Slow Motion with Sony V1 or 60p HVX200
 

I had some questions and concerns with the new Sony V1Us slowmotion capabilites. I've used the search but I havent found the answers I need.

I shoot mainly professional skate videos and I was going to get the HVX200 for the fact that it can shoot 60 frames a second, but only in 720p.

What is the deal with the V1 and its "super slowmotion" Is it full 1080i? Does anyone have samples?

Any information is appreciated

-Clayton W.

Unfortunately, the V1's super slo mo is half and quarter rez, so you'll likely prefer the HVX for this. We own the HVX for it's under/over crank as well. It's about all we use it for, but it's really quite nice for those super slo shots.
the V1 is limited to 3 lengths of slo-mo recording; 3 sec/6 sec/12 sec, and resolution is different from 3/6, and 12 sec choices.

Very, very different functions. As I understand it, (and someone correct me if I get this wrong) the V1 shoots a limited buffer of time, at low resolution, into a memory buffer and then has to take real time to commit that buffer to tape. So you only get a maximum of a few seconds before you have to stop recording, and you can't use the camcorder again until the buffer is through flushing its data to the tape, which will take somewhere around 4x as long as it took to shoot. So you shoot 6 seconds of a clip, but you'll have to stop shooting and wait 24 seconds while the buffer writes out to tape.

And then there's a drop in resolution and noticeable image artifacting. DSE put up a clip from a football game.
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/me...RV1USlo-Mo.zip

If you're serious about needing slow-mo capability, I strongly recommend you download that clip and look at the results the V1 delivers, to determine whether it would be adequate for your purposes.

Whereas with the HVX, you can shoot at about 36 different frame rates all in real time, all in full resolution, with a film-style shutter angle that delivers film-style motion blur at all the frame rates. For an example of HVX slow motion, check out http://10framehandles.com/movies/wolvesHD_720_Hi001.mov

How does mixing 720p and 1080i footage look like? Since I would only shoot 720p for the 60p and then I would shoot everything else at 1080i.

Is the sony's 1080i higher resouliton?

And what do you think will happen with P2 and HDV. I mean HDV has now been adopted by Sony, JVC, and Canon. Is anyone besides Panasonic going to adapt to P2?

Thanks for the help

Mixing 720p and 1080i should be mostly seamless. The quality of the camera almost has more to do with it than the format. For example a Varicam shooting at 960x720 will look better than a V1 shooting at 960x1080.

With HD all kinds of scaling is going on. From the CCDs, to the acquisition format to the editing format, to the distribution format, to the display (most displays are actually 1366x768, not directly 1080i or 720p). So in that scheme scaling 720p to 1080 isn't a huge deal.

The HVX200 definitely has the edge when it come to variable frame rates. The only other low-cost HD camera that does 60p is the JVC HD200/250 but they don't do variable frame rates like the HVX. None of the 1080 HDV cameras can do 60p because it's not part of the HDV spec. I also use to think the GOP format of the HDV signal prevented the possibility of variable frame rates but I notice the PDW-F350 XDCam has variable frame rates 4-60 fps in 1 fps increments and it's also a GOP format. So it must be possible? Perhaps the tape recording is the limiting factor. If so, I wish they could enable it out of firewire so you could record time-lapse on a hard drive.

Anyhow, for now the best choices for slow motion is the HVX200 or the JVC HD200/250. I wonder if deinterlacing the 1080/60i on the V1U and then slowing it down would yield decent results. It's a progressive chip but does the 60i mode still have the time delay between fields?

Well I'm mainly shooting skate videos but would probably start shooting a documentary aswell as offering commercial services. I've been debating the price differences with a friend as he aslo wants to get a camera but it seems he wants to go the sony route because of the cheaper price of recording.

I guess what I'm looking for is solid samples of the V1u 1080i that may persuade me not to go the HVX200. I've seen some excellent HVX200 shots from motivity so I'd like to see if the V1u can compare.

I think with the cineporter coming out there would almost be no reason not to go with the HVX200. If I'm looking at this for the long run wouldn't I be saving time and money shooting to hardrive, and wouldn't the footage look better as far as on the run settings (skating).

for undercrank/overcrank, nothing beats the HVX in its price class, period.
However, the end resulting video is no better, and sometimes poorer, than video acquired with HDV when shooting standard frame rates.
Most broadcasters put the HVX in the same exact category as HDV. Read the various shootouts, you'll find that *every* HD cam in the sub 10K range is within rock-throwing range of the others. Were it not for the P2 aspect of the camera, I'd probably use ours more.
That said, the speed control of this cam is wonderful.

how slow is "super slow"?
 

What I'm aiming to do is take a ballerina doing a pirouette, which takes maybe a second or two, and slow it down as much as I can with as much clarity as possible so you can really see what the muscles in her legs are doing, and what her feet are doing, and what her head is doing. I'd slow 2 seconds down to 20 if it'll still look good. I ran some tests overcranking the DVX100b that I own and the results were ok, but not as good as I was hoping. Then I started reading the reviews on the V1U and thought maybe I should rent one of those for this project. Now reading this thread maybe renting an HVX would be better? Or will none of this class of camera give me a result as slow and clear as I'm hoping for?

The V1U is NOT for you in this application. I have a HC3 which has the same feature. The slow motion video is much LOWER rez than the normal HDV output of the camera. I suspect you will not be happy with it for anything other than looking at your own golf swing.

There are clips of this for the HC3 around and I can post what I've shot if anyone wants to see the difference. I can say it wasn't what I was expecting. I was VERY dissapointed in image quality but impressed with motion smoothness. I thought something was wrong with the camera when I first looked back at the slow motion footage but then found out that is just the comprimize for compressing the video into a RAM buffer before being recorded out to tape.

Chris

What Chris said is right - the image quality is much much lower than HDV - its sacrificed to achieve the frame-rate, essentially.

However, it is perhaps worth noting that the resolution on the V1's Smooth Slow Record mode *is* higher than that on the HC3.
Plus on the V1 the resolution changes according to whether you select a 3second clip, a 6second clip or a 12second clip.
Highest res (still fairly low though) is in the 3-second mode. So the quality in 3 second mode should certainly be better than HC3.
- How much better is debatable but i can dig out the resolutions if anybody is interested.

3 sec= 640 x 360
6/12 sec= 512 x 240

Thanks DSE !

While slow motion from the HVX200 is great and of high quality it is only slow motion if you intend on creating projects that are 24p or 30p which may not always work for broadcast. Many times 60i or 60p is wanted and any slow motion would no longer be at that framerate.

With that said 60i HDV cameras can give you good results as well. 60i is pretty much the same as 60p. What I do sometimes is convert 60i to 60p by bobbing the frames and then down convert to 720p 60p. I can then create slow motion just like what would be done with the HVX200. Now clearly the frames may not be as good but the Horizontal resolution is good and you would still get up to 540 lines for the 720p vertical. I wouldn't think it would look as good as it does but it works pretty good. If your destination is SD then it will look very good.

I think 60i from the V1 bobbed and down converted to 720p or SD would give some pretty good results.

To take 1 second of realtime and slow it down to 20 seconds two factors come into play.

1) Your shooting fps = 20 x delivery fps i.e. 30 x 20 = 600fps. No tape format can support that data rate and even flash memory would peg out. You're into RAM and fair slabs of it. This means industrial style high speed cameras. Upto 5,000 fps isn't that uncommon, you can get to 1,000fps with good resolution. Bear in mind that no codec will encode that fast either so the camera is writing uncompressed data, that's why you need lots of it.

2) Your actual shutter speed also needs to be multipled, so assuming you want the look of 1/50th you need to shoot at 1/1000th of a second. Now you're going to need a lot of light at that shutter speed, still quite doable and without exotic lighting.

Your best bet is to rent the camera and the operator. Not cheap becuase these cameras cost serious money and they need a ROI. But if you need the shot that's the way to go. Should come in under $1000 for a day.