So, questions about my new A1U.
 

I just got it today. I shot some test footage with my wife and daughter outside our folks house today. Nice and sunny. I also shot some inside the house. I have a couple of questions.

1. Am I going to notice a lot of interlacing when I'm not viewing at either 100% or 50% or 25% ?

2. When I import, I use FCP and the HDV 60i codec built into FCP. When i export a clip to quicktime, it changes the resolution from 1440x1080 to 1920x1080. I'm guess this is not what I want? Can someone explain why it's doing this?

I'm sure I'll have more questions later

I want to amend the first question. I see lots of interlacing when I view at 100%. In fact, viewing at 50% looks far better in quality then viewing at 100%. Not sure why. How about one of you savy HDV people let me in on the secret.

Guessing-- not my format OS
Video card not up to it ??

Are you by any chance viewing the footage on an Apple cinema display? If so, you will see the interlacing as the cinema display (as I understand it) is progressive scan.

As far as I know the only way around it is to de-interlace the footage. The problem disappears, but so does the quality of the picture.

I've hooked up my tv as a second monitor and it solves the problem as the tv display is also interlaced. The tv isn't hd though so I'm only seeing it in standard definition. It still looks fab though.

Follow up
 

When I initially got my FX!, I was seeing a lot of jagged edges on my captured files. I'm in PC world. It seems, though, as I gradually updated media players, and quicktime, and the capture and editing software, that I am no longer seeing the problem. One thing I do do when renering HDV is 60i is select lower field first. That seems to give a clean playback--- but that is the opposite of what the experts on this forum are saying---

I'm using a iMac 17" and a crappy 19" CRT samsung. On the iMac, I can see the interlacing really bad when I view it any size other then 50% from actual. When I view it in 50%, it looks fantastic. On the 19" any size looks weird. Instead of seeing a sharp interlacing, I see a strange kind of smooth interlacing. I can't describe it. I'm gonna go to my folks house tomorrow night and hook it up to my dads HDTV. See how that looks.

Could I be importing it wrong? And does anyone know about the resolution thing? is it 1920x1080 or 1440x1080? the book and FCP report 1440. But when I export and play in Quicktime, I get 1920. Anybody have any ideas? Thanks.

Please someone tell me that I'm seeing this really bad interlacing because of the monitors I"m using! I just caputered my video with the downconvert feature, and it still really interlaced bad. I know the film is taken at 60i, but my PV-GS150 didn't do this. I wouldn't expect a 2000 cam to do this. Can someone explain what's going on. I know it's hard to when you can't see what I'm seeing, but I need some input here. Am I doing something wrong? I'm not using the Apple Intermediate codec. Should I be?

One simple thing you can do to check out that the camera is recording properly is to use the camera component outputs into a HiDef TV and look at the footage. When I run my A1 into my Sony 42" HDTV the footage looks absolutely terrific, like film.
If that checks out, then you know that the camera is laying down a good track and that the problems you are seeing must be software related. If it doesn't look right, maybe you need to return the camera.

You're capturing HDV 1440 x 1080 (1080i). If you are capturing to another format, that could be your problem. I assume you are capturing to an intermediate codec, and not native. In that case, your intermediate setting may be the problem. If you are capturing native .m2t format ( which I'm thinking Mac doesn't do) then your vid/card monitor settins may be the problem. Another big clue is that your real problems seems to be 16:9 display, because you don't have a problem with GS material.

Um...why would you NOT expect to see interlacing, if you are playing back interlaced material on a progressive computer display?

(Now admittedly you can set your media player to deinterlace if you wish ...but that's a software setting not an intrinsic feature of the monitor.)

Maybe I'm not understanding your question.

I think you hit it right Graham. I didn't expect to see interlacing. I never saw it with my el cheapo camera. NEVER. it shot 60i. I hooked up the camera just now to my parents HDTV, and I didn't see any artifacting at all. So it's just my monitor. Glad I found the problem. Not really a problem per say, but you know what I mean.

I'm kinda bumed about the low light performance for the A1U. Outside shots are amazing! I mean Crazy Amazing. But If the light isn't just right, it's grainy. Ah well. I wanted a nice HD camera, which I feel like I have one, but I'd like to be able to pop it out when my daughter starts walking and be able to get a crisp clear HD picture of her. I hope we're outside when she walks for the first time.

Also, I ordered a Spiderbrace2 last night. I should get it soon. Maybe that'll help some.

Is there such a thing as a good on video light for indoor use?

For the A1, take a look at this light from Sony.
It takes the Sony QM71/91 series battery. It is a switchable 10/20 watt light source.
It is quick and easy to atatch (to cameras hot shoe) and no wires, and as I said it runs on same QM battery type as the camera does.

The light doesn't give the best diffused light, but it should be enough to take care of indoor shooting like for your daughters first steps etc.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

There are better lights out there for pro use, but for quick setup and use, this little baby is best.

Regarding the original question of this thread: what is 100%, 50%, and 25% referring to?

100% of the picture size. So when I'm viewing at 50%, its half the actual resolution of the picture/video.

I'm a PC guy, so I can't give you details on how to fix this on a Mac, but on my Windows machine with a progressive monitor I don't have interlace problems at all. The trick is to use playback software that deinterlaces the video on playback. Actually most playback software does this. It's just a matter of going into the menus and setting it up. Once it is set, you get double frame rate progessive video that looks (at least to my eyes) even better than native progressive video at all zoom levels.