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First HDTV Camcorder
zymano writes "The JVC GR-HD1 will be introduced in May, it's the world's first consumer camcorder to offer 750 line resolution progressive video at 30 frames per second, recording MPEG2 video to MiniDV tape.
The price will start around $2500-$3500 . Some more info here with pictures. Also check out the pro version. With digital cameras at regular stores with resolution over 5 megapixel it makes you wonder why it took so long to produce."
With digital cameras at regular stores with resolution over 5 megapixel it makes you wonder why it took so long to produce.
The logistics behind capturing, processing, and storing that much data at video rates.
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With digital cameras at regular stores with resolution over 5 megapixel it makes you wonder why it took so long to produce. Speed. With a digital cameria, you have *one* picture containing 5 megapixels, and a little time to process / save it. With video, you need to constantly save those same images one after the other in realtime. Video encoding/compression must be done *very* quickly in realtime.
I'm not Seth.
With digital cameras at regular stores with resolution over 5 megapixel it makes you wonder why it took so long to produce.
Actually, no. It's a different thing to make a camera that can take stills and one that can do continuous video. The size of the CCD is not the issue. The speed of the CCD, the processing power of the underlying electronics, and the storage density with it's associated problems is why this is an engineering challenge.
Even with the resolution of digital exceeding 35mm, digital still has some artifacts that film doesn't.
Digital is now fine for happy snappy sort of photographs, but for anything I want to keep, it's still not good enough to replace 35mm. The other thing is I've still not seen a digital camera which will take my Nikon lenses for anything less than about 6 grand. Add that to the printer you need to get real photo quality (i.e. not inkjet) and it gets really expensive to get 35mm quality in digital.
Doubtless in the next few years we'll see digital cameras which will take interchangable lenses for sane prices - at that point, I'll probably use film for medium format only. But until then, I'll stick with my trusty SLR film camera.
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Excuse me?
Let's do some math... using _your_ 2k as an example (real pros really want 4k [arri wants to make a 4k digital movie camera with lockheed martin for example)
so your image is 2000 wide by 1125 high (assuming a newer, 16x9 format image) - note that this is basically the same res as hd now (1920x1080) - almoust universally agreed on that it is not as good as film (except by that hack Lucas).
So, per frame, with a 24 bit depth you get 6.43 MBytes per frame. Now professionals normally shoot at 24 frames per second, so our of the camer head you've got to move ~154 MB of data per second, again doable, but not to a recording medium located on the camera like tape or a on-cam hard-drive. So we compress it. HDCAM (the current standard) compresses the image 13:1 so down to about 11.8 MB per second - which will easily fit onto tape, but not easily on a portable, camera mounted hard disk.
Motion picture people hate HD for 2 reasons right now: 1 - it has to usually have a f*%$ing cable from the camera to directors monitors (normally with film, we just use a mini NTSC transmitter that goes off the video tap on the film camera, but that's not good enough for HD somehow now)
and more importantly 2 - it won't shoot off-speed.
Slow motion effects require the camera to shoot at many times the regular rate (don't eve start about panasonic's 'hd 60 frame per second offering - it's crap) most pros need a camera that can at least shoot 150 fps.... right now only film will do that (and also in the near future)
doing the math again for 150 frames per second we get about 1GByte per second! now tell me exaclty how you plan on making something that will record even 30 seconds of action at that rate that is even slightly practical in a production environment. (a raid array is _not_ practical in a production environment)
Also, film has a larger colour gamut, equivalent to somewhere near 36 (or some would argue even 48 bit) depth. It has greater latitude than digital (can see into a much more contrasty range, or for the neophytes, the range between how dark something has to be so become black, and how bright something has to be to become white) HD has somewhere around a 5 stop latitude, and some films sit at around 9.5 stops!
Plus, when you buy a $200,000 film camera, it will still work in 20 years, and you'll still be able to get film for it, and your old film will still be usable. in 20 years, your $100,000 HD camera will be garbage, your tape will have oxidised and will now have so many errors on it as to be unusable (film keeps for over 100 years if stored properly) The beauty of film is that virtually all the tech is in the film, and not in the camera. every time Kodak or Fuji make a new film, I get an upgrade, for the cost of the film. Every time Sony makes a new Hd camera, you have to spend $100,000.
Film will be here for awhile, get used to it.
I have used and shot both film and HD, and one day digital WILL kill film, but that day is farther off than the moore's law pundits think it is. HD is NOT film it is pretty video.
Cheers