Slashdot Mirror
Sony's HDV 1080i Consumer Camcorder
An anonymous reader writes "Sony has just announced a high-definition video camcorder that records in 1080i. A site was just created with a lot of information about the camcorder. The camcorder uses the HDV spec which records to standard MiniDV tapes. It includes 3 CCDs and along with the announcement it appears Apple and Adobe are now supporting the HDV standard. The camcorder carries a steep price at $3,700 though. See the original press release as well, though it doesn't contain much information."
It will be competing in the super-high-end consumer market through the professional market. It's similar to the Canon XL1 series, which go for similar prices, with similar characteristics (high end digital video, everything manual, etc.).
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Uhm, one of the defining features of this camera is that it can do 1080i and 780p.
I beleive the JVC GR-HD1US has been avialble for more than a year now, and at a slightly lower price than the Sony. Sony seems to have been spending a lot of (well considered) money on the PlayStation 2&3 platform and ignoring the "consumer electronics" feild for a while now. They just aren't up to snuff compared to Panasonic, JVC, Zenith and the other giants.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
I have a Sony DV camera and it works fine with iMovie.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
My sony mini-dv works fine with my PowerBook. No need for proprietary software or drivers. The only think I had to do was get a cable.
My
RTFA:
"The HDV spec was agreed upon as a standard by Sony, JVC, Canon, and Sharp for new high-definition consumer camcorders last year. Along with the announcement of the new Sony HDV camcorder comes support from major video editing software companies including Apple and Adobe"
Go on the DV boards like 2-pop or creative cow and find me all the people who are unable to use sony's "not recognized and not standard" DV VTR's and cameras. They ARE standard and any editor that can capture DV can get video from them just as easily as from a JVC, Panasonic or Canon. No drivers necessary.
"I forgot my mantra."
IIRC the bandwidth for this cam is 25Mbps, well below 1394's peak of 400..
;)
I suppose it's limited to the speed of the tape reader...
Still, considering how long transitions, wipes, and other effects will take to render even on a 2xCPU G5, importing speeds will be the least of your worries
(BTW, AFAICR the standard digital cinema projection size is 1280x1024.. This cam will beat that, and with post processing the results should look pretty damn good.. Hopefully prosumer 3D modeling pkgs will keep up too!)
I know a lot of sony camera's only work with the proprietary software.. IF you use a USB connection.
However, if you actually go out and buy a 1394 cable, it works in all applications just like any other DV device would.
?SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 42
Final Cut Pro HD has been out for what, five months now? And even before that some form of HD has been supported in Final Cut Pro. I am not familiar with the earlier versions of it, but some of the FCP books I have all discuss editing it.
It is cool to see a 1080i camera out there though. Give it a few weeks and there will be a consumer affordable model.
For now I will stick with my Canon Optura Xi.
"1080 is supposed to be the vertical resolution, with horizontal at 1920. This is less than half the horizontal resolution."
Most likely they offset one CCD by half a pixel, which is a common technique in video cameras to improve resolution with small CCDs. That way they can get a good approximation to the full 1920x1080 luminance signal by mixing the signals from the three CCDs... the chroma signal is probably only being recorded at half resolution anyway, so it's less important.
Actually, given the benefits of progressive scan, I'm surprised there isn't more equipment in 1080p
The basic reason they don't is due to the bandwidth of the amount of information you'd have to transfer is double that of 1080i. And then you have to compress that information. Compressed HDTV runs at 19.8 Mega Bits/second. To do 1080p you would have to run at twice that 39.6 Mbps. This amounts to one full 4.7GB disk every 15 minutes. Not many devices can record that fast, except raid arrays. If you want progressive, use 720p for now.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Actually, if the material contains mostly still or almost still images, 1080i will appear almost as good as 1080p, while 540p will always have just those 540 lines of apparent resolution. Of course any N line progressive format will look better than the equivalent N line interlaced format, but it will also need a lot more bandwidth. It's a tradeoff: An interlaced format will make it possible to squeeze more resolution into the same bandwidth, at the expense of worse quality for fast moving images.
Often when editing DV, you aren't making new frames, you're just cutting and shuffling around the existing ones, so when you export, many of your frames are not recompressed. This is more difficult with MPEG. because it uses interframe compression and you often don't have an entire frame to work from. I'd be willing to bet that when you capture from this camera, it comes into FCP/Premier as HDCAM somehow so that you don't edit in MPEG2.
"I forgot my mantra."
"More likely they're recording to tape at 960x1080"
Not if they intend to stick to the HDV standard: I may be wrong, but from what little is available on the web it appears that the the only recording option at 1080i is 1440x1080 anamorphic.
People often observe that the HDTV standards specify 1080i, 720p, and 480p, but there is actually more to it than this. The ATSC standard specifies these resolutions at 60Hz (where Hz here measures refreshes per second, which is the same thing as frames per second for progressive scan, twice the frame rate for interlacing), but it also specifies lower frame rates. In particular the standard actually specifies 1080 line progressive scan at 30fps (because that has the same bitrate as 1080i at 60Hz) and also at 24fps (because this has the same frame rate as movies and other production on film).
Lots of people in the independent film industry really want 24fps progressive (usually referred to as 24p), because video shot this way can be blown up onto 35mm film and shown in a cinema, and can ideally provide film quality for a much lower cost than actual film (and which can be digitally edited etc etc much more easily than stuff shot on film. They have at times gone out of their way to kludge something similar from consumer DV cameras in the past. Quite a few films have been shot by taking a PAL SDTV camera, getting it to output 576 line 25fps progressive, blowing it up onto film and then running the resulting film at 24fps. The playback speed is slightly slower than the filming speed, but it is close enough not to notice. (Just as an aside, the reverse of this is often done when movies are shown on European TV, which are filmed in 24fps and shown at 50Hz interlaced (ie 25fps) on PAL TV. This sometimes explains why films have slightly different running times on European and American TV, and some actors complain that their voices have a higher pitch when they watch their movies in Europe)
Now this camera does not support either of these 1080 line progressive scan modes, presumably because the CCD sensor in the camera would have to be different to do this. It can apparently film 1080i 60Hz and then fake 30fps or 24fps progressive from that, and I would be very interested to see how good this is. It is undoubtedly much better than the old PAL DV camera at 25fps trick, but how it compares with cameras that film 720 lines in genuine progressive scan remains to be seen. These 720p cameras have apparently been a big hit with film-makers, but a genuine 1080p camera for a few thousand dollars would be something special. It would mean that film-makers could rent a camera for a few hundred dollars that could produce something very close to genuine cinema quality, and they could make movies with it without the costs of film stock. Sony have been making 1080 line 24p cameras for professional use for a few years now ("Star Wars Episode 2", the "Spy Kids" movies, and no doubt a few others have been shot with them). This would change the independent film world, as the absolute minimum amount of money required to produce a feature film with decent picture quality would be reduced from a few tens of thousands of dollars to close to nothing.
Here is the real reason for the 1080i/720p split:
Sony HDCAM: 1080i
Panasonic D5: 720p
Half of broadcasters went one way, half went the other. Keep in mind the existing business relationships at networks and stations.
But 1080i really does seem to provide a higher-resolution experience (when watched on a real 1080 monitor...) HDNET went 1080i, and most PBS content is 1080i. But I will admit it is really a religious issue.
I've never heard about the duopoly issue with DTV channel assignments. It is my impression that every analog broadcast channel is entitled to a DTV channel as well during the transition. Do you have a reference on this?
I can assure you that MPEG-2 is the ONLY codec that is broadcast-ready. Certainly when ATSC specs were defined, they weren't even thoughts.
I've seen the best H.264 and Windows Media live encoders on the planet, and they can barely get the same quality at the same bitrate as the best mid-level MPEG-2 live encoders.
Keep in mind that MPEG-2 encoders have had years to get better. People keep coming up with ways to cut bits, you now have live 2-pass encoders, pre-filtering, etc. MPEG-2 live encoding quality has improved 100% in the last five years in terms of equivalent bitrate quality.
I expect 2-3 years before the live H.264/WMT encoders can catch up with live MPEG-2 encoders.