Spot:

I have to agree with you on the downsampling (at least for the FX1). The footage where I used the camera for downsampling did not look as good as bringing the HDV material into Vegas and then creating DV output.

PSG

For whatever reason, Vegas has some serious mojo going on inside for the sampling/resampling side of things. I'm quite confident it's due to the history of audio and the critical nature of how that's all managed and allocated, but the Madison boys got the voodoo, no doubt!
Once I get some clearance on a copyright issue, I'll share the difference in the downsamples with the world.

Based on stats thst Sony camera can't be good with anything besides static interviews. Compressing such high res onto MiniDv.... That just doesn't sound right no matter how good teh compressor is.

Yeah, well....have you seen it? Touched it? Played with it?
Just read the forums of people who HAVE done the above, and since you don't want to believe Sony, believe them.
There are a few people here who have seen what I've done with this camera at HDV and SD resolutions, downsampled and upsampled, zoomed and so forth. Maybe they'll chime in (without being descriptive of the copyrighted footage)
Whether you believe it or not, it's happening. And it's not a poorman's HD either. Television stations are checkin' into this thing big time. Just keep your eyes peeled, you'll be hearing LOTS more about HDV in the very, very near future.

BTW, a lot of the footage I'm working with is waterskiing footage shot from the back of the boat, no tripod, nada. Just handheld, shooting a fast moving object. Looks stupendous.

As i said man, based on the stats. Soon i'm moving towards HD (not HDV) so thankfuly i'll skip on this one.

I guess I'm missing something. "Stats?" Perhaps you mean "specs?" or am I in the dark on something? On paper, the JVC looks great and Varicam compared to HDcam looks even better. I knew a guy who got a mail order wife from a catalog, in the catalog she was gorgeous and spoke great English.
If you're moving to HDCam, great, good for you, and it's a great place to go if you've got $$ and clients to pay for it all. If I had a quarter mil to toss at video, I'd do that too. But if you don't have a couple hundred grand for a couple cams, storage, system to edit it on, hardware, HD monitor, and all the support gear..HDV is the answer. Is it the same as HD? Nope. Is it way better than DV? Yup.
I've seen some of what you can do with DV on your website, and it's very impressive as a webstream, but I'm at a loss as to how MUCH more you'll gain by going to HDCam.
But forming an opinion based on paper and ink is sorta silly, wouldn't you agree? On paper, the Hula Hoop was the dumbest idea anyone ever came up with. So was the Frisbee. So was DV.

Yes, i mean specs (my terrible English). Indeed, Dv on paper with its 5:1 compression looks terrible on paper.

Here's additional perspective on the XL2/FX1 issue. Before you quit reading and say, "oh no, not another rant from this Ravens guy", read on. As you may know, I've been a staunch Canon supporter since I bought my XL1. But a recent shoot with my new XL2 has me completely disillusioned with canon. There are "small" design issues with every camera, I mean issues besides format. For example, focusing, zoom control, white balance, etc., etc. etc. After a full day shoot with my new XL2, I'm crushed to report that this so called "prosumer" camera has a very serious back focus hunting problem that wasn't apparent until I played the footage back on a 23" widescreen monitor. The subject remains focused(probably because of DOF), however, there's a very distracting focus/defocus happening in the background. I will never again shoot stationary subjects with the auto-focus turned on. Nevertheless, this kind of amateur performance from a camera this expensive is inexcuseable, in my humble opinion. Come on Sony, you've got my attention, now let's get this HDV thing off the ground and solve the editting/ distributing fiasco.

sounds to me like Canon is at it again. What you're describing was the very same thing they did on the XL1 with the original lense (from what I've gathered from a friend of mine in the bus. down in nashville). They screwed up the backfocus and it was a huge pock mark on the face of canon, in terms of video, and has been the reason I didn't go with them. Now it sounds like they've done the same thing agian. I'm not very impressed. I love there Photo equipment, but man does it sound bad for them in terms of video.

I didn't know people used autofocus. Never seen anyone use it professionally.

I have an XL1 backfocus story though. I was gaffing a multicamera shoot a couple of years ago. We had 3 XL1ae going and one had a manual lens and a color viewfinder on it. The camera operator, a good friend and very competent shooter, set up the backfocus while looking through the viewfinder. They started shooting (I stopped lighting) and when I looked at his monitor it was soft on his wide shots. I called it, we reset backfocus, and it was still soft on the wides.

It turns out that the color viewfinder didn't have enough resolution to set critical focus. He had to bring the camera back to the field monitors and set the backfocus based on the monitors.

Moral of the story? Color viewfinders are bad news, bring good field monitors, bring a field engineer or at least hire someone who's responsible enough to watch the monitors as you shoot.

BTW, after rereading the post, I should clarify what "backfocus" is. Backfocus is the focus of the lens onto the target, be it CCD or film plane. In other words, just as you have focus and depth of field in front of the lens, you also have it behind the lens. Depth of field behind the lens works inversely to that in front of the lens so that a wide angle gives you lots of depth out fron but virtually none in back. This is why you adjust back focus with the lens set to it's widest angle-so that you can get the sharpest backfocus adjustment possible.

Rob Mack

FWIW....backfocus is also an issue, which is why I was using autofocus. Pans between face and hands were problemattic. In my case, the DP was watching on a 13 inch monitor and saw no such focus hunting, but, did see the backfocus problems. Hunting was very subtle until displayed on a large widescreen monitor. How many on camera monitors can cover that? At some point, the videographer has to put some trust in the electronics. If that can't be done...well...

I will accept my own failure in not knowing my equipment better....and for putting my faith in an expensive (for me) piece of equipment.

perhaps the more appropriate question is..
"what can I expect from a $4K camera?"
"what can I expect from a $5K camera?"

note to Sony: this is about value for my $$$$, get it? I no comprende "brand loyalty".

Perhaps maybe the tools to do the compression are better than DV?

Perhaps the technology has moved forward just like Mpeg-4 compresses better than Mpeg-2?

It seems bizarre to base your upgrade path on hypotheticals.

Looked at a monitored FX1 at B&H Camera in NYC this a.m., picture looks fine but note that the FX1 has no onboard XLR connectors--the Z1 coming out does, plus some very nice adjustibility on gamma, gain, etc. Price difference is indeed $3500 FX1 / $5000 Z1--exactly $1500.

i was doing a little research on these cameras, it said that the ccd's are interlaced, and not progressive, so it does a fake 24p, which they call 24f. is this true? i mostly do film making and that would be a huge turn off if it couldnt do a true 24p

Our HDV cam got back from a 1 week shoot in the bush, guy using it was pretty impressed, only shooting 16:9 SD with it. Perhaps his most telling comment was, it's a very different camera, if you're used to say the 150 you need to spend some time getting used to it if you like manual everything.
Odd thing he did notice, in full manual, set exposure for inside of room then pan to outside half frame. Outside should be blown out but inside still correctly exposed. Camera seems to pull down a few stops making inside section of shot underexposed. Perhaps a product of how the CCDs work or some clamping circuit.
Bob.

Hi Spot,

You might remember my review of NAB from way back where I mentioned that I was concerned about the lack of information on quality loss of HDV relative to DV or DVCPRO-HD when edited. In fact, I was lamenting that DVCPRO-HD, being an intra-frame-only compression method was going to likely be superior to HDV but not likely to be the format adopted by most prosumer and low-end professional cameras. Nobody at NAB knew how to answer my questionsI've even read some places where HDV was designed specifically to avoid the "mistake" that was DV that turned the ENG (read: $$$) camera market on its proverbial butt.

Given all of that, I'm curious to know with all the experience and toys that you've played with as to how HDV reacts to the following:

* Generational loss - I know that it won't be like Sony's almost magical DV CODEC, but I'm curious as to how HDV video looks after I've edited and then re-edited it.

* Overlays - when it comes to titling, lower thirds not a multiple of 16 pixels away from the top (causing quant block noise) and the like, overlaying a title on an IBP-frame compressed stream is going to be a challenge. How do titles and other objects look when overlayed on HDV?

* Dissolves/cuts - another big challenge of IBP-frame compression is how it handles the two most commonly used transitions. Cuts not on an I-frame of the original video could create some problems, and dissolves potentially have compounded compression artifacts. How does HDV handle these?

I could go into more, but I think these are basically the bread and butter of any NLE workflow. Any insights you could give as to your personal experiences would be great. I'm also curious to know if you have a display that's at a native resolution relative to the HDV source. If you have an HD broadcast monitor, you're sure to get this, but the image processors embedded in so many displays can hide the issues that are necessary to see when you're an editor.

Thanks,
Mike

Thers is no backfocus adjustment on my xl1, least none I can get at ,I'm confused.

Mike,

I think the answer is you don't edit HDV as HDV. You use Cineform's codec.

Spot posted a thread where he put up an HDV FAQ. You may want to check that out.

winrock...

backfocus, as referred to here, is a characteristic of a lens/body combination where the focus of the lens is not the same at different zoom settings. Generally, when you focus on the subject plane, it tends to be backfocused(focused on a plane behind the subject) when you zoom in. A propoerly calibrated lens, camera combination will hold focus at the subject plane no matter what zoom you set. The adjustment is done at the Canon Service Center and they need your lens and body to do it. Very few prosumer lenses allow backfocus adjustments, altho' Canon's 16x manual lens provides such an adjustment.

Buster,

I realize that there may be a digital intermediate CODEC in the loop here (i.e. Prospect HD). For that matter, it could be converted to uncompressed. I guess my curiosity is to see, for such a relatively large compression ratio compared to the size, how the quality of the video fares through these various processes. I just have a feeling that it may be a bit more stressed in some of the cases that I discussed. I mean, can you chromakey well with HDV, all other user factors aside, relative to DV? I'm just concerned that all this compression will have adverse effects on the quality. The only way to really remove the doubt is to get a hands-on perspective.

I re-read robs post,, manual lens on that xl1.
Thanks Bill

Well I think you're right, neither the HDV video or audio encoding system is ideal for editing. I'd imagine they'd be a significant generational loss. But no one is suggesting you should natively edit the stuff, so it's a rather irrelevant question.
For the prosummer they can edit using a number of intermediate codecs and the Aspect HD codec seems to be the best so far.
Now I can see an issue, you've still got to go back to HDV for output. This may not in some situations be the ideal IF someone else is going to ingest your footage and go through the same cycle again however that's only likely to be happening in a professional / broadcast environment in whcih case there's lots of other ways to use this camera.
If you've got the need for pro handling of HD footage then you've already got or can afford to get true HDCAM capability. You can edit HDV in Vegas and finalise in XPRI or one of the Avid systems, you can convert the footage to HDCAM and edit the whole thing on a high end system, many possibilities.
What the camera does bring to Joe Average is the ability to compete with the big end of town, even if the camera is shown to have some limitations I'm certain once they're understood you're going to see a lot of serious productions shot 80% HDV and 20% HDCAM.
Bob.