Sony Announces HDV Camcorders at CeBit

[mr. sparkle]

Hi Guys,

Looks like HDV is a reality in the sony camp. HDV is po' man's HDTV. JVC put out a broke ass version of the camcorder last year, but now that sony's engineers have copied and improved the design, it's going to be a standard.

It'll be a 3 CCD camera and under $5000 U.S. Will it show up in the Sony booth at NAB in Vegas next month? Hmmm....

This is a big deal though. HDTV in the hands of consumers is pretty wild. I didn't expect this to happen for at least a few more years.

"This is the biggest news in the camcorder industry since MiniDV came out. No one will question Sony's dominance in the camcorder industry, and their announcement of a 3 CCD HD camcorder for the prosumer market will certainly shift industry dynamics. If this camcorder performs like Sony's past models, it will certainly be a hit seller."

Coming soon - Rob Pongi in HDTV!

Check it out:


The New Sony HDV model - Suuu-wEET!!!

Rosemary Flynn, spokeswoman for Sony Consumer Camcorders responded to questions about the European announcement and the possibility of a US introduction saying "Sony U.S. has no information with regards to the introduction of an HDV camcorder into the US,".

Yeah, right....

[mr. sparkle]

[Frost]

nice!!! Hey Mr. Sparkle, can i borrow $5000...please!!!!!!!

[mr. sparkle]

nice!!! Hey Mr. Sparkle, can i borrow $5000...please!!!!!!!

i know! it's a lot of bread but just think. last year, any camera doing HD would cost ya $80,000. One gig with that little cam and you'll make your money back. You should anyway.

Anyhoo, $5 G's be peanuts! Especially when you can consider the pongi in Hi Def and in 16:9 widescreen woulda cost a house payment for the cam alone, until now.

Now it's the cost of a good used italian bike.

freakin' suuweET!

[GuyJean]

the camcorder will likely sell for around $3,300 - $3,500 once it hits the streets.

Whoa! That's about the same as a PD170!..

GJ

[GuyJean]

Yeah, it's crazy...

Amazing.. I've also been looking at Apple's Production Suite:

Final Cut Pro HD + Motion + DVD Studio Pro + iMac G5 20" + Sony High Definition 1080i HDR-FX1 =

(+/- 7,000 USD)

GJ

[mr. sparkle]

Hi Guys,
Although it is great news, the format (HDV) is considered a poor man's HD. In other words, it is a highly compressed version of HD. It is also MPEG 2, so to use it right now with any video app, you have to use a program like Lumiere HD to de-mux it.

That being said, I've seen picture from a 1 chip JVC HDV cam and it looked stunning.

Might be a great bang for the buck. :P

[mr. sparkle]

You're right, but as I'm sure you know, all HD broadcast streams are compressed MPEG-2.

Ultimately and for delivery, but MPEG 2 is very poor as an aquisition format. Lossy compression and lays down GOPS (groups of frames) rather than single video frames.

Unfortunately, MPEG-2 is a poor choice for editing.

Because you have to de-multiplex (De-Mux) the GOPS back into frames. I think that HDV is a stupid format for just this reason!

Supposedly, native HDV editing support is on the horizon for some packages, but it's still not an ideal solution.

It's a shitty paradigm.

It's too bad there isn't a prosumer HDV-type codec based on Panasonic's DVCPro HD codec or Sony's HDCAM.

Yes, you've got the right idea. But SKIP the GOPS and simply use the existing DVCPro HD codecs but in new cameras. Panasonic has been kicking Sony's ass lately and to completely blow off HDV would be so fuckin' cool and show that they (and Apple) have cojones of steel. Fuck Sony!

No need to develop a new codec because DVCPro HD is already compressed, and much less so than HDV, but it is a frame by frame codec. Higher quality, and no muss no fuss - a winning combo.

The real problem lies in Panasonic's SDX-900, which sells for $25,000. It is a killer camera but shoots DVCPro 50. What needs to happen is that Panasonic makes a DVCPro HD version of the SDX-500 with big ass chips and good glass at that price point (but variable speed should remain with the Panny Varicam). It should re-tool the DVX-100A 24P camera to handle DVCPro HD at $10 G's and DVCPro 50 at around $3500-$5000. Both cams should have smaller chips and inferior glass to the HD bound replacement for the SDX-500.

Of course, if Sony's rep is saying consumer HD cams won't be mainstream for another 5 years, I guess they have some time to work on a new codec.

What a cautious thing to say. Panny should well be on the path that I just described within 2-3 years. If they are smart, that is.

Also, as pointed out in one of the links, Sony's 960x1080 resolution means the image is interpolated up to 1440x1080.

Hopefully, their scaling algorithm is up to snuff....

HDV still beats the pants off of DV though. Here's an HDV clip (that was further re-compressed with Windows Media 9):

ftp://dude:Sweetn3ss@md-ftp.sonypictures.com/

Too bad my Mac won't play WM9.

It's definitely a larger frame, that's for sure. I just think that Panasonic and Apple are in a strong position to just blow off HDV altogether. Their DVCPro HD cam would blow doors on any HDV cam with lower compression and an easier migration to iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro.

We should know about which way Apple/Panasonic will go very soon - but they definitely have more options with the codec that they've already developed.

[Charles]

We should know about which way Apple/Panasonic will go very soon - but they definitely have more options with the codec that they've already developed.

We already know. Apple just made a quiet announcement about some new HD formats to be included in the next FCP release. I poked around for the blurb I read, but I can't find it. I read too many lists of boring, meaningless acronyms to remember the specifics. I'll look harder if you're interested, but honestly now, you should have better FCP resources than I do.

[Charles]

We already know. Apple just made a quiet announcement about some new HD formats to be included in the next FCP release.

I think you're talking about H.264, which we've mentioned a couple times before...

No, this was something new, not H.264. I vaguely recall some acronym like IMX or IVX or something like that, and there was another format (2 formats in all) that will be supported in the next FCP release. They were described as new recording formats that were just announced in new pro HD cams (don't know if these new cams were released yet). I'll poke around some more for details.

[Charles]

Yeah, there you go, that was the blurb I read. Thanks bikkle. Don't know if these formats will be useful in realworld applications, I'll have to read up on the specs.

[mr. sparkle]

Don't know if these formats will be useful in realworld applications, I'll have to read up on the specs.

They will be very useful compared with standard DV. It's high quality widescreen video. With widescreen TVs selling like crazy and DVD tools that make it really easy to make home DVDs, it's gonna blow up. Also, Adobe is making a plug-in for Premiere Pro to handle HDV (probably though a transcoding process) later this year. So with both FCP and Premiere able to run it, everyone will want to go for it.

It looks like these other formats are aimed at ENG, but they bridge the gap between HDV and higher-end formats, so they would also be useful for budget-conscious indie production.

Right. The P2 format is for a new breed of Panasonic tapeless camcorders - that's right tapeless! This makes it so you do not have to capture the material onto the harddrives (via Video capture card or FireWire). For folks in a hurry, like newsrooms, this is what you want to be looking at. But you're right about indy productions as well (like HK flicks which already get shot and assembled very quickly) - as the P2 is supposed be pretty high quality at 3:1 compression. Apparently, the PCMCIA chips they are developing can support DVCPro HD as well!

The IMX format supports up to 50 megabits/sec which is roughly Digital Betacam quality at about 3:1 compression. Apple has announced that they will support HDV, P2 and IMX formats at the recent IBC conference in Amsterdam.

[Charles]

Yeah, I agree that these formats look like they're targeted at ENG. The local stations here in my rural market are converting to HDTV, the only local production in HD is the local news. They obviously don't want to pour a lot of money into pro HD cams, and they don't want to put a huge budget into HD since hardly anyone has HDTV sets, there's no audience. So this sounds like a bridge format, just good enough for basic HD, and much better than the regular DV cams or BetaSP they're using now. What it really reminds me of is now music studios are starting to record and produce music in 24bit/96khz and then remastering down to 16bit/44khz for the final CDs, retaining the full rez production in case they want to release a SACD or DVD-Audio disc at full rez.

[mr. sparkle]

Check it out:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-HDR-FX1-First-Impression-Camcorder-Review.htm

[mr. sparkle]

Check it out:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-HDR-FX1-First-Impression-Camcorder-Review.htm

Thanks. It sounds like there's no longer any reason to buy any SD camera in the same price range.

Well, I wouldn't go quite that far. For certain productions, most certainly, though - you are correct.

Sony's big mistake is that they did not include a 24P mode or easy way to get to film transfer. Also, no pro Audio I/O in this version. I have heard that they are coming out with a new version in Q1 '05 that has XLR inputs for audio.

I'm interested to see what the CineFrame24 mode really looks like in person. I'd also like to see the final output of the compressed HDV after a generation of recompression on an NLE.

I'm sure it's a film look and not true 24P. Bummer!

I have seen the 1 chip JVC cam's footage on a projected screen and that is awesome enough.

There should not be any recompression upon bringing it into the NLE. The utility should just strip out frames from the GOPS of MPEG 2. There will be a recompression if you do add any FX to the footage though. Yes, I'd like to see that too.

Sony's cam is a warning shot over Panasonic's bow. Obviously, the ball is in their court to come up with either a HDV or DVCPro HD 24P camcorder in the price range of Y30,000-Y50,000.

[mr. sparkle]

Got to play with a JVC HDV 1CCD cam today. All I gotta say is that it smokes DV. Ah yeah.....