xtreme sport type shots with lots of motion
 

IS there anyone noticing any artifacts or dropouts with the h1 when used under these conditons? Love the camera but worry about the robustness of the tape.

mostly, skiing, mount bike, etc.

Also is the camera as rugged as the xl-1 and xl-2's?

If you're worried about tape, don't use it at all. Record to a FireStore FS-4 or similar hard disk device.

Are the firestore hdv drives solid?

Also I noticed alot of drop out on the sony hdv tape. If it records in the same codec/gop (or whatever is causing the problem) wouldn't it still record the probems to the hard drive?

I guess 'is it the tape' or the 'hdv recording format' that's causing the problem I witnessed on the sony demo.

Right now I'm shooting on the JVC 720p and love it but also love the canon desgin, used them since the hi8 days. I would love to feel comfortable with the h1 hdv format.

If the hard drives work, ya I'll go that root. Quickens the process;)

Guess that depends on what you are seeing. If huge chunks of video are blocked out of the shot it's probably tape dropout. If it's more subtle you could be seeing HDV artifacting.

I haven't shot the Canon enough to know how well it's implementation of HDV holds up, but there's a ton of action stuff shot with the JVC that looks great. Go check out the motocross clips in the HD-100 forum.

Look up Kaku Ito's reports; he was one of the first with an H1 and he shoots mountain biking. I don't remember if he directly addressed your questions or not, but he'd probably be a good one to ask (perhaps by sending a private message?)

The single-most common reason for drop-outs I've experienced are dirty heads in the tape drive. Ever since I started using a cleaning tape after every two hours of head-to-tape contact, I haven't had a single drop-out.

HTH,

Ron

when talking about actions shots...
 

...can you use which shutter speed you like with 25f (with a good result)? I assume you would like a fast shutter, but if you shoot @ 4000, and if we pretend 25f is 25p, it should be periods "without" picture between the pictures. Will the movements be strobing (aka Private ryan/Gladiator)?

If you treat H1 like a movie camera and you won't have to worry about the artifacts, too much.
You will notice some blocky artifacts if a rider passes in front of you with lots of trees (many details) and you have to pan the camera fast. Also, I noticed in HDV in general, some red object moving even moderate speed in front or on green surface like grass would introduce blocky artifacts on the edge of red object. My friend is a Specialized rider and he wears the red Specialized jersey, and him moving around on grass area always introduced blocky compression.

You might be able to locate that problem in this H.264 clip shot with FX1 and HC1 here.

H1 would suffer the same problem under the same situation, but H1 provides most high resolution looking picture out of any other HDV camera or HVX200. The clips I shot with H1 are the most stunning comparing to the others. It is too bad that the camera is too large for me.
FYI, HVR-A1 is an interesting camera for x-treme sports shooting especially with some camera motion that goes from dark to bright since it does not associate with ND filters. CMOS provides some terrific dynamic range that can handle from dark to bright without switching the ND filters (probably Barry dan explain this professionally).

Thanks that's exactly what i'm looking for.

I thought the cmos might be good. I like my JVC but it is bulky for some things.

I also like the h-1 so it's good to know what to expect before considering buying one.

Do you think there is a way to fix that in post? or wysiswyg even if you uprez to full hd.

It is wysiwyg. It only happens in few frames, just like when sound gets distorted for overloading, so you can consider this like pixel overload. It is noticible even when you play back the video normally for a very short period of time. Some people here claim that the the problem happens only when you edit in HDV codec in Final Cut Pro, but I haven't had time to do the experimentation. Some of the fast movement picture imperfection in video I shoot (dirt jumping, 4x, donwhilling, bmx race) was figured out that it is because of how 1/3 CCDs treat the fast objects (like wheels turning in the air while a rider jumping), so I still get that kind of imperfection even with AG-HVX200 at DVCPROHD.

What I like about H1 the most is the camera's ability to have details in the dark. It is clear in night time clips.

Us shooting the action of x-treme sports event would have to follow what the athletes do and it is always beyond our imagination. The athletes go from darkest to the brightest with backlight situation. Considering that, what I want now is smaller H1 (don't have to be changeable lens) with CMOS. Considering what Canon can do with their Digic processor, such camera would blow away even FX1/Z1.

By the way, JVC HD100 performs very well. The HD100 let you shoot video like you would shoot film, so if you are looking for a camera to do cinematography then you might wanna look into that too. I did not spend enough time with HD100 to do action shooting, but shooting around people and things in the office looked very appealing. It positions a lot better on you shoulder and the zoom, focus, iris controls are superb. If it does 60p in the future, that will be very interesting.

I like it alot, the biggest problem I have with it is not having a back up image stablizer in certain situations and jvc hdv isn't supported well by mac options.

Other than that I like it. I'm waiting to buy another hdv and want to know more about the canon's. Usually I stay with canon and wait but 6 months ago I felt better with 720 since there is less drop out, artifact issues.

Also waiting for a canon deck before considering.

The nice thing about the jvc is dv can do 60p. I'll bet there will be and external option for 720p60 by the end of the year.

If canon comes out with a small cmos I may get that.

Thanks!

HD100 is supported by LumiereHD now for Mac.

We want CMOS small Canon!

GL3 baby! Don't know about the CMOS, but if a GL3 or it's equivalent successor does the F modes just like the H1, that would potentially be an awesome B-camera or sports camera.

I dont' know about some of you guys, but I've found the demuxing process in FCP with HDV degrades the image in a very subtle way. It's much more noticeable with 60i. It looks different than when I demux with MPEG Streamclip. I wonder if it's actually putting another pass of compression on the footage?

It's all about the intermediate approach for me anyway. Here's hoping for a Mac version of the Cineform codec in FCP in the future.

Lumiere does not carry time code. If you cannot log or create an edl It really isn't that useful to me right now.

I'm going have to use some kind of rs422 with componet to firewire rig for now.

Well, in real life, being able to do logging is important, yes.
Barlow experimented a lot on capturing using Kona at other formats and successfully include the time code but he says can’t really control the camera.
It is really disappointing that Apple did not update the support on H1 and HD100 for the Universal version.
We did do some test with HD100 footage playing back on the deck and capturing with the components out at 60i?p?, I forgot but I will check with my staff with the out come.