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Canon XH Series HDV Camcorders
Canon XH G1S / G1 (with SDI), Canon XH A1S / A1 (without SDI).

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Old November 20th, 2008, 05:42 AM   #1
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Low Light HDV vs DV?

Is there any advantage of shooting HDV in low-light vs DV?

Since the ultimate result was SD-DVD, I shot a play performance using DV, and the main problem with the results was that the auto-focus had trouble engaging and wouldn't correct itself. The viewfinder looked sharp. When I captured the footage it was very soft and blurred.

Would HDV give the AF a finer degree of focus?

Are the limitations of the optics consistent between HDV and DV?

Thanks!!
Jeremiah Rickert is offline   Reply With Quote
Old November 21st, 2008, 12:38 AM   #2
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its all the same hdv or dv. try some of the downloadable presets they can make a big difference.
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Old November 21st, 2008, 01:44 AM   #3
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Hi


Focusing in HD is more critical than in SD as you probably already found out.
Unfortenately the small LCD on the XH-A1 makes it hard to judge focus both because the small size and also because the low resolution of the LCD. I almost never trust the autofocus especially in low light. Try to use the LCD/Magnification/Peaking to get proper focus and also read the focus distance on the LCD to get a hint if focus is correct.

'Are the limitations of the optics consistent between HDV and DV?'

A qualified guess is that there is no difference. It all depends on if the image that hits the CCD:s is in focus.

Regards,

/Bo
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Old November 21st, 2008, 04:26 AM   #4
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Quote:
Since the ultimate result was SD-DVD, I shot a play performance using DV
Just to mention, HDV converted to SD looks a lot better than just standard DV. At least to me.
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Old November 21st, 2008, 06:19 AM   #5
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Hi

I agree to 100%. The reason is that you start with a higher resolution material.


/Bo
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Old November 21st, 2008, 09:13 AM   #6
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A great deal of why HDV outperforms DV on SD DVD output is colour space. SD DVD is 4:2:0, which ends up as 4:1:0 when you feed it DV with 4:1:1 colour space. Not much chroma information at all! PAL DV doesn't have the same issue, as it uses a 4:2:0 colour space.
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Old November 21st, 2008, 02:41 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeremiah Rickert View Post
Is there any advantage of shooting HDV in low-light vs DV?
Yes. To my eye, the results come out much better. I don't know why, maybe it's the compression or resampling.
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