HDV zoomed in with DV

Here is a interesting demo.

I placed a HDV clip on a 16.9 DV timline.

Zoomed in the HDV as it's so much more res than DV.

This then enables more cuts when editing.

Looks great and all in real time

Have a look 1 meg wmv

That is the strongest argument for going HDV, I have yet seen B)

1lux - Sony Z2 - when.......... WHEN ?????

So I'm now shooting, capturing and editing in HD. Actually capturing and editing HDV in Apple Intermediate Code. However the DVD's I burn are still in SD. I've burned HD DVD onto standard disks, but can only play on my Apple Quad - I don't own a HD DVD or Blue Ray player to playback on the living room flat screen yet - that is the 'next phase'.

Thing is having the HD material and then burning SD DVDs means that you have a LOT more flexibility zooming and cropping as Wags suggests. I've found that many a longer shot - eg videoing a shark a little way off with a wide angle lens when actually a mid rage lens would have been better, still results in very acceptable SD material when zoomed in post. A good 'trick' to be aware of.

Meanwile, for the 'next phase' Heather and I were looking at the Sony X series 46" and 52" Full HD LCD TVs today. 1080p - sweet picture. Now - decisions - to get an HD DVD Burner, or Blu Ray? Gawd, will this dollar black hole ever stop .....

So I'm now shooting, capturing and editing in HD. Actually capturing and editing HDV in Apple Intermediate Code. However the DVD's I burn are still in SD. I've burned HD DVD onto standard disks, but can only play on my Apple Quad - I don't own a HD DVD or Blue Ray player to playback on the living room flat screen yet - that is the 'next phase'.

FWIW Discs from DVD SP do not play well yet with HD DVD Players, depending on the firmware and versions of the players, results are all over the place. A couple of PC authoring packages have some capabilities for HD and blu-ray, but even then the results are mixed. For the short term a DVI-HDMI cable from my MacBook Pro does look good though But probably worthwhile holding off on players a bit longer, they will start to drop. Also the HD/blu-ray debate who is going to win rages on, and it may be the combo players that win out.

Meanwile, for the 'next phase' Heather and I were looking at the Sony X series 46" and 52" Full HD LCD TVs today. 1080p - sweet picture. Now - decisions - to get an HD DVD Burner, or Blu Ray? Gawd, will this dollar black hole ever stop .....

I want the toys now also, but holding off a bit more. Of course this does not apply to a 46"/52" 1080P Television

A 52 inch screen...Nick you must be making too much money over there.

Here is a link to a guy that made us a Blue Ray DVD. Still have yet to find something to play it on .

BLUE RAY

Players

Here is a link to a guy that made us a Blue Ray DVD. Still have yet to find something to play it on .

Still a crap shoot as to what software which will make discs which will play on what player, at least with software that is in the realm of reality cost wise.

And even on the high end systems alot of work is still being done to see if they can figure it all out.

As in the early days of DVD Players (and even now), seems the players and software have their own version of complying with the spec.

Does make it exciting though

Normal DVD specifications were written in Japan and the translation itself sometimes introduces interesting story twists so as companies make their DVD software they may interpret particular pages in the book differently

Same with media, two different brands of disks burnt the exact same way and one does not play in a player

So it may be the for HD DVD and Blue Ray this time around again, but at the moment it's way to $$$.

Nick, I was also waiting for "full HD" TVs to come along and this week those Sony's have arrived here in Patong in the new Jungceylon shopping mall. But 170,000 baht for the larger one. That's over 5000 USD!

In Singapore (Best Denki - and you can do a little better but not a great deal better) the Sony X series 40" is Sing$ 6,299 (US$ 4,113), and the 46" is Sing$ 7,999 (US$ 5,224), we didn't write down the 52" price, so I guess Heather decided we wouldn't be getting that one So NickH, if by 'the larger one' you mean 52" and not 46" then you should go and buy it now in Patong!

I think the full HD TV's tech specs are pretty stable now so one can buy if you have the dough, though l'll probably wait another 6 months as prices are coming down all the time. [Re specs Sony and Samsung are pretty much at the top of the range IMHO. They both have lots of colours (3.2 billion) so none of the 'banding' I now get on my older plasma (which has a mere 16.7 million) on 'in the blue' u/w shots. I know banding is caused by video file compression rates and other things but I've found colour range is incredibly important]

Agree that HD DVD burning and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players is still a work in progress, so Wag's zoom trick for SD DVD still works for me meanwhile!

Why do you downconvert on the timeline when the camera does a better and faster job of it?

The Nicks... what's a few inches here and there?

I am curious about the amount you can zoom in with the HD and still have something like a high quality SD picture. I'm interested in filming wildlife, birds in particular, and so the zoom is critical. If you shoot HD at 15x zoom power, then zoom into the resulting footage, what would be your maximum real SD zoom power? E.g. would it be something like 12x optical X 1.5x zoom-into-frame = 18x zoom power for production of SD footage?

Another advantage I see of this approach is that if you are trying to film fast action, underwater or above, the ability to zoom in means you have a better chance of keeping your fast moving subjects in the field of view.

I'm sure there is a mathematical way of determining how much you can zoom into an HDV resolution frame to still get full SD resolution, but I think 1.5x would be as much as I'd like to take it, maybe 2x on a killer shot. On 1.5x from HD you already start to see some graininess in SD in my experience - tho that could be a gain issue in my original rather than resolution.

There are some things to consider when zooming your captured footage, EVEN when captured in HDV and the output is SD DVD.

First, most of us will be shooting with Z1/FX1 or A1 or similar. I'll refer the FX1/Z1 for the moment. Each 1/3 CCD has a pixel count of 972 horizontal by 1100 vertical. That's a far cry from 1920x1080. B/c each CCD is offset by 1/2 element, you get a 1.5 multiplier on the horizontal pixels yeilding 1440 pixels at best. Depending on colors, patterns and motion, the number can be far less. (we have all see this when shooting busy scenes with fast motion). From what i have read, the expected multiplier is closer to 1.1...yeilding a horizontal resolution of about 1070.

The verical resolution must combat all the challenges of interlacing and how the camera manages that. The short of it is that when the 540 upper rows are combined with the 540 lower, the low pass filter in the cam reduces the effective resolution by 1/3rd....to 358 individual or 716 paird.

So lets say we have a 1070x716 effective resolution in the FX1/Z1 cam.

NTSC is 720x480: HDV would be about 1.5x on both horizontal and vertical

PAL is 720x576: HDV would be 1.5x on horizontal but only 1.25x on vertical

My interpretation would then be that in excellent conditions (clear water, well lit subject) you could zoom 1.5x and still "optimally fill" the NTSC standard with crisp material. For PAL you would look at 1.25x zoom at max. If conditions are not ideal, I would zoom much less.

It really comes down to what your objective is. Are you mixing HDV and DV footage? If so..zoom away as you DV footage effective measured resolution will be something like 300x200 at best...say 1/3 to 1/4 your HDV footage. If you are trying to make the best possible SD DVD with all HDV footage, i would keep my zoom under 1.5x for NTSC and 1.25x for PAL.

One final thing I remind myself off. Before when i was shooting DV, i wasn't even close to achieving the full NTSC/PAL optimal standard. As I just mentioned, even the best DV cams were only really producing effective resolutions in the low 300's of horizontal lines (1/2 the SD standard). So, my best stuff was only halfway there! Now, with HDV i can completely fill up those SD pixel slots and achive true 720x480/576!

For me, that is the number one reason to go HD right way in the SD world.

....what he said.

I think Shawn's last point is actually an excellent one. Not many people tell you 'move to HDV so you can make great SD DVDs!' but that is actually the case for most of us at the moment I think. Even if you never intend to burn an HD or Blu-Ray disk I'd think that the quality of the SD DVDs you'll burn would be reason enough to upgrade to HDV today.

Shawn and Nick; Thanks for the informative replies! IMHO, a 1.25x to 1.5x "digital" zoom that still provides high quality SD is yet another reason to go to an HD camera.

Thanks for the great explanation Shawn. I've done a couple of zooms in post on subjects that were too small in the frame and I just used a PAL 720x576 frame inside the 1920(1440) x 1080 HDV material. I figured that way there would be no resampling so the quality should be good. Now I know why it didn't look great. Looked OK though.

As for SD footage from an HDV camera being superior, I still kinda prefer the "look" of my VX2000 footage over my downsampled Z1 footage. It's difficult to pin down why but the colours seem fresher/purer.

Sure thing Nick. Regarding the "look" of your DV footage, b/c HDV is 4:2:0 and MPEG2 ecoded, you can observe color loss in the footage. What is certain is the HDV footage will be sharper/crisper than the VX2000 by a good deal...as explained above.

Depending on what TV you view that SD DVD on, you will see more or less difference between the HDV and the SD raw footage. I watch all my SD DVDs on a large HD Set. The SD encoded stuff (even really good stuff), isn't even close to the visual quality.

Here is a pic of DV inside a HDV grab.

Yes it all depends on how clear the clip is to how far you can go in, but not only can you zoom in you can move the frame around abit.

With the NLE I'm using you get a very good idea as to how far you can go as the preview window (FULL SCREEN LCD) is displaying the raw full res.

My tests on DVD's from down converted in the camera to edit to DVD is not as good as edit HDV to DVD.

Wags great stuff. Also consider how 'busy' the scene is, how much color variation and how much movement. These all greatly impact you ability to zoom hdv.

Also agree that full screen preview should give you a good idea.

Nice Stuff!

Meanwile, for the 'next phase' Heather and I were looking at the Sony X series 46" and 52" Full HD LCD TVs today. 1080p - sweet picture. Now - decisions - to get an HD DVD Burner, or Blu Ray? Gawd, will this dollar black hole ever stop .....

While HD DVD and Blu-ray duke it out, there's at least one interim option that works pretty well: Get a Sony PlayStation 3 and don't invest any dough in a burner or media that may soon become obsolete. You can plop files (like m2t's) on the PS3's hardrive, a flash card, a regular DVD, etc. and watch them in all their hi-def glory on your favorite TV. If HD DVD ends up winning, the PS3 can be used for <gasp> playing games (for the kids, of course).

Some details on playing hi-def content on PS3's can be found here.