Thinking of buying the HVR-A1U
 

I'm a "prosumer" with a VX2000 that I've had for almost five years now - shoot mostly home/family stuff, but will be doing an occasional stage/dance show too (though rare). I've got the HD bug, and with the current $500 rebate allowing me to pick up an A1U for $2k, I'm pretty interested :)

I finally ventured into external mics for my VX2000 while recording a school show, got the Beachtek DXA-4. I ran into some hiss problems (fairly minor for the most part) even though I had the manual gain at 50% or lower; so I'm returning the DXA-4 (IOW, the XLR inputs of the A1U are a nice plus).

I plan to initially downconvert to SD in camera for editing in my NLE (Matrox RT.X100 and Premiere Pro 2), will there be a significant difference in the results compared with the VX2000? It'll be good to have the original HD footage for not too far down the road ...

My main concern is the low light performance, as expected. At what point does the A1U really start falling apart compared to the PD/VX series? Would typical household lighting be ok (is that around 50-100 lux?) I don't shoot weddings and other really dark places, but image quality under the lighting of several 75-90W bulbs is important.

How is the included external mic (is it a shotgun)? What about using the built-in stereo mike - would that be comparable to the VX2000's built-in mike?

I'd appreciate any thoughts at all on this stuff; additional things, like general usability, manual control, handling etc. are also welcome. Thanks very much!

While the A1 isn't anywhere near the low light champ the pd/vx's are, I think you will find the A1s will perform acceptably with 75-95Watt bulbs with the Black Stretch on and the picture will be much better than the VX if you down convert to SD correctly in Premiere, especially if you get a hold of Cineform Connect HD to aid in dealing with the HD stuff.

In fact, it's safe to say you will be amazed with the output of this little camera.

You will have to get used to the Exposure settings, if you're used to f-stops though.

Advice
 

Mohit,

the low light performance of these units is not good -I have a HDV HC1 which I understand is evn worse. You will be amazed with the results in good lighting.

Best recommendation would be to borrow one and test it if you can. Also, you can limit the gain (less noise) on the HC1 using the manual exposure control -expect there is something that the A1 can also do...


Regards, Nick.

Now that's good to hear; I don't need to shoot in near-darkness, and the A1's performance being acceptable in normal household lighting is good to hear! From some reading, it looks like using the Sunset&Moon mode to limit gain to 9dB, and using Black Stretch should make the difference.

I think it'll be easier just to let the A1 do the downconvert to SD, so I can stick with my current NLE process and hardware. How would you use Premiere for the downconversion, without any additional plugins or software? And will the picture still be "much better than the VX" if I use the A1 to downconvert?

No big deal on the f-stops, I can deal with the graph/line display on exposure. I can still manually expose (lock both aperture/iris and shutter speed) just like on the VX right?

Nice to hear your positive feedback, this appears to be a heck of a camera for the price!

Thanks for the reply, Nick. I do need to quantify that "low light performance of these units is not good"; from Frank's reply, it seems I will be fine under typical household lighting.

I'll have to see if I can rent one locally ...

To be honest, I've never tried to 'downvert' in camera. I heard it didn't work as well from so many folks here I just never even tried it.
Yes, you can manually expose and lock down the shutter speed.

The external mic is so-so, but still a LOT better than those internal mics ever are. But the XLR inputs will allow you to plug in higher quality mics for serious business.

Since EVERY camera will have its limitations and strengths, renting one is always a great idea. That way you can see if it works for your needs by setting up 'normal' scenarios and seeing how well they work for you.
It would also help you get over just how small they are. It can take you a little back at first (until you see the output).

:)

Done deal
 

There's no easy/quick way for me to rent this camera locally, and it would cost a good bit to do it via mail. So I decided to just jump into it - from everything I've read, it's a heck of a camera for the price! B&H should have it to me tomorrow, and I leave on vacation with the kids on Friday - nothing like putting a new piece of equipment right to work, eh? :)

I'm going to have to scan the board really quickly to try and figure out recommended/typical shooting modes, etc. I'm familiar with basic SD usage, so the main stuff will be Cineform modes, Black Stretch and the like - the stuff that will make a difference during HD capture.

Does anyone have pointers for me along these lines? Links to existing threads with a decent overview of things to look out for would be super helpful!

Thanks again ... much appreciated!

The best breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of the A1 I know of is in Alan Roberts' (R & D man for the BBC) article. There's a great rundown on settings in a table that's in the article.

http://img.hexus.net/v2/lifestyle/al...n_res_sets.pdf

If you want to try and get shallow depth of field, set the AE (auto exposure) to Portrait and use the telephoto lens to zoom in.

I am certain you will love the camera. Especially after you see what comes out of it.

umm no.
You can lock the shutter speed and then obviously the camera will just play with the iris and gain. If its outdoors then usually gain will be at 0dB, so it will just use iris to vary exposure.

There no wa, to my knolwedge, to fix iris OR to fix gain.

Sunset&Moon Program AE mode will hard-limit the gain to a maximum of +9dB however dim the light level gets.

Iris control needs a bit of creativity. I *think* that you can lock shutter at one speed, then go to manual exposure, and change the manual exposure and this will therefore only be changing iris (and gain if its low light).

You can tell what gain is employed as in manual exposure, the little bar position corresponds on the right'hand side to max. aperture of f1.8, with gain varying from 0db to max. of +18dB.

theres a few threads about this stuff. Try a search.

So i think you will find that the manual controls arent necessarily as flexible as your current cam, but you can develop workarounds more or less.

Indeed you can. That's almost exclusively how I shoot. Again, I think Alan Robert's article explains it well.

If you press the exposure button then iris and gain are fixed...

Essentially, as I mentioned there are no direct f-stop settings. You can lock down the shutter speed, so that's one variable taken care of.

Then you have 24 exposure settings. Everything above 18 add gain which of course will likely add noise to your picture. There is a chart with the approximate f-stops of each setting. Some of these settings, particularly around 7-13 start employing internal ND filters, so you get a lot of settings that look identical:
http://hdvforever.com/hdv/exposure/

But you can always make it a lot simpler by using the auto exposure to get in the ballpark and then pop it down to manual and fine tune from there (I often end up one or two settings down). Remember, your eyes are the final arbiters of what looks good.

And turn on the zebra so you won't get over exposure problems.

Yep. It's a little 'different', but it works for must stuff. And ultimately gets better pictures than a lot of much more expensive cameras with a little practice.

Hope this makes things a little clearer.

Great info Frank and everyone else; Alan's PDF was very helpful too - what I gained from that as an initial starting point to setup my A1 for this trip is to record in HDV1080i (of course), set Sharpness to 7, Camera Color to 8, Cinematone to 1, Cineframe Off, and Black Stretch On. Anyone disagree or recommend differently?

Sounds like the exposure controls are similar to what I'm used to with my VX - choose Program AES mode and set the shutter to 1/60, then press the exposure button and move the lever to get the appropriate iris/gain combination while watching the zebras to avoid overexposure. The histogram is going to be very useful too (I'm comfortable with that, coming from digital still photography) - I think I'll set the Assign button to Histogram for quick recall.

Thanks!

That's a great place to start Mohit. You will be getting great output and you can fine tune from there.
Another thing, you can also bring menu items that you find you use a lot up to the top in your personal menu. And the A1 has shot transition if you find you have two settings you constantly go back and forth to. You know, those settings so many of us fall back on but never admit we do. ;-)

Oh... and one other thing. HD is verrrrrry sensitive to focus. Most times I use the auto-focus to get the subject right, then lock it by just dropping down to manual. Then I can frame the subject where I need without worrying about the auto-focus 'fishing'.

I didn't see a "Push Auto" button in my scan of the manual - looks like I can only get that with the use of certain LANC controllers. It would've been really helpful to have one on the camera, that way I could just leave it on manual and push the button to auto focus as needed. In any case, I will follow your suggestion and use manual focus when possible. The Enlarge Focus option looks useful too :)

I think you will like the HVR-A1 (I say this as an owner) as long as you can accept it's limitations, which primarily are along the lines of poor low-light performance and lack of total manual control. But the big plus is form factor and features. It's a tiny HDV camera with XLR balanced audio inputs with phantom power, and that is a big plus for me.

While I currently do professional shooting with the JVC GY-H100 and Panasonic AG-HVX200, I use the Sony HVR-A1 for personal documentary shooting and I really like it's small form factor and ability to transform from consumer mode (using the built-in mic) to professional mode (adding the included audio adapter for connecting my phantom powered shotgun and lavalier microphones).

I've written about this camera in my blog at: http://kino-eye.com/2006/03/14/a1u/ and it's mostly qualitative impressions, and there you will also find two other posts on the camera, one doing a side-by-side comparison with it's big brother, the HVR-Z1, and the other with some frame grabs of the camera in low-light situations. In summary, if you don't mind the noise from the video gain, it's really not horrible in low light, it's simply not as sensitve as it's big brother, the HVR-Z1.

LOL! yes for sure that would do it...
But what i meant (i *think* your post was in humour...) was theres no way to lock gain *only* or to lock iris *only*.

Got the A1U earlier today and just finished a quick test shoot of the kids outside and inside. First off, amazing how small it really is - I'd seen the pictures and read the comments, but it still surprises you.

I do have some questions on the initial setup along the lines I mentioned earlier, and will start a new thread to get some discussion pertaining to that; I appreciate all the help you guys have given me, and would love some feedback on the new thread, if you get a chance - thanks again!

Congrats on the purchase Mohit! I received my A1U today as well but its charging up as we speak. Let us know how it works out for you on vacation.

I'm back from my vacation, the A1U performed beautifully! Have barely had a chance to really review and play with the footage, but so far so good. Thanks very much to everyone who helped with their suggestions during my initial purchase period :)

Can anyone re-send me that file? It seems to be out now.

Well, I found the article on a different URL:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp...HVR-A1-HC1.pdf

Unfortunately it seems that the A1 is not recommended for pro applications in SD and with some concerns in HDV, and that is what I was intending to use it for.

Will try to find out more about that angle.

What is being talked about is shooting in SD mode in-camera instead of HDV mode. If you shoot in HD mode and later down convert the output to SD in your computer, the output will be great.

I see. Files would be much more heavier to work with though.

Personally, I was sorely disappointed with the outcome. Better than shooting straight DV, but still, nothing spectacular and very disappointing in my opinion.

Wow Alex. The first time I dropped the output into Premiere using Cineform HD and exported it I was blown away and knew I had made the right choice. And that was before I had really learned how to really work with it.

I find that surprising and i think you're the 1sat person i've read about who is not impressed with SD footage downconverted this way.
You are talking about shooting in HDV and then downconverting to SD and then viewing SD footage yes?
Of course you have to view the SD footage, realising that it IS still SD footage and will in no waty compare the the HDV footage. The point here is that the SD footage gained this way is generally regarded as being EXCELLENT DV footage better than almost any SD camera, but of course you have to judge it against other SD footage and not HDV footage!

Stu, yeah, I'm talking about shooting in HDV and downconverting to SD to put onto a DVD and viewing on my HDTV 27" LCD. I don't know, maybe I did something wrong? But when played on my TV for my family and friends, all complained that it was a bit fuzzy and nowhere near good resolution. Compared to Mini DV cameras shooting straight SD, yes, my HDV-->SD downconversion is much better, but that SD is imo and that of my family/friends still pretty poor and unimpressive.

The downconverted footage comes no where close to the HDV resolution and is much closer to regular SD than HDV.

Then again, I'm also someone who isn't impressed with HDV native resolution. In fact, when I saw Superman Returns in IMAX, I wasn't impressed with the resolution at all...so go figure? I guess it's my view, same as the way I view video game graphics - none of it seems good to me, just barely acceptable.

Still, I find it odd that if so many people are impressed with HDV-->SD footage, then why aren't my family/friends who don't know a thing about video, film, etc.?

The old DVDs I have of movies - why does their resolution on my TV seem so much more pleasing than my HDV-->SD footage? I have to check to make sure, but I also have this vague impression that these professional movie SD DVDs also look better (resolution-wise) than HDV native footage. May be wrong, but when I connected my camera straight to my TV, the resolution wasn't impressive. When I captured HDV onto my computer as .m2t and displayed that footage on my TV, resolution wasn't impressive - looked nothing like the resolution I was seeing on my computer monitor, which isn't even HD resolution. Perhaps it's because the computer monitor is so much smaller, so it actually looks sharp and like HDV, but when blown up to TV size or larger, it loses its impressiveness?

I did a project once for a show and they projected my HDV projected it to a 20 or 30 feet screen. Later on that night, someone else who did a project but filmed it on a cheap SD consumer camera also had his project blown up to the same size, and really, I didn't notice much difference in resolution between his project and mine. Maybe it was the non-HD screen laptop, maybe it was the non-HD projector...

Your comments are very interesting.

To start with, if you downconvert HDV to SD and look at that in any TV, SD or HD, it would look like SD, not like HDV.

All serious reviews or comments I have seen done by pros concur on saying that downconversion from HDV onto SD is good but not impressive, and very much depend on the tools used.

Second, if you did see a resolution difference in your monitor between HDV and SD, and you didn't continue to see that on your HDTV, I must say something is not right in your TV. Connection, setup, whatever.

There's a startling difference I see in my 17" monitor between HDV scenes shot by amateurs and quality DVD scenes from films shot by pros: the HDV scenes beat them all by a long throw!

No SD DVD can beat a properly screened HDV material. Even if they were badly shot, the HDV scenes should look more real.

Regular TVs tend to "equalize" and "improve" video signals in some way, and properly done DVDs are designed to take advantage of that. Their origin was also film, which is still the leader in shooting resolution, whatever the great advances video has already got to. So DVD scenes should have a great contrast resolution and proper use of lenses' field depth.

The video projector you saw your video on was quite likely SD, so there shouldn't be much of a difference between your HDV video and the SD one.

HD to SD
 

These last few posts have been very interesting (perhaps we should start a separate thread for this stuff) since I've been struggling with trying to get the best SD output from my great A1U footage. Using Premiere Pro 2 (and trying the Cineform Aspect HD codec), I've output using Adobe Media Encoder with the MPEG2-DVD preset with just ok results. Also tried the Cineform codec and then coverted to DVD, but not much better.

When I hooked up my A1U to an SD TV via S-Video, it looked very good! The DVD conversions look softer, with less "punch", it's like I've lost a good bit of the clarity of the original footage.

How are others getting the best DVD output from their A1?

Well thats just because it IS still DV !!! 720 x 480 resolution! Of course itll look nowhere near as good as Hidef footage. Its just nice quality SD footage, but its still exactly the same resoltion as any other SD DV camera will give (NTSC = 720 x 480).


Pehaps because they are used to you showing them HDV footage, and so when you show them SD footage (as downconveted footage is) you have instantly lost exactly 4.5times the pixelcount. So thats my guess - youve been showing them HDV footage for the last month or two and when you show them SD footage of course they're going to say its unimpressive. You have to remember that the SD quality footage achievalble is GOOD but it´s still just SD footage.

I think you mixing up things a bit. There's no DVD type output on the A1 or any HDV camera. There might be S-video, which still is SD, and composite, which is lower quality.

The only HDV output you have to use to get HD are the three component RCA connectors you should have on the camera and on the HDTV. Now: the TV having component input doesn't mean it's really HD. The TV specs have to say it's maximum resolution, which might be 720p, 1080i or 1080p.

Maybe I didn't explain it clearly - what I meant by "DVD output" is exporting from the Premiere Pro 2 timeline (using AME, or other MPEG encoder), after editing in HDV.

IOW, when I hook up the A1 via S-video to a regular SD TV, that looks great (as far as SD content goes, of course). But editing in Premiere and converting to SD (MPEG2-DVD), I seem to lose a lot of quality - wondering if I should just downconvert in-camera and capture DV for editing in Premiere? :)

hdmi
 

I guess there is at least one advantage to the HDR-HC3 it has a hdmi connector to see full rez on your hdtv..

RE: Thinking of buying the HVR-A1U
 

Not really an advantage, as both the HDMI and Component will provide full resolution to an HDTV set, provided the HDTV has a full resolution input. Remember, in the case of a Component input on an HDTV set, the input may or may not be full resolution.

thnaks, Scott K.

However, doesn't the HDMI send a digital signal to the TV? That would implicitly have a higher resolution. Although sometimes analog signals are more visually appealing.

While HDMI is digital it doesn't mean its a pure digital transfer from source to display. Often there is an analog conversion that goes on behind the scenes before being output to HDMI/DVI. There are just too many external factors such as scaling and DSP processing to accurately compare component, DVI, and HDMI. What looks good on one setup might not be so hot on another.

Just a side note, but I still prefer component video cables for their ability to run long distances. Ever try to get a 30ft HDMI cable? See also: Digital Cliff Effect.

How do I check if my TV has a full HD resolution input for component.

I'm going to assume you meant COMPONENT because composite is for plain old standard def stuff. That being said, if your HD TV set has component inputs then it'll show you whatever resolution it's native for displaying assuming that your source is that same resolution. So if you have a nice 1080i set and are sending a full HD 1080i signal over component then you'll be seeing the 1080i image.

Cheers

Oh, heh, typo, yeah, component. But I'm confused, above someone said, "Remember, in the case of a Component input on an HDTV set, the input may or may not be full resolution." My HDTV is 1080i and I am playing directly from my Mini DV tape which recorded HDV 1080i by my HVR-A1U. I connected it to my HDTV via componenet cable, but the footage just doesn't look impressive or like the resolution I'm seeing on my NON-HD laptop monitor screen (which is 4:3 aspect ratio, so the picture gets letterboxed). I'm wondering if this is because my laptop screen is that much smaller so the image looks sharper and higher res than the image blow up to 27" on my HDTV?

Or is it like the guy said, not all HDTV have full resolution input? Even when I connect my A1 via component cable to my HDTV and move my camera around my house, the picture of my house doesn't look very sharp to me.