Hi, I wish I had time to read more of this forum, but I'm in Vietnam
at the moment travelling with friends but work have told me I need to
decide whether they are moving to hard drive cameras from Mini DV (i
work in the media dept of a 6th form college- never off duty!)

We use premiere pro there and therefore I think we need uuncompressed
DV-AVI. Am I right in thinking the only HD option supporting that
format is professional ($2000+) P2 or Firestore technologies? thankyou
so much for any help or thoughts you can give, sorry again if this has
been covered
Luke

"Joe" wrote in message news:_ypii.1732$4e5.1509@trndny07...
Please keep in mind, all of you, that I'm completely green at all of this
video stuff- but, where do you draw the line between consumer and
prosumer? Is there some price range?

I'm not sure of the answer to that. "True" prosumer gear is easily
identified by its features: XLR inputs for mikes, zebra bars for exposure,
full manual, etc. Sony and Canon make more consumer-friendly versions of
some of their prosumer gear, e.g. Sony's VX2000 and VX2100 are
"consumerized" versions of the PD150 and PD170, and Canon's GL2 is more
consumer-oriented than the XL2.

However, some manufacturers (Panasonic comes to mind) have made produced
what are purely consumer machines that are dressed up to appear to be
prosumer equivalents, e.g. Panny's 3CCD consumer line (I don't recall the
designation Panasonic uses) are, clearly, consumer machines -- you can tell
from their specs, their performance but, mostly, their features.


BTW, I've checked out many of the web sites and discussion boards you
folks have referred to- and they're great! I'll just keep researching
until I can make a good decision. Whenever I spend more than $100, I want
to be sure it's the right choice.

I don't know if anyone recommended it yet, but you might want to check out
dvinfo.net. It's a website for professional videographers, though amateurs
are welcome (as long as they as intelligent questions ). As I recall,
you're looking for a machine to shoot in forests. When I think of forests,
I think of places that are frequently rather dark, which means you need good
low-light peformance, something that you will not find in _any_ consumer
camcorder at this point.



Joe


"PTravel" wrote in message
...

"Joe" wrote in message news:MOcii.6444$DM4.6375@trndny06...
Thanks for that explanation.

I'm not surprised that some manufactures would artificially lower the
quality of their product to avoid competing with their high end
products. However, just for the sake of argument- if one didn't do this-
and word got out that Company X was producing a far superior consumer
camcorder- they'd win the competition.

They'd win the competition for the consumer market, but they'd still be
competing against their own prosumer gear. The prosumer market is very
profitable as the margins on the equipment are much higher.

As far as reducing the competition with their own high end products- I
should think that many other factors make their high product a high end
product- such as better lenses, larger higher quality CCD, more solidly
built camera, more and better features of all kinds.

Prosumer equipment has fewer "features," but that's another discussion.
As you note, it is a combination of glass, sensors and electronics, as
well as compression codec and bandwidth, that contributes to video
quality. Consumer gear, particularly low-end gear, compromises on all of
this. However, scrimping on glass, sensors and electronics saves the
manufacturer money. There is no cost savings in limiting bandwidth. The
only reason for doing so is to deliberately produce an inferior image.


If what you say is true- it would be interesting to see this argument
supported by, for example, Videomaker magazine or some other industry
wide group.

Videomaker depends on advertising of consumer gear for its livelihood.
Similarly, Robin Liss' website tends to cheerlead because of its
dependence on review gear from the manufacturers. Liss' site, however,
has the information you're looking for if you read between the lines,
e.g. "low-light performance, while good, exhibited significant noise and
wasn't very saturated . . .", etc.


Not that I have much doubt of what you say- or that I am a strong
supporter of industry- but it's a serious accusation and I'd like to see
who else agrees. And, if I owned a camcorder company, I'd think I'd
prefer to buck the trend and produce a superior product and make more
money doing it.

All I know is that I would have liked to get a miniDV camcorder with
video as good as the TRV900. When I got around to purchasing one, there
was not a single consumer model, including Sony's own TRV900 replacement,
that remotely approached this level of quality. Instead, I had to buy a
prosumer model that cost a lot more, not because I have aspirations to be
a professional videographer (I don't), but because I wanted high-quality
video. Now, as I contemplate moving to high-def, I'm faced with the same
situation. AVCHD machines (which are all consumer HD machines) all have
limited bandwidth, resulting in poor quality video. HDV machines (which
are only prosumer machines) don't have limited bandwidth and produce
much, much higher quality video. Again, I'm going to have to go the
prosumer route because of specific marketing decisions by the camcorder
manufacturers.


Joe

"PTravel" wrote in message
...

"Joe" wrote in message
news29ii.3112$za5.1915@trndny09...
As a video newbie, I'm interested in knowing the meaning of ACVHD and
HDV.

Thanks,
Joe

wrote in message
ps.com...
Hi, I wish I had time to read more of this forum, but I'm in Vietnam
at the moment travelling with friends but work have told me I need to
decide whether they are moving to hard drive cameras from Mini DV (i
work in the media dept of a 6th form college- never off duty!)

We use premiere pro there and therefore I think we need uuncompressed
DV-AVI. Am I right in thinking the only HD option supporting that
format is professional ($2000+) P2 or Firestore technologies? thankyou
so much for any help or thoughts you can give, sorry again if this has
been covered

There's a lot of confusion evident in your post.

AVI is just a file wrapper -- you can stick a number of formats of
codec-compressed or uncompressed video inside it.

"DV" means . . . well . . . "digital video." Standard definition miniDV
uses DV-25, which is compressed at roughly 5 to 1. Professional digital
videl uses DV-50, which has double the bandwidth.

If you're talking about HD, unless you want to invest in $20,000+ cameras,
you're not going to shoot uncompressed video. You probably want an HDV
machine and, yes, that will cost you considerably more than $2,000. Adobe
Premiere Pro can handle HDV, but you need a pretty powerful computer.



Luke

On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:33:35 -0700, "PTravel"
wrote:

Except that the quality of the ACVHD machines isn't comparable to HDV, at
least not based on what I've read. The ACVHD machines are reported to
exhibit rather profound motion artifacts when panning or shooting complex
fast moving subjects. Everything I've read (and the sample footage I've
seen) suggests that, while HDV has enough motion artifact issues to preclude
commercial studio work, they're far better than the ACVHD machines.

It makes sense of course. While AVCHD is said to be twice as efficient as
HDV, such high compression has it's trade-offs. Now, one could say, if you
know the limits, you can work around them. Probably the average consumer
will not even realise these motion artifacts. I mean, have a look at tv
nowadays, and the picture quality.... they might think that if this happens
on their own camera, it's something normal :-)) (last night for instance I
was watching UK Channel 4's Best War Movies program. They ripped the
samples off DVD, but the compression was so high: the banding made me
sea-sick and cry. And today, on, for crying out loud, the BBC, the footage
they showed in the end of Diana at the Concert for Diana, was so blocky, it
was just shocking to watch!).

I think ACVHD is limited to establish a "consumer" benchmark for HD, with
HDV defining the "prosumer" limit.

But there are some tiny Sony HDV-cams which are, IMHO, not aimed at the
pro-sumer market. I think AVCHD is especially meant to be able to record
with tiny data-rates, so you can record to small hard-disks and DVD's etc.

cheers

-martin-
--
Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk

On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:28:53 -0000, wrote:

We use premiere pro there and therefore I think we need uuncompressed
DV-AVI. Am I right in thinking the only HD option supporting that
format is professional ($2000+) P2 or Firestore technologies? thankyou
so much for any help or thoughts you can give, sorry again if this has
been covered

Luke

You need to spend a lot of money to be able to record uncompressed, if you
are talking about recording on camera. But there are some cheap and clever
solutions available, but they require you to drag a notebook or desktop
system around. Not a problem if you are in a studio of course or on a
controlled set, but if you want to use this wild, you have to start
thinking in 5-digit numbers of $ :-(

For the Panasonic DVX100, there exists a hardware hack, via which you can
capture the data straight of the CCD's into a computer. You get
uncompressed AVI then.
A solution for HDV is the HDMI capture card from Black Magic. For this you
need to bring the HDMI-output of your camera (e.g. Canon HV20) to a
desktop-system with the BM-card, and you can capture uncompressed, full
quality HD-video (limited by the quality of the CCD's and optics).

cheers

-martin-
--
Official website "Jonah's Quid" http://www.jonahsquids.co.uk