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Sony rolled out its HVR-V1U HDV camcorder ($4800, shipping in December), along with an accompanying HVR-DR60 hard disk recorder ($1800, also shipping in December) that can record 4.5 hours of HDV footage on its 60GB hard disk. The camcorder uses three quarter-inch ?ClearVid? CMOS sensors instead of CCDs, and adds 24p recording to adds 24p recording to its feature list. Digital Media Net was at the event at Sony?s US headquarters in New York, and we were quite impressed with all the new products introduced.
The big news with this rollout is the V1U camcorder's 24p capability, that long-awaited frame rate that Sony didn't include with previous models, instead using a 24-frame "CineFrame" scheme that didn?t satisfy most filmmakers and HDV enthusiasts. Holding the camera in our hands, we immediately noticed how light and compact it is, where it's slightly smaller than its brandmate, Sony's Z1U HDV camcorder.
Sony engineers brought 24p into the equation with an effective solution, too, where the vertical resolution is a full 1080p raster, while the sensors pick up 960 horizontal pixels, and this data is then interpolated to the full 1920 resolution in a 4:2:2 color space. The video is then compressed into the normal HDV format at 1440x1080/60i with a 3:2 pulldown, giving the footage the ability to be played back in any Sony HDV gear. Neat trick.
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But then what? Sony says editing software is in development to unravel the 2:3 pulldown and let filmmakers create a full 24p production using the HVR-V1U. The as-yet-unnamed editing software?s modifications will allow filmmakers to extract a sequence of still images at 24fps for film-out conforming. From that, a 60i YUV sequence can be created, allowing the footage to be converted into SD or HD digital BetaCam or HDCam for broadcast.
Next, Sony showed a series of videos shot by the new camcorder, and the quality of the footage, even when projected on a screen that must have been 25 feet wide, was sharp and clear, with the ability to see even into deeply-shadowed areas. In one sequence, it was particularly obvious that we were seeing footage with a high contrast ratio, where a shot of a hang glider against a bright sun behind it still revealed subtle detail in the red aircraft?s wings. Also notable was the lack of smear as the camera shot directly into the sun, a common characteristic when shooting with CCDs.
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Sony said this high contrast ratio and smear-free performance when shooting at bright points of light is attributable to the ClearVid sensors, allowing true 24p capture in the 4:2:2 color space. The trio of quarter-inch CMOS sensors does their interpolation differently from CCDs, using an inverted diamond-shaped sampling grid, in an arrangement that doesn?t need to be packed as tightly as CCDs. This is done in a process Sony calls pixel-shifting, effectively enlarging the pixels and heightening the sensitivity of the sensors. The result is better low-light performance and sharper interpolation, as well as a higher contrast ratio.
The camcorder?s optics have been improved as well. The Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T lens (pictured above) has extra-low dispersion glass, and it's a 20x optical zoom lens with a 30x digital optical extender. The filter diameter of the lens is 62mm, and Sony is also offering a bayonet-mounted wide conversion lens (VCL-HG0868K) that?s attached to the fixed lens. In addition to that lens, we were also particularly impressed with the improved 3.5-inch viewscreen (pictured below), which looks brighter and sharper than its predecessor, even though Sony reps told us its resolution is actually lower than that of the Z1U. Sony also said the viewfinder inside the eyepiece is exactly the same as the one used on the Sony Z1U.
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