Ron,

First off with the dvds and how I give my clients there videos... Depending on who it is, is how i do my videos. Example the sports bar i shoot videos for has a HDDVD player hooked up to the plasma tv's around the bar. So if we shoot videos in HD for the bar(bar vs bar baseball games, Bar partys, wet tshirt contest playback) they end up with an HDDVD video that looks good. and with HDDVD you can make a video with a normal dvd burner and a normal dvd disk. but it's just not worth it.... Other clients like the day spa has a media server that we lease to them. This media server we can connect to via FTP and upload HD WMV files and get added to the playlist and then are displayed on HD TV's in rooms.

Working with HD is a pain becuase there is no fixed format that you can give to your clients. so far computer is the best way to view these amazing videos.

untill the price drops on BluRay or HDDVD no body consumer wise wants to spend the cash, BUT!!! they all want the videos you shoot to be HD.

The one good thing is even if your working with an HD FILE and you dont down convert to capture once you render to an SD format like a normal SD DVD you have a little more quality in your video... But be careful sometimes you can get bad video also(jagged edges and lines).

Now onto the data right off the cam. In FCP it goes from a M2T right to quicktime. I don't mind it keeps the computer happy. If you capture with vegas and don't use 3rd party software you get the m2t but man it is a bitch to edit.

FCE and FCP are amazing at the way they handle HD.. Something you might want to look into is making a DVD Video/Data disks. I do this sometimes when a client wants the video in HD but cant get a HD DVD player for whatever reason. I put video on the disk so it plays on the dvd player but then if you stick it in the PC it has an AutoRun and plays a HD WMV file of the video.

Video is like crack you spend alot of money and once you have somthing. there is better and you need that better and you want MORE AND MORE AND MORE.

not that i know what using crack is like but i think that is a good example.

Ron don't worry about give your wife's friends HD format of video keep that for yourself untill everything with bluray and hddvd calms down.

you can always give them a download link to view the video in HD.

now unless your wife shoots in closet or laundry room like i did in that video i think you will be happy with the low light. Maybe you can just teach her how to white balance with the on cam light so her friends faces wont look blue.

Ron feel free to keep them coming and i'll try my best to respond.

Mike

You have blurred the fields together. Try deinterlacing before encoding or trying to get those fields encoded properly. Not a good comparison as the frames are blurred.

Mikko,

The purpose of the clip was to show the diff in both cams. I DID NOT blur any fields the only thing i did was add text and then i had to lower the res since it was at 1080i.

And im not sure about you but everyonce else was able to see it ok.. maybe there is somthing wrong on your end because it looks fine on my end.

cheers

~Mike

Hey Ron,

I just also wanted to show you a little clip i put together today...

I have been at my girlfriends house and went back to my house to check on things. the skys opened up alittle bit and i was able to get some really nice shots also a few boats went out today. I was really impressed by how well the video came out. The sun was a little harsh at the front of my house but in the back it made all the green stand out and lit the flowers yellow very well.

I hope you enjoy it, no audio just video to keep file small.

http://www.mf726.com/vidclips/pbtest.mov

~Mike

P.S, I don't mind comments in fact i love to hear the good and i really love to hear the bad it's how i learn but if by clicking on your user name and seeing all of your posts are arguing or telling others what they are doing wrong even tho your the only one that sees it. PLEASE don't post. We are here to help ron and others learn about the cameras so please respect what others are trying todo here.

Mike - Thanks again for the excellent footage. FYI, I finally figured out how I am going to store playable copies of HD videos. I took your sample clips and encoded them in Divx HD and stored them on a single DVD data disk. I then played the disk on my DivX HD set-top player and they looked fantastic! Your 133MB 'Footage' clip was a mere 37MB after encoding, but sharp as a tack and atrifact free on a 63" RP monitor. Not Blu-Ray for sure, but at 3.5:1 compression (16GB video on a 4.7GB DVD), it's pretty darn good. Best of all it allows me to use hardware I already own and cheap DVD blanks. Only thing missing now is the camera ;-)

(Oh, by the way... nice digs)

Ron,

Thanks ron but do me a favor and also keep editable files at max quality stored on hard drives for backup besides the divx format on dvd. You know know when you need a HQ file or when you might need to put a bunch together and to edit or even re encode to edit a divx is a pain in the backside.

and thank you I have worked alot and got lucky being 22 years old with a nice home and a future is a blessing but to be honest I don't nearly get to spend as much time at home as i would like, and when I do it's in the studio editing. it's not worth having nice things unless you get to enjoy them. Mind you later on I will have nice things to enjoy and i can always get someone to do the work for me and relax but IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE RIGHT YOU HAVE TO DO IT YOURSELF!!!! :)
The moral here kids is WORK SUCKS!

Ron let me know what cam you decide on keep in touch. in my profile is my e-mail ad and please if you have any qustions or want to talk about any of the gear email me your phone number or ask me for mine.

Off to the airport once again take care

~Mike

I agree that keeping the orignal HQ file is a good idea. Unfortunately there is just so much disk space. As to the camera, we decided to go with the HV-10.

Ron could you explain how you encoded to divx? I have tried Dr Divx with 6.4 and although there is 1080HD mode it defaults to a lower resolution. I can manually resize it (not sure whether thats the right way to do it) and the ouput is not bad. I have also tried encoding straight from vegas 7.c which has more control over bitrate but for some reason the brightness / gamma is too high?

Any tips welcomed!

Fergus -

I simply dropped Mike's clips into DivX Converter and selected 'HD'. Using footage.mov as an example...

Input (to converter) Quicktime, 1280 x 720 progressive, 29.97fps, 133MB file

Output (from converter): DivX 6.4.0, 1280 x 720 progressive, 29.97fps, 37.7MB file, bitrate = 4Mb/s.

Yes, the low bit rate is a bit scary, but there weren't any motion artifacts during Mike's zooms. I prefer 720p over 1080i so didn't up-convert. This was just a quick test to see if it would work. I currently don't have any way to shoot HD, so haven't tried FCP HD yet. I did try to make a HD DVD using conventional media, but never got it too work. Since DivX HD will play on my set-top player, this seems to be the way to go until Blu-Ray burners, players and media are affordable.

Cheers Ron

I was looking at Stage6 which looks like a good you tube like site for potentially shairng clips - encoding as 1080p 6 mbs doesnt look too bad using Dr DivX - I dont think the converter supports 1080HD yet

Because you changed the original res from 1440x1080i to something else your scaler apparently blurred the fields together. It's not interlaced anymore and there are blurred images. That decreases resolution and noise.