Hi Mike. The next line in the article says

"In addition to the customized version of Connect HD, an updated version of Vegas 5 software will also be released, with HDV-specific enhancements in the near future."

I expect you will need these Vegas enhancements before you can capture and edit inefficiently. :)

Richard Hunter

Nope. You can capture with 3rd party tools and edit TS (transport streams) directly on the Vegas timeline, BUT you'll only see 4-5 fps playback. VERY painful. That's a problem with MPEG. MPEG at any flavor hits the CPU very hard.

Hi Spot. I understand about the difficulties in editing the HDV video directly, but are you saying that the Vegas enhancements mentioned don't include HDV capture?

Richard

Not at the moment. Vegas requirew a third-party capture utility at this particular point in time. I recommend the Aspect product for this, since you'll want to use the intermediary codec anyway. If not, use the free CapDVHS. There is a link to an English version on the VASST site.

Thanks Spot. Sony's Vegas support for HDV seems a bit half-hearted, given how quickly they brought out 24p support for the Panasonic DVX100. I suppose that's what happens with these third party tie-ins.

Richard

Spot was in NYC for the HDV press launch, he demoing V5, I wearing the most excellent bolo he laid on me at NAB...

...anyway, Sony 1080i HDV looks amazing when projected- I am not often blown away by anything but watching well-shot HDV footage from the HDV deck or rendered as HD WM projected on a monster (60' I think it was) screen thru dual Sony Qualia projectors, trust me it really was impressive, better than I expected and I think the whole audience agreed.

If you have or are thinking of getting a Sony HDV cam near term, here's the deal:

Vegas 5 support for HDV will be in conjunction with a new version of Cineform Connect HD. A timeout beta version of CHD will be available for testing in the next few days from www.cineform.com. We've worked together with the Cineform engineering team for a long time and will together be offering, very soon, a special deal (~$150, see press release) on a tweaked out version the Connect HD product which will allow basic capture to:

Native HDV MPEG or

Cineform .avi (RT convert at capture time to their primo intermediate codec- works on a P4 Vaio laptop, most reasonably fast desktops) or

Native HDV MPEG and Cineform avi (should you want to use both for any reason).

DV/dc mode works in Vegas just like any other DV camera, looks great also.

In either case all you need is a 1394 card and cable to capture- no other hardware needed as long as you have Vegas 5.

Any and all of these CHD-captured files can be used in the shipping version of Vegas 5 that you all have. A new version of Vegas 5 is coming soon with HDV project and various render templates but if you have a Sony HDV camera in hand now and need setup help at any time, feel free to email our customer support dept and they'll walk you through the basics, including screenshots.

The next full version of Vegas will have, among many other new features and improvements, much more extensive built-in HDV support, including support for the new Sony pro cam and deck, ALL modes. Other than some slightly higher system requirements, HDV production will be nearly identical to DV production.

SD and audio-centric folks do not despair, much new coolness for you is also in development.

(sorry spot, I accidently blew away your previous post- )

i saw that thread edit .... : )

The Sony people here might want to know that the HDV cams didn't go over too well with a pretty well respected, and certainly well spoken member of the dv.com forums. Apparently he was in attendance at a recent press event and had this to say:

Sony very carefully showed the group very specific footage and for good reason, any movement with this format is disastrous. One shot of a locked down tripod showed a street scene with some folks walking at camera and others mingling. The girl walking toward camera was blurred by a strobish effect and this was 60i footage. At one point someone slightly hit the tripod and a black and white sign on a phone booth suddenly showed horrible vertical smear. A very slow zoom out at one point to demonstrate the 12x lens showed horrible stuttering effect but not in the entire frame, only around where 4:3 TV safety would be vertically, and the zoom was very slow. They showed a close up of a parrot but his feathers were making a very strange moire. And of course they showed lots of green shots of Japans country side but even then it was not very good looking footage even though green is a trick these folks use because cameras love green. What they did not show the group and the reason they stopped the tape was the footage of the NYC marathon and other movement shots. I happened to see the footage though earlier when they were setting it up and it was completely unacceptable even in a home video set-up. Obviously they opted not to show it as a result. The bottom line is that any movement looks so bad as to be horrible. Sony also shoed HDV 24p and that looked like someone had applied a trail effect to the video. Bottom line this format is really bad. Worse than that it's awful. If you shot a wedding with it, you couldn't shoot dancing because you would not be able to make out anyones faces. The group of about 100 engineers including some pretty big friends of mine who build all the infrastructures at many of the networks and production facilities in NY all didn't have anything good to say about the demo after the show. In fact the 50 or so engineers and the like talked about everything but the demo as they left as if they wanted to move on. I will not be using this format for anything anytime soon.

Here's the link to the original thread.

I trust that this guy is telling the truth about what he saw at the event, but I'm skeptical about his impressions being final -- maybe the setup was off, or maybe it was just a bad day for a demo??

At any rate, there seem to be a LOT of questions and loose ends where the format, how Vegas handles the editing, and the camera are concerned. It would be nice if the Sony people here can directly respond to some of the finer points in the thread at dv.com -- or is that against dv.com's forum policies?

- jim

After following your thread, I read this guy's post about the HDV format and Sony cam. All I can say is what he describes in the footage and what he says Sony said, is all highly suspect. He describes footage that doesn't exist, he purports a conspiracy to not show certain footage, he claims he "saw the footage prior to the press event." (prior ot the press event, doors were shut, there were 6 people in the room, except for me they were all Sony employees)
He comments on many things about the footage that simply aren't true. So, if I can legitimately call into question what he describes and claims was said when I know for certain these things were never said, it only makes sense to call into question everything else about his post.
[edit]Further, he now admits he was drunk at the time, and not exactly sure of what he saw. Now THERE's a reliable source. He doesn't know whether he was at the Sony or SMPTE event, and can't specifically recall what he did or didn't see. What's next? That the elephants he saw really weren't as pink as they are in real life? Next time, provide a quote from a credible source. [edit]

I don't know if I'm any more credible sober than this guy is drunk so take anything I have to say with a BIG grain of salt.
I've seen quite a bit of footage, some of it I suspect is the same footage too. Pretty much the same projection system, 2K projector onto a large screen at our Film and Television School and no it wasn't a Sony sponsored event so there was no 'censorship' of what we got to see.
Certainly most of the footage was carefully shot and it did look stunning. You do need to discount the WOW factor. I mean if it's the first time you've seen HiDef on a big screen projected optimally then lets face it you're not going to be focussed on what's going wrong.
Seeing SD, HDV and CineAlta footage intercut makes for a pretty good evaluation although the guys running the show I felt weren't that technically bright!
Example, "look at the noise in the CineAlta footage, the HDV camera is much better". Well Duh, that's why CineAlta goes through a noise reduction process in post, despite the cost of CineAlta cameras even they aren't perfect.
I really don't want to comment much on the HDV fooatage, why?
Well two reasons, firstly I haven't seen that much HD on a big screen to truly evaluate anything HD, secondly the footage was being handled through an intermediate codec so I cannot say how much of what I saw was HDV and how much could be attributed to THEIR codec.
That said, I did notice firstly the difference in color sampling between HDV and CineAlta, this is to be expected, all those extra dollars have to buy you something. I did notice things going wrong in the HDV footage that I didn't see in the CineAlta footage. Again I say that with a lot of caveats. No one uses a CineAlta camera the way a lot of people use a handycam, so even if the system quality was the same the CineAlta is way ahead just because of the way it was being used.
But perhaps more importantly, even if all the things that are mentioned in the above post were true, there's no taking away the fact that this camera can produce stunning footage, just what (if any) constraints it'll impose on shooting technique only time will tell. This is surely a given with any technology, what you can get away with with a DV camera you can't with 35mm, the same goes for going from DV25 to HDCAM, things as basic as makeup become more crtitcal, focus has to be spot on. HDV will no doubt bring another set of parameters that need to be considered, nothing is perfect, even IMAX has strange issues with motion, that's no reason to rubbish the medium, the guys who shoot it understand the issues and work within them, I think that's what separates the professionals from the wannabes.
Bob.

Farss, as usual you said it well. This guy simply didn't have a clue what he was looking at, IMO. I think he went there expecting to see IMAX quality for a 6K price or something. The Balinese footage is exceptionally well shot, even in a variety of exposure settings. HDV isn't going to look much better than DV in the hands of a shooter who doesn't know what he's doing, then again neither will HD regardless ofthe compression.
The mpeg compression, then resampled with the intermediary codec looks very, very good. It's not perfect, but from a 6K cam, how can it be? Just the mere fact that it CAN be decently projected on a 60' wide screen says a LOT about the format, IMO. For those that were there at the Sony press event, they saw me do some very deep zooms as well, showing how well the image holds up even when pan/scanned to 50%.

The guy at the DV.com forum (Walter Graff) is an idiot (and probably a shill for Panasonic or Canon) I have looked at a lot of the FX1 raw footage and I haven't seen any motion artifacts. For what it is and for what it costs, HDV is revolutionary.

In case anyone missed it, here's a link to a bunch of raw FX1 footage to play with:

http://www.hdvinfo.net/media/kakugyo/

John

Now that my memory has been jogged I DID see the the marathon footage in question, I was stone sober, and yes I did notice something about it, I guess I got to see exactly the same footage in it's entirety as most of what I saw was from Bali.
So perhaps the gent in question isn't a complete idiot, more likely just arrogant and one thing I'm learning in this game; there's no shortage of people like that and it doesn't just apply to the image part of the game either!

So OK, lets look at all this sensibly. So there's somethings HDV just plain will not cope with, hardly the end of the format in my opinion even for serious HD work. It would all come down to the most basic ingedient of any good movie making, planning!
Know what scenes are going to cause grief for HDV and shoot them with HDCAM, these things are available for hire. I can reliably say that HDV shot within it's limitations does NOT look sad up against the best HD kit. So you've got to pony up for a few days hire of a HDCAM. Given what should be the budget for ANY HD production thats hardly going to make a big dint in the bottom line, the saving though in having to shoot the whole thing in HDCAM will be considerable.
So maybe I wasn't totally out of my tree when I started jumping up and down about wanting a system that could handle both HDV AND HDCAM on the one TL.
Bob.

if someone could suggest a good clip to check out there ... I downloaded one , but it looked more like a 1k (720p) telecine than HD (1080p) quality wise. It also had some interlacing artifacts.


i will immediately of course throw it up on a 50' screen against 8 perf 70mm film and declare that HDV is crap.

in reality i have a huge collection of HD and better digital material to compare it against. Though so many variables, as one being that much of our HD material is from 70mm film SCANS (not telecine) , but also a lot of telecine at various quality and lot of it is CGI also...

BJ_M,

Some of the footage in the "mountain" folder is pretty good looking. Also, the only way to judge this footage is by viewing it on an HD monitor. I don't know how you're viewing the FX1 files, but judging the footage on a computer monitor isn't going to do it justice. And, yes, you will see some interlacing artifacts on the computer monitor, but they are compeletly absent when viewing the footage on a 1920x1080i capable HD monitor. I am using a MyHD HD card hooked up via component cables to a Sony XBR 34" HD monitor and it looks great.

John

John, thank you for the reply and your concern - but since what I do pretty well everyday is work with HD and better source material (including a lot of color and image correction), on up to and including 6k resolution source files in up to 16bit or floating, I rather have the facilities to judge HDV. I wasn't kidding (completely) about comparing it against 70mm film , I have a 5/70mm and a 35mm film projector equipment right in our studio here and a 8/70 in California. As well as a number of video projection systems up to dual 10k output projectors and screens from 18' to 50' in house at our several studios ..

Ah c'mon, BJ_M, you just got your head all filled up big cuz you get to play with IMAX stuff. :-)
I'm with John on this one, HDV is simply fantastic for the cost and what it's supposed to be. These guys that are wanting HDV to be HDCam....they're out of their minds. But it's very sweet when viewed on a 1920 x 1200 monitor, which is what I had for the demo. Sony used 2 Qualia projectors for the demo as well for the audience, and it was deep, lush, no macroblocking visible, and the rack focus shots held together much better than I thought they would.

Yeah, yeah, BJ_M, but do you have a way to properly decode and view the FX1 MPEG2 transport stream on all of your fancy equipment? If you were seeing "interlace artifacts", then I'd say not.

John

hehehe -- i can make a mpeg transport stream dance if i want to ... i also can break it down right to its motion vectors at the pixel level ..

lets see what playback systems are here: mpeg2 transport streams servers (which i have been using for 6 years+, creating and encoding content for) , QuBit servers, our own HD+ 3D servers (2048x2160 resolution) or frame store or mirage systems or D5HD or HDCAM or whatever --
we also dont generally use 24fps though - 30p -60p instead, i really dont like 24p.
If someone sends me a HDCAM or some other 1080i material, yes , i can view it no problem ...

i didnt say HDV was no good -- I just said the ONE sample i partially downloaded didnt look quite that great -- more like a 1k TC.

i will look at some more --

yes -- that is a for sure, it is amazingly cost effective...

even to shoot D-BETA or HDCAM is not cheap, but cheaper than film .. but HDV really warps the curve for quality vs. cost ..

BJ_M, I'm curious as to why you state you don't like 24p. I often tend to be the lone man out on that one. I see several problems with 24P, but because it's the "in thing" it's what everyone wants, demands, and screams that products suck if they don't shoot, support, or output it.
In fact, that's what I'm hearing most about the Z1U is that it doesn't support 24p. For my eye, what has been acquired at it's highest possible resolution and then start pranking with the cadence and or resolution. Starting with 1/3 chips is bad enough in the grand play, but then trying to capture LESS information doesn't help much.

OK - so i downloaded Fujimicreekzoomin, M-probe ripped this apart no problem.

][muxer will de-mux these streams no problem, and convert them to program streams also.

This file has a few strange things, quality is ok.

Stream type: MPEG-2 MP@H1440L CBR

DC is only 8bit, I frames are 9 , should perhaps be 10 or 11 ..

Intra matrix is for progressive encoding, in fact the matrix used is for 6meg/sec avg mpeg files. They should use a true i HD matrix for better quality encoding, normally - but some tricks are being done here because the NON Intra Matrix is really interesting, it is really non standard as it start with a 16 and mpeg spec says it should always be a 8, it is highly optimized for interlaced material and similar to what Canopus does in procorder. Not what is used for broadcast HD TS at all. Which doesn't mean a bad thing.

Not a long GOP, not variable GOP, GOP should be variable for better quality. only 15 frames per GOP (not closed, which is good). No scene change detection for GOPs, I find this odd. Must be the encoding chip they are using. plus of course a camera can not see into the future, BUT could figure out with some brains that the scene has changed.

No Time code on mpeg stream ! none ! I restreamed it with timecode in header, maybe this is done for editing purposes.

Header says CBR , but in reality it is closer to VBR (not a bad thing) , but nom. value is declared to be 25meg/sec but it never goes over 20.1 and avg is 18 ... To me, these are low values for mpeg HD files, I prefer to see 1080 at 44.4/meg for example. Prob. not supported by hardware limitations.

mpeg audio - well OK ..

Very short look ahead for motion vectors, if larger tables were used, fast pans and motion may be improved for sharpness, BUT they may be worried about spiking bit rate. and/or start to pixelate, prob. rather have a softer "blur effect" than get than pixelatation (i would agree).

i get an avg of 8-16 bad blocks per frame (pixelate slightly) , about what i would expect at this bit rate in fast motion. Not visible to the eye unless you really get down to the block level (8 x 8 pixels) , it is well handled..

so overall - i would say about the same quality as a 1-2k ish Telecine of 35mm film , not a scan quality though.

This clip doesn't have very good color, not very rich, not blaming the HDV for that - more like the day they shot it .

I'll download and look at another clip ...