can someone do me a favor....
 

does anyone on this board have about a 5-10 sec FULL DV QUALITY video from the following cameras or is willing to shoot and post some that I can use to see what I think of video quality, b/c some of these cameras are not available at some stores to just hook up to their tv's, and please dont link me to the jap. sites with stills, i've been to all of em, i'd really really appreciate this, thanks

PV-DV953
GL2
Optura XI
TRV950
TRV70

The 3 chip cams from your list will have better looking footage than from these two 1 chip cams. The footage from these 3 chip cams are all very good. The 950 and 953 will have sharper footage than the GL2, but the GL2 will perform better in "lower light." I don't think anyone can or will provide you with a "test tape" of footage from all those cams; but you could go out to some stores and do it yourself. Just bring along a miniDV tape.

When you're talking about posting video clips, there are many variables invloved that will get in the way of what you're wanting to see. These variables include what editing system was used to capture the DV into the computer in the first place, which DV CODEC is used in the capture process, what sort of encoding process is used to get the video to the web. Finally, if you're looking at that video on your computer monitor, then you're not seeing it properly due to the difference in gamma characteristics between computer monitors and televisions.

I suppose the proper way to do this would be to construct a demo tape, and lay it down to VHS only (and not DVD, to keep people from trying to look at it on a computer screen).

Chris,

after having read your last comment, a question has arisen. Do you mean to say that depending on which codec is used to capture the dv footage it will differ in final quality? Wouldn't this mean the footage is being re-compressed in some way? I thought DV was a lossless format beside the intial "in-camera" compression that takes place upon tape recording?

Or do you mean codec as the method of getting the NTSC type footage playable on a computer monitor- and in that regard differing NLE's may use different methods for this process upon dv capture.

I understand the compression process and understand it's quality tradeoffs- but wouldn't original dv captures maintain the intial recorded quality regardless of capture process?

Would this explain the .dv file size when using iMovie being double the size of the same clip if captured using FCP?

(PS- the data rate is also double-...the mov's FCP makes are half the size of iMovie caps using .dv)

Hi Steve, I was referring to the process involved upon DV capture. For instance, Canopus has a very clean codec (there was a time when Avid liked it so much, they licensed it from Canopus). Not all codecs are created equally.

My basic point is that once DV is in the computer (as it must be in order to send over the web), then it ceases to be "raw DV." Instead, it's a Quicktime or AVI file and there are too many variables involved and too many end-user viewing variables to insure that everyone is seeing the same thing.

And, the big difference among the camcorder models being asked about isn't the image quality but the ergonomics, form factor, controls layout and feature sets.

Finally, single-chip camcorders equipped with an RGB primary color filter such as the Optura Xi will approach the three-chip look. Speaking only in terms of color reproduction, there's bigger difference between a 1CCD cam with a primary color filter compared to a 1CCD cam with a complimentary color filter, than there is between a 3CCD cam compared to a 1CCD cam with a primary color filter.

iMovie captured files are slightly smaller than FCP captured files. iMovie doesn't retain the timecode and/or user bits on the DV tape.

When you capture DV into your computer, the program you capture in doesn't recompress the DV footage. You should be able to transfer DV footage losslessly over the internet (but you are limited by bandwidth).

When playing DV footage back, different DV codecs will decompress the footage differently. But you should by able to lay DV footage onto DV tape and get the same thing no matter how you capture it (at least picture wise and assuming you don't get dropouts).

RGB primary color filter
 

Chris, very interesting about RGB type camcorders. But I couldn't locate which type my 1 CCD Panasonic PV-DV852 uses. Anyone know?