HD, SD and VD

[Marc Peters]

Mr Mills and I have been discussing the finer points of HD and have come to the conclusion that it would probably be best to wait for HDV to hold a place in the consumers living room before investing in a HD camcorder.

So, what would you do if you needed a new camcorder for filming?

[Mike Thorpe]

I totally agree. Let the technology mature before diving into it. Look at DVDs for example. All the people that thought "great! i'll get a DVD recorder" at first, ended up buying DVD-RAM drives. DVD players only really started to become popular once they got to below £100 (some may argue even lower than that) so until people are able to buy a base level price TV for about £300 (or whatever the equivalent with inflation is ) I wouldn't personally bother doing it for a long, LONG time.

Let the techno-philes with more money than sense beta-test the technology so that the manufacturers can decide where to go with it, then when they've made their minds up, dive straight in

[Marc Peters]

So VD is a no go then?

[Mike Thorpe]

Didn't notice that

No, I'd stay away from anything with VD. If you do have to go for anything with VD, ensure you're fully protected against any consequences which may occur.

:P

[Alan Mills]

My 2p on the HDV thingy....

My reading on this has lead me to believe that I'll wait a couple of years before I worry about producing HDV. I'm hearing the following which is all giving me cause for convcern over the technology...

1) fears that the standard for HDV is not yet carved in stone. I for one would not like to be 'Betamax Man'

2) Current HDV is MPEG2 and from my perspective is not so condusive to editing.

3) It's a while before HDV TV become widespread and popular. It's only now, four or five years down the line that people are aiming at widescreen TV for gawd's sake!!!

4) bearing in mind number 3, above, if you can produce HDV then who is your target audience?

and lastly,

5) wouldn;t you have to lower the res to produce a DVD of your productions, so where's the gain. Unless there's a complete new format for home video viewing just around the corner as well.

All in all, I think I'm eaiting a few years.

Conclusion, it's a Canon XL2 on my pressie list rather than the new Sony!

[LJR]

My 2p on the HDV thingy....

My reading on this has lead me to believe that I'll wait a couple of years before I worry about producing HDV. I'm hearing the following which is all giving me cause for convcern over the technology...

1) fears that the standard for HDV is not yet carved in stone. I for one would not like to be 'Betamax Man'

I believe it is written in stone and has been some time. In fact many stations in the US are already broadcasting HDTV. I think there is a difference between how the US and the rest of the world broadcase HDTV but the format itself has been agreed upon (1080i, 720p, 1080p, etc)

2) Current HDV is MPEG2 and from my perspective is not so condusive to editing.

HDV is HDV, like PAL is PAL, and NTSC is NTSC (the last two being SD formats). Some editing suites will allow you to import HD in uncompressed format (from what I understand LE 6 Pro will permit this), but in any case you can import in DV format in the same way you do with SD formats. Certainly when you come to author it you will likely encode it to MPEG2, but then again if you start out with higher quality video to begin with then you will still end up with higher quality after compression.

3) It's a while before HDV TV become widespread and popular. It's only now, four or five years down the line that people are aiming at widescreen TV for gawd's sake!!!

And this is the single biggest reason I see for not adopting it at this time. You are spot on with this. Even in the US where one could say that HDV has taken off, only around 10% of households have a TV capable of displaying it.

4) bearing in mind number 3, above, if you can produce HDV then who is your target audience?

Yup, agreed.

and lastly,

5) wouldn;t you have to lower the res to produce a DVD of your productions, so where's the gain. Unless there's a complete new format for home video viewing just around the corner as well.

Another good, and important, point. If you want to get an hours worth of HDV onto media, then I believe you will have to wait until these new Blu-ray format DVD's are available (which I believe are not backwards compatible). Even dual layer DVD's will not have enough capacity for an hours worth of HDV (and are presently unreliable with regards set top DVD player compatibility anyway - apparently).

All in all, I think I'm waiting a few years.

Conclusion, it's a Canon XL2 on my pressie list rather than the new Sony!

Ah, the old XL2. I too think this would be the best buy. However, I wouldn't get one yet as I haven't even realistically taxed my present XM2. Also the lens costs put me off slightly. Beautiful camera though.

[cmlegend]

Which AVI format is the best to convert to from a mpeg2 for best editing?

also, is there any software that can edit mpeg2 or I have to invest $$$ in hard drive space?

Thanks

[mrlipring]

The argument of it not being a standard doesn't really matter these days. The vhs/beta thing doesn't correlate. You capture video with your camera, you edit it, you output it to WHATEVER format you like. It's all about the END format. DVD, blu-ray, whatever.

Personally, i'd love a HD camera. We're shooting our current-but-postponed short on film, because dv wouldn't do it justice. The lighting rigs etc, shooting at night, in a graveyard (A FREEZING GRAVEYARD, DAMNIT!) all wouldn't have worked to the best of our ability using DV, and we need it to look as good as we can, because the intention is to whore it around festivals etc.

It'd have been great to sit and look at the day's footage every night, to make a rough cut of what we'd shot every week or so, but that's out of the question with film, unfortunately.

YES, you'd probably have to lower the resolution to put it on dvd, or to show it on pretty much any equipment, but is it not better to start with higher quality than the end-medium? You don't shoot tv shows on DV. You don't record an album straight to cd. Also this way, when you have better playback technology available, you just remaster it, and charge the consumer more money!

If you look at all the new autumn shows that just started in the US (Lost, CSI:NY, veronica mars (?), medical investigation, etc) they're all simulcast in hi-def. The bbc and sky have plans to start broadcasting it within a few years, and there are plenty of plasma screens and RPTVs available that will play it. As it is, my xbox will output hi-def, although its poor wee 733mhz cpu has trouble with video above the bitrates required for the upper resolutions of HD. There are warez groups releasing these tv shows in (a) their original 20mbit/sec hi-def TS, (b) resized but still high-res xvid, and (c) ol' bog standard xvid. The demand for high-def will grow.

Tvs don't last as long as they used to, technology wise and build-quality wise. A lot of people are buying RPTVs, mainly because of the size/cost ratio, but if more sets sold are at least HD-CAPABLE, it'll encourage broadcasters to start sending it out. The bandwidth required for hi-def is 3-4 times that allocated to normal channels (sometimes more!) so they won't do it until it's cost effective. Knowing sky, they'd probably charge extra for it. If i had sky, i'd pay it. The difference isn't quite as astonishing as from VHS to DVD, but if you get the chance to see some HD content, you'll definitely be impressed.

[mrlipring]

Jesus, that was the longest thing i've ever posted here!

[Marc Peters]

Well this ludite has gobe ahead and ordered an SD cam for the time being. I'm just not happy using HD until theres more than one consumer cam on the market (at the mo, I believe it's just the JVC until the Sony comes out in November).

I know the format has been around for some time now (the 'standard' was agreed in September 2003), but Sky doesn't plan to broadcast for another 2 years and the BBC seems further away than that. If we assume consumers will not therefore be aquainted with HDV for at least another year, we still have that amount of time to play catch up. There's not therefore much point in being at the bleeding edge.

And I think Millsy suggested the lack of an agreed standard as the JVC and Sony cams shoot at different frames sizes: the JVC uses 720p whilst the Sony uses 1080i. Both part of the same standard, but already leaves me thinking the goal posts are shifting here.

As it happens, last year's HDV consortium endorsed 720/60p, 720/30p, 720/50p, 720/25p, 1080/60i, and 1080/50i. That's right, no provision for 720/24p or 1080/24p despite the evident popularity of 24p in the MiniDV community (ask Panasonic).
http://forum.canopus.com/showflat.ph...02&Main=214802

So to the end user it seems a mishmash and the only constant the use of MPEG2 for recording onto current DV tapes.

I've made the decision not on the fact that it won't be the next best thing, but based on the fact that until there is still a while to go for it to be popular with the masses. Undoubtedly it's the way forward. I think we all agree on that. It's just the timing of when we switch to the new format. And personally I'd rather wait until the new technology matures and rather be at the end of the product life cycle of one format than the begining of another. And we all know what companies are like releasing beta on our asses these days.

Ulitimately it's a personal choice. But I'd rather the big production companies shoot and perfect before this consumer switches.[/quote]