[Harryd]

That’s a good observation. I’ve seen some weird things from My HVX when shooting DVCPro HD that I attrubute to the chips (Jan: I still love the camera, so don’t have a conniption. 🙂 ). I used a Sony PDX-10 with three 1Mpx native widescreen chips that was only DV but looked killer.

Also, I wonder what happens to the image once it hits the satellites for distribution, and then once the cable providers squish it down to whatever bandwidth they want. Comcast hits it pretty hard sometimes. Maybe Discovery just wants to sart with as much info as possible to get the cleanest image. After all, the cable companies can screw up the signal, but it would be Discovery who got the blame.

hd

HarryD

[Harryd]

Oh, so now I’m an old curmudgeon! 🙂

Yep, this is probably true. And I do really like black and white. Still, how much do we need to see *every* blemish on someone’s face with vivid detail? I was just looking at something shot in HD on cable. I swear I could see the detail on the speaker’s tongue. So how many soft focus filters are we going to use to tone down the actress’s unexpected pimple, or turn down the detail/sharpness levels because the actor drank too much the night before, on HD equipment to diminish the sharpness? Is Tiffen going to replace the ProMist with a special “de-HD Mist” filter for this? Seems nutty to me. So here is More’s law in play: If more’s good, then too much is just right.

Sorry, I’m not swimming upstream here; HD is a good thing from a video vs film standpoint, probably from a film-out standpoint, too. But from a Television perspective I just don’t think it was all that necessary except to the manufacturers of HD equipment and their stockholders. I know the broadcasters were moaning for a long while. But heaven knows, HD sure is good eye candy.

And it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the 4K stuff arrives and we chuck all the HD gear out the window.

But for now, I’ve got my HVX200 and am riding the wave…

HarryD

[Harryd]

Oh, sorry, I meant to say, the big reason for all this is that I have a Quicksilver 2002 dual-proc G4, which just chokes on HD. I’ll be upgrading to a new Mac later this year, I’m waiting to see what Apple offers in the intel-o-mac towers.

thanks again,

[Harryd]

Actually, that’s what I’m doing – using DVCPRO 50 Anamorphic. I like it. My system likes it. But I’m interested in HD for 2 reasons: First, I like to acquire in the best format I can for future use, which means acquiring in HD. Second, the P2 cards allow more storage (an extra 2 minutes on a 4GB card) for HD 720p24pn.

thanks,

[Harryd]

I have a friend with a display case full of Emmies and one Oscar. We talked about this situation with cable requirments years ago, concerning DV footage and submissions to cable. At the time, he said he just dubs it off to 1″ or Beta SP and that was that. They accepted all of his work, which was mixed format – Beta SP and DV. But he is a very good shooter.

From what I’ve seen, with a little care in post to be sure the “look” matches, we’re talking about the differences in acquisition formats, which aren’t sent to the cable networks. I’ve seen some smoking – good HDV, which to my eye held up quite well in the HD realm. Mixing HD (any format) and SDDV is another matter, entirely.

Still, I’ve seen lots of things on PBS over-the-air HDTV that is clearly mixed format – the uprezzed SD can be seen a mile away. It’ll be interesting to see how the bazillion minutes of SD that we have now will be archived and presented.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of HD. Digital SD done right with a good display is really good looking. The displays that exist now for HD all have problems – just like SD. (I really can’t stand the windowscreen effect on flat-panel displays.) Does HD look better? Yes. But frankly I think it reveals so much detail in many actor’s faces that it’s distracting. I hate seeing the makeup and such – which can even be seen on old films transferred to SD-DVD. Messes with my suspension of disbelief. And I guess I want to think that the actresses are as good looking as they also think they are.

But that’s just me. I don’t mean to stir things up. YMMV.

[Harryd]

I figured as much. Thanks for trying this. at least one of us has cojones to try new things!

Just like the time 10 years ago that I paid $750 for 16MB of RAM (and thought I was getting a good deal), I just can’t help but think that one day we’ll all look back on P2 cards costing $500 – $1300 and say, “what were we thinking!!”

[Harryd]

is this what you mean?

https://www.pstechnik.de/en/digitalfilm-mini35.php

[Harryd]

I’ve wondered if a PCMCIA media reader with a flash memory card can be used. I’m too chicken to try it out on my own camera, but there are some pretty fast memory cards out the – 150X, etc.

[Harryd]

Hi,

I have just gotten an HVX200, and am also testing with 720 24pn for the same reasons stated above. I am editing with FCP 5.0.4 on a dual 1 GHz G4 Quicksilver 2002.

My results with this format are less than spectacular. For example, there are a considerable number of hard-edge artifacts on high-contrast areas that are slightly off-horizontal when doing hand-held – the usual thing one sees in DV footage, but actually it the worst with this camera that I’ve ever seen. I’m wondering about 2 things and need help:

1. is this something that just has to be accepted, as an example of what Adam Wilt referred to as “coarseness” in the chips?

2. if the image as i describe should be smooth and not so noticeable, what am I doing wrong? ingest from P2 to FCP is fine, using the easy setup seems fine, with the exception of the output.

DVDs made with this footage in iDVD also have this coarse look to the image. it’s really quite concerning.

Because I am using a Quicksilver 2002 with dual 1GHz g4 procs, I can’t get realtime playback out the firewire (and the single-frame that does appear look like crap on my HD TV). If anyone cares to comment about ways to get that function, feel free to comment!

I have other questions, but these will do for now – the footage output is the main thing about which I’m worried. I probably need a new editing workflow, and I’ve seen some on the internet, but none seem to help.

please help, as I have a shoot in a week and a half and need to develop a plan B if this HD footage is going to look this bad.

thanks,

hd

ps: Jan: if you should see this, Hello! yes, I am the Harry from Baltimore that you know.