HD/HDV to Film

Hi I Have an HD/HDV to film transfer question.


I am working on a project that is being shot mostly in film not sure if its 16mm or 35mm.
But the water action parts of the movie will be shot in video there are boat races going on in the movie and so on.

Right now the producer owns a JVC 100 and is looking to purchase the JVC 200 which i belive is due out soon.
He is sold on using the JVC cameras for the water shots.

My problem is I want to help him understand why is it important to stay away from the JVC HDV cameras and go ahead and rent a true HD camera for the water stunts.

I am hopeing one of you can help me put this into better terms then what i am comming up with which is HDV is highly compressed the GOPs are i believe 6 frames apart and over all when the true HD footage is transfered to film you well get a much better result then you would with HDV.

Any help any suggestions
would be great thank you

HDV SUCKS for anything with a lot of action in it. Oh...things like watersports, for example. Ask your "Producer" to do a test and see the results. Would be a shame to get back to the post house and see footage that was totally unusable.

there is a cat who posts here from time to time (ryan someone?) he had some awesome looking sony Z1 HDV surfing footage posted when the camera was new to the market.

the "in the water" bits looked really nice, but i saw the typical motion judders on the land stuff.
i wonder if the problems get lost in the water since the water is moving randomly in the first place.

to retierate KM's point above luie, HDV sucks ass for anything of high motion. i have seen people get good results from it. but mst of that was from a locked down tripod.

personally, i wouldnt use it EVER. and if i had to work on a project already shot on HDV, id tell them - hey, ill edit - but i wont stand behind the media quality.

im not sure specifically what makes HDV so "motionly" useless, whether its the longGOP or the fact that it writes to mpeg from the get go. but i simply have NEVER seen, HDV with high motion EVER look good.

Avoid HDV

Especially for high motion high detail

If you want to describe the sort of compression artifacts you will most likely see on HDV if you use it:

Think of a bad cable or digital broadcast or DVD encoded at a lower rate than is needed.

You will often see the image is made up of macroblocks - almost like looking at your footage through a semi-transparent chequered/mosaic filter.

The macroblocks, although small and almost inperceptable on an SD screen, once displayed on an HD monitor or projector are evident to anyone with good eyesight. They are part of the MPEG compression algorithm and are made more obvious with complex footage.

In summary...

Avoid HDV (unless you have no other choice)

Apart from the detail and compression problems you also have a reduced colour resolution and if you want to heavily grade the image you will be limited in your manipulation options.

Look at getting a DVCproHD or HDCAM camera with a good waterproof housing.

Ben



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Thank you everybody, much appreciated.

You are very welcome

Come back and let us know the outcome and how you get on with the shoot!

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]