Low quality clips - no choice
 

While waiting to buy Premiere Elements 4 to capture this clip taken simultaneously by my wife on HV20 here is 9 seconds of the squeezed output from my XM2 (GL2).

I have just seen both versions uncompressed on HDTV and I am truly amazed by the superiority of the HV20 output via HDMI ... best bird flight footage I've ever seen anywhere at anytime.

Makes me wonder why bother Chris Hurd or anybody else to facilitate such low quality clips when they do such injustice to bird-flight.

Brendan,
I'm confused by what you wrote. Are these clips from the HV20 or the GL-2? Are you trying to say that the HV20 is good? And if so, what are you saying is low quality?
I just shot a couple of tapes worth with the HV20 using a screw-on 1.7X tele-extender, and ramping up the digital zoom (heaven forbid) to 40X. It let me shoot flying shorebirds and ducks from 20-50 yards with clarity. It's not the XLH-1, but the footage will certainly be useful.

Steve
Both clips shown here were down-rezzed from XM2. Even before downrezzing the original clip on XM2 was greatly inferior on HDTV to the clip taken at exactly the same moment with HV20.

My point about low quality clips on DVInfo is that in order to upload any clip OF BIRD FLIGHT to DVInfo the downrezzing ruins the image quality. I should be able to confirm that when I get the software to edit and upload the same clip from my HV20.

I'm very interested in your experience with 1.7x tele-extender ... does that mean that HV20 + 1.7x is the next best HD Canon to XLH1? Not that this will improve quality of action clips on DVInfo given present restrictions.

Brendan,
I think your still confusing the group. "Both clips shown here were down-rezzed from XM2". Am I missing something here. How can you down-rez DV, if these clips are actually from your XM2. Or did you down convert footage out of the HV-20 using the XM2 as a recording deck to DV, or did you do a direct down convert capture directly out of the HV-20. I'm not getting what you are trying to tell us. OK, so after you get your new editing software, what kind of file are you going to upload to show us. Welcome back from your trip, looks like you had fun with the HV-20.

Brendan,
No, I can't say that the HV20 is "the next best thing" to the XLH1. Not by a long shot,although I have never shot with an XLH1. The HV20 manual says that at 10X optical zoom (its max) the equivalent focal length is 530mm.
The 1.7 tele would be 900mm. I don't believe this. I think it is really a lot less, but have no measurements to back it up.
The 1.7 tele, by the way, is good Canon glass, not plastic. It's a nice piece of equipment. Even with it, however, I had to resort to digital zoom (40x) to get anything like the telephoto I'm used to with bigger camcorders.
Of course, this ruined any hopes I might have had of getting hi-def, but there was no pixellation, or any other aratifacts. Sort of like shooting in SD.
About your other point. I wasn't aware that it was even possible to share Hi-def footage on line, or any other way short of recording to BluRay disc and playing directly on a HD TV. Is there?

I think Steve is pretty much right about not being able to upload any HD footage on this site. You can always build your own site, and then you can post all the m2t files you want. Down converted HD footage can still look impressive if it's shot in focus, correct exposure, with good glass, processed correctly in edit, and encoded correctly. I have been encoding down converted HD using H.264, and the results have been very impressive. To bad DVInfo has no provisions for uploading H.264 avi files.

You're all right except me ... I'm being stupid and lazy. I should have found the words "compressed" or "encoded" or even "squeezed" but not "down-rezzed". I'm not even sure what down-rezzed means. Sorry for wasting your time and thank you Steve and Don for taking the trouble to sort me out.

It was my wife who used the HV20 and it was her final clip on our last day in Crete that coincided with the clip from my XM2 shown twice above. It was her clip that looked terrific (I mean as sharp as through best binocs) on HDTV. We both used tripods. My uncompressed clip showed slight bubbling along all moving edges on HDTV. Both were played straight from our cams.

Thanks for telling me that HDV is a non-starter on DVInfo. Maybe it is time to rustle up some kind of website for our bird-flight footage ... I presume it will have to have considerable capacity (is that called bandwidth?) to show HDV? Any pointers would be welcome. Start a new thread marnell I'd say.

It really is a pity Don that your most recent Red-tailed Hawk compressed to 3.86 Mbs cannot be shown on DVInfo. It's delightful if slightly fuzzy, inevitably. I must find out what H.264 means and why DVInfo can't handle it.

In Crete I was concentrating on getting good stills with my new EF 100-400mm lens but it quickly proved defective and is only on its way back from repair under warranty.

Here are a few stills taken with my Rebel + Tamron 100-500mm

oN SECOND THOUGHTS I'm still being lazy in assuming that Don's Red-Tailed Hawk clip is "slightly fuzzy, inevitably" ... that should have read "slightly fuzzy on my computer screen".

Should I assume instead that whatever I see on my computer screen looks inferior to how it would look on a CRT monitor? I think I was told that before!
I am still being misled by the fact that I have a few clips (more than a few) that look as sharp on my computer screen as I could wish for ... they are .avi files and uncompressed, but when I squeeze them they inevitably become less sharp on my computer screen.