Hi! I just received my new FX1. Very excited.
2 things.

1st : I wanted to compare the visible difference between DV and HDV, cuz I've been reading "more lines", "more rez", but a picture is worth, well, a thousand and more pixels...
2 stills, one in HDV, one in DV : Same camera (fx1), same light settings, same light(20 sec difference), ...same bottle of shampoo (DownUnder BodySoap)

So here are the two links :

www.toptao.com/HDV.jpg

and

www.toptao.com/DV.jpg

2nd: I've been transfering my footage with DVHSCap
Converting to the DC30 LOSSLESS 4:2:2 codec with MPEG Streamclip
Now, I can edit in FCP HD in realtime. (I have a g5dual2G. Works fine.)
I guess I'm not worried into converting back to HDV because I don't want to recompress in MPEG 2 - once is enough! For now, I thought of brigning my disks to a transfer place to get a HD final tape done.

Anybody can tell me if I'm doing it right? Or if you found better solutions?
Any comments on going back onto a HDV tape?

Thanks!
Dom

Hey Dom,

The HDV looks good. Which DV camera did you use in the comparison?

The same camera in fact.
The FX1 has both capabilities : to shoot in DV and HDV.

I'd love to see a comparison between DVX/XL2 with the FX1 just for grins.

The DV.jpg looks like out of focus. It shouldn't be so soft even it was a DV.

<<<-- Anybody can tell me if I'm doing it right? Or if you found better solutions?
Any comments on going back onto a HDV tape?

Thanks!
Dom -->>>

The superior solution is Lumiere HD. It will allow you to edit a proxy, but then you link back to the original files for output - hense no recompression.

Visit www.lumierehd.com

DBK

As somebody was saying, it's not easy being on the bleeding edge of technology.

Thanks! I can imagine Lumière works well for that kind of thing. But how much is it again?
What I forgot to add was the word "free".
I already invested enough in the hardware, FCP, and the camera for my kind of wallet...

Btw, the DV image looks kind of blurry, I agree. I'll do a comparasion test with a Vx1000 I have and I'll post it. I was asked if the dv recording on the FX1 was using the same chip and making a computer translation or if it was using only part of the chip... I thought it was a good question so I bounce it back. Anyone know what's happening there? Because if there is a calculation from HDV to DV by the camera, it would mean that shooting in DV, you're better off not using it... It would be of less good quality than let say shooting with a native DV chip like on PD150. Please post your comments on this issue. I might be missing out on an important detail here.

Dom

Dom,

You seem to have scaled the images down to a similar resolution when converting them to JPEG, actually the HDV is lower res than the DV one. It would be nice if you posted both at the same higher res, like 1920x1080, and set the JPEG codec to the highest quality in both cases.

It's strange that the DV image is so blurry. My PDX10 makes better images in DV mode. Could it be that the JPEG compression was set to a lower quality with the DV picture?

It's nice to see that the CCD doesn't show much vertical smear. The contrast from the sky in the window might cause the PDX10 and PD170 to smear slightly.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dom Dzip : As somebody was saying, it's not easy being on the bleeding edge of technology.

Thanks! I can imagine Lumière works well for that kind of thing. But how much is it again?
What I forgot to add was the word "free".
I already invested enough in the hardware, FCP, and the camera for my kind of wallet...

Dom -->>>


Incase you have yet to figure it out, you get nothing for nothing in theis world Dom.

Lumiere is also one of the most cost efective solutions. It is $179.99.

DBK

Dom, it's a safe bet that Apple will have support for Sony's HDV cameras for FCP in place by April at NAB, if not before. If it's not a free upgrade, it will certainly be a small incremental upgrade - probably $99 or less. That's just a guess based on Apple's pattern.

The wall in the DV image looks to be in focus, but the shampoo is either out of focus or just lower rez.

The HDV image is perfectly focused, like most HD images I've seen without a great lens--a VERY deep depth of field. Nice and focused.

heath

Thanks for your input and comments!
Here's another test :

[www.toptao.com/dv.tif]

Was shot using a vx1000.
The dv was imported in FCP and converted into a TIFF

The second one :

[www.toptao.com/hdv.tif]

Was shot with the fx1
The HDV was imported by DVHSCap and converted to DC30 LOSSLESS 4:2:2 at 100 per cent quality
And then imported in FCP - Put in a timeline of that codec and exported as a TIFF.

These are big files 4.1 meg and 1.3 meg TIFFs.
Please post your comments.
-Dom

Scott,

I'd be seriously pissed off if apple charged an upgrade fee. It says Final cut Pro HD on the box and thus the codec should be free when avaliable.

As a side thought, it would be nice to see some HD footage converted into SD PAL and converted into lossless DV. Anyone fancy the challenge??? I have server bandwidth waiting !!!

Best


Jonathan

The best currently available solution for HDV editing is Adobe Premiere Pro with the Cineform Aspect HD plugin, but that's only available for PCs. For Mac work I think you're doing about what everyone else is doing, but I've heard that Apple will soon support HDV editing in Final Cut Express in a way which is more useful than using FCP HD.

We're getting off topic with the editing solutions, but I like Lumiere HD (www.lumierehd.com) with Final Cut Pro. FCP and FCE currently do NOT support HDV, but will likely by next Spring.

For more on editing, visit our HDV Editing Forum (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=63).

heath

I know we're getting off topic, but does Lumière support the FX1 yet? The website says it doesn't.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dom Dzip : I know we're getting off topic, but does Lumière support the FX1 yet? The website says it doesn't. -->>>

No it doesn't support it yet. It will very zoon as they are working on it.

DBK

Dom,

As someone else mentioned, BOTH pictures were reduced to pretty much standard DV resolution. The HDV (reduced to SD) STILL looks a bit better than the DV.

The real comparison would be at the higher res.

DV is DV, HDV or 35mm film or whatever down-converted to DV still looks great. I always stress that to my friends who are just getting into filmmaking (not to say you guys are, btw).

heath

David,

I did the first test wrong making the two images the same size-
Please see in the middle of this thread two other pictures full rez and full original size I made available on the net.

<<<-- Originally posted by Heath McKnight : We're getting off topic with the editing solutions, FCP and FCE currently do NOT support HDV, but will likely by next Spring.
heath -->>>

Yes, still off topic...but did you hear rumors that Final Cut Express will support HDV?

That would be great for someone on a budget(my imaginary budget at this moment in time)...

John,

Post that question over in our HDV editing solutions page (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=63)--I'm sure they'll have better answers!

heath

Just an FYI.. Mac & FCP/E users check out MPEGStreamClip to convert your HDV files into something usable in Final Cut.

Capture with DVHSCap, convert with MpegStreamClip, edit away.

Takes some time to convert, but if you've got more time than $$, it's a great solution.

http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html

Right on Patrick.
It's good to know it works for someone else too. So until FCP comes up with their update, I'll keep doing exactly that.

Back to comparing DV and HDV with the naked eye - please look in the middle of the thread - I have posted 2 new images of correct proportions, any of you could see them?

Here are the links again. I'm blown away by the size of hdv.

www.toptao.com/hdv.tif

and

www.toptao.com/dv.tif

Thanks for .tif images. Glad to see people are getting their FX1's. Can't wait for someone to put something together and upload it so we can all check it out.

Does the FX1 have some sort of fake 24p setting? I just read a thread that stated they were doing a demo in NYC for a group of people and they showed the camera using it's 24p settings, but I thought that 24p was going to be reserved for the professional version of the FX1.

The fx1 doesn't have 24p recording capabilities.
It has a cineframe mode 24. I am told it is a shutter speed, and not a frame rate - this is why it looks kind of studdering.

Sorry to be changing the topic of my thread but PLEASE!!! Someone who has SEEN the Z1 tell us : does it have 24 P (PROGRESSIVE) capabilities? I've been searching all over for solid info on this.

If YES : so it will do PROGRESSIVE and INTERLACED?

In anycase, here's a thought : For a film maker like me who will eventually finish in FILM, isn't it better to shoot in 60i (being a larger number of lines than progressive > hence higher quality) and THEN transfering with these pro stations which have great software to make the interlaced to progressive conversions? Wouldn't I get more quality out of my image?

-dOM

Actually, for film out, if you can wait for the Z1, it is switchable from 30fps 60i to Pal 25fps 50i which is easier to tx to film than 60i. But, if you have the FX1 60i will work. No progressive mode other than 25p or 24p will tx to film easily. That's why so many video to film houses warn against using the JVC HDV Cams, and some outright refuse to even work with the footage from them.

For instance, 25p or 50i just needs to be slowed a bit. Not even enough to notice, but most tx houses will do a pitch shift on the audio to compensate for any variance. 24p, well, that kinda speaks for itself. 24 fps out to 24fps in... nuff said. with 60i it gets a little complicated, field mixing is usually the solution to keep motion smooth while lowering the frame rate to 24, without dropping any actual info. Here's the kicker... With the 720p 30 HDV from JVC, which from many accounts has a fair amount of motion judder (I can attest to this as well) you have to actually drop whole frames. Because it's progressive, there's no field mixing possible, and converting 30p to 60i really only doubles the frame as individual fields that contain the same information. So you see, it's not as simple, or as complex as you think. I personally will wait for the Z1 and switch to 25fps 50i for my film out applications, and 30fps 60i for video only stuff.

Hope this helps

Rob

links don't work!