Here's the board behind the pages at 200%. (No correction at all this time.)

http://www.12south.com/video/hv20/24p_200board.jpg

Here, obviously, the difference in detail is much more noticable.

Eugenia,
Why the nasty stairstepping in those images? Are you shooting 60i and interpolating?

That would be very good news, indeed, since we could lock the shutter at 1/48th and work from there.

>Are you shooting 60i and interpolating?

Yes. When I use "blend" fields with Vegas it creates ghosting, so my only Vegas exporting option to a lossless codec that's acceptable is interpolating. As I explained earlier, I have to export before I can grab detailed screenshots, because Vegas won't give me 100% quality previews. BTW, please go back to my previous comment, I modified it and added one more picture to show the difference in a detail.

You're right, TV mode looks best of all those. And what to took notice of most was the "Crate&Barrel" wording on the wooden handle is the most sharp and detailed in the TV mode.

I made some contrast modifications to my earlier comparison picture in order to show under extreme stress which mode has the most artifacts or less clarity:
http://osnews.com/img/vegas/comp2.png
As you can see, in reality, the Auto mode and the TV/AE mode are not all that different. The only thing that differentiates them is the fact that the Auto and AE modes have in-camera sharpening which results to non-recoverable detail and artifacts. TV mode seems to be the most pristine of them all. Cinemode has the most chromatic aberrations and softening. I think I will switch to TV mode from now on...

It just occured to me (I'm not really much of a shooter, I'm a post guy) that aperture settings might affect focus. I know it definitely accounts for a shorter DOF, but isn't it also true that the more open the aperture, the softer the focus? I wonder how much of the difference in modes is attributable to differing f-stops?

Is everybody else also seeing that CINE footage seems to suffer the most visible MPEG-2 artifacts ... both color error noise and macro-blocking? Why in the world is this happening?

Conversely, though, CINE seems to have the most natural color response. Damn.

More testing, more testing.

Yup, if we could get TV mode's no in-camera sharpening with Cinemode's blunt colors, we would be in heaven. ;-)

I don't think the problem is the focus in the AE mode btw, from the pictures I saw it's sharpening artifacts that caught my attention regarding that mode, just like in auto mode.

Here's the chart I'm going to shoot. I'm going to try to be thorough and accurate with every mode.

http://www.12south.com/video/hv20/chart.jpg

P.S. My system is calibrated end-to-end so the color, while lab perfect, will be quite good enough to judge the merits of each mode.

One last test from me:
http://osnews.com/img/vegas/comp3.png

The lower the shutter speed, the less noise exists it seems. I think shooting 24f with 1/48 TV mode is the best bet one has for *indoors* where the light is limited. For outdoor, the AE or P mode might be better. Under no circumstances I would go for Cinemode though.

As for color correction, I think that in this day and age we have tools to fix them, even if we are not shooting cinemode.

I had a long talk with my husband who is a prosumer photographer and has also studied some optics at the uni too. Apparently my tests, which indeed show that slower shutter has less noise, won't have the same results outdoors, or even if you... zoom in! In other words, in order to get the BEST quality out of an HV20, you need to spend an hour per shot going back and forth on your computer doing tests, because the camera does not let you control gain/aperture/exposure/shutterspeed all at the same time. I don't think that shooting and checking stuff all the time on a PC screen before deciding on the best settings is realistic.

Now, what's interesting is that while the user does not have access to the these controls, the *camera software* does.

And this is why shooting on P/Auto, which it might not *always* be the best, but it will be in most cases. If you don't like the contrasty video look, buy a $30 contrast filter, and you are done. Under no circumstances I would use Cinemode though.

Eugenia and Joseph, wow, thank you for your tests. I was a believer in CINE mode up till 5 minutes ago. My HV20 has been gone nearly a month now - warrenty (different problem) - when it returns, I promise I'll do my own tests, with an UNCOMPRESSED digital capture of the signal.

Regardless though, I think CINE mode is out for me.. I desire every ounce of resolution my HV20 can provide.

Thanks again!

I know this isn't completely scientific, but it works in the context of my video work (since I'm not a professional), but I took the nice color image Joseph provided and printed it out on 5x7 High Premium Glossy Epson Photo Paper. Then connected the Component Out (RGB) of the HV20 and connected that to my HDTV, then also had the firewire connected to the PC using HDVSplit for viewing on my monitor, then used the photo to compare what I saw on the HDTV to what I saw on my monitor and made a few minor color/setting adjustments to my pc monitor so that it came much closer to matching my HDTV.

Now before everyone jumps on this method, I am using the HDTV as my given standard to go by since I think that the Discovery HD Theater programs all look very well color-balanced when playing back as well as all the DVDs I play. So if I can match my footage to look like what I already think looks great on the HDTV, then my footage will be good for me. And having my pc monitor better match the HDTV now puts me closer in the ballpark of consistency. Anyway...this is all subject for another post.

So...I spent time going through all the different settings on the HV20 and came to these settings as looking best overall.

TV mode
AWB (or set it manually)
Custom Effect OFF (or)
Custom Effect:
Color Depth = 0
Sharpness = +1
Contrast = -1
Bright = 0

Now the interesting kicker is that when I switched the camera back to FULL AUTOMATIC - the results were very near identical. In other words, full auto actually does look suprisingly good for a set and forget setting. But I definitely came to even more conclusions that I DO NOT want to ever be using Cinemode ever again, it just softens the image too much. Now...you can get a very "slight" flavor of the Cinemode contrast if you use the NEUTRAL setting in the Image Effect. It's not anything drastic like Cinemode does to the contrast within an image, but it leans more in that direction.

Very interesting Nathan, thanks. However, you might want to draw a long cable and shoot with the HV20 outdoors while still watching the signal on your HDTV. My husband said that outdoors the TV mode *might* not be the best mode, but rather the P or AE. Although it indeed seems that the lower the shutter speed, the best the quality.

Thanks for that bit of additional insight and advice. I guess I should have mentioned that my settings were for indoors. Yes, I would think that once outdoors the equation lends itself to change, but if there is any definite in all that has been shared today amongst ourselves - it's that Cinemode is a NO GO MODE. :o)

True. Me and the entire film/television industry.

Interesting tests.

-Stu