I'm curious if any of you with original V1 footage has had a chance to downconvert to SD DVD? I've been pleased that A1, Z1 HDV gives somewhat better image quality on DVD delivery than I was getting with 1/3" chip DV. But it still has that "mini DV" look to it. I wonder if the V1 will further improve the DVD images, or if we are simply limited by the HDV/DVD formats.
It's very frustrating to me because watching HDV previews, it's obvious that all the necessary data for a beautiful image is there, it just somehow doesn't travel well to 720 x 480 m2v.
For me, the holy grail would be to shoot small chip HDV and have DVD imagery that looked like it was shot on 2/3" SD cameras. Maybe that's too much free lunch to ask for- XDCam territory I suppose.

Funny, until you asked this question I forgot that Sony included a DVD in the press kit which I hadn't looked at yet, so I just watched it. It includes some of the material which we saw projected on the big 36' screen at Sony Plaza: nature scenes with fields of grass and flowers, trees blowing in the wind, sunsets, people on the beach, seagulls, mountains by a lake and a soccer game.

It all looks very good, but of course it's only standard definition. I watched it on my 39" ED (854x480) plasma screen. So it downconverts just fine, but I'd say it looks just like what I get from my Z1 for the most part (although probably more latitude, and no vertical smear from the sunset). I'm not sure what you're looking for here, or why one would expect downconverted footage from this camera to look any better than any of the other affordable HD cameras. Obviously it will be missing some of the advantages of a 2/3" camera, not the least of which would be a lens that might cost twice as much as the V1 :-)

However, seeing the full HD footage is much more impressive. In the original version you can literally see every blade of grass, little branches on the trees, etc. On the SD DVD all these details blur together like they would from any camera.

I was hoping that possibly some aspect of the new CMOS chip design, and the new DSP might have an impact that would carry over to SD downconvert. I think I read, for example, that the CMOS image is processed initially with 4:2:2 color sampling, before compressing to 4:2:0 HDV.
Sounds like there's no dramatic improvement when downconverted. Too bad.

Sounds like there's no dramatic improvement when downconverted. Too bad.At the end of the day, DV is limited by its (relatively..) limited resolution and the results obtained currently from the curent crop of HDV cams is IMO at kinda like 95% of as good as it will ever get.

Therefore, taking this assumption, or at least, the idea behind it, to be broadly true, it's not possible to get a *dramatic* improvement if HDV-to-DV footage is already at 95% (semi-random high figure..) as good as it can get, limited by the colrspace and res that is available in that format. You just hit a brickwall really.

Well, while we are on the subject, what is your worKflow fpr HDV>>DVD?
I'm currently using HDV> Cineform 1080i CFHD> 720x 480 m2v using Procoder 2 @ 6mbs CBR> author and burn in Encore.
Is there a better way?? Stu? Boyd?

I understand where your comming from, What you need to do is add a 35mm adaptor downconvert to SD and Colour Correct, then watch the result and see how many you can fool into thinking it was shot on 35mm :)

I think sometimes we forget how much camcorder techonology has improved.

Anhar

Well, while we are on the subject, what is your worKflow fpr HDV>>DVD?

For the projects I've done, I'm not trying for any special filmic effects or anything. I'm on the Mac, but I just downconvert using the Z1 and capture as regular DV. Then I burn DVD's using a standalone recorder with a firewire interface and the print to video command in FCP.

Regarding DVD image quality: I saw a snippet on the Sony V1 website that implies the following:
1) If you acquire in 24 p on the V1 and
2) have the NLE remove the 3-2 pulldown
3) edit in true 24p
4) transcode the 1080 24p movie directly to 720 x 480 m2v
that this workflow will give the highest quality ("mastering quality") DVD imagery possible, presumably better than anything that you can do with 1080 60i.
Does this sound plausable???