Hi all,

I understand from various tutorials on the site that MC now supports P2 in 1080 25p over 50i and 720 25p. Putting final format considerations aside, what is the best mode to shoot in for optimum quality? DVCPROHD seems to be 100 mb/sec whether 720 or 1080 while at the same time confusingly being only 960 x 540 internally. Anyone have any thoughts?

From some of what I've read about the HVX200, it's CCD isn't really up to much in the way of super-high-quality 1080p material.

I think most of the reviews found that it's 720p resolution yielded much better results. Though I may be wrong. The HVX200 is a camera I hope to use myself, so I'll be watching this thread to hear how other people have got on with it.

Yes I've heard similar but wanted some Avid views, thanks for that.

According to the the P2 Formats PDF on the Knowledge Base, 720P/25PN must be cut in at 720 / 50 project. Is that not the case now that MC 3 is available?

What is your final deliverable format? There is no loss or gain to speak of upconverting from 720 to 1080. If you shoot 1080 it is merely shooting 720 and the camera upconverts it or the avid upconverts or the deck or whatever you use. That cammera does not actually acquire 1080 image. In fact the only panasonic with a native 1080 acquisition is the HDX3000

Good stuff, that's what I've been reading elsewhere. 720P is therfore the optimum res for the HVX200.

With the added benefit that the 720p mode allows 'native' framerates, which allows for seamless over and under-cranking. Plus those modes save on disk space.

I always use th 720pN modes when shooting with this camera.

Chris

Unfortunately none of the above is true.  The HVX200 uses a 960x540 pixel CCD and offsets the green array by half a pixel horizontally and vertically to give subjectively double the resolution.  60 Hz cameras then downsample the internal 1920x1080 signal to 1280x1080, while 50 Hz cameras use 1440x1080.  In both formats 720 is downsampled to 1280x720.

Since 720 is not the native resolution of the camera, if you need to supply 1080 to your client then work in 1080.  Doing an upres from 720 will result in a softer image.

 There are, I think only two reasons to shoot 720p, one is card space if you are a bit short, the other is to do variable frame rates. MC3 now has the 720/25p format we've been yelling for for yonks.

There is a mass of info over in the DVX user forums www.dvxuser.com especially as regards image quality, the gist being that 1080p shows less artifacts than 720p due to the way the video is compressed.

Cheers,

Dave

daveswan:

 There are, I think only two reasons to shoot 720p, one is card space if you are a bit short, the other is to do variable frame rates. MC3 now has the 720/25p format we've been yelling for for yonks.

There is a mass of info over in the DVX user forums www.dvxuser.com especially as regards image quality, the gist being that 1080p shows less artifacts than 720p due to the way the video is compressed.

Cheers,

Dave

Is not that easy. EBU demonstrates some tests at a IBC some years ago. Their conclusion, after the expert visitors has mede their judgment, is that 720p50 is not as good as 1080p50, but is at least as good as 1080i50 and 1080p25. They do not test 720p25.

I concur with jwrl. The Panasonic HVX202EN captures a 1920x1080 4:4:4 RGB image and then resamples it to whatever setting you have the camera set to. There is a slight increase in resolution with 1080 over 720.

Steve.