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HV30 or HV40
Hi,
I have the current HV30..and was just about to purchase another when heard of the new soon to be released Hv40..
any advice on which one to purchase?
also heard from many people “oh dont buy the minidv based cams but go for hDD based or memory card based cams, as minidv is now old fashioned and old technology”
but unsure as from my own understanding minidv is still way to go as its lossless no compression and broadcast quality…and high end profesional cams still use minidv eg the Sony HRV-Z1 which is used as a standard by BBC journalists..
Am i wrong in saying this when comparing minidv cams to hdd/memory card cams??
thanks
Nathan. R
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2 Replies
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Well, HDV is a loooong way from lossless… It’s in fact very agressively compressed (that’s why HDV can be recorded to the same miniDV tapes that DV could). And whether or not it’s broadcast quality depends on who you talk to. It’s certainly no golden standard…
I wouldn’t call it old fashioned, though… Just less shiny then the latest and greatest offerings. There was a time when consumer tapeless meant super-compressed, ugly video, but now the higher bitrate flavours of AVCHD (the format used in card and HDD-based cameras) use more advanced, efficient compression than HDV, to deliver higher quality images with less artifacts, and at a lower bitrate. The tradeoff is that you need more processing power to work with the footage.
Codec aside, going tapeless has its own merits (well… card-based tapeless. Exclusively HDD cameras are… not so ideal, for a variety of reasons). Tapeless means no tape dropouts, cards take up less space, faster than realtime capturing, etc…
To get back to your original question… the only really major upgrade the HV40 is offering is native 24P recording capability (as opposed 24P in a 60i wrapper). If you’re planning on using both cameras interchangeably or for multicam work, you’ll probably want to stick to a common framerate/pulldown scheme (ie not native 24P). And if you’re always shooting in some other mode (24PF, 30P, 60i), there won’t be any difference between the HV30 and the HV40 anyways. You could even wait until the HV40 launches and then get an HV30 on clearance.
Hope that helps,
Gord
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Nathan
I currently use a HV30 and I have also used both video cameras using both hard drives and flash media cards. The problem with non-tape cameras is storage of the video footage that you shoot. You will have to transfer all your footage to an external hard drive, so you can re-use the cameras internal HDD or flash media cards. I have my mini-dv’s stored,and have re-edited footage that was shot over 10 yrs ago without lost of quality. Also, I have used HDV mini tapes, the image quality is better then using standard mini DV tapes.
After, using both hard drive and flash media cameras, I’ll stay with the mini HDV tapes, because of easy of use, and cost.
This is just my opinion. You will have to weight the pro’s and con’s of
each, then do it.Russ Andris
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