FX1 and simple FX in Cineframe24. My experiences so far...
 

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I got my grubby little hands on an FX1. Since then, every weekend I've had the opportunity to shoot stuff, and have been having a blast.

Aside from what I read on this forum, everyone who I've shown Cineframe24 footage to has had absolutely no complaints, either live from the analog out, or as playback off of tape. I've shot a variety of fast moving objects, from nunchucks to waterfalls to my girlfriend tossing her hair in parody of so many makeup ads, and really, when played back on its own looks fine to me.

Next to Cineframe30 or 1080i footage it obviously does look choppy, but I'm not sure if that's the film effect or not. Obviously people here don't think so.

I shot a (Star Wars *sigh*) action short several weeks ago in Cineframe24 with a 1/60 shutter. I downloaded the footage from the camera twice - once to proxy DV files, and once to HDV. I then performed a preliminary edit in Premiere Pro 1.0 on the DV files... and was then ready for FX work on the HDV.

After reversing the pull-down to get a clean 23.976 fps in After Effects 6.0 and saving the 24p file to an intermediate HuffyUV file for faster renders, I begun rotoscoping the lightsaber effects 2 days ago.

In After Effects with regular zoom levels of 400x some artifacts ARE visible in the form of colour bleeding around edges, motion blocking, and (I think?) deinterlace errors from the Cineframe24 process. The potential deinterlacing ghosts occur by fast moving objects in front of bright backgrounds and are extremely subtle - and likely inperceptable if I wasn't examining the footage so closely.

The last paragraph however shouldn't raise nearly as many red flags as its going to. I have never worked with footage this crisp and this easy to track.

Following rotoscoping and preliminary compositing, the 16:9 image was cropped to a 2.35:1 file with a 1440x817 resolution (PA 1.33). For export to show my friends I rendered to a 24p 1440x613 Sorenson3 Quicktime file using 50% quality settings and keyframes every 48 frames.

Here are two clips:

http://s94963366.onlinehome.us/Eclipse/svjFX1.mov (2 MB)

http://s94963366.onlinehome.us/Eclipse/neckFX.mov (1.6 MB)

In the second clip, additional blur occurs in the form of a virtual pan (no zoom though). Compression rates are about 1 MB per second.

Comments and criticism are welcome - though keep in mind a lot of the compression artifacts that you see in THESE clips are a result of the Sorenson3 - not the preliminary MPEG-2. You may also consider playback at 1/2 size (or more accuractly 60%) to be an adequate representation of how this footage would look on a DVD - though I would never transcode at a rate lower than 9 Mbps (given how short the film is).

EDIT: Oh - and by the way - the time saved rotoscoping only 24 frames as opposed to 30 is greatly appreciated.

EDIT II - and please don't post links to this topic elsewhere. I have limited bandwidth, and if posted at certain Star Wars boards I could get disqualified from the competition this is for... which isn't a good thing.

-Steve

Wow, you're really good at that rotoscoping.

None of that footage looked bad (although I might just be distracted by the lightsabers to notice the finer details). Someone else posted some CF24 footage at another thread which looked dreadful.

I really liked the neckfx.mov clip. It's interesting to me how much "space" the higher resolution and 16x9 allows you. It's kind of hard to explain but I think we'll see some interesting narrative stuff come out of HDV.

Keep us up to date and let us know when it's finished. I will pretty much watch anything that has a good looking lightsaber battle.

Could there be a difference in the quality of the the Cineframe firmware among initial cams? I suggest people doing Cineframe tests include the serial number of their cam and/or if possible the firmware version.

good to see people are making some progress with cineframe. However, the clips are really short....i know you are involved in some kind of competition but if you could provide some longer clips I wiould appreciate it =]

as for mr.rodriguez, are you serious? this camera just came out....somehow I doubt that someone who bought the camera yesterday will have a better cineframe mode then the camera i bought 3 weeks ago.


Anyways, I look forward to messing around with cineframe24 (now if only i had some way to edit hdv footage)...i have feeling it will prove useful and tasteful in the right situation.

man o man...your CF24 looks ALOT differnt than mine...mine looks more like 4 frames per second not 24.

Congrtatulations on your success with 24 FPS!!

I must know why though...

Seriously, why does your CF24 look better than everyone else's?

<<<-- Originally posted by Hayden Rivers : Seriously, why does your CF24 look better than everyone else's? -->>>

Because he removed the 3:2 pulldown which caused that stuttery look. The movie you viewed was at 24fps with no pull down.

Other thread explained that there should not be any 3:2 pulldown removal for Cineframe 24 or 30 footage, because Cineframe is not really 24fps but rather a simulation.

Am I reading it correctly that people who actually work with such footage professionally *do* find a need for 3:2 pulldown removal?

Why difference in opinions?

Removing the pulldown does nothing to change CF24's stuttery look. Logically it shouldn't, and in practicality it doesn't.

CF24 looks stuttery because it is dropping frames/fields in its attempt to simulate a 24Hz capture rate. If there's not much motion difference between frames it can look okay, but if there's something moving quite fast, the difference between it and genuine 24P are glaringly obvious.

CF24 doesn't sample motion at 24Hz, it samples it at 60Hz and then drops fields and combines fields from alternating frames to deliver 8 out of 10 fields to the tape. The result is that you have uneven motion sampling, which is quite jerky. Removing the pulldown gives you 24 distinct frames that also exhibit the same jerky motion.

> CF24 doesn't sample motion at 24Hz, it samples it at 60Hz
> and then drops fields and combines fields

If so, it's a pity because if this cam actually captured at 24 fps, it could help cover one of it's major shortcomings, the low sensitivity inherent to it's small, high resolution (hence small pixel) sensor design.

Hey Pixel - yeah, it's for the TFN Lightsaber Choreography Competition.

As for seriously why this Cineframe24 "looks better" than anyone else's, I can't honestly believe it does. But I do think without reference footage to compare to, and given the rather abrupt and erratic motion of the combatants in this footage, it would be very hard for the average brain to note the difference. You're not watching stuff moving at constant speed... so how can you rationalize a measurement of "stuttery"?

My philosphy on this kind of thing is that 9 out of 10 trained monkeys couldn't tell the difference... and I suspect off hand, that if I downsampled to DV resolution and shipped the same footage over to an XL2 board or a DVX board, they wouldn't even think to tell me it came from a stuttery FX1 unless I gave explicit reason to think otherwise.

-Steve

OK, so if CF24 is dropping frames, what does CF30 do?

<<<-- Originally posted by Alex Raskin : OK, so if CF24 is dropping frames, what does CF30 do? -->>>

Whereas CF24 drops the odd fields (or the even, I don't know which), then skips every 6th whole frame, then merges 4 frames into 10 fields applying a 2:3 pulldown, CF30 merely does the very first stage of dropping every other field. Every even (or odd) field scanned from the CCD is transferred to it's own frame.

Dylan, so then CF30 mode only results in 50% of the image resolution?

<<<-- Originally posted by Alex Raskin : Other thread explained that there should not be any 3:2 pulldown removal for Cineframe 24 or 30 footage, because Cineframe is not really 24fps but rather a simulation. -->>>

Alex, What there can't be is the kind of native or on-the-fly 2:3 removal that you can achieve with DV's 24p Advanced, because 24pA has a redundant third frame in the 2:3:3:2 cadence which contains fields from the proceeding and following frames. In that sense 24pA in the DVX100 or the XL2 is not really true 24p either, as it is still recorded at 60i onto the tape, though true on-tape-24p wouldn't offer any real improvement.

Some NLEs (Avid Xpress Pro, FCP and I think Vegas) can skip this frame during capture or even in playback and adjust the speed from 29.97fps to 23.976 (or even true 24fps). This can be done without re-compressing the footage because DV is all I-frame compression.

Now, even if the FX1/Z1 did offer a 2:3:3:2 pulldown (is does not) then it would not be able to do this 3rd frame removal because mpeg2 compression relies on all the frames in the Group Of Pictures (GOP).

However if you are reencoding the movie to another file, then the software can remove the 2:3 pulldown, though basically the footage is not really HDV anymore, though it may still be High Definition (as the case with Steve's footage: it's Hi Def quicktime, not HDV).

And yes, CF24, CF25 and CF30 all reduce the frame resolution by half.

> CF24, CF25 and CF30 all reduce the frame resolution by half.

Only vertical resolution, not frame resolution. And if the built in deinterlacer is as good as some hope, only when there is motion.

Got it... so there's no point for in-camera frame manipulation in Fx1 if it all results in halving the reolution.

Instead, it seems like post-production ways of changing the footage from interlaced to progressive, plus possibly changing the frame rate from 30 to 24, is the way to go?

Anyone has a proven and true workflow on this?

> seems like post-production ways of changing the footage from
> interlaced to progressive, plus possibly changing the frame rate
> from 30 to 24, is the way to go?

It would appear from all the preliminary info available that yes, that would be the way to go. Almost everybody seems quite upset by CineFrame24.

But since the camera is not very sensitive to light, CineFrame30 might be ok for getting some more sensitivity out of the camera and assuming NTSC delivery. Or with the PAL FX1 or Z1 there is CineFrame25, which would seem to be the best if you need film out and can live with a 4% time shift.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ignacio Rodriguez : Only vertical resolution, not frame resolution. And if the built in deinterlacer is as good as some hope, only when there is motion. -->>>

Re: resolution - Ignacio, you're right, that's what I mean to say.

As for the built in de-interlacer, I don't think there is one - that's the point - it simply discards one entire field (which I guess is a dinterlacer of sorts, but not one that's worth a great deal).

To get adaptive, or "smart" deinterlacing, you'd have to go for converting it in post.

That or wait for 25p 1250 cameras, which will probably create images as good as deinterlaced 1080i

Ignacio, you see, I'm aiming for SD distribution on NTSC DVDs, and possibly digital projection (1280x720?) in theaters.

CF24 is out as it's way too jittery for my taste.

CF30 I'm unsure about. Previous poster indicated that CF30 loses half of the resolution. You however said that most likely the loss only occurs in the areas where the movement is present.

So bottom line is, I'm still unsure what exactly is CF30 mode doing.

Quick camera test showed that CF30 actually produced visually SHARPER images of the fast moving objects! So far all this is rather unclear to me.

> As for the built in de-interlacer, I don't think there is one -
> that's the point - it simply discards one entire field (which I
> guess is a dinterlacer of sorts, but not one that's worth a
> great deal).

It's what I imagined at first too. But according to http://home.earthlink.net/~dvcnyc/Sony%20HDR-FX1.htm, It would appear that resolution loss will only happen when there is motion. This would seem different to what happens with the PDX10 and PD170, where you can see a visible resolution loss even when there is no motion in 1/30 (NTSC) or 1/25 (PAL).

Quote from there: 'In CineFrame 30 (FX1/Z1) and CineFrame 25 (FX1e/Z1), "smart" deinterlacing is used to create video that has a temporal resolution of either 30fps or 25fps, respectively. Diagram 10 shows how the FX1Õs 2:1 pulldown accomplishes deinterlacing of 1080i60 video.' Of course, Steve might just be thinking that this is how it works, without actually knowing it. But already people have shot res charts and report they can't see resolution loss on an HD monitor when running the cam in CineFrame mode.

There is a whole thread on the subject of resolution loss and low light response: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=36132

I did an eyeball test on Kaku's footage posted on HDVinfo - since taken down - and on static images (ie non-moving video - not still frames), 60i was sharper than CF30. CF30 and CF24 were about the same, but in CF24 there was a very slight "shivering" on lines and edges which did reduce the overall quality.

So if CF30 does use smart de-interlacing, it's not that smart. Also reading through Steve Mullen's article, I'm not sure how much of his discussion of CF24/30 is fact and how much is hypothesis (the qualification "...an intriguing possibility " came up a couple of times.)

One way to test it would be side by side tests of footage that has been shot CF30 and 60i with a discard de-interlacer applied, but since thaty would mean re-encoding to a new file, maybe that would also affect the results.

FX1 60i is definitely sharper than CF30. I know there's been speculation about how CF30 is just as high resolution, but it isn't. Then there's been speculation about whether it's a "smart de-interlacer", which would mean not losing resolution on portions of the frame that don't move. That speculation appears unfounded as well.

I have shots of a CamAlign chart, that includes vertical resolution information. It's easy to see that in 60i the resolution is much higher than in CF30, and that's on a still shot. I don't have a definitive way to test the resolution loss on a moving shot, but it definitely loses vertical resolution even on still shots when you switch to CF30.

Here's an extraction, blown up to 300% in PhotoShop so you can see the details:

http://www.icexpo.com/FX1-60i-vs-CF30-res.jpg

Here's the raw frame extraction from both frames, for those who want to examine the pixel-accurate version without any potential JPG artifacts (100k BMP version of the same picture above):
http://www.icexpo.com/FX1-60i-vs-CF30.BMP

It looks like in 1080i mode the camera delivers about 750-770 lines of vertical resolution (which is surprisingly close to Steve Mullen's estimate of 820). In CF30 mode, it's more like 575, which pretty much would be what you'd expect from a straight field-drop de-interlace.

*edit* to be clear, when I say straight field-drop, that's not saying that resolution is cut in half when you go to CF30 (or, presumably, CF25)! Obviously the res would have to drop to 380 lines or so for that to be true. Instead, it looks like CF30 is foregoing the filtering and field-blending that normally gets put on interlaced video to smooth out interline flicker, so you're getting the full raw resolution of one field (which should presumably be 540 lines, which is certainly close enough to the observed 575 lines to fall within the margin of error).

Thank You Barry. It's clear then... well, no pun intended at all but... uhm... rather: It's conclusive. CineFrame loses vertical resolution, there seems to be no "smart" de-interlacing going on.

"basically the footage is not really HDV anymore, though it may still be High Definition (as the case with Steve's footage: it's Hi Def quicktime, not HDV)."

As if there's anything sacred about HDV... My workflow is designed to allow me to rotoscope on progressive frames without losing any information of the original HDV footage until the final render. If I were so inclined I could (hypothetically - I don't have the software to do this) re-interlace the final 24p video to a 2:3 HDV signal for future display on a 60i television.

My plan is to save a final uncompressed render of this footage to DVD-R using HuffyUV, so that when an acceptable high-def delivery format comes out, I can re-master my flick.

I don't understand why anyone would shoot in Cineframe24 and then edit on a 60i stream without appropriate pulldown.

Further to this: I would not shoot any documentary-type event using Cineframe24... it takes too much effort to set up individual shots for run-and-gun type shooting.

-Steve

Who is ever to think that it uses smart de-interlace is either uninformed or crazy. I tell you whys.

1. To do smart de-interlace, the camera need to have a frame buffer memory of AT LEAST three 1440x1080 pixel images. You looking prolly around 4-6MB of pixel data that need to be buffered.

2. Secondly, you need a chip to process the images, looking for changes between frames, and it need to be done all in real times. Such processing chip, haha, would be more expensives then just to put in a real progressive CCD.

3. Thirdly, because video never completely clean and noise free, a smart-deinterlace would not give you perfect results each time. Deinterlace would be subjecting to many artifacts, such as twitter, pulsing of fine detail, etc.

So given these objections, why would Sony use smart-deinterlacing and get shabby results, and prolly also more expensive to implement? They could save money just by switching to progressive CCD instead. Now you understand why CF is fake progressive and reduce whole resolution.

Think people! OK?

Why they not use progressive CCD? Prolly cuz they use interlace CCD to get better low light performance, and/or they is want to keep it 1080i to not eat their higher-end offerings.

> you need a chip to process the images, looking
> for changes between frames, and it need to be
> done all in real times. Such processing chip,
> haha, would be more expensives then just to
> put in a real progressive CCD

That's already in there there for the MPEG compression.

> Why they not use progressive CCD? Prolly
> cuz they use interlace CCD to get better low light
> performance, and/or they is want to keep it 1080i
> to not eat their higher-end offerings.

I totally agree. That's probably it. It's already terrible for low light compared to similarly priced SD equipment. If it were real proscan, they would have to include larger sensors, and then they would not be able to sell Betacams again. Ever.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steven White : "basically the footage is not really HDV anymore, though it may still be High Definition (as the case with Steve's footage: it's Hi Def quicktime, not HDV)."

As if there's anything sacred about HDV... -->>>

Nothing sacred about HDV? KILL! PERSECUTE! BURN THE HERETIC! ;-)

<<<--- My workflow is designed to allow me to rotoscope on progressive frames without losing any information of the original HDV footage until the final render. If I were so inclined I could (hypothetically - I don't have the software to do this) re-interlace the final 24p video to a 2:3 HDV signal for future display on a 60i television. -->>>

Only if you make VHS/Tape versions - any decent mpeg2 encoding software would be able to make 23.976 fps mpeg2 files with 2:3 flags in there that would play in a DVD player without. I assume that DVB receivers do the same; does any one know if digital broadcast of film material in 29.97Hz land is 2:3 interlaced or 23.976 progressive?

<<<--- My plan is to save a final uncompressed render of this footage to DVD-R using HuffyUV, so that when an acceptable high-def delivery format comes out, I can re-master my flick. -->>>

This is an expremely good plan. If I may ask, how big are your huffYUV compressed files, minute by minute? and what resolution are you holding them at? I also have a long form project in mind and would like to think in terms of shooting HDV, and huffYUV looks like a good solution ot storage problems of the final Master.

<<<-- don't understand why anyone would shoot in Cineframe24 and then edit on a 60i stream without appropriate pulldown. -->>>

There are reasons to do this, such as if you're heading to a broadcast out, one may want to retain a 29.97 timeline and timecode for convenience sake, but I think effects work like yours would always be done on uninterlaced progressive frames, for the reasons you mentioned before.

<<<-- Originally posted by Davi Dortas : Who is ever to think that it uses smart de-interlace is either uninformed or crazy. I tell you whys.
1. To do smart de-interlace, the camera need to have a frame buffer memory of AT LEAST three 1440x1080 pixel images. You looking prolly around 4-6MB of pixel data that need to be buffered.
2. Secondly, you need a chip to process the images, looking for changes between frames, and it need to be done all in real times. Such processing chip, haha, would be more expensives then just to put in a real progressive CCD.
So given these objections, why would Sony use smart-deinterlacing and get shabby results, and prolly also more expensive to implement? They could save money just by switching to progressive CCD instead. Now you understand why CF is fake progressive and reduce whole resolution. -->>>

Well, the camera has a chip that makes more complex calculations than deinterlacer and it has 18 frames memory, it's called mpeg encoder.
Like Steve Mullen suggested, that if sony was smart, they could use mpeg encoder to enhance cineframes deinterlace.

Big question still is: why no progressive?
It just remains the most asked feature from this camera.
Mullen also said, that basically all ccd's are progressive, it's just a matter does it have big enough buffer to hold the whole frame.

Maybe sony underestimated the success of progressive dv cameras back in 2003 when they started to design this ccd.
And now they might be in a hurry to grow that buffer to hold a whole frame and camera with this renewed ccd might come to market very soon.

In the HDV format, you have a choice of either 1080i or 720p and Sony decided to go with 1080i for these particular camcorders. As more HDV camcorders become available in the marketplace, you'll have some that are 1080i and some that are 720p. If Sony recognizes a demand for true progressive scan, then I wouldn't be surprised if they offer a 720p camcorder eventually. My own guess is that Canon will go with 720p, but that's just a guess.

One thing you won't see is 1080p, because that's not part of the HDV specification.

:)
 

Like Sony said before its either you're with them or us (them being progressive, and us being interlace)

Well in Japan, interlace is very popular for dramatic movies, so maybe Sony located in Japan is a reason they choose one thousand eighty i?

>>how big are your huffYUV compressed files

The data rate is between 40 and 50 MB per second. The files are 23.976 fps files with a 1440x1080 resolution. The final renders of the movie (which I haven't done yet, as I have loads of colour correction to do) will be 1440x818.

A good estimate for the final version of the flick (at about 6 minutes) will be 20 GB. Easily backed up on DVD-R.

In terms of transfer to DVHS anything that's not the plan. The flick will be released on the web first as a Sorenson3 QuickTime file (probably at 720x306) and maybe as a WM9 file in HD. I will also be downsampling it to a 24p DVD. Whenever HD-DVD or Blu-Ray come out and are cheap enough I'll remaster to that... but since I don't have an HDTV, there's no point in worrying about it at this point.

-Steve

> Big question still is: why no progressive?

The cam's already low sensitivity to light would be even lower for progressive scan at the same chip size, right?

<<<-- Originally posted by Davi Dortas : Well in Japan, interlace is very popular for dramatic movies, so maybe Sony located in Japan is a reason they choose one thousand eighty i? -->>>

Which is probably one of a few very good reasons. For one, I think the Japanese market apparently doesn't necessarily value 24P/30P the way the American (and other) markets do. From my extremely limited understanding, pretty much all dramatic production in Japan is done in 60i, isn't it?

Second, keep in mind that Sony is engaged in a death battle with Panasonic over the future of HDTV in Europe. The EBU is going to choose 720p OR 1080i, unlike the American ATSC which endorsed both standards. Sony is championing 1080i, Panasonic is spearheading the 720p charge. From the reports I've heard, the EBU is leaning strongly (if not unanimously) towards 720p. If Sony had produced progressive chips and made a progressive camera, it might have compromised their position regarding the sincerity of their belief that 1080i is the "right" choice for the entire continent of Europe.

Third, on paper, 1080i sure sounds a lot higher-resolution than 720p, doesn't it? In reality they're just about the same; once you get done with row pair summation, low-pass filtering and the Kell factor, HDV 1080i yields a real-world pixel count of about 775 scan lines of resolution, 720p yields 720 lines. So from a marketing standpoint it makes the Sony sound like it's much higher resolution, even though when it's all said and done they're pretty much the same (1440 x 775 vs. 1280 x 720, they're within about 18% of each other, vs. the "on paper" spec which would show 1080i as having twice as many pixels per "frame"). And 720p is capable of pumping out about 1.6x as many pixels per second, since it does a full progressive frame with full height 60 times per second vs. a half-resolution field 60 times per second for 1080i.

Finally, as Chris said, there's no provision for 1080p in the HDV specification. JVC's already announced their intention to ignore that and go ahead and produce a progressive 1080 camcorder, recording like the DVX and XL2 do, writing the progressive image out in interlaced 1080i form. But as per the pure HDV spec, there is no 1080p in HDV.

So it all really does come back to what Sony said in the introduction: now consumers have a choice -- they can have 1080, OR they can have progressive, but as far as Sony's concerned, not both.

<<<-- Originally posted by Barry Green : Finally, as Chris said, there's no provision for 1080p in the HDV specification. JVC's already announced their intention to ignore that and go ahead and produce a progressive 1080 camcorder, recording like the DVX and XL2 do, writing the progressive image out in interlaced 1080i form. But as per the pure HDV spec, there is no 1080p in HDV. -->>>

Barry, what would be the practical difference between 1080 progressive scan recorded to 1080 interlace compared to 1080p scan recorded to 1080p on tape, assuming a no-pulldown frame rate (i.e. 30p to 60i, or 25p to 50i - lets ignore 24 to 60i with 2:3 pulldown for the minute.)

I'm kind of at a loss to work out what the difference really would be, other than at the actual playback stage.

Good question Dylan,

I wonder myself. Would it not be great to piggyback 1080p30 on 1080i in the same way as the DVX100 and XL2 can piggyback 480p30 on 480i? Would this not be better spatial resolution than 720p30? Sort of like CF30 but with real proscan. That might be the next step for Sony or JVC.

Great compositing - from ILM!
 

Hi Steven,
I'm a compositor at ILM and I think your work is just great. Keep it up and keep me posted on your work. I think the cineframe is very useful for your application.
cheers,
Sam

Woah! Thanks Sam. That made my day : )

-Steve

<<<-- Originally posted by Barry Green : Second, keep in mind that Sony is engaged in a death battle with Panasonic over the future of HDTV in Europe. The EBU is going to choose 720p OR 1080i, unlike the American ATSC which endorsed both standards. Sony is championing 1080i, Panasonic is spearheading the 720p charge. From the reports I've heard, the EBU is leaning strongly (if not unanimously) towards 720p. If Sony had produced progressive chips and made a progressive camera, it might have compromised their position regarding the sincerity of their belief that 1080i is the "right" choice for the entire continent of Europe. -->>>

It may also be that the path will be 720p first and 1080p then.
Here's couple of good documents about the issue:
http://www.ebu.ch/trev_300-wood.pdf
http://www.ebu.ch/CMSimages/en/tec_d...tcm6-17109.pdf
There's lots of good reasons to forget interlaced picture.
1) ccd/cmos are basically progressive
2) all displays will be progressive
3) progressive picture can be easily shown on interlaced display
4) interlaced picture isn't so easy to show on progressive display
5) in intraframe level progressive picture compresses a lot better
6) distributing eg. 25p material over 50p feed does not need any additional bandwidth
So, as stupid as it may sound, Sony might try to keep up with interlaced just for authority reasons...

<<<-- Third, on paper, 1080i sure sounds a lot higher-resolution than 720p, doesn't it? In reality they're just about the same; once you get done with row pair summation, low-pass filtering and the Kell factor, HDV 1080i yields a real-world pixel count of about 775 scan lines of resolution, 720p yields 720 lines. So from a marketing standpoint it makes the Sony sound like it's much higher resolution, even though when it's all said and done they're pretty much the same (1440 x 775 vs. 1280 x 720, they're within about 18% of each other, vs. the "on paper" spec which would show 1080i as having twice as many pixels per "frame"). And 720p is capable of pumping out about 1.6x as many pixels per second, since it does a full progressive frame with full height 60 times per second vs. a half-resolution field 60 times per second for 1080i. -->>>

Absolutely right!
I do a lot of work for multidistribution (net, dvd, vhs, television) and there is lot of additional work to change interlaced to progressive to some formats. Originally progressive material would show up nicely on everything.

<<<-- Finally, as Chris said, there's no provision for 1080p in the HDV specification. JVC's already announced their intention to ignore that and go ahead and produce a progressive 1080 camcorder, recording like the DVX and XL2 do, writing the progressive image out in interlaced 1080i form. But as per the pure HDV spec, there is no 1080p in HDV. -->>>

But is there a need for 1080p spec?
If you capture progressive frames from camera, but record them as separated fields (PsF), I don't see any violation of the hdv specs.