JVC GY-HD100U

John Schlater II · August 12, 2005

Did any of you see this yet?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...egoryNavigation

Wow...I don't even know what to say about it...just wow...what rock has JVC been hiding under...

:blink:

August 12, 2005

Did any of you see this yet?

Take a close look at the HD Only forum. :lol:

drew_town · August 12, 2005

The real question is what rock have you been hiding under?

August 13, 2005

Oh, be nice guys. :rolleyes:

I'm glad he posted this because I didn't know anybody was actually selling it yet, so that's good news. I still don't know of anyone that's seen one in use yet. Are there any stills or movie clips available on the Net that anyone knows of? Even though we've known about the cam for a while now, I still have yet to see if it lives up to its hype. (I'm assuming it probably will though)!

Rod Otaviano · August 13, 2005

Oh, be nice guys. :rolleyes:

I'm glad he posted this because I didn't know anybody was actually selling it yet, so that's good news. I still don't know of anyone that's seen one in use yet. Are there any stills or movie clips available on the Net that anyone knows of? Even though we've known about the cam for a while now, I still have yet to see if it lives up to its hype. (I'm assuming it probably will though)!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You can see some footage/stills here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=31678

August 13, 2005

You can see some footage/stills here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=31678

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Cool, thanks.

~~~~~~~

PS to my last post:

BTW, I noticed that Sony has yet another new HDV cam out, this one aimed at consumers, the HC1.

Actually, I just found a review at a St. Louis site I go to once in a while, where a guy was able to test the Sony HC1, Z1, JVC HD101 (similar to HD100), and Panasonic HDX400 side by side. Here is his thoghts on the cams:

PAL products were tested. Footage was converted to 1080/25p.

Picture quality in normal light, from best to worst:

HDX400 and Z1

HC1

HD101

Low light, from best to worst:

HDX400

Z1

HD101

HC1

HDX400, PAL model, was tested in 1080/25p. Z1 and HC1 PAL were tested in 1080/50i and deinterlaced to 1080/25p by DVfilm. HD101 was tested in 720/25p and converted to 1080/25p.

HDX400 was the only 2/3" camera. It is a pro camera that is easy to work with, has a superb performance, especially in low light. It uses 1280x720 chipset from which 1080p/i is interpolated. 1080/50i mode was not tested.

Z1 is a semipro camera, is harder to work with because it does not have true manual control lens, etc. The image quality was amazing though. At normal lighting levels it was on par with HDX400, at low lighting levels it was just slightly worse.

HC1 had excellent performance at normal lighting levels but the camera is 100% consumer, with little manual controls, which makes it extremely hard to work with. It does not have wide enough lens. It does not have XLR mic inputs. It is unusable for production because of these limitations. The picture was nearly as good as Z1 and HDX400 at normal and especially high lighting levels. At low lighting the picture quality was rather poor.

HD101 is a camera with the worst picture quality at normal lighting level, but this deficiency was somehow compensated by its pro features, fully manual lens, etc. It had very professional feel, right after the HDX400; it balanced well on the shoulder. The picture quality was not up to par with the other cameras. At normal lighting levels the color was less rich, more muted; there was also fixed pattern noise; the picture looked grainy. The camera also had too much chromatic aberation. It can use a nice wide, more (a lot more) expensive lens, but this one was not available for testing. At +18 dB gain the picture color was not uniform, with more red noise on one side (with the lens capped). Some pixel banding was evident; there was chroma distortion at low light. The LCD had a dead pixel, and unlike on Z1, it was not automatically compensated. The camera's low light performance was different than with HC1: the picture quality was different, better, with more saturated colors, but not as good as on Z1.

I'm a director of photography and the results surprised me. The order of quality I expected before the test, under all lighting conditions, was:

HDX400

HD101

Z1

HC1

I guess we all learn, all the time.

We did not test some of the other modes on the cameras, like CineFrame on the Z1, or 1080/50i on the Panasonic. We viewed the results side by side on Sony Digital Cinema true 1080p monitors.

The feel of the Z1 can't be compared to HDX400 or HD101. The manual lens makes so much difference in follow focus, etc.

What is intersting is that the nonuniform color at 18 dB is present also when you hook up the monitor to the uncompressed output. Also the motion smoothing feature, that the JVC employs to make the 25p motion appear to have less judder, introduced artifacts and degraded the picture.

JVC demonstrated the picture out of this camera at various shows by having monitor hooked up directly to the uncompressed analog output; recorded images were not demonstrated. That makes a lot of difference.

I discussed with our engineer why the JVC is worse than Z1 and why is Z1 nearly as good as HDX400. He said that theoretically 720/25p should have an advantage at 20 Mbps over Z1's 1080/50i at 25 Mbps. He also said that the Z1 codec is 2.5x more efficient than the DVCPRO HD codec, so 25 Mbps of Sony HDV is like 62.5 Mbps of Panasonic DVCPRO HD, which is 100 Mbps. Our engineer summed it up as "more esoteric, more precise" processing on the Sony.

What I liked about the HDV cameras was the motion blur they introduced on moving objects. You normally add this in post. No need to do so with these cameras.

Is anyone going to the IBT show next month? They should have a working model of the Panasonic HVX200 camera. I suspect its image quality at normal lighting level to be close to HDX400; at low light it should be worse.

This just occured to me. HDX400 uses 1280x720 chipset, same as Varicam. Varicam costs 50% more and outputs 1280x720 progressive pixels in a 40 Mbps stream at 24p. HDX400 interpolates the chipset output to 1440x1080 progressive pixels in a 100 Mbps stream at 25p. I have not tested the two cameras against each other side by side. Panasonic HD cameras are not comonly available in Europe. Sony totally dominates this field here.

From what I understand, both of these cameras (HDX400 and Varicam), when upconverted to 1080/24-25p have about equal performance. Basically the HDX400, although it outputs 1080p, it outputs it from a 720p chipset and so its 1080p performance is on the level of 720p, at 40 Mbps (same as Varicam).

This may explain why Sony Z1's output of equivalent 62.5 Mbps (DVCPRO HD equivalent stream) has such a high performance and why others repeatedly compared its quality to Varicam.

There is a false believe that 2/3" chips will produce superior performance to 1/3" chips. This is true only in low light. Panasonic demonstrated very well how good output can be even from 1/6" chipset DV camera, when light is good enough. The samller chips will still have superior dynamic range to the compressed 8 bit recording system. The main reason why 2/3" cameras outperform 1/3" cameras at normal lighting levels is because they are normally made better. Other components are better; the smaller chipset is good enough to provide as good output as a larger one, in most scenarios.

The reason why we upconverted all camera tapes to 1080p was because the Panasonic output was 1080p, so this became the comon denominator.

The lesson learned from this is as follows: HDX400 is the latest Panasonic's pro camera and its 1080 output is only as good, or just slightly better, than the Z1's output. HVX200 is getting distributed in the same year as HDX400, so one can only expect that its 1080p output will not be any better, but rater worse -- than the 10x more expensive HDX400 camera.

Conclusion: My opinion is that Z1 image quality, when properly converted to 1080p, will be equal to, or maybe even better than HVX200 image quality at 1080p. The DVCPRO HD codec is just too dated and the camera head on the HVX will likely not produce true 1080p output, but rather an interpolated one, just like its 10x more expensive cousin.

It all just shows the inability of Panasonic and JVC to compete with Sony in the professional video arena, where Sony totally dominates. The broadcasters have a very good reason why they buy Sony. It is better. Panasonic brand in the pro market is just the poor man's Sony. JVC's presence, except for some monitors, which they sell quite cheap, is practically non-existent in broadcast.

As to 1080i vs 720p HDTV. Europe will now have a 3rd HDTV channel, in France; it will again be 1080i, just like the other two Europe's HDTV channels. Europe's 1080i is 50i, which means 50Hz.

The Hollywood studio and US theater owner group that made the final specs for digital conema included 3 standards: 2k at 24 and 48 fps (Hz) and 4K at 24 fps. 1080p is about 2K. IMAX better films are also 48 fps. That only shows that, in the future, films will be made also in 48 fps, not only in the archaic 24 fps speed. Latest Sony HD cameras produce up to 1080/60p (fps, Hz).

The main reason why the JVC is inferior and Sony HDV is superior is because Sony is the world's foremost CCD manufacturer and the first CMOS manufacturer to produce HD camera CMOS in quantity.

Nikon, among others, is using Sony CCD and CMOS sensors.

The JVC HD101 camera CCD's are just too noisy, too inferior to Sony's CCD's.

JVC is owned in Matsushita, maker of Panasonic, who supplies CCD's and other semiconductors to JVC, since JVC does not make these. If you open an older JVC radio, all the transistors were always made by Matsushita. Now the same goes for CCD's, except for JVC's most expensive cameras for which they buy Sony CCD's.

Panasonic HVX200 is too likely to be inferior to Sony Z1 mainly because Matsushita CCD quality is far from that of Sony.

So far the reports were that the JVC cameras come with up to 10 dead pixels. This again means that the CCD quality is extremely sub par. Sony CCD's normally come with no or at most one or couple dead pixels that are automatically corrected in the camera. 10 dead pixels is unheard of in prosumer grade cameras. Sony would never use junk CCD's like this in their cameras.

1080i deinterlaces nicely to 1080p and superbly to 720p. There is no need to use inferior Matsushita products if superior Sony products exist.

There's been so much used car salesmanship techniques to sell Marsushita products through forums that one just begins to wonder who the Barry Greens, Chris Hurds and Steve Mullens really are.

John Schlater II · August 15, 2005

Oh...nice to see there are zealots in every crowd...you picked the right guy to argue with...

Uh yeah thanks a lot. I didn't notice the JVC specific section at first.

If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all.

If you want to flame me...go ahead but be warned...I only had a small question and was hoping we could start a conversation about it...but if there are so many here that are too good or are better than me... then don't bother...because I won't stand for someone "trying" to put themselves on a pedestal over other people regardless of the medium.

So often I run into know-it-alls on the internet...and I have to remind them that they were snot nosed little kids at one point in life... and from some of the replies...I guess they are now snot nosed adults too.

So for those of you that had something good to say thanks a lot...but to those of you that had negitive things to say...go take that holier-than-thou attitiude you tout around on the tip of your nose that you turn up at people and go screw yourself....and don't ever reply to any of my posts ever again because I will remember you and I will call you out for being a pompus Ahole for now on...regardless of your experience or expertise for its not what you say that defines you...its your actions that speak louder than words and your shown your true colors to me right away...so unfortuneately...you both are turd in my books.

Now you two can go cuddle underneath the rocks you were under...slugs.

Robert Cassar · August 21, 2005

Hi John Schlater II,

I understand your anger. Howver I am sure that no offence was meant. I like the J=VC camera. it seems better on many levels form the Sony Ones. I just hope the cost won't be prohibitive.