New HDTV Camcorders

franc11s wrote on 6/7/2003, 10:20 PM

Anyone have any experience with these $3500 or so pieces of kit.

Should you see better MPEG results or would the compression bring them down ?

Can you produce DVD's that record from these babies and then only play on HDTV's. I'd heard MPEG (DVD) isn't the right medium for HDTV yet...

I guess I'm very new and wondered what you need and what you'd expect...

Thanks...

Comments

seeker wrote on 6/8/2003, 10:13 PM

Frank,

I am certainly no expert on HDTV, but I do have a few comments.

"Should you see better MPEG results or would the compression bring them down ?"

Even with compression, the video should be noticeably higher quality.

"Can you produce DVD's that record from these babies and then only play on HDTV's. I'd heard MPEG (DVD) isn't the right medium for HDTV yet..."

Because DVDs have 16:9 and HDTV has 16:9 there is a popular misconception that DVDs could contain HDTV video. They can't. For one thing, they don't have near enough storage capacity.

I am personally rather alarmed at how slowly things are moving in the HDTV field. There is a tape player that can record HDTV, but it is only an interim solution, is expensive, and will probably become obsolete in a couple of years. There are rumors that blue laser discs will have enough capacity to record HDTV, but for the time being they will be prohibitively expensive, both for the recorders and the discs themselves.

I was planning on buying an HDTV television set this year, but I am alarmed at industry's lack of progress so far in meeting the 2006 deadline for full conversion. The HDTV sets you see in stores now are probably playing from an HDTV satelite feed. It's doubtful they are playing from a disc or tape or local television stations. I understand there is an HDTV Tivo, and that might be a solution for time-shifting. But you can't rent an HDTV movie from BlockBuster. If you need to record an HDTV show, you can't unless maybe with HDTV Tivo.

Even though Vegas can ostensibly edit HDTV, you probably need about a terabyte of hard drive. How will you share or distribute your HDTV videos from Vegas?

If you watch conventional TV for any period of time on your HDTV set you run the risk of "burning in" the black bars on your screen. It is sort of good news that HDTV camcorders are now available for less than a small fortune, but there seem to be a lot of barriers for HDTV in desktop video as well as in home video. But I do love those luscious high definition pictures and the wide format. I am very tempted, even though it still seems like thin ice.

-- Seeker --

rebel44 wrote on 6/9/2003, 1:46 AM

I read specs on some of thos $3000 cams with 3CCD and found the 1024 was the higher lines resolution what is not enough to consider HDTV. I heard that HDTV cams runs about $100000. I hope I am wrong because no way i hell I can afford it.

SatanJr wrote on 6/9/2003, 4:39 AM

the "HDTV" consumer cams that I read seemed to all be 1ccd.

a 3ccd 720p camera with a good lens would be fun to have, after seeing the 720p wmv's at windowsmedia.com, I want higher res.

Forget 1080p/i for now, that level of stuff wont even play on my PC.

farss wrote on 6/9/2003, 7:19 AM

I suppose everyones talking about the GR-HD1 which was a hot topic on this forum a while ago.

HDTV will be kicking off here in Australia very shortly mostly because the govt has mandated it will. Small oversight though in the legislation, they didn't specify just what HD is, most stations will be running 1080 but at least one saw the loophole and is going with something even less than 720.

Getting back to the camera, I've been able to bring video from it into VV and edit it but I only had a very small sample to work with so it wasn't a definative test. What comes out of the camera is MPEG2 so you're going to strike all the issues that others have had with that in VV unless you convert it to an AVI. Certainly if you try going to uncompressed at that resolution you'll soon eat up an aweful lot of disk.

Apart fom that the camera is very ingenious for what it is, its not going to destroy the market for real HD cameras, it hasn't got the optics for starters and by all accounts give it too much motion and it gets blocky.

IMHO though its a road worth exploring, with care you should be able to get results much better than standard DV, with VV and DVDA you can produce HD DVDs to the Microsoft format. Sure they will not play in any ST DVD players, only on a PC with WMP9 but more people are using PCs as the hub of their A/V systems now. For a flashy corporate vid to go up on a big plasma or LCD screen this could be a viable option at an afforable cost, at least one most of us could have a go at without risking the house, by all reports the GR-HD1 is not a bad straight DV camera anyway.

SatanJr wrote on 6/9/2003, 1:34 PM

does it record standard DV also? Does it use standard miniDV tapes?

flashlight wrote on 6/9/2003, 5:16 PM

It does use standard MiniDV tapes and does record NTSC DV.

Does anyone know where I could download some footage shot from this camera?

Thanks,
Al

indyfilmmaker wrote on 6/11/2003, 11:24 AM

I just bought the HD-1 from B&H photo in NY. I hear it records MPG2-TS which is not supported by VV.

Please tell me how you got it in to VV and I will do some tests and report it to the forum.

Mark Gordon

thrillcat wrote on 6/11/2003, 2:18 PM

The problem in my market is, the stores are trying to sell HDTVs with a shi**y VHS tape split off to all of them! Who wants to spend $4K - $10K on a tv that looks like sh!t?

They pull the same stupid things they've done for years with the tvs, like cranking the color and brightness and sharpness allllll the way up, running a crappy tape through all of them at once.

I really want to get an HDTV set, but hate having to go in and deal with changing the settings on every one before I can compare them, and before the dealers start changing them back..

BJ_M wrote on 6/11/2003, 5:02 PM

convert the transport stream to program stream , wobble or vitec can do this ..

or demultiplex the ts stream and re-multiplex it as program (what i do)

or you can frame serve it to vegas using v-dub mod (sometimes this also but see below)

personally i make a proxy of the ts in sd dv avi and then conform the edits when finished by swaping the source material ..

SonyDennis wrote on 6/11/2003, 10:03 PM

You can drop the captured file right in Vegas and it reads it, I've done it with three different HD1 clips so far. Vegas does not write MPEG-TS, though, so you'll have to render to WMV or MPEG (720/30p).

///d@