Kyle,
It is more trouble for me to boot up something other than Final Cut Pro 5 right now, but I will come back and provide the raw files later. Also, in the beginning I need to show credit for what I do and what people helped me for and raw files can't include these things.

Yiannis,
I actually noticed the stabilizer worked pretty good for that purpose. The one I shot last night is too dark, so I will do something else for you.

Lorin,
I posted the footage file with car passing by (only side way for now) which are shot with both FX1 and HC1. Can you look at that? It is only 20 sec. footage, so the file is smaller and please tell me what we can do further.

xtream.ne.jp download page link

Please register at my site and leave comment for me there, too. I look like an idot just talking to myself there. I really appreciated that Chris, Mark and few other people left messages at my blog when I provided the FX1 files last year. I'm hoping to do active discussion here and sort out my idea there at my site, so both my site and hdvinfo gain from it.

Another fact
 

The automatic adjustments seem to lead to little on the brighter side during the night shooting. I kept going to the brightness adjustment to lower the brightness to make it look close to what I see with my own eyes (hoping that the gain would go lower and gets less grainy).

Those two speeds should work fine. For the cars going by test the camera should be used normally, so cars go by horizontally. Not with the camera tilted on its side.

The rolling shutter effect should also be visible when filming with some varying vertical motion, like what Yiannis had asked for, some hand-held walking shots. Just walking normally would be fine. And for a more extreme test, use a high shutter speed and move the camera with a short motion up and down more quickly on a detailed scene.

Thanks so much, Kaku!

-Lorin

Lorin,

So the comparison file should be good for your testing. They were shot without the stabilizer, but that is not concern anymore on the vertical tilt, right?

It is already dark here in Japan, so I can't shoot good footage with vertical movement, but I will do that tomorrow.

Also, someone was asking for a human skin footage on another thread. I shot video of a little girl playing around today, so I will post it sometime tonight.

Super SteadyShot hasn't been ruled out as the main culprit, but after pondering on the effect some more it has taken a back seat. So what you've captured is definitely still a valid test.

Thank you again so much!

-Lorin

Rolling shutter is used in HC1
 

Okay, I've been checking it out, and here's a portion of one of the frames giving evidence that the sensor uses a rolling shutter:

http://hdvforever.com/hdv/truckslant.jpg

Notice the red truck looks like it's slanted backwards. I would have to expect that's not what trucks in Japan really look like! (The back of the truck would be fairly straight, and fairly vertical.) Although subtle, the rolling shutter effect is present.

This is then also the most likely culprit for the vertical stretching phenomenon I saw in some other clips. Hard to see when it's being played back full-speed, but evident when going through frame by frame.

When clips taken with a higher shutter speed are made available, the effect will become more obvious. But perhaps it will still be an acceptable compromise for most people.

Still can't believe the broad latitude this camera offers. CMOS really trumps CCD in that area. Very little need for a neutral density filter.

-Lorin

About rolling shutter effect, some slight vertical image breezing on some frames with steady shot. Problems, if they exist are so slight, no one has really complained about.

Slight rolling shutter effect exists in film cameras too.

We have preproduction model, tested on another site, was supposed have some extremely minor image breathing.

Even if was rolling shutter and breathing existed in production model, would it effect anybody's purchase decision? Extremely unlikey. Camera's superior overall performance is what natters. No camera is perfect.

As to rolling shutter with Sony CMOS, any CMOS, Sony have 3 CMOS 3MP DV camera. Haven't heard anyone raising issue about rollig shutter issue. Even if rolling shutter existed, to me is non issue, rather nothing to really worry about. The camera has no competition. There is no other camera that size, price that come even close in performance. Still is nice to know.

Steady Shot can bring lot more image degradation than what described. That's why is switchable and is hardly ever used in true pro productions.

Radek

So far, the cam is more than satisfactory for the price and ease of carrying around. I won't even have problem to set it on my helmet to do onboard video (not sure if the MPEG scheme can hold on with all of the vibration) as far as the size and weight you are talking about.

Tilting problem seems to be minor. I have more clips to share tomorrow with little girl playing in a small river in the park, a dog, and almost famous Harajuku street descending (and GAP). Now Frederic Haubrich helped me with migrating my LumiereHD to the new machine, I will be able to provide the raw clips, too. Then we can compare how well or bad FCP5 keeps the original fidelity on HDV.

By the way, I added m2t format file (converted from FCP5 HDV format) on my site, so people had problems playing back can download that version to enjoy. <Click here>

Kaku, that link isn't working properly. It states "You must login to access the document section."

Edit: Nevermind. I decided to just go through the registration process and created an account for myself.

I'm not sure, but it looks like HC1 has incredible dynamic range. In Kaku's clip the gain is above 9db, grain is clearly visible inside car (e.g. at the face), but also the portion of picture where is view at outside (tree, other car) is almost perfect - without grain and not overexpose. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think any consumer/prosumer CCD camcorder would be able to capture such a high dynamic range. Is Sony leaflet about CMOS advantages true, what do you think of it?

Kaku, thanks for the excelent report. I have a few questions that I hope you can answer:

How does the image compare to the fx1- specially in color and skin tones? How about the lens?

Have you tried downconverted sd? How does it compare to a trv 900/950/pdx10? (I'm trying to find a replacement to my trusty old 7 year trv900-that still works and was never repaired!)

Thanks again Kaku, and I look forward to your further testing!

Sergio

Michal,

CMOS seems to have more dynamic range, but the dark and bright area is controlled by their new processing scheme called Enhanced Imaging Processor (Gawd I sound like advertising). They separately handle the image and the birghtness, resulting the ability to make only the dark area brighter. So, now you know why that coffe ban scene was possible.

Sergio,

I will do my usual test today (me and my bike in front of my office) to compare the video I previously shot with PDX10 and others. I have footage of FX1 and HC1 with a girl. Please give me few hours.

thanks for your videos
Can you please upload a video with motion, like take video while riding your bike or while walking? We have to see how is the gop level.
thanks again

Oh, that is what I forgot to do (I have some during night, but day), so I'm getting out now with my bike before I jump in the bath. Me and my wife shot my regular bike routine in front of my office so you can compare to my older footage with PDX10, XL2 and so on.

I added few clips including handheld and bike-mounted video footage at my site. These clips are raw m2t clips captured using LumiereHD 1.5b11 with the help of Frederic Haubrick. I had to make them available to registered users only to avoid directly linked download from other sites. You can simply go through the automatic registration procudure. Please also leave some comments and suggestions there.

The rolling shutter artifact mentioned a few posts up is actually referred to in the manual, under "troubleshooting."

"The subjects passing by the frame might appear crooked. This is called the focal plane phenomenon. This is not a malfunction. Because of the way the image device (CMOS sensor) reads out image signals, the subjects passing by the frame rapidly might crooked depending on the recording conditions."

Being a software developer, that's when we say: "That's not a bug, it's a feature!"

Thanks Kaku Ito
 

Kaku can you also upload Cinema mode

I was little disappointed when i saw hc1 clip from this site...especially the color of WMV encoding

http://www.oysy.com/citv/

but when i saw Kaku raw footage i'm confident this cam is not so diffrent than fx1. excet the wide angel..

this airplane was shot by hc1
but it looks so diffrent...

http://www.airliners.jp/qtd/KZ74X_JA...050706_MP4.mov


Thanks alot

thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kaku,

I haven't said it before, because I was so wrapped up in my video-playing problems, but thank you so much for your all of your efforts. It's much appreciated.

I've got an off topic question about Japan if you don't mind. Is everything over there an odd mix of 90% Japanese and 10% English? It seems like everything I see with Japanese writing usually has a little bit of English thrown in. For example, the cover of the FunRide magazine shown in the top-left of your website is all in Japanese, except for the subtitle that says "Cyclists' Magazine & DVD". Also, the English URL FunRide.jp. What percentage of people speak English as a second language in Japan?

-Mike

small question about descending clip
 

may i ask small question about descending clip
how did you shoot this..did you attach your cam with bike?
it's really nice shot... i want to use same method on my short film..

Jung,

Did you see my clip that is titled "handheld while riding my bike"?
Part of the clip shows the Manfrotto mount I used on my bike. And importantly, the bike I use is most up-to-date air suspended mountainbike by Iron Horse (many mountainbike makers have this type called "All Mountain" bikes, but mine is actually built from frame last night by myself with all different parts rather than buying a complete bike). These bikes pedals firm although it is suspended, so they pedal firm (without bobbing) but when sharp obsticle comes and it will suck the shock.
I would do helmet mount in the mountain because this mount will get loosen with more vibration, but this is fine on the road. This concept should be widely used for street shooting instead of usind trollys and steadycams especially for chasing shot. So, if people use this method, please call it Kakucam or something (lol).

My next dream is to do this with HVX200 at 60 frame prgressive.

I love this shot. Is that really the HC1??? The more shots I see with this camera the more I wanna buy it. It can't be a bad buy, can it?

cool
 

this is really nice invention kaku
you should register this invention in japan as kaku steadycam

but question still remains...even you used with Manfrotto..how did attach with your bike..i don't think u used scotch tape to wrap around...

Did you see the clip? you can clearly see the Manfrotto clamp mount on my bike frame. It's the black clamp and arm attached to my blueish bike frame. It is made to clamp to something, and arm has the mount for cameras.

You're welcome Mike,

I love to get feedback from people that what I do is valuable to them. That goes to you, too Mark Kubat (he is working behind this forum to get me, or bug me to provide my service, hahaha).

Since I speak little English, I try to provide informations that I can provide to the world, so I have English section in my site. More and more people speak English, but say, not as many as countries like Singapore. We do study English from junior-high and highschool (maybe in elemetary school by now), but people hardly learn anything. We are heavily once race country (although we do have a lot of Korean and chineese people in our society). But Japanese people love superficial styling, say, even companies like Sony even use English words in the advertisements with wrong English and if you point it out, they would say "it is okay as long as Japanese people understand and it looks slick to use English". I use English to communicate to the whole world, but most of Japanese use it for meaningless styling. I'm saying this from close to 20 year of handling business on my own in Japan. By the way, I deal with company called Mark of the Unicorn from Cambridge. Do you know them?

Now a lot of files are available
 

I made the renoun (at least at HDVinfo) bike routine clips that are shot with various setting with HC1.

I probably have to look for my similar footage shot with other cams previously? Oh boy.

I'm jealous. I've always wanted to learn a second langugage. Unlike Europeans, most anglo-Americans never learn a second language. I've tried, but I just don't have the knack for it.

No. I don't work in the A/V industry, I just happened upon these forums while researching the HC1 as a "DaddyCam" for my twin daughters who are due to arrive any day now.

-Mike

I spent six years in Hawaii learning the language. Sorry, it was hard but acutally all of other things are so much fun!!

Consider http://www.motu.com when your twin daughters want to make music in the future (lol).

Does it mean HDR-FX1 is also able to handle this scene (it has EIP) or HDR-HC1 is a bit better ? I'm just courious. ;)

Thank you

I shot some footage of bamboo trees by making the cams facing up to the sky. Maybe this comparison can describe the difference. I will post these later.

cinema
 

any cinema mode 24p... clip

I saw short footage of cineframe but clip was too short to determine the motion.

I quickly shot at in front of my computer by panning the cam side ways and vertical ways. The clip is already uploaded.

Since it prohibits to set the shutter speed manually, I don't see much use of this function on this cam. They crippled the feature on purpose.

Thanks Kaku Ito
 

thanks for uploading cinema mode...
auto shutter speed..isn't so bad...
I heard there is historam function....do u mostly use it? before you shoot it..

I'm keeping the histogram on at all time so far. It is useful and not really in the way or anything.

Kaku, thanks for your great work.

I read the English translation of the brochures, from what I can tell, it exposes pixels individually, depending on exposure, is this what the brochure is actually saying? This is something I have been raving about in the Digital Cinema camera projects for a while, because of the great dynamic range it gives. There are two schemes I know of, one that adjusts the gain per pixel (I think this is the scheme behind the "Autobrite" technology by smalcamera) and one where the pixel/field is reset when it overexposes and re-sampled (the dual slope scheme used in the fill factory Ibis5a). It seems like the scheme, and definitely a desirable feature.

For most it shouldn't matter too much, but sometimes it does matter. In movies you don't want bad rolling shutter. Unlike a 1 foot slanting truck on a TV screen, it can become 20 foot slanting truck on a big screen (much more noticeable because of size and distance) and potentially all action shots will be effected. If you look at the digital cinema camera project threads you will see tests of cheap industrial camera with rolling shutter. Nice colour images (like HC1) but even gentle pan will make sides of buildings lean over. To reduce the slant they ran at double speed and moved the readout into frame blanking as much as possible. The smaller the slant is (the faster the readout) the less relevant it is. There is probably a metric for how small the slant has to be at speed before it becomes unnoticeable enough.

Unfortunately the rolling shutter on the HC1 does not look like the best. You can see that the first field slants inwards, and the next field slants even more. This is unlike the even slant you would get from 60i interlaced from a 60p rolling shutter image.

hehe :) @ Mike Farrington, I speak two lanuages fluently and am able to read another whilst understand a futher two. so what does that make me; quint-lingural?

Anyway @ Wayne, what infomation do you have about Sony's EIP, I read somewhere that the HC1 does not have a ND filter because "it doens't need one"

Thanks


Anhar Hussain Miah

Kaku, you are the MAN!!! Thank you!
 

Excellent preview reporting from "our-man-in-Japan" Kaku Ito!

Hooray - thanks so much for shedding so much light on this new cam for us - certainly very impressive for the money...

Kaku, seems like such a small, portable cam is going to be a popular choice for you on the bike, no?

Definitely replacing your GS400?

Mark,

I never tried DV mode with HC1, yet, so I will determine to replace GS400 or not(I have tree GS400s, but these are good to hand them over to athletes when they go to race events).

HC1's zoom ring works better than GS400's, but DVC30's zoom ring was better. I won't expect that Sony will make the zoom ring better than HC1, but I will probably buy the prosumer version, HVR-A1 as second unit.

My plan now is to combine HDR-FX1 (for wide angle shots for whole views), HVR-A1 (for getting into woods) and AG-HVX200 (for 60p to use with slow motion).

My concern is how Wayne described the problem with rolling shutte effects for larger screen. I show my movies to people with my company's HD projector and 120 inch screen. Although HC1 is great for money and everything, I do not agree to Sony about skipping of this kind of issue because everythingelse is tempting.

Kaku

It is only an 120inch screen, do tests to see if it looks good. It might be so small as to be virtually unnoticeable at high movement rate (for instance, how fast was that bus moving, it might have flashed by too quickly) and most people won't be making block buster action movies with this. I imagine it is not much a problem for Sony, as if they fixed every little thing there would be no need to buy really expensive cameras.