Is that Mike Schell of the Interactive Images Plum fame? If so, 12 years later, yours is still one of my more memorable customer service experiences - personally handling telephone support from your home well after business hours.

Hi Roy-
Yeah, this is the same Mike Schell, just 12 years older and (hopefuly) wiser.

Best-
Mike

Thanks for the JVC footage, shows alot of info there... whats the possibility that you could also post some HV20 footage showing the delta from HDMI and analog??

Out of curiosity, why would you want to use HDMI to capture off of a HV20 if you've already shot your footage? Wouldn't it already be compressed down to 1440x1080?

I believe it's because the HV20 internally upconverts the footage to 1920x1080 and it gives slightly better colors. From what I am learning it's better to have tha done "in-camera" rather than through an NLE. Maybe someone else can help....

I thought it was to have a very cheap "studio camera" with better color space and full 1080p resolution. This would mean that you have to have a computer connected to the camera during shooting.

I don't know if the internal upconversion can be any better than what a computer can do.

I bought the Intensity for edit monitoring. I'm not really interested in uncompressed HD, but for recorded HDV, capturing through HDMI on the Intensity offers the opportunity to get away from interframe compression of HDV. Generally, economy of processing power for editing and better quality graphics renders are the things that are gained in moving away from HDV for editing. Personally, I'm interested in the option to capture and edit as DVCPRO HD.

That might be a mistake in quality. You take the 1920x1080 image and compress it to 1280x1080, which is all DVCPRO-HD 29.97 will do, lossing up to a third of the image. Also DVCPRO-HD will not help you with the pulldown issues, at 24p, which will not be flagged. You will not ba able to use the 24pA mode, so more loss of effeciency/quality. The are still issue on the Mac (a guess that is what you are using) for Intensity 29.97 to 24p and capture at 1920x1080. CineForm is hoping to address this in the Mac market like it does for the PC soon.

Thanks Ray, we'll try to do a similar test on the HV20 in the future. However, I am quite confident you'll see similar improvements in the digital vs analog comparison.

Mike Schell

Hi Roy-
We have lots of customers using the DVCProHD CODEC for editing of their transcoded HDV material. It does have some shortcoming, but generally delivers a good image. However, I would highly recommend moving up to the new ProRes 422 CODEC, when it becomes available.

Mike Schell

Yes, any 1080i HDV footage which is captured to tape has been horizonatally resampled to 1440x1080 before the MPEG2 compression. But with regard to capturing this video, you still want to keep the processing in the 100% digital path to maintain as high a quality as possible.

It is true that the live-camera video out of the HV20 is exceptional (for a $1100 camera). You do get the full 1920x1080 422 YCbCr video which has need seen a compression cycle of any sort. At a shootout at NAB many people were hard pressed to tell the difference between the live HV20 and some very high-end ($100K+) cameras.

Mike Schell

That's a little scary. Does anyone want to buy my slightly used HV20? I'm giving it away for $99,999!

Well, it's all moot until I can capture with the Intensity.

I wouldn't presume to tell you anything (if just for the reason of number of posts alone - not even considering that you are an industry professional), but I was specifically talking about capturing from tape. I would think that as a practical matter going from 1440x1080 to 1280x1080 would be offset by also going from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 color and going from a 25Mbit compression to 100Mbit; i.e., wouldn't DCVPRO HD have higher quality potential than HDV?

As far as all of the 24p stuff goes, I'm not really interested in it. I bought the HV20 primarily for its HDMI port, to use as a feeder for FX1 and Z1 tapes (and as a family camcorder).

Thanks, Mike.

Step one: Intensity support for the HV20

Step two: Intensity support for monitoring ProRes timelines

If those two things happen, I'm ready to give it a go.

Ryan, when I mentioned this I was talking about "after" the footage is captured to tape. I believe you still get better colors even after tape capture and it is internally blown back up to 1920x1080 (instead of you doing it with an NLE). Other than that.."live" usage is the real benefit (especially since this "little monster" does not have component out.