Parts of this video were shot with two very different cameras. Which part was shot with the Sony HDR-SR1 high definition camcorder and which part was shot with the Canon G9 and why do you think so?
Well...I prefer the footage taken from the 'finish' end of the pool. Looks cleaner and nicer colours. If it's straight out of the cam, I'd guess that's the Canon - the more pro cams tend to shoot flat to allow for later processing.
I'd say first half Sony, second half Canon, based on the fact that the Canon is listed as 15p frames and the framerate in the second half looks much lower than the first.
Overall, though, the Canon colors really "pop" and look much better. The Sony looks awfully flat. On a bigger camera I'd suspect that too much neutral density filter was dialed in (but on a bright, sunny day?) and that the image sensors were not getting enough light. But that wouldn't be an issue on a handy-cam type camera. Maybe some kind of "scene select" setting on the Sony was messing things up?
I have not used the G9 but I'm going to say Canon first, Sony second mainly because the 2nd shot was at a distance that required a greater optical zoom & was steadily centered on the subject. If the reverse is true the operator of the G9 did a fantastic job keeping the subject centered & steady at that distance which I find is hard to do when recording video with certain dig. cameras vs. a camcorder...
Thanks to all for your interest in this exercise. The Sony camera was first. When I edit video from this camera, I'm usually happy with it given that it is a first generation consumer AVCHD unit, I didn't pick it and I didn't pay for it. I'm glad to get HD video of my grandchild and have given up on the idea of my son being a videographer. As a parent, he frequently gets involved in the action and forgets he's shooting video.
This is the first time I've had video from both these cameras on the same timeline and the difference in color is stark!
When I posted, my primary interest was the quality of the output given 15 fps video from the Canon and interlaced video from the Sony. I used the Yadif plug-in in Vegas Pro 11-683 on the Sony media and just turned off resample for the Canon media and rendered to 30 fps progressive with the Mainconcept AVC/AAC Internet HD 720p codec.
Today, I remembered the Sony camera video range is from 16 to 255 and that I had applied a Computer to Studio filter to it. The range of the Canon is 0 to 255. The Computer to Studio filter is "necessary" to create broadcast legal video for the Canon but not for the Sony, at least on the black. I removed the filter from the Sony video completely since it's not necessary on the black end and, from the scopes, there seems to be little content at the white end of the spectrum. The changes can be seen at .
Thanks to TheRhino for commenting on my keeping the camera steady and on the subject. The Canon has an optical stabilizer and I'm a little more interested in this particular subject than most people. I cropped the Canon video from 4x3 to 16x9, so that gave me an opportunity keyframe a few seconds when she got out of the pool to keep her head in the frame.
Here are the specs for the media:
Canon G9
Video
ID : 0
Format : JPEG
Codec ID : MJPG
Duration : 41s 333ms
Bit rate : 14.9 Mbps
Width : 1 024 pixels
Height : 768 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 15.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:2
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 1.265
Stream size : 73.5 MiB (95%)
Sony HDR-SR1
Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 41s 975ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 15.1 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 16.0 Mbps
Width : 1 440 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.325
Stream size : 75.7 MiB (93%)