Compare with the naked eye
 

Hi! I just received my new FX1. Very excited.
2 things.

1st : I wanted to compare the visible difference between DV and HDV, cuz I've been reading "more lines", "more rez", but a picture is worth, well, a thousand and more pixels...
2 stills, one in HDV, one in DV : Same camera (fx1), same light settings, same light(20 sec difference), ...same bottle of shampoo (DownUnder BodySoap)

So here are the two links :

www.toptao.com/HDV.jpg

and

www.toptao.com/DV.jpg

2nd: I've been transfering my footage with DVHSCap
Converting to the DC30 LOSSLESS 4:2:2 codec with MPEG Streamclip
Now, I can edit in FCP HD in realtime. (I have a g5dual2G. Works fine.)
I guess I'm not worried into converting back to HDV because I don't want to recompress in MPEG 2 - once is enough! For now, I thought of brigning my disks to a transfer place to get a HD final tape done.

Anybody can tell me if I'm doing it right? Or if you found better solutions?
Any comments on going back onto a HDV tape?

Thanks!
Dom

Hey Dom,

The HDV looks good. Which DV camera did you use in the comparison?

Dv - Hdv
 

The same camera in fact.
The FX1 has both capabilities : to shoot in DV and HDV.

I'd love to see a comparison between DVX/XL2 with the FX1 just for grins.

The DV.jpg looks like out of focus. It shouldn't be so soft even it was a DV.

Re: Compare with the naked eye
 

<<<-- Anybody can tell me if I'm doing it right? Or if you found better solutions?
Any comments on going back onto a HDV tape?

Thanks!
Dom -->>>

The superior solution is Lumiere HD. It will allow you to edit a proxy, but then you link back to the original files for output - hense no recompression.

Visit www.lumierehd.com

DBK

Lumière
 

As somebody was saying, it's not easy being on the bleeding edge of technology.

Thanks! I can imagine Lumière works well for that kind of thing. But how much is it again?
What I forgot to add was the word "free".
I already invested enough in the hardware, FCP, and the camera for my kind of wallet...

Btw, the DV image looks kind of blurry, I agree. I'll do a comparasion test with a Vx1000 I have and I'll post it. I was asked if the dv recording on the FX1 was using the same chip and making a computer translation or if it was using only part of the chip... I thought it was a good question so I bounce it back. Anyone know what's happening there? Because if there is a calculation from HDV to DV by the camera, it would mean that shooting in DV, you're better off not using it... It would be of less good quality than let say shooting with a native DV chip like on PD150. Please post your comments on this issue. I might be missing out on an important detail here.

Dom

Dom,

You seem to have scaled the images down to a similar resolution when converting them to JPEG, actually the HDV is lower res than the DV one. It would be nice if you posted both at the same higher res, like 1920x1080, and set the JPEG codec to the highest quality in both cases.

It's strange that the DV image is so blurry. My PDX10 makes better images in DV mode. Could it be that the JPEG compression was set to a lower quality with the DV picture?

It's nice to see that the CCD doesn't show much vertical smear. The contrast from the sky in the window might cause the PDX10 and PD170 to smear slightly.

Re: Lumière
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Dom Dzip : As somebody was saying, it's not easy being on the bleeding edge of technology.

Thanks! I can imagine Lumière works well for that kind of thing. But how much is it again?
What I forgot to add was the word "free".
I already invested enough in the hardware, FCP, and the camera for my kind of wallet...

Dom -->>>


Incase you have yet to figure it out, you get nothing for nothing in theis world Dom.

Lumiere is also one of the most cost efective solutions. It is $179.99.

DBK

Dom, it's a safe bet that Apple will have support for Sony's HDV cameras for FCP in place by April at NAB, if not before. If it's not a free upgrade, it will certainly be a small incremental upgrade - probably $99 or less. That's just a guess based on Apple's pattern.

The wall in the DV image looks to be in focus, but the shampoo is either out of focus or just lower rez.

The HDV image is perfectly focused, like most HD images I've seen without a great lens--a VERY deep depth of field. Nice and focused.

heath

SEE THIS TEST INSTEAD OF FIRST ONE!
 

Thanks for your input and comments!
Here's another test :

[www.toptao.com/dv.tif]

Was shot using a vx1000.
The dv was imported in FCP and converted into a TIFF

The second one :

[www.toptao.com/hdv.tif]

Was shot with the fx1
The HDV was imported by DVHSCap and converted to DC30 LOSSLESS 4:2:2 at 100 per cent quality
And then imported in FCP - Put in a timeline of that codec and exported as a TIFF.

These are big files 4.1 meg and 1.3 meg TIFFs.
Please post your comments.
-Dom

Scott,

I'd be seriously pissed off if apple charged an upgrade fee. It says Final cut Pro HD on the box and thus the codec should be free when avaliable.

As a side thought, it would be nice to see some HD footage converted into SD PAL and converted into lossless DV. Anyone fancy the challenge??? I have server bandwidth waiting !!!

Best


Jonathan

The best currently available solution for HDV editing is Adobe Premiere Pro with the Cineform Aspect HD plugin, but that's only available for PCs. For Mac work I think you're doing about what everyone else is doing, but I've heard that Apple will soon support HDV editing in Final Cut Express in a way which is more useful than using FCP HD.

We're getting off topic with the editing solutions, but I like Lumiere HD with Final Cut Pro. FCP and FCE currently do NOT support HDV, but will likely by next Spring.

For more on editing, visit our HDV Editing Forum.

heath