Used to think these guys were being harsh.

[Brendan Sundry]

I remember reading a post a few months ago about a wedding videographer expressing why he wouldnt use HDV. Apart from the cost he would not be able to recoup from his clients, he mainly talked about the fact there was no delivery method.

At the time i was like "Well, 35mm looks better on DVD than DigiBeta because its oversampling, so why not shoot HD and downconvert, itll still look heaps better."

But, after some recent tests, it is my opinion any brilliance gained by watching the HDV on a Cinema Display at full rez is lost as soon as you pump it out to mini DV. I did a test with two very similiar shots and the difference was about 6%.

This is on a FX1, it seems the only decent way is to either go to h264 HD, or just Downconvert for what a client would presume as widescreen dv.

In fairness to the format im not the best shooter, but generally speaking its just not good enough.

With a DOF device though everything looks fantastic. The boat clip on the red rock micro site is sensational. Would love to see what it looked like on the standard lens.

OK, glad i made that point.
B.Sundry

[Anthony Bristol]

Brendan,

your point appears to be confused, to me at least. Are you arguing the merits of HDV, or high definition video of any standard, due to delivery methods, or are you arguing the point about imagistic quality, as your DoF adapter comment would suggest?

Didn't we all know when we bought our HD(V) cams that delivery methods would slowly be following behind? HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are here, albeit slowly making it into the market. HDTV sets have been making their way into peoples homes now for some time, I believe the market is being primed for HD delivery of footage.

For now (or the past?) a SD-DVD will have to do, I find downconverted footage on my SD-Television to look fantastic, it has a crispness that I still find jaw dropping after all these months of ownership. But SD is SD and there's no getting around that so I wouldn't expect miracles from downconverted footage. Editing HD (although not in HDV, rather AIC, cineform, photoJPEG et al) and exporting a SD dvd for clients now while holding onto that HD cut (1080i, 720p) would seem the smart move, once you're ready to deliver HD with one of the many HD-DVD or Blu-Ray burners now hitting the shelves. We are at a turning point in video delivery methods, when the dust settles I believe those who went the HD route will be the ones who benefit most.

Regarding the image produced by the FX1/Z1, there are feature films and BBC documentaries, Nike commercials et al being shot with them, I don't understand how it is good enough for them but not for others? Good composition, storytelling, lighting etc is good composition, storytelling, lighting through any lens, HD, SD, 8-16-35mm etc means nothing at the end of the day.

Anyway, it's an interesting debate, but I feel as time goes by one that will be less important as the market begins to demand High Definition.

Regards,
Anthony

[Michael Hendrix]

I think the one point people fail to realize is, everyone tweaks in post. If you shoot 35mm, you telecine, if you shoot video, you run in after effects or color correct in Avid.

I just got my Z1 yesterday, so I am just getting into HDV, but when I did all of my research, I did not just look at what camera. I figured out my entire workflow, from shooting to how am I going to edit and color correct and so on.

People using this camera for broadcast understand the workflow. That's how they make it work.

[Jack D. Hubbard]

Anthony is right on target. HDV pictures downconverted to SD (I use letterbox) are of superb quality and much better than SD. HDV capture is way ahead of the software and editing capacity. But it isn't going to stay that way for long. HDV and HD will be the dominant format very soon, and one of the big advantages in "future proofing" is to have an archive of HDV footage. You can always downconvert to SD; upconverting to HDV from SD is a very dicey propostion right now, and I don't think you will ever be able to match the quality.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Brendan Sundry

I remember reading a post a few months ago about a wedding videographer expressing why he wouldnt use HDV. Apart from the cost he would not be able to recoup from his clients, he mainly talked about the fact there was no delivery method.

What this person missed is that HDV yields much better widescreen output than the typical 4:3 DV cameras used by most wedding videographers. So even with today's DVD players you can deliver noticeably better image quality for customers with HDTVs than shooting in 4:3 DV, and when you view HDV at full quality it puts most SD cameras to shame. Of course if you happen to have a true widescreen DV camera then there's less of a distinction between that and widescreen DVDs produced from HDV, but few videographers own proper widescreen cameras. (The Canon XL2 would be about it for weddings.)

HD delivery has been possible at a reasonable price for well over a year now and is becoming more mainstream with the introduction of formal HD DVD players. The final details of burning, authoring and delivering mainstream HD DVDs probably won't be sorted out until next year's wedding season, but by then anyone who isn't shooting HD will be doing their customers a disservice. And the people who will best recover their costs for upgrading to HD will be the ones who are doing it now, while you can still charge a little extra for HD and still get something for selling your SD cameras. Plus there's something to be said for building up an HD demo reel now before customers start expecting to see that; you definitely don't want to be the last person on your block to be offering HD.

When every college kid with a pair of HC1s is offering HD wedding videos for under $1000, the old-time videographers who refuse to offer HD at any price are going to have a problem on their hands. I talked to one such videographer recently who understands how to make extra money for the esoteric service of shooting on 8mm movie film, but can't figure out that the same customers might be persuaded to pay more for HD quality. It's ridiculous not to offer HD at this point to high-end clients, who are going to feel ripped off a few years from now when everything they watch is in HD except for their expensive wedding video.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Jack D. Hubbard

You can always downconvert to SD; upconverting to HDV from SD is a very dicey propostion right now, and I don't think you will ever be able to match the quality.

That's correct: you can't upsample SD source video to have full HD image quality. In fact you can't even get 4:3 SD video to look good for widescreen SD delivery (see message above), so any camera without a true widescreen recording mode is essentially obsolete as we head into the HD era. We don't have to wait for HD delivery to see the difference between widescreen and non-widescreen cameras, so if you have customers with HDTVs it's time to start thinking about getting some widescreen (HD) equipment.

Unfortunately, many customers don't see a point in paying more for HD quality, especially with some videographers still telling them that it's not worth bothering. This is so backwards it's kinda sad: we should all be pushing HD as the biggest advancement in video quality in over 50 years, and one of the best reasons to pay good money for a professional videographer. Almost anyone can shoot and edit DV now; let's use HD as a sales point to show we're staying ahead of 'Uncle Charlie.'

[Michael Hendrix]

It's going to be hard selling HD to most clients until the means for delivery have been worked out. I think we are on the edge of that as I walked into Best Buy this weekend and they are offering BluRay with movies for sale.

[Peter Ferling]

A few things you have to consider when having HDV, even if you wind up selling it as SD, is 1) you never know when you'll have that first customer whom want's HD and is willing to pay for it, and 2) you can advertise your best shots in HD to make the SD sales.

To me HDV is a three letter acronym for opportunity.

[John McGinley]

The line I always use is, "You may not thank me now, but you will in 5 years."

I don't shoot weddings as a steady diet, but the ones that I have, had very happy clients with the HDV downconverted footage. I shoot, capture and edit in HDV, then downconvert in Vegas to 30P DVD widescreen, that's a big part of it too. Because if you create a 4:3 file with letter box, you're throwing away resolution. 16:9 Anamorphic uses all the resolution available at SD and lets the DVD player letterbox it if necessary. When your clients finally get around to upgrading to a 16:9 tv (and eventually we all will) they'll be even happier. I also supply them with a DVD that has the edited M2T files that they can later have converted to whatever HD format shows up.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Michael Hendrix

It's going to be hard selling HD to most clients until the means for delivery have been worked out.

Again, the current form of delivery is proper widescreen DVDs, which can't be produced very well using most SD video cameras. And you can deliver as compressed HD on discs playable on many personal computers or the Avel LinkPlayer2, which only costs $249. And as John noted you can deliver edited M2T files which the customer can have converted on their own to HD DVDs, since we know that format will be supported by the players. And both the Toshiba and Sony HD players are showing up in stores now, so hopefully we'll soon be able to deliver proper HD DVDs.

The hardest thing about selling HD to most clients is convincing them to spend more money. And some are concerned that HD might be 'too good' in the sense of showing their facial flaws, but they don't seem to have that same concern about being photographed at several times the resolution of HD video. My line about that is that it's easy enough to soften detail when necessary starting from HD, but you can't *add* detail when you want it starting from SD.

[Brendan Sundry]

Originally Posted by Michael Hendrix

I think the one point people fail to realize is, everyone tweaks in post. If you shoot 35mm, you telecine, if you shoot video, you run in after effects or color correct in Avid.

Michael, good point, and i need to get better at tweaking. My test was a basic downconvert with the same shot in DV and HDV and i was fairly disapointed. Again, it could have been the footage in the first place, but i would have expected to see more bang in the HDV.

On a 23 inch cinema display the HDV footage looked impressive, but for my client's SD CRT's are the reality check so to speak.

Originally Posted by Michael Hendrix

I just got my Z1 yesterday, so I am just getting into HDV, but when I did all of my research, I did not just look at what camera. I figured out my entire workflow, from shooting to how am I going to edit and color correct and so on.

Michael another good point, what is your workflow?

Bottom line. I know you can get great stuff, but for a simple test with average lighting in both DV and HDV i expected the HDV to shine.

Thanks everyone for your input.

[Drew Curran]

I reckon by Christmas 2006 there will be a wave of cheaper HD-DVD players. We are being bombarded with HD 'ready' TV's here now.

Thats why I went with HDV. In 2 years a HD will be more widely available.

When I got married, I was given a widescreen TV and DVD player to put in my new house. My friends are the same - they all buy new TV's and home thatre systems for their new houses. They will be buying HD tv's and HD DVD players now. If I shoot their weddings, I'll give them an SD copy now, and an HD copy when the burners come down in price.

I want to be ready.

Andrew

[Evan C. King]

Think your problem is the fact you said you are "down converting to mini dv." There's no need to do that, edit in hd and at the end down convert to SD DVD which is different than downconverting to dv.

[Michael Hendrix]

Brendan, I shoot HDV and capture with a program called DV Rack. This gives me the raw HDV file. I then downconvert to 24p with a DV Filmmaker. You can save out uncompressed files with DV Filmmaker which is what I am most interested in since I can edit in Avid or work in After Effects from that point forward with no loss in quality. Keep in mind, the files are going to be huge, for a big project, I just buy a external hard drive. For this latest project, I bought a 320G Western Digital for $180.

The great thing about HDV is you are working in 4:2:0 which means the weakest part is color. But color is the easiest part to add with any editing/compositing program.

This is the workflow that I have worked out in theory, I am now done shooting my project, and will do the real test. Should work fine as I worked through this process before spending any money.

[Ben Gurvich]

Not to rub it in but PAL DV is 4:2:0 already. Thanks for the workflow info as i too am lookin at the FX1 in similiar situation. Brendan that boat clip is fantastic, ive just seen it recently, though there is a lot of Color correction on it.