Frank, my opinions about HD are not at all popular on this board, but that doesn't change my opinions. ;o)

For all intents and purposes, HD is still a toddler. Yes, it is up and coming, but so far that's all it is (someone will be certain to jump on that, wait and see). Some have elected to go that route, others of us haven't. For many of us, it's a matter of economics and practicality. For others, it's a matter of supply and demand--"I ain't gonna supply until my clients demand it" (someone will jump on that, too). The truth of the matter is that the means of showing our videos in HD are limited at best, at this point in time. Certainly that will change.

The real question is, I believe, do I want HD or do I need HD? There is a difference! I think it's important that each of us realize the difference and fess up to the true answer, not that one is less viable than the other.

The final decision is up to you. Just be honest with yourself in the end.

Thanks to both of you for the insight. It really hits home when I ask do I want HD or do I need HD? I was looking at used SD 1/2 CCD cameras (a bit of an upgrade from my current cams) before I got caught up in the HD aspect. So you see, my budget is a bit tight by video equipment standards. Still...if I'm going to spend several thousand dollars, I just wanted to be sure to get input from some of you as to where (and more importantly...how fast) the industry was heading. Your comments have helped. Thanks!

For all intents and purposes, HD is still a toddler.

That's not at all an accurate statement. Opinions are of course, something everyone is entitled to, but HD has been with us as a format for more than 10 years, and as a reference format for nearly 40 years. It's older than half the people on this board.
You could say that at broadcast, it's still a toddler, but it also took broadcast nearly 10 years to ramp up to where they could manage anything non-SDI. But for production... it's been with us for a long time.
You could say that HDV is a toddler, being only 3 years old. You could say HDV editing is a toddler, given that only a few tools have been able to manage it for the past 3 years.
However...HD is entirely the future. The question isn't "do I want HD or do I need HD" but rather, when am I willing to make the move to the inevitable? Like it or not, you're not going to have a choice. Either grow or die. Do you *need* to move to HD today? Nope. But also know that sure as wet water, the day will come you'll be asked to shoot and deliver HD, and if you're not experienced at it (it's NOT AT ALL the same as shooting SD) then be prepared for embarassment, or to lose money for having to turn the gig away.
Almost all of our corporate clients are requiring HD now, as much for future benefit as for right-now benefit. And the corporate clients that aren't asking for it? They get it anyway, as we've gotten rid of most of our SD cams, including our 2/3 chippers. HDV for SD delivery is that good, outside of some lens wishes that the higher grade JVC lens can answer.

Good points DSE, and it does appear from what I've seen that the "lower end" HD Cams (like the FX1) are formiddable. So you dont HAVE to spend $$$$ to own a Varicam to be shooting HD.

Your comments are well received and helpful. Thanks!

Here's what I know about how soon this is all going to happen: One of the electronic consumer superstores here had the Sony hi-def HDC1 for sale at three hundred bucks off and it sold out in a matter of hours. Another store is selling a Sony A1U for only two hundred bucks more than the GL2. With this kind of price push from the camera makers, this is going to happen very soon. Sure, these buyers will experience the frustrations of editing the footage but they'll simply plug the camera into their hi-def TV sets and wow the family. The key here is getting the product into their hands and waiting for them to scream to the NLE and CODEC developers to come up with better/faster/efficient stuff for handling the footage. This is the way it works. This is the current business model and it works well.

For all intents and purposes, HD is still a toddler.

It most certainly is accurate! Come on, Douglas, HD isn't mainstream and you know it. There is no industry-wide standard, not yet.

You and most others keep bringing up that same old "when am I willing to make the move to the inevitable? Like it or not, you're not going to have a choice" argument. I've never said nor suggested otherwise.

The question at this point in time most certainly is a matter of "want" verus "need" for many, many videographers. You said so yourself:

Do you *need* to move to HD today? Nope.

So there you have it. That's all I was saying.

... day will come you'll be asked to shoot and deliver HD,

Have I ever said otherwise? If so, show me where that was and what I said to the contrary.

What you or anyone else is doing has no bearing whatsoever on what I or anyone else is doing. Period.

As I've said before, all this hype about HD is nothing more than the purveyors of the technology trying to create a market for their porduct because SD has, for the most part, reached the saturation point. That's my opinion. I for one refuse to be sucked into it. If others want to, that's fine. That's their business.

Obviously, you have a vested interest in all this, and that's perfectly all right, too. I have no problem with that. But, please, whatever you do, do not attempt to make it sound like those of us who have no such interest and/or immediate need appear to be a collection of total dolts that are clueless idiots when it comes to media production who are doomed to failure because we're not doing what you think is vital. That is an elitist attitude and the fact is nothing could be further from the truth! I resent it and I'm sick of hearing it, to be perfectly honest.

The man asked for "Thoughts...suggestions?" and that's all I gave.

I think there was a nerve struck with this thread. Maybe their right there are now 3 things that shouldn't be discussed on video forums, Religion, politics, and HD vs SD.

Dave

" ... trying to create a market for their porduct ..."

... absolutely correct ... early indications show that they will be very successfull ... but they don't have to sell the hi-def concept ... that's already done ... all they have to do is sell their implementation of it ...

There is no industry-wide standard, not yet.

there isn't? That would be news to me, and the ATSC, and everyone else in the industry.
there is:
1280 x 720 in framerates of 24p, 30p
those ARE the standards, they are accepted by ATSC, SMPTE, AES/EBU, and everyone else that is responsible for standards, broadcast, manufacturers, and producers. That standard was set many years ago.

How more standardized do you want things?

Displays are predominantly 1080p as of January 2005, although there are some display manufacturers doing their own thing.

Mainstream or not, which is a highly debatable point, HD is coming on faster, harder, and more predominantly than we went from Black and white displays to color, from VHS to DVD, and on top of all that, we have a legal mandate that changes the broadcast industry that will be in place in less than 2 years, which although not HD related in terms of legal maneuvering, has provided the impetus for everything at the broadcaster side to go HD. Mainstream today? Debatably not. Mainstream in a year? Absolutely. ABC, NBC, CBS, Discovery, HBO, Showtime, MTV, VH1, ESPN....All broadcasting in HD. Is it ALL HD content? No. Because we've got 50 years of broadcast legacy content, and it's going to take a while to repurpose and supplant that media. But the broadcast streams are there, right now. Many of us watch it daily.
Broadcasters at the high end won't take SD any longer unless they have to. Even MTV is now requiring HD. Discovery has gone even further, and they likely won't be accepting anything acquired on 1/3 chip HD cams. They are filling the pipe. It takes time to become acclimated to HD, the editing workflow, output, etc. It's not at all an overnight process.
It doesn't matter to me whether you do or don't move to HD, I have no stake in it one way or the other unless you count a coupla bucks from the HDV book I wrote. But if you're going to survive as a producer in this business, you have zero choice. Can you put it off for a few months? Not if you have clients that are interested in future benefit you can't. If you're just messing around in the industry, doing a little thing here, a little thing there, then sure... you can put it off. For a little while longer. However, it's an embarassing moment when Uncle Ernie can point to his HC1 or HC3 and you're standing there with an XL1. The HC1/Vegas Movie Studio combo has been a smash hit for retailers this year. Consumers are doing it too. Every bottom end NLE has HDV support now. That alone should say something about the move to HD across the nation, and to a great extent, the world.

" ... a nerve struck with this thread .."

... yes, but it's important ... many here have a huge investment in SD stuff and the resentment/reluctance/frustration is understandable ... I bought an AMD X2 4800 processor and was smug for all of five minutes before they announced a four-core in the pipeline ... they do it with cameras too ... a pox on all their houses but that's the way it goes ...

In my opinion (and it is just my opinion but I did back it up with a purchase) ;-)

The question is not whether you want or need HD today. The question is what is the life expectancy of your purchase? If you are planning for you next camera purchase to last a year because you buy a new camera every year than the HD vs SD is moot. Buy whatever your need right now. Next year you can re-evaluate the need.

If, however, you expect the purchase of your new camera to last you 5 years, then you have a different decision to make. What will you need 3 years from now when you still feel you have 2 more years of life left in your investment? What if by the end of this year or middle of the next year your customers want HD but you bought an SD camera? What will you be able to sell your SD camera for then, when nobody wants one? How much money will you lose on that investment? These are the questions that I asked myself.

Forget about whether HD is needed today or whether it’s an infant or a teen or whatever. I bought a Sony Z1U because I don’t plan on buying a new camera for a while. It made no sense to me to buy a PD-170 or XL2 or any other SD camera. The Z1 shoots better downconverted SD than any of them so it was really a non-issue.

My thought process was: Do I buy a camera based on yesterday’s technology that just shoots SD or do I buy a camera based on the technology of the future shoots HD, and shoots SD better than SD cameras, for around the same price? The choice was obvious.

Once again, since all HDV cameras shoot SD (it is part of the HDV spec) it makes no sense to invest in an SD camera today. But again, that’s just my opinion and where I put my money.

~jr

Very good words, Johnny. I was going to buy an SD Canon Xl-2 but after further disussion on here with everyone you are absoultely correct in the fact that I don't want to have to buy a new camera in a couple years I want one that will last me for a long time. Thanks for the advice!

" .... What will you need 3 years from ..."

This forum is made up of home hobbyists, wannabe and actual film-makers, slideshow enthusiasts and media/broadcast people and they all have very different needs. But the most striking thing I find is that this whole hi-def thing is being aggressively marketed to consumers. This is a very shrewd move on their part. Once the sheeple get a taste of hi-quality viewing after watching years of blocky low rez pictures on their TV's, then they become the drivers of the market at all levels.

HD is coming on faster, harder, and more predominantly than we went from Black and white displays to color, from VHS to DVD, and on top of all that, we have a legal mandate that changes the broadcast industry that will be in place in less than 2 years ...

Frank,

After reading a lot of threads similar to this one, and after making a post similar to yours last fall, I went ahead and purchased an FX1. You can read the threads I started here:

HDV Questions

My workflow for HDV to SD projects

As you will see, my main focus was exactly like your original post, namely how do I use an HDV camera along with my existing SD cameras, and does using it this way make sense?

The answer is that it works well, and while it does add some time to your final render, if you make the investment in the Cineform capture (which I haven't done yet), you can limit the increase in workflow time to just the final render. Not bad, given all the extra bits involved.

As to the question of whether HD is "here" yet or not, the answer to that, as well as the answer as to whether one should agree or disagree with Spot's arguments, partially quoted above, depend on at least two things:

1. What business are you in?
2. Do you believe forecasts?

If you are in the broadcast business, then HD is here now, and has been for some time. If you deliver content for broadcast, you had better be HD. However, the further away you get from broadcast, the less important HD becomes. There have been lots of posts about how much demand there is for HD in event videography, corporate training, etc., but the lack of any viable delivery vehicle means that the demand -- almost by definition -- is virtually zero: If your customer can't play it, they can't demand it.

As to whether this is all going to change suddenly, I have significant doubts. Color to B&W TV took almost two decades, at least when measured from the definition of the NTSC color standard until more color sets were installed in people's homes than B&W sets. Remember, the point at which the sales of some new technology exceeds the sales of old technology happens MUCH sooner than does the point at which the installed base of the old stuff is eclipsed by the new. Therefore, it will be a LONG time before there are more HD sets installed than SD.

In addition, the forecasts -- as usual -- are totally over the top. Companies that do forecasts are paid by the industry participants and have every incentive to produce aggressive predictions. If you go back and look at forecasts and see how well they predict what happens, not only are they wrong, which is understandable, but they are virtually always too optimistic.

Finally, HD has had a VERY slow ramp up. I saw my first HD at CES back around 1991. It was an analog system then. Since then, the rollout of HD has been extremely slow, much slower than any forecasts. If you do a quick Google search of "HD tv federal legislation mandate" you'll get all sorts of articles from the past talking about various deadlines and forecasts. All those deadlines came and went without any of the goals being met.

This is not to say that HD isn't happening or that it won't, someday, actually supplant SD. However, playback of pre-recorded HD material in half the homes in America (which is the relevant driving metric) isn't going to happen for quite a long time, and that time is measured in years.

It will take MUCH longer than it did for VHS recorders to be in half the homes in America, or for DVD players to reach that milestone. It took five years (1997 to 2002) until DVD players were in one of every four homes, and seven years (1997 to 2004) until DVD players were in half the homes (http://www.dvdinformation.com/News/press/010802.htm). VHS took longer.

Thus, if you think of March 1997 (when the DVD players first shipped) as the starting point (just as March 2006 is the starting point for HD DVDs) and then think of your own experience as to when you were first being required to deliver on DVD rather than tape, most of you will probably remember that, while you may have had a few requests early on, the real action and push in your business happened somewhere between the point at which DVD players were in 1/4 of the households and 1/2 all households, namely between 2002 and 2004. Five to seven years after first shipment. Given that HD disks have far fewer advantages over DVD disks compared to all the advantages that DVD disks had over VHS (see my comparison: DVD advantages over VHS) it is very hard to make the argument that the demand for HD delivery on disks is going to happen FASTER than it did for DVD. Thus, it would appear that it will be at least five years from now before those of us in the event business are going to have BIG demand for HD delivered content.

Despite all this, you still should buy the HDV camera. The quality is better, the cost isn't a HUGE difference for most businesses and, if I am wrong, you'll be ready to deliver in HD.

" ... It took five years (1997 to 2002) until DVD players were in one of every four homes ... "

Yes, but consumers didn't have cheap NLE's and DVD authoring programs like they have today ... hi-def is going to happen much faster than we all think ...

johnmeyer,
Good points, and very relative to my situation. I do indeed deliver some boadcast material (mainly TV Commercials), but most of my buisness right now is corporate stuff, and event coverage where the clients require the end product on DVD.

Your points really make good business sense out of it for me. Thanks.

Your points really make good business sense out of it for me. Thanks

You're welcome. I really try to base everything on facts, when possible. However, sometimes I don't have all the facts, or forget something ...

Yes, but consumers didn't have cheap NLE's and DVD authoring programs like they have today ... hi-def is going to happen much faster than we all think ...

That's a very good point. If I were to "take the other side" of the debate, I would definitely point out that DVD burners didn't really arrive until roughly the same timeframe (2002 - 2004) that I claim that customers first starting asking for event video on DVD rather than VHS. The question you bring up -- which I cannot think of a factual way to answer -- is whether we would have had demand sooner if DVD burners were available back in 1997. In other words, did we as videographers "push" the demand for delivering on DVD because we finally had the tools to do so, or did our customers finally start asking because they finally had the players into which to put the discs?

" ... did we as videographers ...."

That's my point. It doesn't matter who pushed or pulled. Consumers AND content providers finally had the tools and motivation to feed off each other ....

Fact: millions of people today already have NLE's and authoring programs
Fact: 100% of todays NLE software already can do HDV
Fact: HDV burners will be available in a few months
Fact: They'll develop HDV "authoring" programs by the time the burners ship

The uptake by consumers and content providers will be much faster because Sony and the rest of the industry simply can't afford a long, drawn out wait. That's why you see the price of NLE's coming down or "junior" versions being developed. That's why you see hi-def camera prices competing aggressively against SD stuff. The whole hi-def foodchain is involved up to their eyeballs in this and NONE of them can afford a long wait period so they'll drop prices further and come out with more cameras and codecs and software and I'll bet you won't even be able to buy an SD camera within eighteen months.

It's pointless to debate the future, so the more optimal things to say (from my view) are these:
~If you need a camcorder today, you're really tossing money away to buy an SD camcorder unless you've got a short-lived need for it and you can pick it up cheap. If you've got an SD camcorder now and aren't working with corporate or broadcast clients, then by all means, stick with SD for now.

~ whether forecasts are right or wrong doesn't matter much, the nubmer of products get shoved into the channel regardless. Japan long ago perfected, or at least optimized the notion of figuring out the channel requirements and building products to sell that number. Casio was built entirely on this philosophy, and Samsung much does the same today as to most Japanese conglomerates.
That said, CES was virtually dead-on in their predictions for 03, 04, and 05' in terms of sales. They predicted post Xmas/Superbowl sales within just a few thousand sales. We're just slightly ahead of their predictions for 06', but that could falter at any point.

We won't see "HDV burners or authoring programs" because HDV is strictly a tape-based format. Not DVD, not disc, not disk, just tape. But you're right that consumers are accessing HDV SIGNIFICANTLY faster than anticipated. Witness the already discontinued HC1, and it's replacement, the HC3. The HC1 should have been sellable until late fall. They ran out. Market predictors fell seriously short there, further proof John_Meyer is right; forecasters aren't always accurate.
You *will* see BD burners, and HD-DVD burners, and you'll likely see a tool like DVD Studio Pro, Encore, DVDLab, Workshop, and DVD Architect, etc all become HD-compliant at some point in the future.

Additionally, we've got EVERY broadcaster heavily promoting HD. Never happened before in a new format. Color television wasn't shoved down the throats of American viewers like HD is. We didn't have DTV legislation enacted for color television either, even though it's not *directly* related to HDTV. Additionally, Moore's Law says we'll see this cycle faster and faster, and we certainly are. Realize that less than a year ago at NAPTE, there were only 5 shows broadcast full-time in HD. Today, over 250. In less than a year. Marc Cuban has just invested another billion into HD marketing and awareness. Remember that just a year ago, there were effectively just 4 HD camcorders on the open market; today, there are more than 30, with more being announced in just 3 weeks.

Finally, the primarypoint of disagreement in this thread was, and still is, that there are standards (two of them) that have been ratified, activated, developed for, and rock solidly entrenched in the HD world. Nearly 10 years ago now. All HD products comply with one or the other standard, and some products do both. All NLE's provide for both. All broadcast ingest provides for both. Eventually, 720 will be going away, but 720p upscales (in most instances) to 1080p30 just fine.

I've only had my HDV camcorder (an FX1) for about a month now, but I'll never shoot DV again.

You DON'T need a whizzy computer to edit. Either pull DV from the camera or pull the raw HDV clips into Vegas and do a Gearshift number on them. Some hours later, you have DV proxies, which you then work with exactly as you did before. At the end, you can just use those DV proxies to make your final product, or Gearshift back into the HDV format and make something with those instead.

This simple workflow assumes that (1) you want to make widescreen DV material that looks great on a widescreen set and has letterbox bars on 4:3 sets; and (2) you don't mind letting the PC render for hours and hours at the capture phase of your project and also render for hours at the end (when converting back to HDV). But, hey, that's what sleep time is for, isn't it?

If you want to stick with 4:3 DV, I believe you can have your camera shoot in 4:3 DV, or you can pull a 4:3 window out of the 16:9 HDV. Haven't tried that yet.

It's pointless to debate the future ...

Got to disagree with you on that one. We each have to make a guess on investment based on these forecasts, and these investments -- both in equipment and training -- are not trivial. I guessed wrong on Laserdisc many years ago and spent a fortune on building a library of movies. Probably $2,000 down the drain. I bet correctly on VHS, back in 1981, but many of my friends went with Beta.

Thus, making an educated guess about the future is vital to each of our businesses. Getting misled by vendor hype and industry self-promotion can cost us all some serious "coin."

While I agree that none of us, no matter how clever our arguments or detailed our facts, can come up with a perfect forecast, we do have to get some sense of the timing of when these things will happen.

More important -- and perhaps this will eventually be the thing to focus on -- once each of us decides to take the plunge -- not only to purchase the HD camera, but also to purchase the HD authoring system -- which one do we commit to?

I know where Spot stands, and many others have given their opinions in other threads (no need to re-hash that here). My point is, that even if I put aside the skepticism I voiced in my earlier posts in this thread, if I am going to buy a HD disc burner, I have absolutely no clue which technology to go with. And, at this point, it doesn't look like there is going to be an easy way out of the mess. At least with DVD+R and DVD-R, it was technically possible to build one player that would handle both. At this moment, everything I have heard says that this will not be an easy technical feat (to play Blu-Ray and HD-DVD in the same player).

I still think that some sort of ad-hoc solution may evolve, much as what happened with VCD, which took over China and Hong Kong markets in the 1990s. It also happened in the audio markets with MP3, which took over the entire world without any standards committees or corporate support. In both cases, manufacturers of players quickly adapted so their products could play shiny discs that contained both these "unsupported" formats, and some went so far as to support SVCD and "XVCD" formats on the video side, and WMV formats on the audio side.

I am willing to bet good money that something similar may happen for non-commercial HD video delivery. This will not supplant either of the two competing formats, but I can envisage a scenario where people want to deliver HD content NOW that can be played on equipment that people have NOW (laptop computers). This will be a file format -- probably MPEG-4 -- that already exists, and may not need to be modified. Manufacturers of current DVD players will modify their equipment to play discs containing these files, just as CD players were modified to play data discs that contain MP3 and WMV files.

The longer the stalemate between the two competing standards remains unresolved, the more likely this scenario becomes.

Ahh....the delivery standards argument. I'll accept that as a valid argument, to a limited point. No point in arguing that one, either, because we don't have a choice of either right now. I know that Pioneer has a whole warehouse full of BD burners, just awaiting a few clearances, insertion of software based on that information, and they'll ship. That could be tomorrow, could be next year. But they're sitting there... due to a lot of marketing and positional changes on the part of the BD consortium. We're betting on BD here, and NDA prevents us from saying why. Don't bet because of our position, but suffice it to say that the water will be much clearer come mid June or so.
It's a sad thing indeed that politics alone, have caused another delivery rift, I'll agree with that. +R, -R, VHS vs Beta, Laserdisk vs VHS, lots to be worried about there. But...Toshiba has a seriously hard road to hoe if they're going to upset the applecart that was already moving forward, and continues to move forward. But they still could buy enough of the market to do so. I'll be extremely surprised if BD doesn't emerge as the clear winner in this debate well before Xmas of this year. No one of merit, save it be for political reasoning, is backing Toshiba's bid. Long term storage is the option that EVERY manufacturer and supporter has looked for, and at best, Toshiba is already an also-ran.