DMN Interview: JVC’s Dave Walton
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DMN: The JY-HD10U shoots at 720p, 30 frames per second, right?Walton: Yes.
DMN: Are there plans for one that’s 60 frames per second?
Walton: I’m not allowed to talk about plans for any upcoming HDV camcorders at this time. The JY-HD10U will record 480 60P (60 frames per second) with a true 16:9 aspect ratio that looks pretty close to HD. HDV recording can be either progressive or interlaced. Both 720P (progressive) and 1080i (interlaced) are considered high definition. If you compare 720P at 60 frames a second with 1080i at 60 fields a second, the actual closeness in resolution might surprise you.
At 720P 60, you get 1280x720 every 60th of a second.--. And the interlaced version is 1080i, in the case of HDV, is 1440x1080. (or 540 fields 60 times a second.) In the case of 720 60P, you actually get more pixels per second than with 1080i. (1280 x 720 x 60) versus (1440 x 540 x 60).There are actually more pixels per second on the screen at 720p than there is at 1080i in the HDV format. I hope that I haven't strayed too far from your original question.
DMN: Yes, but I find that very interesting [DMN’s after-the-interview calculations confirmed that 720p/60’s pixels-per-second are indeed a higher number than 1080i/60’s, totaling 55,296,000 to 1080i’s 46,656,000, but keep in mind, the JY-HD10U is shooting at 720/30p, not 720/60p]. What I wanted to know is there is a new market category here, and who are the people using it? You’re saying it’s not these people who are used to using Panavision cameras, but there is a new breed of producer out there using these camcorders. Who are these people and what are they using them for?
Walton: It’s varied. And this is the part that I find most interesting, and I find it hard to put it into any one specific category. One producer is doing a film that they hope to show at Sundance. A production company in the L.A. area is producing a show called “Hollywood Alive” – a pilot for episodic television series. The award-winning cinematographer for that series is using three of these camcorders. They report that production costs turned out to be a fraction of what they were originally scheduled to spend. You’re putting more of the money on the screen and less behind the set when you shoot with low-cost HDV. We’ve had others who are using the camera for unusual things, for example, there’s a shooter in Colorado who’s using the camera to shoot mountaintops for his cell tower installations.
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DMN: He needs a lot of resolution there, so he can see where the rocks are, right?
Walton: Just about anywhere you would use a camera, you can use an HD camera. It’s not such a specialty any more. At one time it was, because it was so hard to watch HD. But look at the number of TV sets, displays that are available. Go to any appliance store, and you see them everywhere. Every one of those widescreen displays is now capable of displaying the output of this camera.
DMN: How are people editing this footage that they shoot?
Walton: I’m pleased to say, there are quite a few options now. Final Cut Pro users can edit using a package by a company called Heuris. They’ve developed a $500 package that will allow them to bring the HDV footage into the system, edit it, and then send it either back out onto HDV, or to DVHS or to burn a DVD in standard definition. There are other packages such as CineForm...
DMN: With Aspect HD.
Walton: Yes, Aspect HD, and there’s a new product called Connect HD that you can plug into Sony Vegas. Aspect HD lets you use Premiere, and that’s interesting because Aspect HD not only lets you edit in real time, but it gives you a variety of different output options. I know that some people have actually used it to create Windows Media 9 disks that are in high definition that they can actually play it back using a computer with a Windows Media 9 decoder.
DMN: We tested that system here at the Midwest Test Facility, and I can confirm that it works very well.
Walton: You’re talking about Aspect HD?
DMN: Yes, we’ve fully tested that with Adobe Premiere 6.5. We haven’t tested the Premiere Pro version yet, but we hope to do that soon.
Walton: They’ve just released that support. Did you have any footage from the JVC camera?
DMN: Yes we did. That’s what we were using. We were using the DVHS deck.
Walton: That’s the other transport mechanism. Without any signal conversion you can record it to DVHS and you can either give someone the unedited copy, as you were given, or you can take the finished program from Aspect HD, dump it onto DVHS and then carry it to another location and play it back.
DMN: And you can edit all that using real time effects, which was pretty remarkable. That’s where that 19mb/sec. comes in handy.
Walton: Yes it does.
DMN: Because you can quickly move it through the computer. But then, when you want to go back out to tape you have a bit of rendering to do. It takes a while.
Walton: Yes. It depends on the system you use, because technically the CineForm system transcodes it into a different format than MPEG, when it does the editing.
DMN: Yes, that’s the way it works.
Walton: And that’s why it has to render back out. If you were editing in native MPEG2 there would be no rendering on the outside. Now, there are several companies that have either announced or are about to announce solutions for native MPEG2. One of those is Ulead. They have a package for editing that native MPEG2 stream. I haven’t tested it yet. I understand they’re in their final Beta right now, so that one should be along very soon.
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