AVCHD has a 33frame GOP?
It's entirely variable. HDV is 6, 12, or 15.
I'd submit the scaler is the culprit, and not at all the format.

funny u mention the scaler, because SD DVD using SVideo <yeah i know... lol> looks closer to 720p than native 720p....
Still doing tests might jsut be the colour processing, but there is ALOT of noise...

the setup is fine, everything has been fine really.. i actually thoguh results were pretty decent on a 720p panel but now... still more testing to do

Can only add to what others have said.
I've seen the Z1 on a cinema sized screen out of a decent projector.
Send the panel back, it's junk.
Some of the scalers and de-interlacers will make mountains out of minor defects, they'll make noise look worse than it ever was. And it depends on how they're connected and driven.
Bob.

I watch HDV material via my PS3 on a 1080p display and it looks pretty darned good.

When I went from a 42" panel to a 60" panel I noticed a significant difference in the HDV I was shooting. When everything is shot just right then it looks amazing, but the size increase in the panel amplifies the bad shots something awful. With the 42" panel the low light shots didn't look that bad, but with the 60" panel they're just hideous..... almost unwatchable.

hmm.. well i turned off the scaling on the PS3, and let the panel do its thing.. MUCH better results, however the typical criss cross MPG artefacts were still visible (admitedaly I was looking waaaaaaaaaay up close..) as was excessive noise in the out fo focus areas.

The footage was filmed with a Canon A1, during the day and processed with the only "correction" being levels where blacks were pushed down a wee bit. Aside from that, there was no other processing..

Colour bleeding after the scael was pretty horrible on certain edges

I might render a HDV m2t at 1080i and see what happens

Ive got other footage of monster trucks which out of the cam, looks friggin crazy cosnidering its virtually zero light with only 2 stadium floods, BUT once i processed that footage with levels to bring blacks down a bit, it looks like crud... motion is ok.. not as smooth as DV, but the actual artefacts introduced really look like crap... methinks its time to re-experiment with Cineform... either that or im doing something wrong...

Maybe im just overanalysing it.. As for the Tv, i chose this over the Bravias simply because it passed my "black" test... An I also got a free TV with it...

LCDs are notorious for dodgy blacks, but this retains detail but still offers a true black (a oposed to really dark grey due to the backlight)
I cant fault the panel itself.. colour looks pretty incredible and FTA HD looks very impressive...

I guess i need some more experimentation, coz if i can make it look good on THIS tv, then it will look on most others

Th eTV has a "game mode" which kills off any image processing as al this is done in the console itself, so Ran it on and off and noticed a significant difference, Then with the PS3, i killed off the scaling and jsut let it run the signal straight as 720p...
The TV however still picked up that the signal was 1080p, not 720p, even though the signal im tryin to send is 720p... so somewhere we're still seeing scaling happening..

Still sussing out teh PS3 on this..
but as far as i have ben able ot run the signal through HDMI cleanly, it still doesnt look as good as i thought it would..

And ... you still haven't answered why you are using 720p.

Also, what were your deinterlace settings, Blend or Interpolate?

why? well, it was an experiment really.. because i was consideirng using 720p for longer form HD delivery...
I was also cropping some badly framed shots (yeah ok i was cheating)

as for the deinterlacing it was set to interpolate. There is no ned to blend fields in this situatio becuase the actual delivery isnt using any interllacing.. However, now that I think about it, it may well be Vegas doing its "reinterlacing when i really dont have to" trick...
Then again, my wife thinks it looks stunning, but IM my own worst critic.. it still doesnt change the fact that im as paranoid as hell..

I just threw on some SD DVD... my god is THAT a scary sight!

If your source was 1080i I think you must always de-interlace before downscaling regardless of whether output is interlaced or progressive. Pretty certain I once made that mistake and the result was not so hot, would pay to check it. If you interpolate you've lost half your resolution and half of 1080 from the A1 is less than 720 I think.

Bob.

My HDV looks great on the 1080P Bravia 46". In fact with the Z1 I can't make it pixelate even when I try too. I whip the camera back and forth and up and down on house siding installed horizontally. Also fast moving objects are just fine. This is with the camera set to full automatic in 1080i. I also rendered the same project to DVD widescreen and it was fine. And this project was shot under a picnic pavillion with huge backlight problems. While it is not as brilliant and rich as the local OTA live HD news or HD-DVD discs it is dam close.
JJK

"Wow... how crap does HDV look on a 1080p panel"

This title reminds me of a thread on the HV-20 forum. The subject line screamed "HUGE problem" and the post described how the camera was intermittently dropping long chunks of video. Turned out there actually was no problem with the camera at all, except in the user's mind -- he had been using the camera outside in strong winds in temps that were 30 degrees or so below the cameras published operating range. . . .

I "grew up" shooting 35mm negative in the Mitchell BNC and Arri with Cooke primes. Watched a lot of dalies in lab screening rooms that looked great. Saw it in the theatre and it looked like crap. My HDV video looks really good on the 46" Bravia. In fact, even down rezed in the camera "squeezed" to SD then expanded on the Bravia it looks pretty amazing (even when I put my glasses on). I guess I'm not "picky" enough, but it sounds like something is wrong!

out of the camera, straight into the TV, it looks pretty bloody incredible..
HDV tape... VERY nice...
SD scaled on the panel though component or SVideo, and youd find it tough to notice the scaling at work
Render HDV 1080i to HDV 720p (scaling done straight from M2t, deinterlaced set to interpolate durign render output (ie, no pre processing of 1080i footage.. everythign is noe at once) and it looks like rubbish...

So Bob, u think i should scale and deinterlace BEFORE i edit?

I haven't tried going from 1080i to 720p so I can't say with any certainty. What I can say is there's a big difference going from 1080i to 576i between editing in a 1080i project and rendering to 576i compared to editing 1080i in a 576i project and rendering to 576i.

The order of operations is what is critical.

I would think that de-interlacing the 1080i first and the downscaling would be much better than the other way around. Each field of 1080i contains less vertical res than a frame of 720p. You would seem to need to get the two fields into a frame to get enough res before you downscale.

To look at another way. 1080i has a limit of around 800 lines V Res. 720p has a limit of 720 lines.

Bob.

I bought my HVR-A1U because Best Buy had a demo and we hooked it up to 1080i flat screen. "If" I do my part and getting lighting and exposure right it looks bloody amazing on my 42" 1080P monitor.

Konrad

Hey Bob, when your scaling from HDV to SD, are you exporting as progressive or interlaced?
If yoru interlacing are you switching the field order from upper to lower (for output to SD) or are you delinterlacing to progressive.
Typically, i would scale down to progressive and despite sharpness twitter issues it looks pretty decent...

I dunno.. still much to test..

Interlaced, as 576p25 isn't an official standard. If you end up with PsF that'd be fine too.

Bob.

So Bob, assuming I have 1080/25p material (native, as it comes fromt eh EX1) and cut a project in HD, then - to author an SD DVD version - I use the 50i DVDA template?

Yes.
At the end of the day, no matter about anything else you cannot feed 25p over composite, S Video or component connections in SD. 25PsF is another matter obviously otherwise film wouldn't work on a PAL DVD. This is what you'll get on your SD DVD, the same cadence as film. You will very likely have to wrangle aliasing and line twitter issues from the very high resolution of the EX1 when shooting progressive.

Bob.

Hey Bob,
I meant ot say , when you start with an interlace HDV source, how are you outputting to SD?

well ive discovered its the vegas processing thats causing the image to puke.. sadly...
Was hopign to get good 720p results but alas..

And running the camera through a 1080p panel uncompressed through coponent helped me configure the cam to a point of being able to run 18+ gain with ful colour and only slight motion blur (NR1 )..
The NR filter on the A1 is astounding on its own, but couple the 2 NR filters together and you can get away with ALOT.
I pushed the camera in ways i never thought would be posible or acceptable, but now, i'll be using 12+ on regular basis with virtually no noise.
Closest way to descibe it woudl be comparible to a DVX on 9db. Colour may not look that good on the LCD, but it really is there. Gran might look nutty on the panel, but MPG compression smooths that noise out.
Hell if i can make it look good on THIS panel itll look good anywhere.

really happy with these new findings, now to work out a decent delivery method...