Isn't the PD170 the same picture-qualitywise as the VX2100?

What about the XL1s?

What exactly is lacking in the JVC compared to the prosumer camera's?

What I want from a camera is to get a very high quality (detailed) picture, not neccessarily all of the pro-features. It will be used in a controlled well-lit environment.

PD170 is indeed the same as the VX2100. Big advantage is ease of handling external audio on the PD170.

As to the JVC under studio lighting you've got a fighting chance of reasonable images. But how are you planning on outputting your footage? If it's going to be DV then JVC has no advantages over say the 170. Personally I'd go with the DVX100, it's got all the control you need to get excellent images.

Sorry,
I didn't fully read your original post. If you want to shoot for NTSC DVD then the DVX100 is THE way to go. The GR-HD1 gives you no advantage over any prosummer camera and lots of disadvantages.

Remember your still outputting at 720x480.
Problems with the GR-HD1/10 include:
Smear, uncontrollable edge enhancement, lack of latitude, almost no manual control of anything.
With the DVX100 you can shoot and the author to 24p for DVD meaning you can use a higher bitrate on the DVD for the same amount of footage. Add to that decent gamma control, good lens, good audio and useable focus control.
These things contribute far more to the image than the number of pixels in the CCD. If you doubt what I'm saying look at the number of pixels in the CCDs of a $50,000 broadcast camera. The whole megapixel CCd thing is there for two reasons, an attempt to make video cameras take half decent stills and to hell with what that does to its performance as a video camera and secondly to suck in the mugs with some fancy marketing numbers.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Also currently the DVX100 would offer a very easy and standard workflow. It will compatible with with tons of existing software and hardware.

The JVC HD camera will download to your computer with their own editing program which is very basic. Vegas doesn't like to edit MPeg2 streams. The JVC D-VHS vcr will record from the JVC camera.
Cineform now offers an HD capture program to work with Vegas ($400.00) and will capture from the JVC camera or Deck and put the file into AVI digital format or so I understand so that Vegas can edit properly. The program is at cineform.com and is called "connect HD".
Wait till spring and you will probably see more cameras in HD from Canon, Sony, etc. And when you get tired of spending money on HD then you can jump to HD-2K, then HD-4K, then HD-8K the K number being how many more times the resolution is increased. I can't wait to spend about a trillion dollars that I don't have on this stuff.

JJK

Actually the K numbers refer to the number of lines of resolution. These are standards used in film scanning and are irrelevant to video.

Farss:
since I am really interested in this stuff can you be more specific?
How many lines?

You might find this article interesting - Interview with Mark Chiolis.

From the article:
DMN: How does its quality compare to 4K film images?

I also mentioned this interview in another post on a different thread on another subject a while back - It is an interview with Douglas Trumbull and in this he talks about Video and HD as well as Showscan. It’s already been shown very clearly to me that neither the studios nor the audiences have created a compelling justification for 70 mm photography or giant screens for the basic fare of feature motion pictures in theaters," Trumbull said. "We seem to have reached a comfortable zone of how many seats and the size of the screen. And about 2k seems to completely fulfill the needs of the audience.
The complete article is on the Film and Video site: http://www.filmandvideomagazine.com/2002/08_aug/features/trumbull.htm

I've no doubt that a piece of the finest grain 35mm stock exposed through the best lens would give a resolution of 16K lines.
Your chances of ever seeing that in a cineam are zero.
I'd say your chances of even making 2K on what you see in a cinema are about even money if it's a new print.
I've done a stint in cinemas showing movies off DV. Anyway I was told that there were major problems with prints and the ac3 tracks. These are recorded as data between the sprocket holes. The Dolby decoder provides a degree of error correction and displays the amount being used. Over a certain value it switches to the optical stereo track. A new print should run between 0 and 1. Well the new prints they were getting from the lab were reading 4 to 5 and rather quickly going over the limit, ie all you were hearing in the cinema was from the optical stereo track.
What has this got to do with image quality? Heaps I'd say. If they couldn't make prints good enough to hold the data what must have the image quality have been like and how fast was it fading. After all the area that carries these data blocks isn't subjected to anything like the light that the image frame is.

Filmy:
Thanks. Looks like they say to rival film it should be between 4k to 8k per frame. I don't get why they say 4K instead of 4M. Unless I missed something on the $100K camera.

JJK

Sorry to butt into this thread, but I wanted to let WhyBe know the two main reasons NOT to go with the JVC. First off, it is only a one CCD camera, and no amount of color filtering or megapixel crap is going to fix that. The fact that the camera has a megapixel CCD only helps with how sharp the picture is, not color saturation. SECOND, and THIS IS BIG, the JVC records in native MPEG-2 at its higher resolutions (HD). This means that the information on the tape has already been compressed to a very "lossy" format, and re-rendering it will cause even more loss. MPEG-2 actually drops fields and uses software or hardware to replace them during playback. Thus, the recording format is inherently flawed, unless you are just going to play back what you recorded on your big plasma television. Hope I'm not telling you something you already know, cause I might sound like a know it all (which I don't, which is why I joined this site!!!!).

I think I am going to stick with my original choice of VX2100 instead of the JVC. It seems too much hassle to actually get to the point to where I can edit the footage in Vegas.

So even if Canon, Panasonic, and Sony come out with HD camcorders, they are going to suffer to same problems. It seems they all are going to be stuck recording HD with on-the-fly mpeg2 compression as long as they use the MiniDV format.

Don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with on the fly mpeg-2 compression. Silicon today is powerful enough to do it in a reasonably priced chip. The big problem with this camera is what is being fed into the mpeg encoder. It'd also seem that Cinecraft have neatly solved the problem of editing the footage in Vegas as well.

The VX2100 isn't a bad choice however if you're shooting in an office invironment I'd suggest the PD170 would be a much better choice. The pictures will look exactly the same but the 170 gives you much easier handling of audio. Yes you can buy boxes to let the 2100 handle balanced audio and provide phantom power but they are a pain, one more set of batteries to go flat at the wrong time, one more thing to fail and one more gizmo to lug around.

I don't really know exactly what the following means, but I thought it might be on the right track for people looking for cheaper and not mpeg compressed HD. This is from the creativecow HD forum and hope it's okay posting it here. People seem to get upset about this kind of thing for some reason. Anyway, I'd be very curious how Vegas could handle this footage:

So here is my experence with the JVC HD camera:
We have used this camera's analog output with the AJA HD10A and RaveHD (our wicked cool DDR product... sorry, blatant plug.. but a starving programmer is no use to anyone to capture elements several times. This method eliminates any compression (as our capture happens right after the camera head) and we end up with OK looking 8bit 4:2:2 YUV 1280x720 images. (Of course we have to remove duplicated frames and we do suffer slightly as we are doing an analog to digital conversion, but it is WAY better than the on camera MPEG). These frames tend to be about as useful as any 8bit 4:2:2 video: i.e. certainly not as enjoyable to work with as 4:4:4, but certainly not 4:1:1 either. There is a lot more actual resolution there than SD, but certainly not the color gamut of a good 3 CCD SD camera. Not to mention the CAMERA IS ONLY 30p.. Have I mentioned how much happier I would be if it did 24p?!?

I have not been very pleased with the MPEG encoder on the camera itself; It simply does not keep enough video information to make it useful in any sort of compositing/effects shots. I am almost certain that the JVC camera is limiting chroma bandwidth in the MPEG encoding process. (This would certainly make sense as most MPEG is encoded as 4:2:0).. Perhaps someone has some insight here? But I could see how you could get away with a decent production as long as you keep it simple (cuts only?), clean, and stay on top of your levels and pans (Kino is correct, pan slow or the MPEG encoder wacks out and you end up with macroblock cities in your frames.) Art is very much like hacking (No, not breaking into computer networks, but rather writing code) in that it is about learning your limitations and figuring out creative ways to use the limitations to your advantage... of course art is a bit more abstract.

This thread, like many other flame wars, seems to be stratifying on the splitting of a hair. If you look at the graphic above this forum it says this forum is about "HD acquisition, editing, planning, and production".. so acquisition is really only 1/4 of the game. Furthermore, the line between the "Backyard Video Bob" (sorry, in house joke) and a professional is really more about production values, customer service, and artistry (probably not in that order) than what type of equipment he/she uses. I think the JVC camera has just as much a place in this forum as the Varicam or Cinealta. I am really interested in hearing how people are overcoming the limitations of the various cameras to further push the envelope of their art... After all .. that really what this whole thing is about. Isn't it?

I look forward to reading more about HD!

Jason
Creative Cow Linux & Media Leader
http://www.spectsoft.com