Got my Monivision-Spectacular image!
 

I got my Monivision 32" HD monitor today and my JVC 30k DVHS deck. I have to tell you that the image from this camera looks much much better on a true native 720p capable monitor than on a computer monitor or the Apple 23"inch LCD cinema display which was the best I had previously viewed it on. The most amazing thing is that most of the color noise I was observing in skies is just not there, or is greatly reduced on the Monivision. I have no idea why this is. Maybe the computer graphics card on-the-fly conversions are producing noise. This is an incredible suprise as I was fully expecting the color noise to be much worse on a large screen display.
Also the JVC 30k deck works just fine with the Mac using the VirtualDVHS utility to upload playllists of clips from the computer, and there is no noticeable quality loss when played back from the DVHS deck.
As I mentioned earlier, I've also experimented a bit with color correction on uncompressed clips in FCP4 and have had no problem saturating the colors and matching with my Ikegami.
I'm not getting any of the strobing or ghosting I've seen talked about, but maybe that's because I'm always shooting at 1/30th, which is the look I think gets me closest to a film-like look.
The more I play with this setup the more I like it. The HD1OU definately IS HD.

Paul, glad you got your monitor. It is a great deal! It had 100% great reviews.

JVC loaned my a $4000 monitor. Wow! You are so right. It really is HD. (But shoot some traffic, even at 1/30th you'll see the double images.)

Are you copying clips to DVHS before capturing?

How come you are not using DVHScap?

Didn't you have to install a lot of pre-release FireWire components to get VitrualDVHS utility to work? What's it's advantage over DVHScap for you?

I'm finding using DVHScap works, but after demuxing the clips won't easily load into FCP. I suspect you may be directly converting to uncompressed.

Boy does uncompressed eat disk space!

Just for your info -- the Hueris encoder takes about 2 hours per minute to encode on a 1GHz iMac. I won't see my 5 minute movie till I wake up!

steve mullen writes:

> Boy does uncompressed eat disk space!

if youre using a pc, you might wanna try the huffyuv codec. its uncompressed yuv, extremely efficient (2:1 or so), very fast on playback, and free.

you can download it at:

http://www.divx-digest.com/software/huffyuv.html

info at:

http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/www....g/huffyuv.html

picvideo-lossless is also good but it costs 400 bucks.

for mac people like paul (osx?) i'd take a look at the bitjazz/sheervideo codec which is actually 4:4:4 and i think compresses losslessly by 2.5:1 or something like that. i think goes for a hundred bucks.

http://www.bitjazz.com/

also, i remember a site where a mac graphics guy did some really nice tests of fifty or sixty codecs, many of which worked cross-platform. i'll try to dig that up.


cbianco

steve mullen writes:

> JVC loaned me a $4000 monitor. Wow! You are so right.
> It really is HD. (But shoot some traffic, even at 1/30th
> you'll see the double images.)

could you possibly post a few sequential frames of out of that footage?

was the traffic daytime or night? sometimes flickering light sources (like household flourescent lights for instance) create multiple image trails on a single frame when the subject moves through the frame quick enough. does the same thing happen when you wave your hand rapidly in front of the camera (when lit with a tungsten source)?


cbianco

HDTV displys
 

Paul,

I’m excited to hear impressions of how the image from the camera appears on true HDTV displays. I just received my HD10 yesterday and also had cable installed including a HDTV receiver. I have a 10 year old multisynce front projector that I’ve been using with a line doubler and 480P from my DVD player. I wasn’t sure it would except HDTV input but to my surprise it accepts 720P and 1080I. As a matter of fact it defaulted to a factory input setting that was labeled HDTV/RGB? This is a 10-year-old projector? How long has this format been touted? Anyway, it will take a while to set convergence and focus settings for the various input formats but I will certainly relay my impressions of how the HD10 looks on a projected 10 foot diagonal screen (4:3, something less for 16:9).

Raymond, unless your projector has 720p resolution display capability, I doubt you will see much difference between SD and HD. I believe that only very recently have projectors with this rez become available, and thy're pretty expensive, but I may be wrong. Also, do not use a PC software player to play back the footage to judge anything, as they degrade the picture quality, add noise, and cause jerky motion in playback.

Paul,

I really don’t know for sure. At this point all I know is that the projector is locking in a 750P and 1080I signal and I can not see any scan lines at all. Although, I know this is at least partially due to not having completed convergence and focus adjustments. The specs on the projector are:

Scanning frequency: H 15 to 61kHz / V 38 to 150Hz
Retrace time: H 4.0 uS
Video bandwidth: 70MHz (-3dB)
Resolution: 1000TV lines
Pixel resolution: 1280 x 1024 dots

Although the projector was marketed as a GE product it was acually manufactured by NEC as a model 6 something? It retailed for over $10K back in 1992 so I think it should have been pretty state of the art at the time. At the time it was described as just falling short of supporting a line quadrupler. If you or anyone else can verify if this is HDTV capable please let me know. If it isn’t, then somewhere down the distant future, it will be replaced by a DLP HDTV 16:9 single lens projector. However, for now I’ll see what this baby can do.

Well the specs look good, wish I had it here right now because my Monivision just upped and died after only 4 days of faithful service!

Paul

Dead after 4 days of use? Bummer.

Please let us know how long it takes MoniVision to solve the problem.

Thank you Paul,

- don

Bummer Indeed!
 

Paul,

Very sorry to hear about you’re Monivision going belly-up. Keep us updated on how Monivision or the retailer reacts. I might be interested in getting one myself depending on your experiences. The experiment with my front projector hasn’t been as fruitful as hoped. I did get the three CRT’s converged as best I could and I am sure it is syncing up to the connected 720P and 1080I inputs but the projector is just plane old and tired. The blue CRT is pretty much gone so on darker scenes everything goes green and also darker scenes are just plan dark. I think that the scan rate is so high that the prospers aren’t getting enough electron beam time to get totally excited. All of this is just with the cable HDTV tuner. I don’t even want to try connecting the camera. However, It does project enough of an image I did manage to reflect on just what HDTV does offer and I need a replacement. I am a fan of front projectors, the bigger the better. But I think I also realize that the HDTV revolution is truly upon us. I probably will start replacing any TV in the house with HD units on an attrition bases. Keep us informed.

Steve Mullen had mentioned he was going to review an HDTV resolution projector for $1500 a while ago, I don't know if this is still on the books, but I'd be very interested in that if it's any good. Perhaps he could give us a bit more info?

Regarding that color noise. I'm not a Mac person but on the PC
you can set the color bit depth of your graphics card. Which by
default (if I'm not mistaken) is 16 bits. This means that our video
footage gets converted and may end up dithered. Perhaps this
is what is occuring here?

In reference to codecs
Here is the link to Black Magic designs, makers of the Declink.
http://203.94.147.64/index.asp
click on the support menu option, the codecs for downlaod will list on the right.

Very generous thoses Aussies.

You can download their codecs for free. Available for Windows and Mac, just need Quicktime. They support up to 10bit4:4:4 if your system has the power to handle it.
You don't need a declink to use the codecs.

Excellent way for Wintel/Mac people to share video too.

I won't be ordering the Monivision... :-( That's a shame, too, because the price is so attractive! Oh, well, I'll just stick with my "crappy" LCD HD TV/computer monitor. Cheaper (and smaller) than an HD Apple Cinema Display...Maybe next year I'll grab a CRT.

heath

Didn't mean to put anyone of ordering the Monivision, it has a really great picture quality, I think I've just been unlucky with mine. Talked to Monivision this morning and they will send someone out to my house to fix it within a week, they say.

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : Didn't mean to put anyone of ordering the Monivision, it has a really great picture quality, I think I've just been unlucky with mine. Talked to Monivision this morning and they will send someone out to my house to fix it within a week, they say. -->>>

That's nice that they say they'll do that...A week, though? Let's hope they come through.

heath

Paul,

Please keep us informed as to whether MoniVision follows through or not.

In the meantime, what do you guys thinks about these four monitors? Know of anything better right now for presentation purposes?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....oryId=cat03002
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....oryId=cat03002
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....oryId=cat03002
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....oryId=cat03002

- don

I took a quick look at the first two on your list, and neither does native 720p, they both do upconverts to 1080i. That's why I went for the Monivision.

Cheers

Paul,

What is the status of your Monision monitor? Did the manufacturer come through for you? What are your thoughts? Would love to know.

Thanks!

- don

<<<-- Originally posted by Don Berube : Paul,

What is the status of your Monision monitor? Did the manufacturer come through for you? What are your thoughts? Would love to know.

Thanks!

- don -->>>

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing!

heath

Yes they did come through. I had a lot of bad luck with mine, but I think that's just what it was, bad luck. The Monivision people sent repair men out to my house twice to fix it, and the second time replaced everything inside the TV except for the tube.
The only issue I now have is with how to calibrate it correctly, as I found the Digital Video Essentials tape to be absolutely useless without any instructions, which they neglected to include or supply in any way, which is ridiculous.
I also still have an issue with the component inputs on the converter box that is thrown in free with it, which seem to add very faint green vertical bars, which are mainly visible with 1080i input from my JVC 30k deck, but from the camera footage do not seem to be a problem, I may have to ask them for a replacement converter box. Through the VGA inputs, these are not an issue at all.
In general I love the image from this TV and think it is probably the best choice out there for the money, to view the HD10 footage, or DVHS tapes, if you don't want a bigger screen. I would probably also get an HD digital projector if I could afford it, but 10k seems a little much right now for that.

Paul,

I had a G4 last April that just FAILED every day. They replaced EVERYTHING inside except the Super Drive and the power supply, but STILL it failed. It's bad luck. Sent it back to smalldog.com and they gave me credit (which, I'll use to buy a G5, if I ever make any cash with the darn camera).

But, as I've never heard of Monivision, I'm skeptical about it. If they were well-known, I'd chock it up to bad luck, but I won't be buying one anytime soon.

heath

Actually when one considers that only native 720p televisions can display images correctly from the JVC HDV camcorders one has to first consider that there are a lot of variables involved. First of all there is an almost lossless conversion process when you upconvert 720p to 1080i. This is because unlike going from interlace to progressive no deinterlacing or interpolation is required when upconverting progressive to interlace. The only exception is when juddering occurs then there is a reduction in image quality when viewing on a 1080i HDTV but juddering does not really look good on any monitor. Also many so called native 720p LCD televisions do not have a very good refresh rate so they sometimes cannot keep up with fast motion like a 1080i CRT monitor can. Plasmas seem to do a pretty good job but why buy a Plasma and have no money left over for a HDV camera? The best way is to bring your HDV camera to the store and start hooking it up to different kinds of televisions. You may find that the so called incompatible television actually dispalys the best picture quality.