OT: Eating Crow, Just For The Record

Jay Gladwell wrote on 10/15/2008, 10:38 AM

Okay, I shot my first job (Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the New World Symphony, among others) with the EX3 over the week-end.

Today, I simply put the raw camera original footage in the timeline--no grading whatsoever--and output it to an SD file for burning a DVD (the client wanted to see the footage). Needless to say, I was skeptical at best.

At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, I was blown away with the footage--even in SD it's a stunning image.

A few years back, when HD was first introduced, I saw no reason to shoot in HD and down convert to SD. It seemed, in all honesty, silly to me. Well, boys and girls, I was wrong!

This is one time I am more than happy to sit down and ingest large quanities of crow, because the ultimate out come is worth every gristly bite!

My sincere apologies to all those who tried to tell me so.

P.S. Standing within arm's reach of the musicians and hearing the music the way they hear it was a thrilling experience to say the least!


Comments

John_Cline wrote on 10/15/2008, 10:48 AM
Well, as they say, "seeing is believing." Glad you've made it over from the "dark side."
CorTed wrote on 10/15/2008, 10:57 AM
I was skeptical at first as well, but I shoot with the Canon HV20, and since very few people have Blu Ray, for them I render to DVD. The picture looks great and better than 'regular' SD material.

Wait till you burn that HD content to Blu Ray, that is awesome!

Ted
Spot|DSE wrote on 10/15/2008, 11:08 AM
;-)

Nice
johnmeyer wrote on 10/15/2008, 1:36 PM
There really is no comparison. I think the improved color (vs. DV) contributes as much to the improvement as does starting with a high resolution image. Also, the ability to let a much more sophisticated conversion process (the Vegas renderer) handle the resolution decimation, rather than doing it in the camera (if you down-res there) provides an added boost to quality.

What I'm waiting for is my first request for BluRay. Here in Carmel, CA I have yet to have one person even inquire about it, even though I have now been shooting HDV for three years, and make a point in letting everyone know.

There was an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal that BluRay still isn't taking off as expected, although this time the reason given is that people are finding they can get enough HD via satellite (even though a lot of that is only 720p). I also suspect that most of them can't tell the difference, given how poorly their home TVs are set up. I am absolutely horrified when I visit friends and see the picture they watch on their new LCD HD TVs:

The only HD I can see is the logo on the screen bezel.

farss wrote on 10/15/2008, 1:50 PM
My blank media supplier told me 2 days ago he's seen a recent 500% increase in sales of BD media. He's now selling around 25 units per month compared to 5 per month earlier in the year.
I oftenly buy a carton of TY DVD-Rs of him, that's a carton of 600 units.

Bob.
Infinite5ths wrote on 10/15/2008, 2:43 PM
"The only HD I can see is the logo on the screen bezel."

LOL! ...consumers. And then we wonder why people think we're crazy to put so much money into high-end audio & video gear.

As Jay Gladwell said: To hear it like the players is really something. [I know...I'm a player. :-) ]
RalphM wrote on 10/15/2008, 4:37 PM
johnmeyer, I'd agree on the color having a great impact. Like Jay, I didn't see much reason to go to HDV, but after seeing the results of SD vs HDV (downrezzed to SD) I'm looking to pick up two more consumer level HDV camcorders to complement my A1U.

rmack350 wrote on 10/15/2008, 5:45 PM
We do a lot of corporate work up in Silicon Valley, north of John M. We have now moved up to the point where clients will ask for HD once in a blue moon. It used to be less than that.

Australia and EU are much farther along in their HD adoption so I'd expect to see more demand there. We can look at our HD market here in the US and figure we'll be where Australia is in about 2 years.

Rob Mack
farss wrote on 10/15/2008, 5:56 PM
From what I'm told HD has really taken off on the free to air broadcast side. Viewers are actually watching and listening to their expensive new giant screen 5.1 systems, even the news! If the content, even the news, isn't upto scratch they ring up and complain. Of course if they're getting enough satiisfaction out of the OTA content there'll be a delay in the push for other content.
The other thing is consummers have a cheap and simple way to create their own HD content from their AVCHD palmcorders without using BD disks at all, don't even need a PC to do it and that's all the majority want to show off their new toys.

Bob.