HVR-V1U: Sony unveils new 24P HDV camcorder

[Wes Vasher]

60p! Did I read that right? I figured 30p would be the highest. How in the heck would you ever get 60p out of the camera though? Will Intensity capture 60p through HDMI?

Could Sony have meant 60i, not sure how they could have messed up their own press release though. Perhaps it can capture HDV in 60p to that hard drive unit.

[Meryem Ersoz]

whoa...is this THE ONE?? dang, and here i thought the canon XH series was gonna be THE ONE...with the trade-in program, this is gonna be hard to resist! canon, quick, give me a reason!

how great to have these sorts of "problems" in choosing from such magnificent cameras at these prices...

[Chris Barcellos]

60p should mean some great slow motion shots.

[Chris Barcellos]

Check this Sony Site out for the particulars:

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...V1U/index.html

[Chris Barcellos]

Don't see them touting 60p.... could have been error in release ??

[Stu Holmes]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

I checked and it said 4,800 and 1,800 for the drive.

heath

Originally Posted by Stu Holmes

I'd say MSRP of V1 in USA will come in about US$4700-4800,

pretty close.. :-)

[Heath McKnight]

I think the camera does 24p, 30p and 60i because this site

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...V1U/index.html

isn't saying 60p.

heath

[Philip Williams]

Here's a quote from the site Heath mentioned:
"the HVR-V1U supports 24p (progressive) scan, the frame rate of film and 30p (progressive) scan modes, in addition to typical 60i"

[Stu Holmes]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

I think the camera does 24p, 30p and 60i because this site

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...V1U/index.html

isn't saying 60p.

heath

Yes i'd echo Heath on that.
Quote from the above site:
"Processor, the HVR-V1U supports 24p (progressive) scan, the frame rate of film and 30p (progressive) scan modes, in addition to typical 60i."
So it's 60i, nmot 60p, and as such the Sony press release here :
http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_ro...ase/25017.html

appears to have been badly worded, as it strongly implies 60p :

"Sensor system natively captures progressive images at 24P, 30P or 60P, while maintaining full 1080 HDV resolution"

Bit unusual for a Sony press release to get it wrong on basic stuff like that.

[Chris Barcellos]

Spec Sheet is here:

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...-V1U/spec.html

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Wes Vasher

60p! Did I read that right?

No, what you read was that it scans the chip at 60p. It doesn't have any sort of 60p output or display capability. Internal processing is done at 60p (same as Panasonic and JVC, not sure about Canon). But when it comes time to output it splits that 60p into fields and converts it to 60i. There is no 60p recording, output, or display.

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

60p should mean some great slow motion shots.

Not on this cam because it can't record it. But what it can do is "smooth slow" record mode, which delivers 240 fields of info, which would make for a 4:1 slow motion effect. It'll be interesting to see how that actually looks; the technology is available in the HC3 as well but involves a significant drop in resolution. I don't know if the Sony V1U employs the same technique or if it's advanced somehow.

[Stu Holmes]

Originally Posted by Barry Green

I don't know if the Sony V1U employs the same technique or if it's advanced somehow.

They increased the on-board fast-RAM buffer for this mode (relative to HC3 which i think had 32Mb of fast-RAM for this mode) so that allows them to get 6secs of realtime (=24secs of playback time). I too am interested on the res achievable in that mode, but i do rather suspect it will be similar res to the HC3 which is really fairly low (below DV res i think).
shutter-speed range in SmoothSlowRecord mode is 1/250th - 1/2000th, not-user-selectable (unless as you say, they've tweaked that mode siginificantly).

[Craig Irving]

All the documentation on that Sony page seems to indicate that everything is processed at 4:2:2 using EIP, is this correct?

Or will it still be recorded to tape at 4:2:0 (DV limitation). And furthermore, has it been confirmed whether or not we can bypass that DV limitation by recording straight to the HDD?

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Craig Irving

All the documentation on that Sony page seems to indicate that everything is processed at 4:2:2 using EIP, is this correct?

The 960x1080 chips are scanned into a 1920x1080x4:2:2 matrix. But the only place that 1920x1080 signal exists is internally. There's no way to get that out.

Or will it still be recorded to tape at 4:2:0 (DV limitation).

Well, when you say "DV" limitation, you're talking about standard-def, and in standard-def this unit will be 4:1:1 (because it's NTSC DV/DVCAM). In high-def mode the HDV format is only available in 4:2:0. So all recordings on tape or through the firewire port will be 1440x1080x4:2:0.

And furthermore, has it been confirmed whether or not we can bypass that DV limitation by recording straight to the HDD?

Hard disk will also be MPEG-2 compression at 4:2:0. (and presumably standard-def at 4:1:1)

According to the chart on their website (http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...EipSignal2.gif) the signals start on the chips and go through a "Sony original interpolation Process" to become 1920x1080. Then, before any output occurs, it goes through a "Resolution Conversion Process" to become 1440x1080. Now here's where things get interesting: it shows that the resolution conversion process yields 1440x1080ix4:2:2, which goes to the component outputs and to the HDV compression engine. HDV will process that into 4:2:0 for recording on tape or onto hard disk, but what about that "component output"... on analog component output it's not any different than any other camera out there, but what about HDMI? Is that going to be an actual digital 1440x1080x4:2:2 digital HDMI signal? If so, will someone develop (or has someone already developed?) an HDMI->HDSDI converter box to allow uncompressed 4:2:2 digital HD recording?