Got the new Z1 today

JJKizak wrote on 2/25/2005, 11:58 AM
Read thru everything and set it up then shot a couple minutes indoors and a couple minutes outdoors using in full auto with steadyshot normal and internal mic. I then played it back thru the supplied cables to the Sony HDTV and it was very impressive, no pixelation at all and I was wipping that bad boy around real good, The colors were great for shooting on a bleak day with a ton of snow and ND 2. The indoor fleshtones were very good. All white balance etc. was default. The sound was not bad far away but close was distorted with the internal mic. The optical stabilization worked ok when I whipped it around but when held steady it had teeny- tiny stacato jerks (hunting) tried it in hard and soft and ended up soft. The Canon optical stabilization in the XL1-s blows this one away. There was no blinking or flashing at all on really fast movements. I am really impressed with this camera even though the optical stabilization is a bit jerky when stopped. The picture quality is outstanding and is indistinguishable when compared to what I receive on over the air broadcasts.
I then captured the footage with Cineform and it went without a hitch.
Loading the driver was not easy with windows saying it's not certified. Then converted it and there was no problem. Loaded it into V5 with HDV 1440 x 1080 and watched the preview on the external monitor tv set. Its pretty choppy in the best-full position and tried others but it isn't really close to what is seen on the HDTV. I can see not really needing an HD monitor but the playback on preview needs some work, and thats without anything applied to the clips.
This camera is a real gas and I really don't know what I'm doing.
Using SP1, P4-3.4, 2 gig ram, Sata 500 gigs.

JJK

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 2/25/2005, 12:06 PM
Loaded it into V5 with HDV 1440 x 1080 and watched the preview on the external monitor tv set

Are your previewing out via a standard DV camera? If so.. then I guess it would have to be doing some major work to convert each native HDV frame to a DV format. I could imagine that might stress the workings just a bit.

How is it with previewing on the internal monitor?
mark2929 wrote on 2/25/2005, 12:08 PM
JJK

Sounds great keep us updated.. Perhaps you could make a short film DV Or HDV and post it on Chienworks I would love to see what people look like in HDV !
JJKizak wrote on 2/25/2005, 12:17 PM
The external preview goes out via the Canopus ADVC-300. I haven't even checked to see if this unit can handle the video. I keep the preview window very small but I expanded it and it's not that good on the LCD monitor. I always use the external monitor for viewing. There is one thing to be aware of---the firewire jack is the same size as the direct link jack that feeds directly to the TV set and I almost tried to jam the firewire cable into that jack. I know that somebody is going to do that for real in the future.

JJK
Liam_Vegas wrote on 2/25/2005, 12:28 PM
Right... so that is going to do a SD DV preview... not an HDV preview.... so I am not surprised by the low frame rate out. Did you expect something different?

I'm with you in that I always use external preview on my SD DV projects. It seems to me to be less than ideal however to preview your HDV stuff on a regular TV though. I could be wrong.
farss wrote on 2/25/2005, 2:46 PM
Far from ideal!
Best way I can find is a HP 23" LCD and using internal monitor.
The CF DI avi should play smoothly.
Bob.
JJKizak wrote on 2/25/2005, 4:51 PM
So is that going to be the restriction to use the best internal monitor you can get instead of the external monitor?

JJK
farss wrote on 2/25/2005, 5:17 PM
Well I guess it depends on how you want to view it.
If you've got a thing for seeing it as HiDef then you'll need a BIG monitor, capable of 1920x 1200 and then strecth the preview window a bit. The HP will take the component feed from the camera so you can play your tapes back to have a look at the native fooatge at full res. except for two things:
1) You'll get the image at 16:10 and you cannot adjust that.
2) You will need to tweak the monitor settings to see it right from what I can see. The 709 colour space is one issue and I think the different gamma of HD maybe having an impact on how we're seeing it as well.
Bob.
riredale wrote on 2/25/2005, 8:28 PM
I suspect there's something wrong with the stabilizer. Sony makes really good ones, and I wouldn't think the one on the Z1 would be pushing the envelope in any way. Is there some way to borrow another camera for a quick test?
Liam_Vegas wrote on 2/25/2005, 8:47 PM
There was a thread a few days/maybe a week ago where various methods of viewing HD were examined. One that I thought particularly intriquing was using a LAN attached HD/DVD player - the AVeL LinkPlayer2