Just sampled the FX7
 

My friend just got an FX7 and we took it out west to Yellowstone. Today we hooked the camcorder up via HDMI to my HD plasma and played some of the footage. Utterly fantastic!!! He shot all on the automatic settings; nothing adjusted, just point and shoot. It looked heads and shoulders better than my digital footage from my old digital cam. What a difference! I am so pumped! So I downloaded a small sample directly from the FX7 of about 3 minutes onto my computer and used Pinnacle 10.8 to capture and burn a regular DVD. The program recognized the camcorder, captured the footage, allowed me to edit (added only one transition), and burn the DVD. Could have burned an HD DVD (according to the program), but I don't have any blank HD DVDs, nor an HD DVD burner. The reular DVD that I produced, while not near as good as the HD footage directly from the camcorder to the TV, was better than the DVDs that I could produce from my digital cam.

Correct me if I am wrong, I think the DVDs produced from my digital cam has a resolution of about 330 lines, the regular DVD produced from the HD cam is over 400, while the HD shown directly from the cam to the TV would be 540 lines. Is that right?

Thanks.
Mike

Mike -

Here's my take - shoot HD, use a program that can output 24p 720x480 (SD) - I use Vegas 7. As near as I can figure, by starting with the added information of HDV, you end up with a far superior end result.

I don't think a "retail" DVD has anything more than 480 lines does it? And yet by starting with a high quality source, the "commercial" DVD looks way better than your average "pro" or consumer Standard Def camera...

To my eye, the same thing applies - start with HDV, you get a much better looking end result.

BTW - if you're outputting from the camera, depending on the method, you should have 1080i - which may or may not display in full depending on what "flavor" of HDTV you're dealing with... many display more like 720... it gets confusing... 720 lines is considered HD, but so is 1080...

I agree. The added info from the HD picture will add to the PQ of the SD DVD. To my way of thinking, my old digital cam could only produce so much resolution (300+/- lines), not nearly filling the potential of the blank SD DVD disk (400 +/- lines). While the HD cam was able to produce 540 lines, more than enough to reach the potential of the SD DVD. Therefore more burned lines of resolution = a better picture. AM I thinking rightly? Of course an HD DVD (or BR) would have the capacity for more lines of resolution, hence the better PQ.
Mike

I have not purchased an HDV camcorder yet (hopefully soon). I downloaded HDV program stream files (M2t - short ones) from an FX7, that have been posted on line. I also wanted to see how a regular DVD looked. I edited them, putting them together in Avid and then converted them to the Avid DNxHD codec, which allowed me to export them as quicktime reference files. I then brought them into Procoder as 1080i files. I encoded them to MPEG2 converting the field order in the process, and burned a DVD. The resulting DVD looked as good as a comercial DVD (Anamorphic Wide Screen) and was absolutely pristine in quality. My Sony PDX10 shoots native 16x9 DV and it doesn't look nearly as good. I'm excited to get into HDV.

You're on the right track - the SD cams "supposedly" can do 480 (v) x720(w) widescreen, but in reality, the actual effective resolution is a lot lower... SO when you burn a DVD best case you've MAYBE got the 480x720...

The HDV cams are supposed to do 1080 (v) x 1440 (w) lines, so roughly 4x (2x the vertical and 2x the horizontal) the information the SD cam puts out best case. It's going to result in a better output, and once you've seen it, SD just bites...

Burned to DVD with a good program, HDV has lots more information to create the final frame - so a better result, once you work out the workflow!

You and me both. Just need to save alittle more money. I wish you well in your new purchase.

Dave, thanks for your help. Yes, even just getting the HD cam now, I can still progress in two areas until the time comes when I can upgrade my equipment to include those things for the production of HD DVDs or BR DVDs and the playing of said DVDs. Those previously mentioned two areas being archiving the footage of things the way they are right now (kids, grandkids, etc.), and producing better homemade SD DVDs than I can with my old digital cam. I can hardly wait.

Mike

Mike

Burning HDV to DVD
 

I am shooting in 24P mode.Is it better to reneder the footage in Vegas to .mpg DVD Arch. 24p widescreen video stream or 108024p avi and let the DVD software down convert the image. My final Product will be 24p Progressive DVD using Sony DVD ARCH.

How are you shooting 24p with the FX7?
Either way, you want Vegas to render the DV widescreen/23.97 mpg, NOT DVD Architect. Vegas has unique qualities that DVD Architect does not.

Sorry Dougals I am shooting with V1u's Finishing up a short film
I removed the pull down when I captured with cineform.
So I reneder in Vegas Dv Widescreen 23.97/ mpg. The setting in Vegas when I pick the MainConcept MPEG2 format says DVD ARCH.24P NTSC widescreen video stream is this correct? I am also aurthoring the DVD with DVD ARCH. I am using the widescreen setting progressive mode I also set the video mode to 23.97? Are these the correct setting? Thanks for your help.

Interesting discussion guys!

My friend and I are putting a new FX7 through its paces also. Just like the others, I am trying to figure out the best way to output to SD DVD. I have checked some of the threads on this matter and still am researching, but here is my flow. I am mostly satisfied with the results, but still tinkering. I am using CS3 Prod from Adobe on Matrox(RTX2) hardware..

My flow:

1. Capture within premiere via firewire
2. Edit the footage
3. Export to mpeg 2 with approx a 7.5 VBR 2 pass bitrate depending on the length of the timeline or 10bit avi to transcode in Encore with a preset of 8.21 target bitrate 2 pass.
4. The 10 bit I am still exprimenting with to see how that looks. But the results have been pretty good so far..

Maybe someone can chime in if they wish also on the benefits or shortcomings if there is a more optimal way to return even higher quality DD DVD's from the FX7 files...

I actually thought about simply capturing analog into 10 bit via component, but have not tried that as of yet.

Damon