Planning of doing side-by-side comparison on FX1 and HC1
 

I hope my plan works on July 7th. Not for sure tho. But I will try.
You won't be seeing the same green bike anymore. Just got stolen last night.

Now I can provide you folks with better choices of video formats since FCP5 is here.

Wow - you had a bike stolen in Tokyo?


its probably outside Shinjuku station :)

Hi John Jay,

No, it happened in Shibuya.

Great! I'm waiting impatiently for your review/comparison. :)

Regards

Did Sony use a rolling shutter in the HC1?
 

A danged shame with the bike theft. Hopefully you can film an event for someone and earn enough money to replace it with a nice upgrade!

From page 87 of the HC1 manual, it says "subjects passing by the frame might appear crooked". This suggests that the CMOS sensor is using a rolling shutter rathar than a global shutter. If true, it would mean that Sony is getting more light sensitivity out of the available die space on the sensor by not having an extra shielded sensor area dedicated for a virtual shutter. The drawback is that objects in rapid horizontal motion show up tilted. The faster their CMOS readout speed can be, the less tilted it will be overall, but still it would be present. This same effect, much more pronounced, can be seen with cheap webcams when there is horizontal motion in the scene. In that scenario you can clearly see the scanning effect being used by the sensor.

Anyway, if you have time Kaku, I'd love to see an .M2T of an outdoor scene with the camera set to a high shutter speed, and something blocky (like a large truck) driving by rapidly. Or rapid panning on a scene with strong vertical lines. Examining field by field (cutting each frame into their individual fields) should show what appears to be a slanted edge. If the object is moving rapidly to the right, it should look like it slants slightly to the left!

Even if you don't have time for this specific test, I'm still very eager to check out the M2Ts you'll be creating. And thank you very, VERY much for your willingness to share them.

-Lorin
HDV Forever!

Kaku, we've hosted your FX1 clips before and we'll be happy to do it again for your HC1 clips. Just let me know when you're ready and I'll give you the access info for uploading. Looking forward to it!

Kaku, you're amazing
 

Kaku, again I'll say that you've done AMAZING work on our behalf in North America - last summer you were invaluable helping me choose GS400 and then HDR-FX1... can't wait for your info!

Mark in Toronto

Kaku

I've noticed that the Aperture on the HC1 goes from F1.8-2.1 which is hardly anything compared to the F1.6-F11 of the FX1. This would indicate that the performance of the sensor might be so good as to not require much stepping down in Bright light. But also an advantage, even though you won't get large DOF, the effect of AE (and manual adjustment) on DOF will be reduced, and mostly effect gain (once shutter is locked). Along with locking down shutter speed, this gives a much better control of look of the video. Something well worth testing against the FX1.

Re-edit: I should add, not enough control to shoot cinema quality, of course, only doco etc.

Here are some other things that might be worth testing out:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47018
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47019
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47020

You guys are so great
 

You people are so great and on top of things on what I should be doing and since what we (me and my company) can learn from it is so great, we decided to purchase to cam for testing (we can probably sell it right away).

With the help of Pro Video Station Shinjuku, I will be able to receive the cam on 6th, which is this Wednesday.

Great -- glad to hear it, Kaku! Let me know when you're ready to upload some clips,

Er... Wayne... hold on there just a moment.

When you see f/1.8 to f/2.1 on the HC1, that's not the full aperture range of the lens by any means. It's simply the maximum apertures at each end of the zoom range. The maximum aperture at full wide is f/1.8. The maximum aperture at full telephoto is f/2.1. I couldn't readily find what the minimum aperture setting is before the iris closes, but most likely it's going to be f/11. Hope this helps,

Okay, Chris and others that gave me testing suggestions.

Let's build the most valuable consumer report (opinion) here!!
I'm very concern about how Sony is skipping on cultural value with music and video lately, so I want them to be aware that the consumer expectation on media quality is higher than what they think. At the same time, they develop and manufacture good technology, too, so I want them to be better in taking good care of media culture. Our study and conclusions will greatly influence Sony.

Glad to see your enthusiasm!
 

I think you're right. I hope Sony takes note of how interested we are in the details. Quality is very important to us. We're definitely happy to learn from all the tests you're preparing for.

Based on a few .M2Ts that were released to the Internet this morning from another site, it looks like the SteadyShot feature will occasionally stretch frames vertically to try to compensate for motion. Not a very good solution to stabilize the image! Ends up with a slightly "pulsating" image, and also limits a little the effectiveness of the MPEG2 compression. But that's really my only gripe with the footage. I'm hoping that this type of single-frame stretching of the image can be avoided by turning the SteadyShot off.

By the way, I'll be flying into Okinawa prefecture on Sunday, with a four-hour layover in Narita. If you know of a good place near either Narita or in Naha to buy an HC1 for around 160,000 yen, I'd be interested. Do you know if any of these three shops are reputable? They sure have great pricing.

http://www.tantan.co.jp/detail/HDR-HC1 - 151,400 ¥

http://www.tokado.jp/gekiyasu/video_body.htm#MARK1 - 158,300 ¥

http://www.bidders.co.jp/pitem/50723344 - 155,757 ¥

Thanks!

-Lorin

Lorin,

Four-hour layover is not much to do since Narita is far from Tokyo.

You should make arrangement now with people in Okinawa that you can see in person to preorder for you with one of these company, or the shop I'm buying from. I can make sure that they help you.

Kaku
 

Are camera's cheap to buy in Japan ?I will be over there in September and was wondering what it costs for an XL2 or the new JVC GY-HD101E .Also are PAL versions available? Joe

Joe, well, maybe it is right now, since yen is very weak at this time.
The dealer I deal with is selling XL2 (body only, without the lens) for 321,300 yen (only supply lasts). You probably find more information in the XL2 thread better than here.

Pro Video Station Shinjuku

Chris, OK, I thought that sounded a bit too good to be true :|( no blush cheek smiley available for some reason ;) . I checked over the web and found the same figure, and even f1.6:f11 in comparison for the FX1. So I thought maybe they were trying to strangely handicap the camera by removing larger DOF's. Silly me ;) Still, approx half a stop loss for telephoto is good.

Okay, my staff emailed me (I was out to give lecture at a music college) and the cam is in.

I will make few clips available on midnight.

Chris, you can copy the files to make them available at your ftp. I will close mine after you copy them.

Now, I'm off to the same Gap and the street to shoot the same angles and movement in Harajuku.

Thanks Kaku -- I'll let you (and everybody else) know when we have them.

Geez,
 

Now I'm having the same problem that Frederic had, can't capture with FCP5 and 10.4.1. Do I have to reinstall the whole OS?
FCExpress is capturing okay, but it will be AIC that way.

I guess I'm going to install 10.4 into my G-Tech G-RAID.

Because of this, it will take few more hours to start providing the files.

Potential rolling shutter issue on the HC1
 

After reviewing other M2Ts out on the 'net, some have a vertical stretching type artefact. I think this stems from the HC1's CMOS sensor having a rolling shutter. If so then it must be scanning the sensor pretty slowly! Now I'm curious to see footage that has some vertical motion, across different shutter speeds. I think we may have a significant rolling shutter issue on our hands here.

Technically the faster you can read a sensor with no shutter, the better it should be. But from what I'm seeing here it may only be scanning at the rate of the shutter speed.

In addition to vertical motion uncovering this issue, another way it would show up is when a flash goes off in a frame. Normally on film or a CCD system with a shutter, if you have a quick flash such as with flash photography, lightning, an explosion, or a strobe, then the whole field is affected simultaneously. Those that have done frame by frame editing of events are well aware of what it looks like. One frame is normal, the next is brighter from the flash, and then after that it's back to normal again. But with a rolling shutter it will be a horizontal band, and not always affect the entire field. It would at least occasionally (and perhaps frequently) only show up on a part of the total field! Perhaps just a few lines, perhaps a broad section. So most of the image would be normal, but a portion would have a brighter band in the middle.

Altogether this is probably a new beast we're dealing with here. Good deshaking algorithms could compensate for some of the motion effects. But subjects travelling horizontally, especially moving quickly, would be tough to correct for.

(Anyone else out there technically inclined and understand what in the world I'm talking about?)

-Lorin

Lorin,

The footage I just edited, was shot with shutter speed at 60 and it include the video of water and coffee going down from espresso machine.

Now I'm waiting for chris to provide me the login procedure to upload the edited m2t file.

I will do more test tomorrow on something going up and down (maybe cars going by with camera set sideways) at different shutter speeds.

Here's the file
 

Here's the first clip for now.

This footage was shot with shutter speed "60", automatic f-stop and gain. It was shot early evening. Atuomatic white balance.

Probably it takes awhile for file transfer to complete.

dotMac filesharing page.

P.S. I could not do the comparison today (I was alone shooting video), but I will ask my wife to help me tomorrow.

Thank you Kaku for the clip. <wow> It's almost 300 MB - the longest clip from HC1 available. Unfortunately I will have to wait till tomorrow to watch it - it's at night now and it downloads "only" at 20kB/s.

Thank you

I've downloaded the clip, but i'm only getting the audio. I'm using both the VLC player and WM, neither work. I could view Kerr Cook's clips just fine, but not these.

Any suggestions?

I have the same problem

I left it as QuickTime HDV format and maybe that is why. How about downloading QuickTime 7? Will that work?
Anyway, I'm converting the file to "HDV1060i format" in "Compressor 2", so that should be more native?

Not for me. I've tried it on two different PC's with Quicktime 7.0 preview with no luck. I've been searching for codecs all night, but just cant seem to find one that works with this particular HDV file.

-Mike

Mike,
Thank you for trying. It takes hours to transfer to dotMac acount and that goes same to you to download. I asked my company web administrator to setup download page in my site, so I can be more flexible in creating formats for Windows users.

For Windows users, should not download this file. I will capture the clip using LumiereHD (just like the first time) and post it as native m2t.

I wonder how mac users are doing.

i cant play it too

Hello all.

I can play the clip fine on Windows XP with Media Player Classic. I am using version 6.4.8.2 so that and newer should work.
It uses the built-in mpeg2 codec it seems.
Here is a link to it on Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ckage_id=84358

Best, Magnus.

Just like some of the other guys, I get video but no audio. And very nice at that! The focus seeks a bit when it's zoomed up on the grounds. Amazing demo of the latitude, even with a fairly bright background and dim foreground the background doesn't get washed out. EIP works very well in that regard. 14 bits is enough to be impressive. Gets kinda grainy at +15db... But still usable. Definitely not a low-light cam.

I think the red truck that passes by may be a good enough subject to examine the rolling shutter artifact with. I'll start picking it apart frame by frame.

For those that can't view it yet, note that even though the file extension is M2T, the content is actually recompressed into a program stream at 26.3 Mbps. So not too much loss altogether. Still a standard 15GOP. I was able to play it back full speed on my laptop, which has a 2 GHz Pentium M.

Thanks very much for the clip! Time for me to put it under a magnifying glass.

-Lorin

And also put into a QuickTime wrapper with strange indexing! No wonder some software didn't understand it that well the first time 'round.

-Lorin

The video played fine on my XP with Real Media Player. This machine I use for the internet is only a Athlon XP 1800 and it played fine. It was a little jerky but it still played.

The video looks very nice so far. Not bad for a single chip camera. They sure have come a long way. I will be some image tests later tonight. Thank you for the video. You did a great thing for all of us.

One thing I did do was change the file extension to ".mpg" I can now even use the file in After Effects.

I think this is QuickTime 7 thing. But I knew you folk would figure out some other ways to playback.

I mastered this clip to tape and try to capture it with LumiereHD. Than will capture the footage as simple m2t, but can anybody figure out what is the best way to convert the edited clip from FCP5 to m2t that both mac and window users can playback? I'm busy shooting and editing so, if anyone can help, that would really save time and effort. While someone will be figuring that out, I would be editing more clips.

Also, we went out to shoot some cars going by on a street with both HC1 and FX1 at the same time with all of the shutter speed from 10,000 through 30. Lorin, which shutter speed footage would be needed to compare (I'm going to go ahead and do 10,000 and 60 for now which are probably mandatory anyway)?

AND, the focus is rather slow in dark places (with low contrast I guess). With its small LCD and the view finder, I was having harder time focusing manually comparing to FX1 for sure. The focus/zoom ring feels fine, not as good as AG-DVC30 felt, but better than NV-GS400 for sure. For how fucus/zoom ring works, AG-DVC30 still feels the best to me.

i change it to .mpg and played with windvd 7 and it worked but only video - no sound. With media player classic the opposite only sound - no video.

Please Kuku Ito
can you take video with hc-1 while walking? I always record like that with a small-cheap steadycam.
thank you very much

Yiannis
Greece

The footage looks real nice, but as suggested before, some raw M2T files would be nice to check out. Since the file you provided is edited and recompressed twice it is hard to judge the quality straight from the camera. From what I see, it looks pretty damn good.

Thank you for your effort.