Z1 vs Varicam

[Abraham Cherian]

Was all set to make a music video on the Z1 + Mini 35 and the client has all of a sudden developed cold feet and wants it made on HD. The video is for broadcast on MTV (Digibeta PAL). How different would the quality of the Z1 be from that of the Varicam (the only other camera i have access to). Thought i would shoot both mediums and actually compare. The video will be in B&W and will have almost no other kind of effect used.

Could anyone throw some light. Hit the floor on the 21st...

[Bob Hayes]

These cameras aren?t in the same league. Varicam shooting true 24P HD. The Z1 however is very compact and flexible. Footage from the Z1 might be good enough to cut in as some cool shots in a rock video.

[Joseph White]

yeah have to chime in and agree - the Z1 has its place but in terms of side-by-side quality, Varicam is a proper HD camera - not HDV which, while nice in its own right, is still recording onto mini dv.

 

if you're sure this is going to air, i'd shoot Varicam - put your best foot forward if you can afford it.

 

best of luck!

[Abraham Cherian]

Thanks guys, but how much difference do they make when you are finally going to down convert to Standard Definition. I understand they are not in the same league but once down converted will there be a marked difference between the two. Anyway have decided that i will film with both cameras, with the varicam as the main one obviously and the Z1 only for test reasons.

[Stephen Williams]

Thanks guys, but how much difference do they make when you are finally going to down convert to Standard Definition. I understand they are not in the same league but once down converted will there be a marked difference between the two. Anyway have decided that i will film with both cameras, with the varicam as the main one obviously and the Z1 only for test reasons.

 

 

Hi,

 

It depends on whats in the scene! If the scenes were fairly static and the camera still the Z1 might look very good downconverted in SD. However move the camera, then try to color correct the images, you may be very disapointed. There is a good reason to pay more than ten times more for a Varicam.

 

Stephen

[Brian Wells]

The video will be in B&W

Good. If you eliminate the (lower resolution) red and blue channels and use the (full resolution) green channel as the basis of your B&W effect, you could end up with a really, really sharp-looking master.

[Jonathan Bryant]

If you use the Z1 I would use the black and white filter in the camera so it won't have to worry about recording color informatation and can take more bandwidth to record the rest of the picture if that makes sense.

 

Varicam in IMHO has great color, a much shallower depth of field, and of course the 24p film like capture.

 

Since you aren't using any color, and if your subject can deal with large areas in focus rather than the shallower focus seen in motion pictures, and you could deal with the reality look of 1080 interlaced capture you could go with the Z1. Though I feel as others on here that the Varicam is a much safer way to go and has the film look that is standard in music videos.

 

Any SLOWMO? Then go with Varicam which can shoot upto 60fps!

[Abraham Cherian]

Thanks John, but we will be using the mini 35 with Nikkor Lenses so am not worried about the DoF, can replicate that part of the look with the lenses we have. Will try it with the black & white setting in the camera, have two days of test before we actually get down to filming.

 

There is no slo mo.

 

We are doing a day with the Z1 and the next with the Varicam, the Z1 day being a dress rehersal.

[s_walker]

Q: " If you eliminate the (lower resolution) red and blue channels and use the (full resolution) green channel as the basis of your B&W effect, you could end up with a really, really sharp-looking master."

 

Why so? How is this possible?

[Jonathan Bryant]

I think he means if you eliminate the color in camera it will give the MPEG2 codec less to deal with allowing it to record more info about just the picture.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I think the point here is that if you eliminate the colour from a 4:2:2 image, you end up with an effectively 4:4:$ mono result.

 

I'd do this by averaging RGB, though, not simply by discarding the UV channels, as I think you'd then run into compression artifacts that might otherwise be averaged out to invisibility.

 

Phil

[Matt Sandstrom]

if you're editing/onlining in final cut pro you can use my free black and white filter plugin. it lets you select which channels to use for the black and white conversion, and how much of each. using the green only indeed makes the image much sharper although i like to mix in some red for better skintones. i usually drop the blue altogether.

 

http://www.mattias.nu/plugins/

 

/matt

[Abraham Cherian]

Thanks Everybody, Thanks Mattias

 

The day we started shooting we decided to keep the video in colour - although very desaturated. Shot day #1 with the HVR Z1 + Mini 35 + Nikkor lenses and day 2 with the Varicam + Angineux + Arri Lenses. The conclusion everybody on our end has come to is that there isn't a remarkable difference (as different as their prices are) in quality of video when viewed off the monitor. It may be a totally different story when blown to 35 mm. But anyways we have finally decided to mix both mediums. The Mini 35 + Nikkor makes all the difference i suppose. Will try and put up the video once we finish the post.

 

Planning to use the HVR - Z1 for a TVC Production in a weeks time. This time we will go with only one camera and lot more light :)

[Jonathan Bryant]

Did you not notice the difference in the interlaced image from the z1 and the progressive image from the varicam ?

[Abraham Cherian]

Yes we did. They looked very close while digitising - but the moment we start working on them the HDV footage tends to take a huge beating - maybe it had something to do with the way we used it on the same timeline on FCP - but all the shots with movement started to go soft - so we had to take out what looked like very good footage while digitising and replace it with footage from the varicam. At the end of it - we now have two HDV shots of approx a second each in a 4 minute video.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Yes we did. They looked very close while digitising - but the moment we start working on them the HDV footage tends to take a huge beating - maybe it had something to do with the way we used it on the same timeline on FCP - but all the shots with movement started to go soft - so we had to take out what looked like very good footage while digitising and replace it with footage from the varicam. At the end of it - we now have two HDV shots of approx a second each in a 4 minute video.

Wow Sony HDV not ready for prime time. Could you post a link to the finished video?

[Matt Jeppsen]

They looked very close while digitising - but the moment we start working on them the HDV footage tends to take a huge beating - maybe it had something to do with the way we used it on the same timeline on FCP - but all the shots with movement started to go soft - so we had to take out what looked like very good footage while digitising and replace it with footage from the varicam.

 

Abraham, can you provide a few more details of the path you took acquiring and editing the HDV footage? Did you capture the HDV footage native, or convert to an intermediate codec? On the FCP timeline, how did you deal with the HDV footage being interlaced, while the was Varicam progressive? You say in reference to the HDV footage "all the shots with movement started to go soft". Was that movement inordinately fast?

Sorry for the barrage of queries, just trying to understand the details. Thanks!

[Abraham Cherian]

Abraham, can you provide a few more details of the path you took acquiring and editing the HDV footage? Did you capture the HDV footage native, or convert to an intermediate codec? On the FCP timeline, how did you deal with the HDV footage being interlaced, while the was Varicam progressive? You say in reference to the HDV footage "all the shots with movement started to go soft". Was that movement inordinately fast?

Sorry for the barrage of queries, just trying to understand the details. Thanks!

 

 

 

We grabbed it through fire wire and converted it to DVCPro HD 1080i 50 - everything was fine at this stage - the image was as sharp as what we saw on the monitor while filming.

 

The Varicam footage was 1080i 50

 

There was no fast movements at all - in fact some of them were almost still images - but for some strange reason - when the whole edit was down converted to a PAL timeline - the image went soft.

 

Will post the video - once the record label lets us.

 

Cheers

[Jonathan Bryant]

We grabbed it through fire wire and converted it to DVCPro HD 1080i 50 - everything was fine at this stage - the image was as sharp as what we saw on the monitor while filming.

 

The Varicam footage was 1080i 50

Are you sure it was a Varicam? On Panasonics webpage for the Varicam it says " Recording Format DVCPRO HD (720/60P, 720P/59.94P)" Nothing about 1080i 50. Could you have mistaken Panasonics 1080i camera http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/s...Model=AJ-HDX400

for a Varicam?

[Abraham Cherian]

Are you sure it was a Varicam? On Panasonics webpage for the Varicam it says " Recording Format DVCPRO HD (720/60P, 720P/59.94P)" Nothing about 1080i 50. Could you have mistaken Panasonics 1080i camera http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/s...Model=AJ-HDX400

for a Varicam?

 

Very sure it was a Varicam. The VTR - the 1200 lets you choose between 1080i and 720. Thats why the 1080i timeline in FCP. Have done 6 varicam projects all of them with the same workflow.

[Christopher Bell]

Are you sure your camera was a Varicam? I own a 1200a and it cannot convert 720p to 1080i via firewire. Only via HD-SDI can it convert 720 to 1080i or 1080 24p. Are you importing 720 and converting in FCP?

 

I am curious how you are doing a firewire conversion.

 

Here is a Panasonic web site describing all of the firewire options:

 

https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/sal...AP_FCPHD45.html

 

Chris Bell, Seattle

[Abraham Cherian]

Are you sure your camera was a Varicam? I own a 1200a and it cannot convert 720p to 1080i via firewire. Only via HD-SDI can it convert 720 to 1080i or 1080 24p. Are you importing 720 and converting in FCP?

 

I am curious how you are doing a firewire conversion.

 

Here is a Panasonic web site describing all of the firewire options:

 

https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/sal...AP_FCPHD45.html

 

Chris Bell, Seattle

 

Am extremely sorry - its probably the long hours over the last few months that have made me do this - but we didn't digitize via firewire. We took it via HD-SDI using the Kona LH. My apologies.

[Mr. Macgregor]

Well, this is not the same, but it might help you even when you allready finished the shooting.

 

Have a look at this:

http://personales.ya.com/autodrome

 

I did a quick comparison between Sony FX1 (which is the same as Z1) plus a 35mm adapter (the guerilla35, which i think is better than the mini35) versus a sony F750 (i know, it is not a varicam, but both are high end HD cameras) with angenieux zoom and arri digiprime lenses.

 

I think that allthough the huge difference in price, once they are both in PAL, they look really really good and you ask, where have the extra euro100,000 gone?

Edited November 28, 2005 by macgregor

[Brian Drysdale]

Well, this is not the same, but it might help you even when you allready finished the shooting.

 

Have a look at this:

http://personales.ya.com/autodrome

 

I did a quick comparison between Sony FX1 (which is the same as Z1) plus a 35mm adapter (the guerilla35, which i think is better than the mini35) versus a sony F750 (i know, it is not a varicam, but both are high end HD cameras) with angenieux zoom and arri digiprime lenses.

 

I think that allthough the huge difference in price, once they are both in PAL, they look really really good and you ask, where have the extra euro100,000 gone?

 

Nice pictures. although with such a small picture you can't tell much about the differences.

 

The difference comes with the higher quality lenses (and range of lenses) that you can use on the high end HD cameras compared to the HDV cameras. There's also noticeable aparture ramping on the FX1's lens. Most HD productions don't use the Mini/Pro35 type adapters, which also have a slight diffusion effect from the ground glass.

 

With the high end formats you don't have the the same compression issues (although HDCAM has a quite a lot of compression), which can create problems in post production and distribution chain.

[Erkki Halkka]

With the high end formats you don't have the the same compression issues (although HDCAM has a quite a lot of compression), which can create problems in post production and distribution chain.

 

HDCAM 1080i is actually really close to HDV as a format - same bit depth, same resolution, just slightly better color sampling. Data rate is much higher than with HDV, but the real life difference shouldn't be big, because of the differeces in compression algorithms.

 

Reading the above experience with HDCAM and HDV, downconverted to SD PAL, it sure sounds to me like the problem lies in how the footage was treated in post.

 

Personally, i've found that to get really good results, one should digitize the raw .m2t HDV stream to the computer, and make an uncompressed intermediate directly from it. Compressing it to another format is a bad idea, especially if you're going to do some complex post production work to it. Cineform intermediate is rather OK, if you're not going to do much FX work.

 

I work in a PAL country, so the frame rate i'm aiming for is 25P. When 50i HDV footage is de-interpolated correctly, then downconverted to SD, the result should be perfect - because the SD information is combined from 3,75 pixels, one gets almost 4:4:4 color sampling too.

 

When using green screen, this footage can be keyed without any serious problems even at HD resolution. Even blue isn't a problem, if the end result is SD resolution. I've had no big problems with color correction either.

 

Slomo is not a problem at SD resolution - you can slow down 50i HDV by 50%, and get more or less full resolution slomo 25P. This only works at 50% though.

 

When the final master is SD resolution, HDV footage should look more or less perfect, wher following this route, and very good at 720P resolution. Even at full 1080 rez, the result should be acceptable.

 

Here's a pop video we did using the above principles, we mastered at 720 25P, and made DigiBeta PAL copies from that master. The result was as sharp as you'll ever get at PAL resolution.

 

If some of you happened to be at HDFEST screening in LA some time back, you may have seen this there (uprezzed to 1080 / HDCAM for the festival).

 

http://www.poetsofthefall.com/

 

(Lift video)

Edited December 8, 2005 by Eki Halkka