Marti's blog

A brief update on my first experiments (just 16 minutes of filming so far... all in 25p mode).

The good : The picture quality outdoor is absolutely stunning ! Everything is very detailed, textures are realistic and vivid. This is a huge step forward compared to any DV camcorder.

The bad : 4 Gb for 16 minutes of footage... Even DVD-R are not enough for archiving, hard drives are the only option.

The ugly : Filming done indoor shows some noise, and it gets quite serious if the room is a bit dim. This is something that you can't escape with any camcorder, camera or even old-fashioned analog film, but after the beautiful video you get with bright light, it's a disappointment. Also the soundtrack has a slight background noise (maybe the camcorder tape turning ?), but maybe an external mic can fix that.

For importing the MPEG2 video inside my PC, I used HDVSplit which is a free and simple, no-nonsense application for extracting the video. I didn't need to install any Windows driver, read any help file or had anything to configure, it just worked right away and saved every sequence into its own file with time and date in the filename.

I long hesitated to get myself a camcorder, for so many reasons: HD technology isn't quite there yet, the tape storage medium reminds me of my old Amstrad CPC 464 computer and sounds totally backward, the requirement to get a high-end PC for editing and some large storage capacity to go with it. Add to that some limited use: most people start to act funny when they know a camera is on (and that kind of ruin everything to me), and to save your audience from a painful death-by-boredom you need to spend some time editing your footage, which is not quite my idea of "fun" either. So I have been sticking with my trusty digital camera for the time being.

Yet there are some moments in life that you want to preserve for posterity but that a still camera cannot quite record properly. Still pictures lack an extra dimension (yes, that would be "time", but I'm talking figuratively here !). I finally decided to pull the proverbial trigger and Amazon delivered to me today the brand new Canon HV20: a tape-based HD camcorder, the first one in this price range to offer full cinema-like 25p progressive recording (as it's a PAL... in some other market it's a 24p). I got this model based on the high-praises that it got from the first published reviews, and the fact that tapes have one big advantage that I hadn't realized until now : they represent a very good and quick backup, once you have transfered their content on a drive.

As all HDV camcorders, the HV20 produce a MPEG2 video that is stored at a 1440x1080. It's a odd resolution because pixels are rectangular (1.33 ratio) rather than squarish (as they are on most display devices). That means there'll always be some resampling involved when viewing it, typically at the standard 1920x1080 HD resolution. This issue aside, the big advantage of the HDV format is that it is widely supported by many video editing software (which is not the case of the newer AVCHD for example).

My first trials look promising, the device feels a bit flimsy but is packed with features and connectors, and most of the all the picture looks nice and detailed. The manual doesn't seem very user-friendly, I guess I'll have to work on that one.

Next step : get a carrying bag, a new PC (with a large drive for storage). And then maybe some external microphone, an extra battery, a Blu-Ray recorder, etc... D'oh !