What about the artifacts a lot of people in forums talk about. Is it so bad or just visible for pro's????

<<<-- Originally posted by Bryan McCullough : The real pain comes from knowing that you're going to have to distribute in SD. -->>>

Actually, you can distribute in Windows Media HD at 720p on standard DVDs and that should be playable on most recent computers, plus on the Avel LinkPlayer2. No need to wait for blu-ray players, which probably won't be affordable and widespread for a couple of years yet.

Thanks Kevin, will have to get up to speed on that.

I showed Bryan some stuff I encoded to WM9 that looked to have too much in the way of interlacing problems, and yet the stuff I downloaded from someone else recently had no problems at all at half the data rate. So I need to get better at encoding.
It must have something to do with 720p vs 1080i

Steve: what encoding tool and settings are you using? Have you tried playing the footage back to an interlaced HDTV to see how it looks on there, or are you just playing back on a computer screen?

Steve will give specifics, but we were looking at it on his LCD Sony TV.

The stuff that was encoded and played on the DVD player looked very interlaced.

The footage played back straight from the camera looked great, no interlacing.

Since footage I encoded looked too interlaced, and footage I downloaded from another forum looked fine, I have to assume that I need to work on my encoding methods.

Since the TV is only designed to handle 720p natively, I figure it must be something to do with the encoding from a 1080i project into a 720p output.

I should have time to experiment this week.

Steve: are you encoding directly from the Premiere Pro timeline with Aspect HD, or some other solution? Also, how are you playing back the footage to the HDTV?

I am editing in Premiere Pro with Aspect HD, and using the Adobe Media Encoder. I have also tried encoding directly from the Cineform AVI to WM9 using the standalone Microsoft Windows Media Encoder.

The footage in WM9 format is then played from a DVD+RW (or USB2.0 Mass Storage Device) on the AVel Linkplayer2 set up to use 720p. The Linkplayer2 is connected to the HDTV using Component cables.

Hans, I have had my FX1 since early December and I haven't seen ANY artifacts. Most of my shoots have been on a tripod and as such have not had any fast pans. Hand held at home running after grandchild, in low Christmas lighting still no artifacts that I can see. HOwever you need to view output on a screen that can display 1080i. A 720P display, depending on the display can be acceptable or plain terrible depending on how the conversion is performed. If you want to see true Sony HDV then a 1080i set is a MUST. Right now that means a CRT within a reasonable budget. A lot of the reports you may have read about low light performance reflect comparisons at 0db. The FX1 is still very clean at 12db or even 15db of gain wereas the DVX100 in comparison is totally unacceptable at 6db of gain . Over Christmas, in normal family room lighting of three 100 watt lamps inside lamp shades, I had very clean and sharp HDV video at 18db of gain. I shot all on automatic and viewed data code afterwards. Clearly the low light performance is not as good as the VX2100/PD170 but it is perfectly acceptable and a lot better than my 1CCD TRV50 or PC10 SONY Handycams.

Ron Evans