By the way, what is the SR-DVD100 like? Is it worth the investment? (I'm not holding my breath for HD-DVD or BluRay to get their issues sorted out soon, so this player may be a good interim alternative.)

Earl - another thumbs up from my 7 year old daughter earlier this evening...and she's not shy of dishing out constructive criticism!

Earl, I showed your video to my kids (9 and 11) and they loved it! They say we need to recycle more carefully at our house now :)

I told them you made the video with the cameras that "daddy brought home" and they were really excited. Now they want me to make a movie with them in it :) I have the HD110 for work - and it's a bit too hefty to use for home movies.

Bravo on your project. Very nice puppetry/roto work. I'm impressed with not only the sharpness of the HD100 (and your chosen scene settings) but also how good your project looks when transcoded to HD WMV. Very nice presentation of the educational material as well. I'm sure your clients are well pleased.

Best,

David

That sounds like very high praise! She said nothing negative? (I'd figure there'd be something by now -- everyone's being so nice. :) )

Encorp will be happy to hear that.

I sometimes get quizzed as to why I don't make more home movies. The GL1 was harder to explain as a "work" camera, but the HD100 is certainly more logical. Though, I have been seen at the park with it.

Thanks, David!

The HD100 really came through. Any criticisms with the picture quality can all be attributed to my relative inexperience with the camera. It's got so much flexibility and there are so many ways to manipulate the image one has to take a healthy amount of time to work with it. But as I say, there are no "mistakes", only learning experiences. :)

And I too was impressed with the HD WMV. Never used Windows Media Encoder or WMV HD before but couldn't believe they got such a great HD image in a 650 MB file.

captured?
 

I have seen this video a few times, and i read most of everything people had said, but it seems that no one has asked if it was shot on the mini DV tapes (4:2:0 color space and mpeg compression) or captured through the component out to a 4:2:2 color space no compression???

Would love to know because this looks great!

Thanks, Giuseppe. We shot this to MiniDV tapes in HDV format. Would love to get a component capture system, but I'm glad the JVC's do such a good job in HDV.

wow I have to say, from all the footage i've seen from the HD100/110 I've never seen footage so clean with very little artifacting, in fact even compressed via wmv, it still shows little artifacting considering the compression.

I could almost swear that it was captured via component out, considering how much cleaner it looked compared to some other stuff i've seen.

Was there a specific "sweet spot" on the stock lens that you usually shot at? I dont see as much CA but then again most of all the lighting is nice and soft as well. I would love to know this, because most of the "wide shots (the first one of her coming out of the school) was nice and clean.

Thanks for the info :)

HI Earl, Excellent film, i really cant believe how 'clean' the shots look. What interested me most was the fact you recorded the audio on the AT 897 as this is the same mic i have and yet to test it in the field, i wonder how much treatment did you do to the vocals to get them to sound so in place and warm in quality? And also did you run it straight to camera or did you record to an external device/preamp etc? Thanks

I can't really say I found the sweet spot for focal length yet except that zoomed all the way in (75-88mm range) tends to be the worst area for both sharpness in the corners and chromatic aberration.

(There is a really bad example here: http://www.neopics.com/gl1-hd100/HD100-5-720.jpg)

But I can confirm what others have found in that F4 tends to be about the best place for the iris. Wide angles with the lens wide open tend to show too much white shading (where the top of the screen looks more green and the lower part more magenta). An iris too small (F8-F11) starts to show diffraction limitations.

Thanks!

The mike was cabled directly to the camera, and other than some attempts to balance the levels and a couple of effects filters (like her voice on the telephone), no other processing was used. That's the natural sound of the AT 897. Also, Barry Wong, our boom operator, did a great job of getting the mic as close as possible.

I should clarify, though... the AT 897 was only used during filming of the actors on location. All the character voices were dubbed in later, and those were recorded at Sound Kitchen Studios in Vancouver. (Not sure which gear.)