JVC HD line at Cannes
 

I'm at the Festival here in Cannes and JVC reps are showing their HD line of decks and camcorders here in the American Pavillion. Anything you'd like me to ask them?

It would be nice to try the camcorder, tape something in normal indoor light, and in daylight, then play the images on HD monitor. The report so far were that on playback the colors are washed out. If you could give us your impression, it would be nice. JVC was going to fix the problem. Maybe the new camcorders are upgraded already.

Is JVC claiming that these could be used for novie production?

I'm curious if they have any plans to build a HD version of the DV5000, or something similar.

Ask them about slowing down the capture to 24p and upping the MPEG-2 bitrate to 25 mpbs. The 60% more bits could sure be used, from the macroblocky examples I've seen so far. Plus, 24p would be nice for the filmmakers.
///d@

How's the beach?

Sorry, this is a question about cameras. OK, maybe uniformed questions but here goes: Do the cameras have the lens or the CCD to really produce the image one would expcet from an HD camera? Are the cameras just OK?, a really step up? a breakthrough?

And will they attract hot chicks? Sorry that was another thread wasn't it.

I think that it should be clarified that we are talking about the small HD1 and HD10 MPEG2 HD DV camcorders, not of the CMOS HD prototype box camera.

How about Sony? Maybe you can ask them when will they counteract with low cost HD, possibly blu-ray HD DVD MPEG2 camcorder.

Forget the toy, are the women as beautiful as they say---LOL!

They have a proto HD1 here. I'll ask about 24P operation and upping the bitrate.

They will not have 24p and will not up the bit rate. The color quality on playback on HDTV monitor is what would be interesting to hear about, since most people said it is poor.

There's that complete package problem again, no one is willing to give us HD and 24p in the same deal.

Robert!! You're in Cannes!? Mon Dieu! (Cannes, B.C. maybe?)

You lucky son of a gun. Please give my regards to André at the Miramar... and if you happen to bump into Catherine Deneuve tell her I'm sorry for never returning her calls.

Okay...we were talking about some gadget or something, weren't we?

<<<-- Originally posted by Don Parrish : There's that complete package problem again, no one is willing to give us HD and 24p in the same deal. -->>>

Not true. Of course you can get HD and 24p in the same camera. It will however cost you quite a bit more than $3,000.

Yea, I guess it would be too hard (and too expensive) to slow down the frame clock from 30Hz to 24Hz. They'd have to triple the price to pull that trick off. Duh.
///d@

"Real" HD cameras can shoot at variable speeds. They cost real money.

These are consumer cameras with just adequate lenses and tiny ccds. You can fixate on frame rate all you want but that isn't the biggest problem that these cameras seem to have.

24p is no big deal technologically, but the manufacurers are making sure we do not get all the good features in their inexpensive packages, and will therefore buy their expensive ones.

There will be soon nearly 200 theater screens in major US markets with digital projectors that accept 30p. If the movie will ever need a wider distribution, you can slow it down digitally to 24 fps for optical printing. It is slow work, especially on fast/complex motion scenes, but it can be done, and it is not that expensive.

You seem to think that JVC held back on 24p because they were afraid of cannibalizing sales of some higher-end camera. I rather doubt that's the case because, just as Rick pointed out, the HD1 suffers in other area (optics, chroma problems, too much compression, etc). My personal opinion is that they were caught off-guard by the success of the DVX100 24p camera, and plan to address that issue in the HD1 at some point, probably after everyone buys the first batch of 30p cameras :)
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Matsushita that sells under the brand name Panasonic owns 52% of JVC. Sony was showing prototypes of blu-ray HD DVD recorders last year and it was clear that they have the technology to introduce blu-ray HD DVD camcorder at 2003 NAB. There is a big rivalry between Matsushita and Sony; still they cooperate, as do all Japanese companies. Matsushita jumped the gun to be the first with consumer HD camcorder and JVC introduced it in Japan before NAB. Then Sony did not introduce anything to rival either the HD1, or the DVX. Canon didn't either. JVC is stuck selling product that was not fully developed. Sony will introduce HD DVD camcorder the latest the next NAB. It will be everything the JVC is not. The JVC does not have 24p so it does not compete with the DVX, and more expensive Matsushita models. When they were developing, they apparently did not think that it will be so bad. That's my opinion.

Rick wrote "These are consumer cameras with just adequate lenses and tiny ccds"

The tiny CCd's can easily and cheaply go to 1/2" and the lenses can be changed with a twist of the wrist. 1/3" CCD's are already creating broadcast footage, the XL1S and some others are already doing broadcast work why not alot more? Well because in documentaries and other broadcast programming people like to shoot film like images, hey, isn't that 24p that we are asking for. I shoot with a prosumer camera, certainly not a $100k unit but I have had footage on the NBC Today and CBS Morning shows as well as CNN.

The new cameras coming out are already becoming High Def, that makes them much more than a jiggly wiggly consumer cam. This site has a lot of impressive people on it, if their existing cameras had 24p the DV i community could bang out some unreal footage. But getting that look is a big chunk of why we are here, to get better video. The line between pro and prosumer is getting thinner everyday. The line between 60i and 24p is a manmade brick wall.

It's taken me a while to get back to you guys, and I apologize for that. I'm still trying to get over the fact that Dogville didn't win the Palme d'Or--in fact, it went away empty-handed.

Here's what I learned about the HD1 (that you probably already knew):

- The chip is 720P, 1.18 Mpixel.
- The camera has 60i and 30P modes of operation. No 24P.
- The bitrate is 19.3 Mbps (non-variable).
- The camera will be available August 2003. The follow-up "pro" version, the HD10, will have XLR jacks, color bars, and adjustable iris (by f-stop versus +1, +2, etc.)

The camcorder image looked just fine on the little built-in LCD screen, however, the demo folks didn't (wouldn't?) rig the camera to one of the HD monitors.

The HDVHS decks were very impressive. We were watching demo versions of Galaxy Quest and Ice Age on HD monitors, and I wasn't able to notice any compression artifacts at all. This is an especially notable achievement for graphics display as in Ice Age. However, there was occasional digital dropout, and it was every bit as ugly as when it happens on your MiniDV tapes.

If interested, you can see pictures I took of the HD1 demo unit here and here.