quality of tape recording with ag-hvx200

[Steve Eisen]

MiniDV (DV 25) only using tape. No conversion necessary to use in FCP, all formats.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Lawrence Marshall]

I just finished two shoots recording to mini-DV tape, both run and gun, both using available light. The first shoot was at a boat show, and I took my new camera there to run it for the first time in a variety of formats: 4×3 480i 60, 4×3 480i 30p, letterboxed 16:9 30p, anamorphic 16:9, video matrix, Cinematrix, CineD, CineV, etc. etc. This was strictly goofing off, not shooting for a client. I put a wireless mic on my friend as we walked around and he “narrated” the boats we were interested in. I must say I was quite surprised when I got back and looked at the footage. I played it on my Panasonic AJ-SD93 deck (a DVC Pro 50 deck), and went component out of the deck to my 20″ Sony PVM 20L5/1, a very high-resolution CRT monitor. I thought the picture looked better than it had a right to… available light, iris opened either at 2.8 or wide open, and I thought the picture looked absoutely gorgeous, especially when I went into anamorphic 16:9 and used the different Cine settings. There were plenty of moments where the footage was quite dark… I parked the tape deck on those and manually cranked the brightness of the monitor as high as I could to wash it out… didn’t see *any* of the noise issues many have been complaining about. The audio was stunningly clean. My wife Karen saw some of the anamorphic 16:9 footage I shot at 30p and remarked “it kinda looks like film, doesn’t it?”

Yesterday I did a shoot for a client, again run and gun, again using only available light. This was at a convention center… all lighting in the meeting rooms were overhead fluorescent. I white-balance everywhere I went, iris floated anywhere between wide open and 4. Everything shot at 4:3, 480i 60. Again used a wireless mic on one channel, a short shotgun on the other. Again I was surprised at footage that looked better than it had a right to. At one point I discovered I had accidentally bumped the gain to +6, and immediately thought “here comes the noise everyone’s been talking about”. When I got back and saw the footage, I was surprised to see how well the camera handled the bump in gain. Yes, there was a tiny bit of noise, but nothing at all objectionable and *nothing* none of us haven’t seen with other cameras. In fact, based on just that one instance of accidentally bumping the gain, I feel I would have no hesitancy to bump it again if I needed to in a future situation.

This does confirm, however, that the HVX wants light. When I discovered the “error” of accidentally bumping the gain switch, I immediately set it back to 0db. When I saw the 0db footage played back (same room, same participants), I wished I had left it alone and kept the gain on… the picture looked much better with the gain on and looked too dark and muddy with the 0db setting. It seems to me that, in this particular room I shot in, any other camera would have done a better job at 0db, but we have all already heard that this camera performs 1-2 stops slower in interlaced mode than comparable 1/3 chip cameras.

One final note on the never-ending “video noise” issue: on the above footage, and also on other tests where I fed component out of the camera to both a component-in Sony LCD 16:9 monitor and my Sony PVM-20L5/1 CRT monitor (trying all formats: 1080i, 720p, B-press, Cine D, etc. etc.), I would often see the “swimming macroblock” noise on the LCD panel, but *never* (repeat, NEVER) saw this noise on the Sony CRT. I’m not a scientist nor an engineer, and don’t understand why, but I do all my monitoring on the Sony CRT (again, a very high-resoution, multiscan monitor), and I am not seeing the kinds of things others have been reporting.

Larry Marshall

[Ben The camera guy]

thank you, your advice has been very helpful…