Wow - thanks, Brook. Clear and comprehensive. On 22-Jul-08, at 11:07 AM, Brook Hinton wrote:
What they're thinking is they want you to buy an XHA1. The HV20 is one of those classic "oops, we made a strictly non-pro item a little too good" events (kind of like DV). It was never intended to become the low-cost hdv equivalent to a bolex for low-end pros or even a b-roll camera. But its image quality, sensor, low light performance, relatively (compared to Sony at least) acceptable mic preamp (you'd never know it from the horrid onboard mics) and, once you learn the tricks, manual capability made it the biggest camcorder-suitable-for-filmmakers bargain in history. But since it was never intended to be a pro or even high end prosumer camera, the 24p feature is designed to be used as is - with pulldown added to fit a 29.97 frame rate, just like film telecine'd to video. The higher end cameras that shoot 24p have flags built it to the datastream that, with the right software, make it possible to remove pulldown on capture, leaving you with a 23.98 file. Using the HV20 professionally - and 24p is really not a consumer format - means tweaking and hacking and working around the limitations of a consumer camera that has enough positive qualities (not the least of which is price) to make that process worthwhile for many. And now the 24p rant, so move on if you aren't interested! 24p is also something of a universal format. It can be converted to 29.97 NTSC, to PAL, to film, to higher end digital formats, all without any motion degradation. In this regard it is somewhat unique - 25p/PAL is close, but while 24p has to be sped up to 25p for one of these format conversions (to PAL), 24p only has to have a speed change for its PAL conversion - the others can be handled via pulldown. 30p, on the other hand, cannot be transferred to PAL or to 24p HD formats without serious motion degradation or softening. Even 60i is better for these. 30p means you are NTSC or the Web, for good, forever. It's less hassle, but less flexible. But Rupert's right. If your just shooting for the web none of this matters much - except for 3rd party flash transcodes. Different places (blip, vimeo, youtube, etc) transcode to different frame rates, and this can cause all kinds of weirdness. A [EMAIL PROTECTED] file on vimeo HD is going to look really really weird. But a 24p file @24p, which will look great on vimeo hd, will look really weird in flash on blip (unless they've changed the way they do flash transcoding). Then there's the whole interlace artifact nightmare (at least in HD you can deinterlace for the web without much meaningful resolution loss - unless of course you're trying to serve hd as a final format.). I use 24p because of its flexibility, its efficiency for transcoding (progressive and fewer fps both make for better quality encodes at a given data rate), and because I like the slower motion signature. Heck, I like ONE fps in the right context, but never got used to 60i in any but the most "pure content" situations. Aesthetics is all about transformation of the real. 60i is much closer to the way our eye sees motion than slower motion signatures. Hence many of the aesthetic challenges of interlaced NTSC video. Brook _____________________________________________ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
