1st film on HDV,is Sony Z1 the best with FCP 5 to edit?

[Shane Ross]

HDV is the lowest form of HD there is, and it is HIGHLY compressed. It is to HD what DV is to SD. And because of it’s compression scheme, it is very difficult to work with, and has lots of artifacting when you have fast movement or the camera moves quickly. Blowing it up to film will produce a very less than desirable picture…the only image worse than it to blow up would be DV.

If you were thinking of shooting on film, shoot on film. If not, then seriously look at HD CAM. The LOWEST form of HD I’d recommend for film blowup is DVCPRO HD, and even then it is a compressed HD signal.

But please..avoid the HDV bandwagon. Cheap in, cheap out.

[John Treffer]

“the only image worse than it to blow up would be DV.”

That’s a bit overstated. For sharpness HDV is actually really good, comparable to 16mm.

There is a lot more than sharpness though. It is not very good on fast movements. (although this doesn’t really disappoint me so far.)

The biggest drawback is colors. Cologradients are not good and the dynamic range is poor. Apart from that it is just 8 bit there are really a lot of artiffects in the shadow parts, and you can’t do much with the air either.

In my opinion it is good within its price range. But if you talk about feature film length 35mm comparable prices you should compare it to DVCPRO HD camera’s. Still if image quality is your focus I’d say 35 mm still rocks best by means of first colors and second sharpness.

[Rajesh Bhanushali]

Thank you Shane & John for your review.
The price difference between the two is major,
and the producers would definately make a note
of the same. As being a regional movie & specially
for a particular state only, as would according to
your boths review would like to go on HDV format,
but will have to compromise on the quallity too,
but seeing the money factor,the producers have agreed
for the same.
Thanx friends………….Raj…..

[Arthur Vibert]

Thought I’d weigh in with a point of view on this. I’m in the midst of assembling a 2 hour film shot on HDV and cut in FCP5. Normally I would’ve waited to upgrade but the film has to be finished soon so I had to dive in. So far I’ve been very happy with the workflow. I think the HDV format looks pretty good, especiallly for the price of entry. There are noticeable artifacts. You will be limited in how far you can push color correction – shots that are underexposed get VERY noisy very quickly if you try and open them up too much. I find the deck (the Sony HDV deck – can’t remember the name/number offhand) to be less responsive than a DV or Beta deck. But it’s acceptable. I’ve noticed that if I have too many audio tracksin the timeline going at the same time that playback hiccups (where it would not have under my previous setup – FCP HD on a G4 2x1ghz cutting SD). Not sure if this is a function of HDV, FCP5, or QT7. I doubt it’s the machine, which is a G5 2.7. However by exporting to Soundtrack Pro and mixing there and bouncing the mix to two tracks everything works fine. Soundtrack is a superior mixing environment (in my opinion, anyway) to FCP so it’s not much of a compromise.

Hope this is helpful. Feel free to contact me directly if you have questions.

Arthur Vibert
http://www.arthurvibert.com