HD For Indies

Was gonna post this on the cow.... but as blades... threads fo grass are dying on the other sites I thought I'd pick another pasture....

The Cow is a great place to graze, but sometimes the grass seems greener on other forums... um pastures. I know some of us stray to those fields from time to time... and I'm pretty sure I've seen some of them chewing the cud.... and well, it seems like a funny thing is going on over there.... They had a shootout.... the bodies are not even all cold or accounted for and its getting messier by the minute.

JVC, Canon, Sony and Panny... were all there (the last 2 even brought their big brothers). Now we all know that our favorite tool is waaaaaaaay better than the others: "My P is better than yours!" "In your 'i' Onethousandeighty times" .... your pan, my swish, my glass, your a$$. Et tu P2! Strange no one agreed on anything..... but wait... can it be JVC!!!!

Is anyone surprised that after all is said and done... and the test IS NOT DONE.... there is no consensus? And funnier (sadder) still is that its getting personal!

Seems like one of the regular info-maniacs got put out to pasture, and is seeking refuge at an old user... some of the users used to be cows...

The point has been made, but bears hearing again... THEY ALL WILL WORK. Some are better at some things, others at other things, some cost more... some less.

99% of the people who see what you shot could care less, HDV, HDX, SDI, 720P - have you seen what is on TV? Have you been at a bar and seen a 4:3 picture forced on to 16:9 screen with the stolen coax-cable splitter patched through a 7 year old VHS, with RCA cables sheathed in magnetized miniature X-Ray machine interference hell.... only to have the person next to you say....

"Wow! can you believe how good these new TVs look?"

-Harry
 

Harry, thank god our viewers are not the same experts these forum junkies profess to be. The only thing that I agree with in that whole article is that all the HDV camera's "kick the snot" out of the SD camera's, and that they each have the qualifying HD look.

I knew this in SD land, that uneducated viewers can only look, and judge on that basis alone. Which is why I bought my canon XL1s with it's oversharpening because it's image 'looked' better than beta SP. That my cost/fees were way under the competition in direct reflection to a nano-sized overhead.

It's not pixels folks, it just having a wide-screen that makes average Joe take notice. Eventually, pixels will matter, but that won't happen before the warranty on any of these camera's expire. By that time, the bar will be raised yet again... faster computers, higher resolutions... it never ends.

Bottom line, I agree with you non-technical approach, that if you like what you see, then that's what you should get.
 

well, here's what i'm most interested in:

i have a couple (now a few, come to think of it) of Sony HDV cameras, and I am VERY interested to hear what the difference between the HDI captured analog footage looks like when compared to the the HDV footage on tape. I have yet to hear definitively where in the capture chain the analog component out from those cameras falls - is it before compression or not? because when I have viewed it on a 42" screen, it looks like it's pre-compression. This has a lot of implications:

1) If it is pre-compression, then of course that means capturing out of there would be the best resolution one can have from the cameras

2) Monitoring off the component out is NOT a perfect way to know what you're getting from the camera. You could tell focus, which is important, but if there is ANY grain in the image, you have to assume it will be WORSE on tape.

I think, by the way, that it is pre-compression, because in my experience (on a 480i HD Sony CRT preview monitor) the image is clearer there than what ended up on tape.

But I could be wrong.

So I wanna know!

;)
 

analog out is pre-compression on all 4 cameras from what i have read. obviously all but the canon will hve a slight loss due to D/A conversion.

++ chris