HDV is a production house nightmare
 

Let's see:
Sony style HDV, JVC style HDV, possibly a Canon style HDV, Panasonic is using DVCProHD.

Unlike MiniDv, DVCam and even DVCPro25, not one of these work on another brand's deck. This adds up to my company looking at investing a lot of money to keep up with the formats. I can see a near future where clients will be coming in with projects on all different formats and I'll have to turn them away because I can't be sure if a $5000 investment, in say Sony HDV for example, will ever pay itself back. And that's just to have a deck for playback and record, doing FireWire transfers will require even more investment. I avoided DVCPro and it turned out to be a good decision since I only get 2 requests a year and that's only to transfer the client's tape to DVCam or Beta since they can't find anyone who uses the format.

Is there any consensus here about which HDV format might become more or less universal? It's a good guess that DVCProHD is going to stick around for a while.

It's not a nightmare at all.....

Just make sure you buy the LATEST version of 1080 and the LATEST version of 720. They are both backwards compatible to their predeccesors.

- Canon will play AND digitize any kind of 1080i/p HDV, so just be sure you get a deck that handles the newest versions of 1080 HDV (coming soon)

- JVC will play AND digitize any kind of 720p, so just be sure you get a deck that handles the newest versions of 720 HDV (available now)

If you get those two then you need nothing else to handle ANY AND ALL clients that walk in your door with a miniDV master recorded in any type of HDV.

Also I am pleased to tell you that coming soon is a single deck that will play AND digitize every type of HDV in exsistence. All in a single "low-cost" deck.

As for DVCPRO-50 possibly you will get more requests for that format in 2006 because of the new Panasonic just released. Those clients will possibly want you to convert to DVCAM or DIGIBETA as well. As for DVCPRO-HD, maybe you should go ahead and get a deck that does that as well to handle all your DVCPRO needs.

Do this...and all HDV and DVCPRO clients will be able to come to Espy-TV for all their crossconverting needs in the New York. I know I sure will if I'm shooting out there with my HDV rigs.

- ShannonRawls.com

Very interesting and thank you for your response.

Who is coming out with this "magic" HDV deck?

Interestingly, I have not had a single request for DVCPro50 yet, DigiBeta yes and that's under control. Do you forsee a budget DVProHD VTR in the pipeline? My duplication work is usually making safety masters, duplicating to VHS or creating DVDs for distribution.

Production work is different, for that I'll invest in the HD format of my choice, looks like a P2 system at this point. HDV is just a little underwhemling for my shooting needs (lots of action).

Right now, it is very much a nightmare. I have a series I am working on that Cam A was a Varicam and Cam B were various HDV cams... NIGHTMARE!!!!!! Only option is to capture ANALOG thru the Kona card... not a good workflow...


ash =o)

The $14,000 Question
 

As an update, I have had to turn away two jobs in the past two weeks. One was in Sony HDV, the other just a few hours ago was in JVC 24p. That's a few thousand dollars gone nowhere since no one else in town is set up for HDV to HDV FireWire either!

Here's the fourteen thousand dollar question (fourteen thousand being the cost for two VTRs from both Sony and JVC):

Will a FireWire dub work from a Sony HDV unit to a JVC HDV unit? Meaning that I play a JVC HDV tape in the Sony and record to the JVC unit.

My answer is no, but hoping for a surprise.

Definitely not. The Sony deck will not output the firewire signal from a JVC tape.

Why don't you just take the jobs but knock a certain percentage off the price because you need to keep their camera during that time as a deck. Obviously you don't want to do this with tons of clients but one to two a month or something should be manageable.

Or about $3,000 for an HC1 and an HD1 (I'm assuming that all of JVC's HDV cameras will play HD100 tapes?)... or a few hundred to rent a camera long enough to capture the footage.

I agree that HDV is a bit of a mess, but turning work away for the sake of a few hundred dollars in rental fees seems odd to me.

This is still going to be a nightmare for a long while. People are shooting the JVC HD100 camera in HDV 24p mode not realizing Avid will not work with that "flavor" of HDV.

There are serious issues with TC and RS/422 control on some JVC pieces (specifically any non-firmware updated BR-HD50U decks) and so on.

To it's benefit, the JVC gear can upconvert to 1080i output which gets the Sony and JVC on similar ground but in general - yes, for large post houses like mine HDV has been a big mess with a ton of work arounds that not all the shooters/editors/sales folks understand. We are about to put together a position paper for the staff on what the recommendations are for selling, shooting and editing HDV.

It is smoothing out a bit but it's been a long bumpy ride so far and the woods are dreary, dark and deep, and I have miles to go before I sleep.

Sean

The Sony M10 deck will play back 730p30 and the JVC will play back 1080i60.

heath

The big job I turned away was shot in JVC 720p24. 38 hours worth of raw footage! The rental for two decks would have been a waste of money ($400 a day for two decks around here) since the client was returning to their home state in a few days and not a prospective regular client. AND..... their HD-100 was broken and in shipment to JVC!

Unfortunately, the budget offerings from JVC (cameras or VTRs) do not output 24p via the analog ports.

Another client came in with JVC HDV 24p footage this week! Fortunately their cameraperson provided them with DV downconverts and we worked with those. The client didn't need HD at all but the letterboxing made it look classy.

A question; JVC lists in their manual that the deck can upconvert to 1080i60 but it seems that is only available thru the HDMI port. Is this correct?

I have pretty much resovled to purchase one Sony deck and one JVC for the time being. That's with the understanding that I still wouldn't be able to do the job I turned away.

Loan officer, here I come!

Seems like the pressure of economics has forced a decision you could have done without.

I guess there wasn't any way that you could have used computers as a virtual style "universal format" deck, because of the time restraints.

I don't have any experience of the HDMI output capabilities of the JVC deck - my only observation being that given the comments/responses I have seen from people who have or manufacture HDMI enabled devices, advanced feature sets such as up-conversion are restricted to the HDMI port.