HDV 1080i: The HV series are using the HDV mpeg2 format to record (rather than the competing AVCHD mpeg4 format). HDV does not record in full 1080p, it records in 1440×1080 with aspect ratio 1.333 (yes, that’s still widescreen HD, and the HV picture quality makes up for the loss of pixels).

HDMI capture: There is a way to hack around the 1440×1080 recording limitation and record at higher quality at full 1920×1080 (and without mpeg2 visual artifacts), by using the HDMI output port instead of firewire to capture. You basically use a PCI card with an HDMI input port to capture. It costs a few hundred dollars, but it’s simply impractical for normal users to do capture like this as it requires a full PC to be in the shooting site at all times, so please stop dreaming about it.

Aspect ratios: As I said above, the HV series record in aspect ratio 16:9, and pixel aspect ratio 1.3333. This means that the horizontal resolution, which is 1440, when multiplied with 1.3333, it gives us 1920 pixels wide, which is the right HD resolution (and that’s why it still looks widescreen even if M2T format reports a 4:3 pixel count resolution at 1440×1080). More info on aspect ratios here. Aspect ratios are an advanced topic that confuse most users.

M2T: the file extension that the HV series use when capturing from tape when using a non-Apple editor (Apple’s editors tend to re-encode during importing on another format and not edit natively in M2T). M2T is an mpeg2 type format, at 25mbps bitrate. When viewing the video in 1:1 size on a large monitor, some mpeg2 artifacts are visible if looked carefully.

NTSC: The Japan, US and Canada (and a few other countries) TV format. NTSC uses 60 frames per second. The NTSC version of the HV cameras record by default in 60i, meaning 60 interlaced frames per second.

PAL: The rest of the world’s TV format. PAL has quite a few iterations and versions depending on the country, but most of them use 50 frames per second. The PAL version of the HV cameras record by default in 50i, meaning 50 interlaced frames per second. Explanation of what a frame is in the first place, here.

Recording formats: The NTSC HV20 cameras records in 60i (default), PF24 and the HV30 adds also the ability to record in PF30. The PAL HV cameras do 50i (default) and 25p. The PF24 mode (also known as 24p), only available on NTSC HV cameras, is not true 24p, because of compatibility problems with the HDV standard that didn’t have provisions for 24p support. So Canon created a hack to go around the HDV limitation: record in 24p but with pulldown addition (extra frames in a stream that “fools” the camera and the video editor that the video is really 60i and not 24p). To get the true 24p out of this mess and edit as true 24p (otherwise you will get ghosting artifacts), you need to perform a pulldown removal. PF30 and 25p users should not need to do anything extra other than telling their video editor that these are progressive formats (so on Sony Vegas for example, you use the supplied 1080i HDV template for your region, but you change the field order to read “progressive”). As for the default 50i and 60i recording modes these are the most common kinds and all HD-enabled video editors support them. And to make it clear: PAL HV users do NOT need to remove pulldown, only NTSC users who have switched their cameras to record in PF24 need to do that (and only in a few cases, read the link I provided about it).

Interlacing: The HV series record in an interlaced format by default, meaning, that it has some ugly horizontal lines by default. Unless you are burning a DVD or you are writing back to the camera or you are re-saving for archiving purposes back to the same M2T format, you need to de-interlace your video (in other words, to make it progressive). TV-viewed footage doesn’t require to be de-interlaced/progressive, as TVs can actually do de-interlacing on their own, during playback. Check this picture to see how the first image which is interlaced with ugly lines looks like, while the rest two pictures using two de-interlacing methods to make the footage “progressive”. Remember: there is no perfect de-interlacing algorithm (that’s why we have so many of them, each one thinking they can do better than the other one — long story). That’s why in the future always strive for a camera that can also record in true progressive mode, like the HV30 can with its PF30 mode. The PAL HV cameras also record in true progressive at 25p, but the NTSC HV20 does not record in true progressive, as the PF24 (24p) mode has some of its frames in interlaced format (only 18 out of the 24 frames are progressive).

In which mode should you record: Generally speaking, use the defaults: 50i and 60i. These modes while interlaced, they offer the best frame rate, which means smoother movements. So it’s ideal for sports and casual life events that end up on a DVD. But if you are going to export for the web/PC only and not DVDs, or you are doing artistic videos or real movies, then you can start considering 24p or 25p, which are frame rates that real movies use. However, these modes are not very smooth in motion, so you must be very careful how fast you move your camera.

Firewire: To read the video from the tape and transfer it to your computer, you need to have a “firewire” port (also known as IEEE1394). Most PCs don’t have a Firewire port, so you must make sure that you either have one, or that you can buy a cheap PCI firewire card to add such a port. All Macs have a firewire port. You must also buy a cable, as the HV box doesn’t come with a firewire cable. You can use your video editor to capture the M2T video from the tape, or the freeware HDVSplit, or if you are also need to remove pulldown in case you recorded in PF24, you can use Cineform’s HDLink tool which does both jobs in one step (costs $200 and up, there’s a special offer for HV users in particular as the company is HV-friendly because they recognize the huge hobbyist filmmaking community around these cameras).

Editing speed: You need a minimum of a Pentium 4 class CPU at 2.8 Ghz for PCs, or a dual 1.2 Ghz G4 or above for Macs. 2 GBs of RAM or more (users with 1 GB of RAM will find their operating system swapping sooner or later and things will get really slow). Get a big hard drive (for best performance get two hard drives, one holds the OS, editor and temp files while the other one holds all the captured footage). XP is usually recommended over Vista as many of the utilties used for the freeware pulldown removal method work best with XP. One last thing: don’t confuse a “pentium 4 CPU at 2.8 Ghz” with a “Core2Duo 2.8 Ghz”. You see, even a CoreDuo at 1.6 Ghz will be faster than a Pentium 4 at 3.2 Ghz! So it’s not the Ghz you should be looking at, but the generation of your CPU. Generally speaking, any PC sold 2006 onwards is good enough for HDV editing speed-wise. Just make sure you got enough RAM and a high resolution monitor (over 1280×1024).

Cinemode: When switching the camera to manual mode, you have the ability to use the “cinemode”. Cinemode is a collection of settings that Canon put together (shutter speed, color, gamma, sharpness, aperture etc), to make the look of your video to look more like the expensive film cinema cameras. This mode, especially when used with the “neutral” color setting, is not meant to simply be used as is. It’s meant to be color-graded during editing. The color grading behaves better with the Cinemode/neutral settings ON.

35mm adapters: One interesting way to extend your HV camera (apart from the Canon offered add-on microphones, telephoto and wide-angle lenses), you can also get a 35mm adapter. When using this adapter with photography lenses, you can get a “shallower depth of field” than the HV cameras can provide out of the box. Shallow depth of field means that you can focus to a person or object, and have the background being all blurred out in order to look more “cinematic” or “artistic”. That’s the main difference in the “look” between big Hollywood movies and cheap home video or cheap TV series. Visual example with a stock HV20 here, and with a 35mm adapter and lens here. A 35mm adapter with a lens costs anywhere from $200 (non-vibrating version) to $1300 (vibrating version with achromat addon).

Exporting formats: If you are exporting back to tape, export in the same M2T format that the HV cameras capture (1440×1080, interlaced). If you are exporting for DVD, export with the supplied templates your video editor supplies for DVD. If you are exporting for archiving reasons or to exchange footage with another person, export in a lossless codec that doesn’t lose quality when encoding (also known as “intermediate codecs”). If you are exporting for Vimeo, youtube, 720p, 1080p or other “casual viewing” reason (also known as lossy “delivery codecs”), export in one of these ways (it must be de-interlaced, usually at resolutions 1280×720 or 1920×1080 with pixel aspect ratio 1.000). The difference between intermediate and delivery codecs is explained here. Remember, when using a delivery codec, each time you re-encode the resulted file, you lose quality. So always have as few “jumps” from format to format to ensure best quality as possible. For best results edit directly the M2T format (or Cineform AVI if you removed pulldown for PF24), and after editing export once in a lossless intermediate codec for your archiving reasons, and once in a lossy delivery codec for casual future viewing.

Finally: General advices on how to shoot for best results, here.

Email me directly or IM me if you need more information or explanation.

If I had that $150 million that Spielberg has available for the creation of each of his movies, I would do an HDR-like movie. I always had in the back of mind an epic sci-fi movie (a’la Star Wars) with visual elements from the Final Fantasy franchise. A new application or plugin would have to be developed specifically for the movie that does tone mapping (kinda like Photomatix for video), while the actor’s faces would have to be smoothed out in post to look as pristine as in the FF games (I never said my movie would be about humans anyway).

I like the look of these pictures and I think that with a lot of visual effects and CGI buildings would look interesting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. If you are careful with such color grading you can create a convincing look without looking totally CGI or cartoonish.

I must say that except two entries, the ones titled “O2” and “RPDM“, the rest pretty much sucked. Sure, there were a few more that were watchable, like “Survival”, “Unzeit”, “Parallel”, “The Small Multiple” and 1-2 more, but for the most part, the vast majority of these entries were pure cheesy suckiness. I remember a year ago, the SpyFest competition, that had at least 5 entries good enough to become full featured films. This time around, there’s a lot more people who entered the competition, but I couldn’t find truly amazing films (except the “O2″ and “RPDM”). This time seems to be about quantity over quality.

The suckiness experienced is not just about the actual camera movement, framing or dialog, which are the artistic part of each movie, but in the technical parts too: overexposed subjects, terrible audio quality, bad exporting quality (someone even exported in QVGA at 12 fps), interlacing, what have you. All the shit is there. There were about five HV20-based entries too, among the worse of the overall bunch I must say (I am sorry if any of these HV20 directors reads this, but I got to write my opinion).

Someone could say to me “oh, at least we tried, where is your entry Eugenia?“. Well, that’s the thing you see. If I know that I can’t do something as well as I should, I simply don’t do it. Or, I do it, and if I notice that the result is not up to high standards of an international competition I simply don’t submit it. But I certainly won’t release a movie for a well publicized competition and have people laugh at me at the end.

And as for the exporting, gosh, do it right. DVXUser requires up to a 6 minute video, h.264/AAC encoding, and up to 50 MBs of a MOV/MP4 filesize. Now, to achieve this, is pretty easy. Export like this:
- From a miniDV widescreen camera export at 720×400 at 1024 kbps h.264 and 128kbps AAC.
- From an HD camera export at 848×480 at 1024 kbps h.264 and 128kbps AAC.
- From the DVX100 camera export at 852×480 at 1024 kbps h.264 and 128kbps AAC.
For the HD and DVX cameras, if you are not happy with the quality you get, or if you shot at 30p/60i instead, you can go down to 640×360 using the same bitrate. If your film is shorter than 6 minutes, you can upgrade the video bitrate a tiny bit, just enough to gain some additional quality without running over the 50 MB limit. And for God’s sake, remove pulldown if you shot in PF24, and de-interlace if you shot in 50i/60i. Nobody wants to see your horizontal lines on their media player.

UPDATE: What do you know. The “O2″ short movie used the same set that was used on Firefly’s 3rd episode, titled “Bushwhacked”. Pictures here.

The adapter has an achromat and it’s vibrated. I tried it with a 50/1.8 Canon EOS lens, but I must have assembled it wrong as the ground glass rotates when I turn the lens’ focus ring. I am waiting for my JBQ to come back from work and have a look for me.

And thanks to reader Josh for letting me know of these cheap rails designed specifically for the HV20/HV30, going for just $125 (with shipping). That’s dirt cheap if you think how much rails usually cost.

The only affordable solution that was created with camera work in mind is LCD4Video. But its resolution is embarrassingly low, has no high quality input jacks for us HD users, the battery is external, and I hear that its shoe mount is flimsy to the point of being unusable.

So what an honest hard working indie filmmaker to do? I hear that people are buying LCD kits (with their electronics dangling out like a slaughtered pig), and even car LCD kits (e.g. Ikan, Lilliput, Xenarc) that they will have to modify and build holders for. There’s a lot of DIY involved.

In other words, there is no “good” solution today for external monitors. There is no monitor that has a 960×540 (1/4th 1080p) resolution at 8″ size, has a proper flip function, enough controls, HDMI/component/composite inputs, has a built-in 6 hour battery, has an optional sun hood and a car charger, and it comes with a special tripod mount with two “strong rotateable arms” that lets you mount the camera on one side and the LCD on the other. The right price is $300 for something like that. It’s economically doable, and with profit.

Instead, people have to improvise. The latest craze among videographers and even professional indie filmmakers is to buy the Sony DVP-FX820 (DVP-FX850 for PAL countries) portable DVD player. It comes with a rotateable swivel 800×480 8″ LCD, 6 hours of battery and an RCA input jack (requires extra $6 adapter to connect your camera to it). Then, you will have to either build yourself a monitor holder, or buy this (not sure it will fit nicely with this device). It’s stupid. It works alright, although the LCD resolution via composite is not fantastic, it’s just that it’s not a device that was designed for this job. Unfortunately, I will have to buy one, as my 35mm adapter is on the way here, and I need a bigger screen for focusing (it’s impossible to use shallow focus on the HV20’s 2.7″ screen). Overall, this DVD player with the tripod mount and the adapter will cost me $320. For something that’s not ideal. Simply because there is nothing better in the market right now.

And then they talk to me about market demand. I can tell you that this DVD player sells like crazy among filmmakers right now. There is demand, there’s just no one to sit down his a$$ and create the right product for us.

And don’t let me start as to how much overpriced tripod rails/rods are. I haven’t seen anything below $600. Because I don’t have any tripod rails I will be limited to be using my 35mm adapter with a single small lens, that won’t break my HV20 apart because of the added weight of the adapter. I am not the Black&Decker type you see to built it myself.