image is up-rezzed, and the frames get interleaved into fields, but you don't magically get 60 field-per-second imaging!)

Then today i learnt of no 60p to tape, and then not even through firewire!!!!!

No 60p to tape, and no 60p through firewire. The only way to get 60p from the camera is through the analog component outputs, which is fine for live viewing but substantially more problematic to record. It is, however, uncompressed (meaning no MPEG-2 compression).

anyone know what was so bad about JVC's first little hdv cam ?

You can read volumes about it here. Basically it was a home handycam, which came as a huge disappointment to people who wanted it to be a professional tool. It provided no true manual exposure control, no form of manual audio control, very poor low light response, extremely limited latitude, no way to accurately manually focus, basically a lot of issues that made it less than desirable for professional productions. All of those seem to be resolved in the HD100 however.

[Jiri Bakala]

Dane,
you need to realize that the HD100/101 is an HDV camera. It was designed that way. It will not (and frankly should not) have the same level of features and specs that one can expect from a $50k+ professional camera. The HDV format produces fantastic pictures but it is intended for entry level broadcast, documentary, independent low budget filmmaking and event videography (and of course for the consumer market). The limitations are a result of available technology (as Barry explained), price and marketing forces. It's great that we have a choice between 1080i in SONY and 720p in the JVC and both later on with the Panasonic. Each WILL have their own limitations and we will have to live with our choices/compromises. Should we push the manufactures to give us more? Absolutely! Will they give us a CineAlta for $7k? No. Live with it. Personally, I take a real lens over 1080i or P2 any day. You will have to find your compromise...:-)

[Steve Mullen]

"Basically it was a home handycam, which came as a huge disappointment to people who wanted it to be a professional tool. It provided no true manual exposure control, no form of manual audio control, very poor low light response, extremely limited latitude, no way to accurately manually focus, basically a lot of issues that made it less than desirable for professional productions."

It offered all the control one needs if one knows HOW to use them. Most video shooters didn't -- so they got poor results. Those that mastered the control system had no problems doing "pro" work.

The audio had a limiter and there was no need for manual control -- that is analog thinking in a digital world. Manual focus was by ring -- I never had a problem using it. Nor have I heard any one else have a problem. AF was not good, but who uses AF for film making. And, if you ever shot film you would know one adds light when "film" sensitivity is low -- what's the big deal? In short, if you were a fimmaker these camcorders did and still do work fine.

One negative -- at times it shows way too much red chroma noise. Never happened for me me, but I've seen it on under-lit indoor situations.

The new CMOS Sony may offer the same "video" look as all Sony camcorders do. So I'm not selling my HD1 until I see its color quality.

[Tommy James]

One has to remember that a lot of broadcasting trucks for sports and electronic news gathering still have obsolete microwave analog transmitters. So with the JVC HDV camcorder the full 720p60 analog signal can be transmitted through the analog microwave transmitter from the broadcasting truck and once the signal reaches the television studio then it can be digitized compressed and broadcasted digitally at the full 720p60 data rate. This saves the television studio from having to buy brand new digital broadcasting trucks that can be very expensive yet they can offer full 720p60 quality for the major sporting events using their old obsolete equipment.