Sony HVR-Z5U camera, which is best recording mode?

Barry W. Hull wrote on 11/15/2011, 8:01 PM
I have a fairly fast Lenovo D20 work station and more storage space than I will possibly ever use, so large file size is not an issue for me whatsoever. The issue for me is the best, clearest rendered file.

I am trying to determine the combination of which specific setting on my Sony HVR-Z5U camcorder and which file property settings on Sony Vegas Pro 11 will give me the best, sharpest, clearest, final rendered video.

I have the Sony HVRMRC1K, which records files onto a compact flash card, and transfer files directly to the computer, rather than using the recording tapes (time saver).

If anyone has specific knowledge of the Sony HVR-Z5U camcorder, I would appreciate advice. I want to record in HD. There are several choices on the Sony HVR-Z5U, however when I read the owner’s manual all that recording jargon loses me quickly.

I have studied the difference between progressive and interlaced, and decided to record in 1080/30P. That seems to be advertised as an option on the HVR-Z5U. However, on the camera, in the menu under "Recording Format," the only two choices are "HDV1080i" or "DV", which leaves me wondering why is there not a choice of "HDV1080p"?

There is another option entitled, "HDV Progress." The choices under that are Progressive "24" or "30," or Interlaced "60," "24", "24A" or "30".

So I am wondering what is the best choice, "1080i and Progressive 30,” or should I use "1080i and Interlaced 60", or something else?

I have always used "1080i and Interlaced 60,” and have been very satisfied, but I am simply trying to produce the very best highest quality and wonder if I should switch to another mode.

One thing, I have shot a few scenes in the "1080i and Progressive 30" options. I have heard some describe progressive as a slightly less natural look, which I have noticed very slightly as well. It seems the interlaced 60 gives a very slightly more natural "blur" to motion, but maybe I'm just doing something wrong in the property settings of Vegas Pro, not sure. Or maybe I should record in progressive and make sure the use the motion blur setting in Vegas, so many choices.

Anyway, I have about 12 terabytes of storage and a brand new lightning fast Lenovo D20 work station, so I want to use the best clearest recording settings and use the best file property settings in Vegas Pro 11, for when I buy that huge obnoxious television and invite my neighbors over to torture them with home movies.

This is a long question I realize, and if you answer, and I do not understand, and I ask you to repeat, please do not be annoyed. I get enough of that from my nieces and nephews who think their uncle is a knucklehead.

Thank you. I appreciate your advice.

Barry W. Hull

Comments

farss wrote on 11/15/2011, 8:54 PM
"However, on the camera, in the menu under "Recording Format," the only two choices are "HDV1080i" or "DV", which leaves me wondering why is there not a choice of "HDV1080p"?"

You would definately want "1080i", "DV" means standard definition.
The camera will definately record progressive in that "1080i" mode, I think the reason why there's no 1080p mode is because some of the choices in the other menu item cause the camera to add pulldown and record progressive in an interlaced stream

"One thing, I have shot a few scenes in the "1080i and Progressive 30" options. I have heard some describe progressive as a slightly less natural look, which I have noticed very slightly as well. It seems the interlaced 60 gives a very slightly more natural "blur" to motion, but maybe I'm just doing something wrong in the property settings of Vegas Pro, not sure. Or maybe I should record in progressive and make sure the use the motion blur setting in Vegas, so many choices."

In part the decison to shoot progressive or interlaced is a creative one, hell will freeze over long before we decide which is better.
Given that you have the choice of 24p, 30p or 60i I would tend to favour 30p but you need to ensure that your shutter speed is locked at 1/60th or motion will look jerky if the shutter speed increases much to handle light levels. You also need to watch how fast you pan etc. It's not going to be as much of a pain as shooting 24p but it is more critical than shooting 60i.

In theory 30p should cause the camera to record more vertical resolution than shooting 60i, it sure does on the EX cameras but I don't know if that applies to the Z5 or not. On the other hand all else being equal shooting 60i gives less noise than 30p.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask questions but at the end of the day you do need to take some technical stuff on board so you can make an informed decision.

Julius_ wrote on 11/15/2011, 10:25 PM
Hi,

I currently own a Sony Z5u and have been using it mostly for weddings. I tried both settings 1080i (60) and 30p and here's what I found.

30p footage is slightly better quality, but it doesn't look good if you need to do slow motion or pan (looks jittery. There's ways around getting slow motion in post, but it's an extra step.)

60i footage is still great and high quality (and probably can't tell between 30p) but on fast pans and slow motion it's butter smooth. Also, the Z5u has a feature to do super slow-mo 3-6 or 9 seconds but only works when camera is set to 60i and not 30p.

For me, I went 1 year with 30p and another year only with 60i..and for weddings where there's lots of movements (at least here in Montreal) and I often need to slo-motion, I'm going with 60i.

If your filming stationary things then go with 24 or 30p.

Also, in vegas, if you need to join a few mt2 clips (with no effects), Vegas re-renders if the footage is 30p. But if the footage is 60i it doesn't (if ever you wanted to give out the raw footage, it will be the best it can be).

The camera should be set to HDV and not SD..
Rec Format: HDV 1080i
HDV PROGRE:
Rec Type: Interlace
Scan Type: 60
This will give you 1080i at 60

Farss is right about setting your shutter to 1/60 on 30p...actually you should always double your shutter speed to get the best motion and slow motion (i.e on 60i go with 1/125 if you can....at the reception I can only go with 1/60th because anything higher is too dark)

Hope this helps.
Barry W. Hull wrote on 11/16/2011, 7:05 AM
Thank you.

Great answers, and very understandable. I am glad to hear that my opinions on 30p versus 60i are echoed by others. I wondered if the less natural pans and motion were all in my head because I thought I read it somewhere else.

I live on a large acreage and shoot many great outdoor scenes, all sorts of wild critters, would make National Geographic proud. There is sometimes fast action, pans to follow hawks grabbing snakes and rodents, etc., and 60i just seemed to "do it" a little better, but I wanted to make sure that later, when I project it super-sized that it will remain crystal clear. On the other hand, some of the footage is relaxing and lazy, sometimes (at least for me) awe inspiring, and wonderfully sleepy.

Julius, like you, for now I think I will go back to 60i. I sometimes shoot at dawn or dusk, in and out of wooded shadows, not sure that a manual shutter speed would work as well in sometimes fairly rapidly changing lighting conditions, maybe the iris can keep up, do not know, and also I do not yet trust myself to do it properly. Maybe I will experiment with that slow-motion feature too.

Farss, you are correct in taking on more technical information, getting smarter every day. When I started in the recording world it was 8mm film movies, manual splicing, seems years ago, it was! I thought I had hit the big time with my Sony Hi8 and my Panasonic HG1950 Super VHS decks, A/B editing system with, on a good day, 3 - 5 frame accuracy at best. After a few years away from editing, now all this computer software is mind blowing.

I am a recently retired US Navy F/A-18 pilot and have some great footage of carrier aviation and combat, and need to put it on disk, it is all on tape. I was the so called designated "camera guy" and have made a couple of videos for my squadron mates and want to preserve it in the highest quality possible. That was also part of my request for an opinion of 60i versus 30p. As you can imagine there is some very fast blurry stuff, bombs, couple of mig kills, fly bys, etc.

I am always looking for another opinion and thank you again for yours.
Laurence wrote on 11/16/2011, 8:45 AM
I basically use two modes on my HVR Z7U, both from the "interlaced" options. Those are interlaced 60 and interlaced 30. Interlaced 30 is actually just 30p flagged as 60i. There is no visual difference between that and "progressive" 30p. Well, the interlaced 30 might show the odd then the even fields sequentially of the each 1/30th of a second frame instead of just running from top to bottom, but that is not something your eye is quick enough to see. For all practiacl purposes they look the same.

The advantage of using the "interlaced 30" is that it will smart-render whereas the "progressive 30" will not. Vegas won't smart-render any progressive video that is flagged as progressive. Not HDV, not Cineform, not any format.

Not only will the interlaced 30 smartrender, but it will also smartrender in a project that is a mix of interlaced 30 and interlaced 60. This is very cool because it means you can go back and forth while you are shooting choosing the sharper looking progressive "interlaced 30" for ithings like interviews and the more motion friendly 60i for things like skateboarding stunts. At the end it will all render into a 60i project (smart-rendering if you like) and the 30p sections will look like 30p and the 60i sections will look like regular motion video. When you want to do an Internet version, just run it through handbrake using the decomb filter and just the 60i parts will deinterlace.
Laurence wrote on 11/16/2011, 9:00 AM
One more thing on formats:

I do use 24p occasionally, but only because some client will insist on it. I never use it if it is up to me. The reason is that without dollys, tracks, steadycams etc. it will judder on movement. Anyway, most of the time when I shoot 24p, it is on tape and I am giving the tape to somebody after I'm done.

In this case I've learned to NEVER shoot using the 24p from the progressive options on the Z5/Z7! Basically, unless they have one of the latest Sony decks to capture the footage (and I have yet to run into a place that does) they won't be able to capture the footage, and it will somehow end up being your fault.

Instead use one of the 24p settings from the Interlaced menu (which is basically 24p with added pulldown put on the tape as 60i). They are probably using FCP, and this will let them capture the footage with whatever HDV deck they have, and FCP will remove the pulldown as it converts it to the Apple Intermediary Codec, and everyone will be happy. This is way better than having them come back to you complaining about you giving them blank tapes, how Sony cameras suck, and can they use your camera to capture the footage.

If you are giving anyone else the tapes, don't give yourself headaches, just use the interlaced options and give them 24p with pulldown if they want 24p.
Barry W. Hull wrote on 11/16/2011, 9:54 AM
Thanks Laurence.

Surely being a professional videographer, of which I am not, and the necessary dealings with clients, likely at times cause all sorts of headaches, even though of course they are paying the bills. Lucky for me in that regard.

The idea of changing camera settings for different types of footage, while seemingly simple, is something I prefer to avoid if possible. I am certain that in the rush to capture the shot, I will forget to change back to 60i for that fast moving subject.

My firm is producing training videos, which are for the most part fairly static, but I have noticed that even the movement of hand and arm gestures of the presenter has that very slightly unnatural look in Progressive when compared to Interlaced.

After reading these suggestions, for the vast majority of shots I will use the settings as suggested by Julius:

The camera should be set to HDV and not SD..
Rec Format: HDV 1080i
HDV PROGRE:
Rec Type: Interlace
Scan Type: 60
This will give you 1080i at 60

Those are the identical settings I have been using and they have worked great so far, and none of the advice so far suggests otherwise.

One more question, I assume on the Project Properties within Sony Vegas Pro that the best option is to click the "Match Media Settings" button?

That selects "HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080, 29.970 fps)".
Julius_ wrote on 11/16/2011, 10:30 AM
Correct!

By the way: As a retired Army pilot, can you put to rest the whole theory about Chemtrails vs Contrails? Do Chemtrails really exists?

Sorry I know this is way off topic, but drop me an email at granata5@hotmail.com

Thanks
Barry W. Hull wrote on 11/16/2011, 12:36 PM
Thanks.

Sure, simple answer to your question, NO SUCH THING.