[Will Salley]

Yes, just as in any lens system, as the iris is opened up (made larger), the depth-of-focus is reduced. This gives the subject a sharp focus while putting foreground and background objects out of focus…a more pleasing image to most people except maybe camera engineers. Using a more telephoto side of the lens exaggerates the effect and using a neutral density filter restricts light so that the iris can be used at a bigger f stop. It’s just one part of the look of film cameras that most people find pleasing.

As for the keying comment – If you have a capture system that will allow for HD uncompressed (no codec, raw video) capture, it is best to use that for any bluescreen keying or special graphics work. Although the original HDV footage is highly compressed as mentioned, it is a different type of compression (MPEG-2) that relies heavily on the frames preceding the frame being compressed. It consists of a group of pictures (GOP) that get the color and luminance ques from the first frame in that group. This makes for excellent reproduction but horrible editing. If the codec was used to edit, only cuts would be allowed at the first frame of GOPs and that would be very restrictive. So when the video is uncompressed, the system actually has to work LESS because it’s not decoding a codec and it’s using the best possible image quality. Hardware (Decklink, AJA, Avid, etc) is the only way to edit uncompressed – or at least, get it into and out of the system.

System A Info G5/Dual 2 – 10.3.6 – QT v6.5.2 – 4GB ram – Radeon 9800Pro – Lacie FW800 L1 RAID via Lacie PCI card and internal – Decklink Extreme – Wacom 6×8 System B is identical except: 2GB ram – Decklink SP – Radeon 9600 – Pro Tools

[Will Salley]

I’ve had the Sony Z1 HDV for about two months. I got lucky and managed to pay for it on only two jobs (considering the difference in rate for DVCAM and what we charged for an HDV delivered final product). It is a different animal, but I predict it will become an ENG friendly format in the coming years. For more film-style productions, it still has some usefulness. As mentioned, the Z1 has only a 1/3″ chipset. This makes it difficult to get a pleasing “selected focus” image. I try to shoot as wide on the lens as possible and keep the ND filters in use when the existing light can’t be manipulated. This is true for the standard def cameras as well as HDV, so it’s not really an HDV issue but it is revealed more as resolution is increased. I also believe that we are conditioned to expect a shallower depth-of-field with the widesreen ratio. As for the codec, It is amazing most of the time, but can quickly fall apart when fast motion or very busy images are shot (like sunlight reflecting on waves). Any scene that has extremely short, fast or random visual events seem to choke the GOP-based MPEG2 codec. However, with the right light, some careful filtering and smooth camera movement, you could create some very convincing footage.

Editing is still the achille’s heel for now, but we’ll see how FCP 5 delivers on this. I’m using Lumiere for now and can’t wait to stop using it.

A few opinions on the HDV codec and the Z1 specifically:

– The color accuracy is much better than with DV. I have successfully done green-screen with good results. The tip is to capture uncompressed for any keying work.
– Sound quality is excellent (at least on the Z1).
– No dropouts yet. I still use the blue DVCAM (SONY PDVM-40N) cassettes for HDV.
– audio, video and timecode seem to stay in sync better than DV (similar to DVCAM)
– Since the codec works in a completely different way than the DV codec, the artifacting we all hate has been greatly reduced with HDV, but at the expense of increased potential of motion artifacts.

System A Info G5/Dual 2 – 10.3.6 – QT v6.5.2 – 4GB ram – Radeon 9800Pro – Lacie FW800 L1 RAID via Lacie PCI card and internal – Decklink Extreme – Wacom 6×8 System B is identical except: 2GB ram – Decklink SP – Radeon 9600 – Pro Tools

[Will Salley]

“HDV is not a usable format for professional postproduction” – Huh?

Tell that to my recent client who was happy, no… thrilled, to pay $24k for an HDV shoot / edit that would have cost her only around $18k in DVCAM or BetaSP. The Z1 was exactly what it was billed to be…and the HDV codec held up quite well under heavy AE usage. Didn’t do any green-screen- yet, but I’m willing to give that a try next. Hey, I even use the berated Cineframe 30 setting when appropriate.

Like any format, film or video, if you light it right and choose the right settings, it can be useful as professional format. I think that is more true with HDV than with DV.

System A Info G5/Dual 2 – 10.3.6 – QT v6.5.2 – 4GB ram – Radeon 9800Pro – Lacie FW800 L1 RAID via Lacie PCI card and internal – Decklink Extreme – Wacom 6×8 System B is identical except: 2GB ram – Decklink SP – Radeon 9600 – Pro Tools

[Will Salley]

Make sure “Anamoprhic 16×9” is checked on in the sequence settings. Your setting of “squeezed” is the correct one.

System A Info G5/Dual 2 – 10.3.6 – QT v6.5.2 – 4GB ram – Radeon 9800Pro – Lacie FW800 L1 RAID via Lacie PCI card and internal – Decklink Extreme – Wacom 6×8 System B is identical except: 2GB ram – Decklink SP – Radeon 9600 – Pro Tools