I know a lot of people on here second question the HDV format when it comes to a lot of motion and the ability of the camcorder to produce smooth flawless video. The GOP/HDV type compression makes it a difficult challenge but does anyone have some video they can share that shows the quality of the V1 with regard to a lot of motion or actions such as sports. I know finding a place to host is hard but if anyone has run across any links can you please post them here. Thanks for your time.

Gorski

high action is a way to disturb an mpeg encoder, but it is not the only one.
the moving water of the surface of a lake is a difficult one too.
a vertical pan on ah highly detailled picture works also.
sudden light intensity (flashes) are good candidate too.

Thanks for the extra info.

I find that the fast-action footage can look very good, but it is more difficult the more pixels change from one frame to the next. A camera tracking a motorcycle on brown dirt against a blue sky actually doesn't have too many pixels change. If the blue sky fills 25% of the screen in the upper left and right, that makes the compressors job a whole lot easier. A person running through a scene where the camera does not pan is not a problem at all. The background remaining static allows plenty of information for the runner. HDV really can make some great footage, but to be absolutely perfect in all situations the bitrate would need to be raised. The 25mbps of HDV is ALMOST there, but the 35mbps of XDCAM is where it could start to be perfect. Even with the odd compression error, HDV is far superior to DV. The images can be quite stunning on a big HDTV. Don't forget that broadcast HDTV signals are frequently 19mbps, so HDV is technically better than broadcast.

yes the fast action picture has the advantage that even if the picture goes bad, it is not sure you will see it.
on the other hand some slow but difficult pictures can be more disturbing since the sudden degradation (most of time blockiness) is very visible.
if you know how mpeg is working , it is easier to create problematic shot (or avoid it).
basically, mpeg cuts a picture in small blocks, then calculate/predict between each picture the movement(direction) of each blocks.
if blocks are all moving as predicted or all to the same direction, the picture will look good. If blocks are moving too randomly, prediction will fail and the encoder will have to thrown out some info (bandwidth exceeded), so the loss in quality.
that is why a calm water surface with just small wave can be a nightmare for a mpeg encoder because the random behaviour of water.

Wow ... I'm starting to worry a little about doing handheld HDV footage of fast-action whitewater kayaking, sometimes while I'm still floating in a kayak myself or am zoomed in fairly tight to a wildly churning/ splashing/ crashing rapid or waterfall.

Then again, what other choices do I have?

What are the least expensive higher-bitrate/less-artifacty camcorders and how much do they cost?

All HDV camcorders are typically the same bitrate. You really have nothing to fear. If you want something inexpensive, I would guess that the populous of these boards would recommend the Canon HV20 and the Sony HC series (HC1, HC3, HC5,...) for the very small cameras and maybe an FX7 if you don't mind your budget and size increasing. The smaller cameras are about $1300 and the FX7 is twice that. If your budget is creeping towards $3000 anyway, you will get a lot of recommendations to go up to the Canon A1 which is now under $3500. It is also another step larger than the FX7 but still a handheld.

Water isn't the problem. There is a particular issue with waves on the surface of water that can cause a minor problem but that shouldn't be present in your shots. Imagine a scene of a sunset over the ocean. The water would fill the bottom half of the scene. At this angle, several miles of ocean are in the shot. There are thousands of waves moving very quickly through the scene, but the apparent effect is a sort of flashing back-and-forth between a white and black pixel. As the waves go up-and-down, they oscillate quickly between a side that is lit and the other that is shadowed by the sun. When almost every other pixel on the screen is bouncing between black and white in a random pattern, there can be some macroblocking. It is a few scenes like this that can have a problem and even then it may very well not be noticeable. Keep your camera as stable as possible and you will probably never notice compression artifacts with HDV.

I can't post any footage from my V1 where there are apparent compression artifacts because I haven't noticed any. There may very well be technical flaws with some of my footage, but if it isn't noticeable while watching it doesn't matter. You will see far more compression artifacts watching big-budget movies on "professional" broadcast HD television every day. If "amateur" equipment originates footage better than the pros broadcast, I don't see a problem with HDV.

You will see far more compression artifacts watching big-budget movies on "professional" broadcast HD television every day. If "amateur" equipment originates footage better than the pros broadcast, I don't see a problem with HDV.

I second that, Markus.

Water isn't the problem. There is a particular issue with waves on the surface of water that can cause a minor problem but that shouldn't be present in your shots. Imagine a scene of a sunset over the ocean. The water would fill the bottom half of the scene. At this angle, several miles of ocean are in the shot. There are thousands of waves moving very quickly through the scene, but the apparent effect is a sort of flashing back-and-forth between a white and black pixel. As the waves go up-and-down, they oscillate quickly between a side that is lit and the other that is shadowed by the sun.

I'm not too concerned, and the alternatives are very pricey, but the circumstances I'll be shooting in sometimes are quite different and can have nearly frame-filling, chaotic, splashing whitewater ... Like this:
http://www.dreamflows.com/Trinity/frank.trinity.lg.html

Shaun,

My advice with content like this would be not to add "stress" to the HDV encoder with fast zooms, pans etc. If you keep your shots reasonably steady, the water itself should be handled just fine. Just MHO.

Shaun,

My advice with content like this would be not to add "stress" to the HDV encoder with fast zooms, pans etc. If you keep your shots reasonably steady, the water itself should be handled just fine. Just MHO.

I agree. The mpeg-2 blocking on 1080i60 hdtv channels are very painful. I've never seen anything from any hdv camcorder that is this bad. In fact, I just shot moving water with my old jvc hd1 -- zero blocking.

But, I expect CU of a bomb explosion would do it.

If you really want to be safe use xdcam hd or 720p24.

I really am getting tired of battling these endless myths about hdv. do folks realize that 720p24 is compressed less than dvcpro hd 24N? Yet, 24N is seen as fully acceptable.

and where is avid's support of 720p25 and fcp's support of the v1's 24p?

a good friend claims sony really doesn't care if the v1 flys because they have never supported shared standards like hdv. he claims they want to promote xdcam ex just like they do dvcam. i'm beginning to think he's right. after all, jvc long ago moved to ProHD.

i'm typing lower case because i have three new kittens and they are trying very hard to add their own keystrokes.

a good friend claims sony really doesn't care if the v1 flys because they have never supported shared standards like hdv. he claims they want to promote xdcam ex just like they do dvcam. i'm beginning to think he's right. after all, jvc long ago moved to ProHD.

i'm typing lower case because i have three new kittens and they are trying very hard to add their own keystrokes.

Never supported shared standards like HDV?

Well they didn't do too bad a job with DV, I wasn't in this game back then but I'm reliably told by just about anyone that was that DV came alive with Sony's VX1000.

HDV?, wasn't it Sony's Z1 that lit the fire under that format?

And who are the only ones that haven't caused compatibility problems by going outside that shared standard, Sony.

JVC 'moved' to ProHD? Well their first efforts at HDV wasn't exactly stellar but why did they move down to 720p?

XDCAM mightn't be a "shared" standard but at least you've got a choice of media vendors, if you wanted to pick on anything as being closed Panny's P2 would surely have to win that crown.

If you want to knock Sony for their closed and/or dodgy formats there's plenty of them but HDV isn't one of them.

Of course the reality is most things that look closed aren't, it's just that one vendor sees a hole in the market and finds a way to plug it. The rest realise the hole isn't big enough for two players and leave the market to one vender. IMX would be a good example. A pretty problematic format when it first rolled out but it still works well in many situations like Big Brother. It's never been a huge money earner for Sony but they still support it and even continue to develop for it.
I guess the reason mundane realities don't get much coverage is conspiracy theories sell more copy.

Congrats on the kittens, I'm a real sucker for them myself. Don't know how you stop them typing, our 8 year cat loves my noisy original IBM buckling spring keyboard.

I just taped a hip-hop dance competition last week and I have to say that the V1 handled it great. It caught all the movements and looked very smooth and fluid. People who saw the footage was very impressed by it and love the hi-def look. Even I was taken back, because everyone has been talkin about a long GOP and was thinking the V1 wouldn't be good for sports, but it handled this test very well. I wish I can upload it it here by I have no online storage.

Wendell, why don't you try this: www.rapidshare.com. Works great for me!

Do you know what I see in that Trinity River shot? It's almost all white. There is some static black and a bunch of white that is going to swirl around. It's not going to flash from all black to all white every other frame. There will be plenty of data avialable to record the kayakers in all their HD glory. No, it won't be perfect, but it may very well be stunning.

Hey guys, here is the dance clip I promised. I had to make it under 100mb in order to put it on rapidshare. I encoded it with Apple's H.264 codec so it's not the best representation of the original clip but it came out pretty good.

http://rapidshare.com/files/32833368/ECDC_Dance_Clip.mp4

Great! And I'm sure even much faster action would be handled fine by the HDV encoder. What were your settings?

Actually this was my first shoot with the V1U I just got it the day before and didn't even have time to play it. Everything was shot out of the box. I only controlled the exposure settings and gain. It was all in 60i. i was impressed with the automatic capabilities of the V1U.

Hey Steve, for the record… we care! The HDV format and HDV users are very important to Sony; we are fully committed to both. Due to its being Sony’s first flash memory camcorder, the introduction of the XDCAM EX camcorder stole the attention away from a “mockup” of a future, full-size cassette HDV camcorder that was also shown inside a glass case at NAB. It is too early to reveal the details about this HDV camcorder, but you can be assured that like previous Sony professional HDV products, this new acquisition tool will further enrich the quality, workflow and creativity of low cost HD production.

Juan Martinez, Sony Electronics

Juan, what PC setup would you recommend to capture live video from Sony V1U over HDMI?

Due to its being Sony’s first flash memory camcorder, the introduction of the XDCAM EX camcorder stole the attention away from a “mockup” of a future, full-size cassette HDV camcorder that was also shown inside a glass case at NAB.

I thought the full size HDV was wonderful, but I haven't published anything because the comments I heard were that Sony wasn't "sure" if it would actually build it and because I didn't find a Press Release.

As you say, given the EX (and it's very low price) it was hard for many not to wonder if EX wasn't the future of MPEG-2.

This impression is strengthed by:

1) a string of stories in major publications that "HDV is dead"
2) Sony being a co-developer of AVCHD (which has a 24Mbps option).
3) JVC "pro" marketing ProHD, not HDV
4) JVC "consumer" using 1440CBR MPEG-2, but not calling it "anything."
5) Avid's several year pause in support for "HDV."
6) Apple's equal lateness in supporting the 720p50/720p60 and V1 camcorders.
7) The incredible hostility to HDV by the alpha dogs in Hollywood. The fact that what they say is untrue seems not to matter as no one dares argue with them.

In fairness, some of their issues are justified. FCP/JVC has serious issues capturing 720p using batch capture. (Avid doesn't even claim it can.) And, until the Sony 1500 VTR -- just introduced -- the pros had no RS422 controlled VTR with HD-SDI which they claim they must have.

At the same time, XDCAM HD offers 35Mbps (which makes them FEEL better about MPEG-2) and pro level capture by Avid and Apple. The EX falls into line with all this exiting support.

Bottom-line, had Apple shown support for ProHD and the V1, and had Sony put-out some kind of Press Release on the full-sized HDV unit -- the question of "HDV's" future would not have come up as strongly at NAB.

As we talked about at NAB, "out-reach" is especially important for Sony because its R&D creates multiple formats that differ by relatively small price increments. FUD is inherent in today's market, even when not created by the competition. (And, it is.)

The fact that the same "are you still beating your wife" type questions appear on all the list-serves, suggest that even after 3-4 years of use -- HDV is still not understood by both novices and even super pros. Perhaps because intra-frame compression and 4:2:0 sampling move video so far into mathematics that creative types either can't (or simply won't try to) understand it and so become easy prey to FUD.

"EX (and it's very low price) it was hard for many not to wonder if EX wasn't the future of MPEG-2"

Hmmm ... I hope MPEG-2 doesn't have too much more of a future for aquisition formats -- there's better, newer, more efficient methods out there in many flavors now.

"very low price"?!? -- Wow, for some folks on the higher end, it might be somewhat inexpensive, but compared to the nicer HDV options, it's still VERY expensive, and will be for some time, especially with the cost of the big storage cards. It will be quite a while before I head out for a big field adventure or overseas trip with cards for many hours of footage vs. very affordable tapes.

I'd love the quality boost and direct-to-card recording, but it's not going to be affordable or practical for me and many other folks for quite a while -- which hopefully only means a few years.

Until then, HDV will keep going strong in its market -- especially given some solid camera choices and amount of HDV producers out there already.

For what it offers, the EX is very resonably priced. I know a few seasoned pros who have wanted physical lens control on a camera in this price range. As far as workflow goes, xdcam ex is the only solid state format that has a solid state archival method (sonys professional disk) that can back up your original acquisition footage, without converting files.
More efficient codecs require more powerful and power hungry encoders, not so good for a 7.2v camcorder (I do think the mathematics of this business is a little too much to handle). It's at least a few years out. MPEG-2 seems to be a pretty good comprimise right now. As for fast motion and the V1u, any other clips you guys could post would be just wonderful. I'm looking for an upgrade right now and the V1u is at the top of my list.

Greg, V1U's mpeg2 encoder behaves just like the ones on FX1/Z1U...

With fast pans, or unpredictable motion/busy background in the frame, the vertical lines are falling apart for as long as the compressor is over-stressed.

You can see the same thing in your cable HDTV broadcast :)

I have a limited experience capturing LIVE video from V1U over HDMI. This method *bypasses* mpeg compression and so the picture quality is great and without the compression artifacts mentioned above.

I've shot HDV for 4 years and I've never seen what you describe. Likewise, I've had HDTV from near day one in the USA and even the horrible first HD Olymics on NBC -- I've never seen what you describe.

MPEG-2 break-up comes in the form of macro-blocking, not trearing. But, even this is increasingly rare. It never happens with 720p. It happens with explosions on 1080i. BUT -- almost only when a TV station doesn't provide the full 19.4Mbps for HD. Or, uses a cheap encoder.

On TWC and COX cable, it is very rare.

HD2 records at 25Mbps, 20% higher than ATSC.

They key is not MPEG-2 or not MPEG-2, but the sophistication of the MPEG-2 encoder. By increasing encoder sophistication and the bit rate to 50Mbps -- 4:2:2 can be recorded that will look as good as what some call more "advanced" formats.

PS: "Wow, for some folks on the higher end, it might be somewhat inexpensive, ..." Have you priced XDCAM HD camcorders WITH an HD lens? And, XDCAM HD is at the very low-end of HD. The EX is crazy cheap. And, the street price of the EX will be cheaper. Not in my price range, but certainly in the price range of anyone who shoots HD for profit.

Wow thanks for all the information. I'm definitely more confident in the HDV codec. Looks like the A1 is in my budget so it looks like I'll be making a purchase real soon.

Shaun, I have been shooting quite a bit of wakeboarding ,very fast action and Im not seeing any problems. Lots of water moving fast with fast pans. I am shooting in 60i but I havent burned to disc yet. Just watching it on an HD tv and all I can say is WOW

Shaun, I have been shooting quite a bit of wakeboarding ,very fast action and Im not seeing any problems. Lots of water moving fast with fast pans. I am shooting in 60i but I havent burned to disc yet. Just watching it on an HD tv and all I can say is WOW

Thank you for posting. I have to wonder if some reports of "tearing" images aren't from LCD displays that cannot update fast enough. Or, a connection problem.

The mpeg compression artifacts of the Sony z1 are very obvious with anything slightly more demanding shots. If the v1 is anything like it then it should show those same ugly macroblocks in difficult situations.

The HC1 also has a tendency to breakup in difficult scenes rendering some frames really bad

The mpeg compression artifacts of the Sony z1 are very obvious with anything slightly more demanding shots. If the v1 is anything like it then it should show those same ugly macroblocks in difficult situations.

The HC1 also has a tendency to breakup in difficult scenes rendering some frames really bad

"Anything slightly more demanding" - could you elaborate? I'm not a Sony (or HDV, for that matter) fanboy, but haven't noticed any compression artefacts on my V1E that would be more dramatic than what I can see on Discovery HD, for instance.

Piotr, it does look the same as on HDTV, just like I pointed out :)

Any fast motion in the frame (or busy background) = blocky artifacts.

Since this only occurs during motion, the motion blur itself does mask the artifacts somewhat.

However I can see them during normal playback, and they are extremely obvious on frame-by-frame viewing in NLE.

Sony Z1 and V1 both seem to produce similar artifacts.

(On cable HD TV, similar blocky artifacts even occur during fades between the scenes. Urgh.)

This is all because of low-bandwidth mpeg-2 compression.

Supposedly, higher bandwidth (50Mb/s) devices like XDCAM HD or EX, do not exhibit such problems.

In fact, V1U also does not have any macroblocks on fast motion if you capture *live* via HDMI, since it outputs uncompressed 1920x1080 signal.

Live HDMI signal is before mpeg2 compression.

Now all we need is a laptop with Blackmagic Intensity card built-in, for mobile video capture on location
:)

(On cable HD TV, similar blocky artifacts even occur during fades between the scenes. Urgh.)


Perhaps you have COMCAST or your cable company is getting a multicast. :)

I have a dozen HD channels on COX -- who does not rate limit and gets feeds direct from the stations -- and this simply in not the norm. But, it does occasionaly happen. I don't why.

So I'm not saying you don't see what you see, but it is not inherently true of 19.4Mbps MPEG-2.

I will take the wakeboarding footage, send it through FCP and burn a disc then report back. Its true that I have been watching the footage on an HDTV ..however Im using the component inputs. So let me check what my footage looks like after rendering and burning. I do have some snowboard footage I have put out as a Quicktime movie on my PC...and NO background blur there

Steve, my HD broadcast provider is Cablevision in North East US. I saw exactly the same artifacts on my older DirecTV HD two years ago though, as well as over-the-air HD broadcast of FOX, ABC, and PBS, so I assumed all broadcasters are bottlenecking at the mpeg2 codec.

John, while in FCP, simply go frame-by-frame and you will see the artifacts.

You are *not* looking for the blur, but for the squares (blocks) that will appear on fast-moving parts of the image.

They look completely unnatural.

Not only do they occur on the moving parts, but sometimes also on the steady parts of the image, for a few frames following the fast motion, arbitrarily. Clearly the mpeg2 codec gets thrown off and cannot keep up with the action at 25Mbs and less.

I read some articles than JVC HD250 cam has what they call SuperEncoder that somehow encodes better, but I have no first-hand experience with that. (Note that HD250 only records 720p, while V1U outputs 1080p, making mpeg2 encoder work harder.)

I also believe that pro cams that record mpeg2 in 50Mbs streams have enough bandwidth to *not* exhibit motion artifacts - but then again, I have no personal experience working with that footage yet.

I personally did never notice any macroblocking on my V1E (apart from what sometimes happens when a photographer's flash changes quickly the lighting conditions where I'm shooting).

The only evidence of the HDV encoder running out of bandwidth that I do encounter when shooting progressive is the dancings pixels, or marching ants occuring near sharp, contrasty edges with plenty of small detail. This has nothing to do with high action/motion, though.

OK, here: this was shot with V1U last week in Central Park NYC, recorded on tape (HDMI *not* used).

The setup: girl's head is between the camera and the guy.

Girl moves to the right and out of the frame, fast.

See the trail of macroblocks on her hair and to the left.

Guy's face in the background is also affected (and will be for a couple of frames even after the girl is completely out of the view.)

Tree on the left is far enough from the action and is unaffected.

I captured that frame from the NLE as bmp, and then saved as jpg to decrease file size. This did not change how the still cap looks.

So there you go.

Yeah, this definitely is ugly. Does it last long enough to actually see it when playing at normal speed?

Again, I've never spotted anything like this on my recordings. When I find a single frame that looks as bad, I'll let you know!

You can hardly ever notice it at normal speed.

In my case, it lasted for a few frames altogether.

That's why people think the blockiness is not there.

FYI, this was shot at 24p, but it does not matter - the same thing occurs at 30p and 60i. Z1U did the same thing too.

Once again, V1U cam is actually great: simply capture from HDMI out live (i recommend Cineform Aspect HD as codec of choice), and voila - no macroblocks on fast motion.

I'm not affiliated with Cineform, just love their AHD codec.

next week I will be installing the Blackmagic HDMI capture card. No more MPEG 2 capture for me, so I hope that will do away with this problem

Weird. I've been shooting with the Z1U for a few years, now, and haven't seen these artifacts at all (and I scrub back and forth on single frames in Vegas all the time).

next week I will be installing the Blackmagic HDMI capture card. No more MPEG 2 capture for me, so I hope that will do away with this problem

I guess you realize that only live HDMI capture will let you avoid HDV compression?

So, if I record to tape and watch it on HDTV via HDMI cable its still compressed at Mpeg2? And the only way to capture via HDMI without compression would be to use a hard drive instead of tape?

As I said, and Brandon confirmed - this is really weird. I do a lot of scrubbing of my HDV material in Vegas and have seen many things you can't notice when watching the normal speed video, but never came across such evident macroblocking.

So, if I record to tape and watch it on HDTV via HDMI cable its still compressed at Mpeg2? And the only way to capture via HDMI without compression would be to use a hard drive instead of tape?

John, HDMI is uncompressed. But, if you first compress in order to write to tape (or disk drive such as HVR-DR60 or Firestore), you're certainly not going to get rid of the compression artefacts, should any occure during the original compression process. HDV, or more generally MPEG-2, is not a lossless codec and what is lost, cannot be recovered.

Therefore, to avoid compression artefacts, one needs to capture uncompressed (HDMI with Blackmagic is one option) before, or without ever writing to tape/hdd recording unit.

As I said, and Brandon confirmed - this is really weird. I do a lot of scrubbing of my HDV material in Vegas and have seen many things you can't notice when watching the normal speed video, but never came across such evident macroblocking.

Correction -- I have seen macro blocking when shooting standard interlaced 60i or 50i, BUT when I shoot in CineFrame30 or CineFrame25*, the motion artifacts are gone. I had always figured that the interlacing added an extra burden for MPEG encoders, and thus don't do anything other than interviews in standard 60i.

*I understand that CF30 and CF25 are not true progressive, but it sure looks purty. :)

I attended the opening night of the Sydney Film Festival last Friday night. The movie was shown in the wrong aspect ratio.
At the party afterwards there was lots of discussion about the movie. Outside of a couple of people in our group no one mentioned the major projection stuff up. Those of us who did are all the kind of people who look at vision frame by frame.
Perhaps there's a lesson in this.