HDV format may be like HD-DVD for pros

HDV & HD-DVD - remember those days? Format wars? Seems like only yesterday people couldn’t tell the difference between VHS and Beta, but the networks saw that difference and set the broadcast standards.
This review was written 15 Oct 2007 when the camera came out. http://hd2o.tv/flog/hd-underwater/sony-pmw-ex1-video-camera/
Here’s the brief: I’m posting what I Flogged in here as an editor and underwater shooter, about the perils of HDV and 4:2:ZERO color.

Hello from Key West, went out fri. to shoot some u/w footage for Florida Keys CC w/the Panasonic HVX 200. We did some test shots for color balance. It was a 100 ft viz day!

GO DIVE!

Not much wild life but we saw a nurse shark, beautiful scorpion fish, spotted eel, bunch of divers stirring it up…
It was fun and felt good to get wet. I got the shots

Hello from the S. Most cameraflyer. this news story going around of the eagle ray is misleading. They are showing STING RAYS over and over. What, they don’t have any eagle ray footage? Want some?

SMC

Do you Flog?? You’re here so either you Flog or you are being Flogged. Whatever, you can use this code for $6.00 credit in our store. Download some HD clips for iTunes, grab the oceanic screen saver series, get the featured DVD at a great price. You can even combine other promotions. Because I’m too lazy there shall be No Restrictions.

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Here’s the catch… (did you really think it was that easy?) You should feel compelled by our mindless generosity to tell a few friends about us and our non-profit causes. Why? Would you hand them six bucks for the heck of it? No? Tell ‘um about the discount… it’s the next best thing. If you comment on an article - bonus!

Jump to hd2o.tv

Support us so we can afford a better studio.

LOL ###

One amazing day at Island Dolphin Care…

A decommissioned Air Force ship, that once tracked Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space launches off Florida, is being prepared in a Virginia shipyard to become a new habitat for marine life and an attraction for recreational divers in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Information on diving the Vandenberg.

This link yoursafetymatters.org/ covers related issued sinking a ship.

This link www.thespacereview.com/ covers the ship’s role with NASA.

Retired in 1983, the 524-foot-long General Hoyt S. Vandenberg floated for 24 years among ships in the U.S. Maritime Administration’s James River Naval Reserve Fleet at Fort Eustis, Va. It saw cinema duty as a Russian science ship in “Virus,” a 1999 release starring Jamie Lee Curtis, William Baldwin and Donald Sutherland.

The almost $6 million ship-to-reef project is scheduled to culminate in the late spring of 2008, with the vessel’s intentional sinking in 140 feet of water, about six miles south of Key West.

Prior to sinking, workers must rid of the vessel of all environmental hazards. That means removing paint, stripping out almost 800,000 feet wiring loaded with toxic PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) used in insulation before being banned and off-loading any remaining waste petroleum products.

More than 50,000 man-hours of work will be necessary, but the end result, project officials say, will be a diversified shipwreck that should appeal to divers of all skill levels.

“We came up with the Vandenberg from a list of about 400 ships, because the Vandenberg seems to offer a little bit to everybody,” said Joe Weatherby of Reefmakers, the company coordinating the project. “There’s going to be 10 or 11 places along the entire length of the ship that will come up to within about 40 feet of the surface. That’s a lot more area for a rookie (diver) to explore.”

Most of the funding for the project is coming from Florida Keys government sources, including the region’s tourism council. MARAD is contributing $1.25 million to the effort.

“We have a huge set of ships from World War II and beyond that are now destined for scrap,” said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who examined the project in early October. “By taking ships like the Vandenberg and instead (turn) them into an artificial reef, we create a new conservation opportunity for marine wildlife and also generate economic activity.”

Project officials say the Vandenberg reef should generate $8 million annually in tourism-related sales after it is sunk and point out environmental benefits, especially alleviating recreational diving pressure on natural coral reefs.

The addition of the Vandenberg is to anchor the lower end of a dive experience that area dive shop owners are calling the Florida Keys Wreck Trek. At the top, off Key Largo, is the former U.S. Navy Landing Ship Dock Spiegel Grove, another ship that was “mothballed” at James River.

“It’s the final piece in the wreck trek puzzle,” said Bob Holston, president of the Keys Association of Dive Operators. “We’ll have wrecks of every size and age from … ancient galleons to freighters and military ships.

The Vandenberg began its nautical life in 1943 under a different name, the Gen. Harry S. Taylor, as a troop transport ship.

After participating in World War II, the Hungarian Revolution and the Cold War, it was overhauled to become a sophisticated missile-tracking vessel in the Atlantic. When christened for that assignment in 1963, it became the Vandenberg, named after the former Air Force general and director of the Central Intelligence Group, predecessor to today’s Central Intelligence Agency.

For “Virus,” the ship was repainted and stenciled with Russian lettering. Much of the lettering remains, but the ship is now being primped for a different purpose.

“You ask yourself, is she rusty?” Weatherby said. “Yeah, she’s rusty, but where’s she going, she’s fixing to get rustier and the fish are going to love it.”

Should be a boon for HD2O services!

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Welcome my friend Garry Lee Rosenberg, a guy of musical talents and diversity.  He is the man behind the curtain scoring music for HD2O.  As fast as he can compose and perform we hope to pour on an hour of unique video over the next six months.  That’s a load.  He will also contribute his findings of sounds, music, and their effect on human behavior.

I remember watching Garry sketch out a horn chart during a band break in Vegas, without the song playing, just G.L. and a composer’s ledger in the corner scratching.  More impressively, the band played that tune in the next set.  He’s a nice guy I’ve known for years and I’m glad he was interested in the project.  In fact if I went through my VHS archives from Danger Zone there would be a performance with G.L. on trombone.

Welcome aboard!

Welcome Joe Berg to the Flog.  Time to bring him in to track this year’s HD schedule for us.  We dove together in 2007 and shot Key Largo, this year is Key West.  Not only is Joe an experienced diver and underwater cameraflyer, he’s a real nice guy too.  We are a good team because he brings so much for both skills. He has been shooting underwater for years and we have his best of shark moments posted.  Highly recommended viewing…  SHARK! and hours of sea creatures.
Joe is genuinely excited to help RE-shoot the Keys; this time in HD. He can apply scuba and camera skills as he executes the dive plan and all movement in the water behind the camera.  We’ll have our first shot at the season soon, weather permitting.

Joe is married and although I have not meet her in person we have the internet, for now, as she was traveling internationally last summer.

Welcome aboard!

Paul Dymon films is a small post production suite that turns out video under client direction. All ‘other’ time is absorbed by independent projects, like HD2O™. ‘A’-list clients get service immediately; good, fast but not cheap. The ‘B’-list clients get excellent service, pretty fast and pretty good price, but might not need instant turnaround. ‘C’-list is for convention services; good, not fast, not cheap, typically with several months planning to complete.

I’ve flogged about how I am (we are) addicted to energy. What would we do if the power went out? Electricity is pretty darn important in my studio where nothing but the blackout blinds work without power. Battery life? OK, the workstation UPS can go maybe 20-minutes on battery, (if only it were still new). Camera with limited zooming- a few hours, and the Frezzi mini-fill is good for 45-minutes. Then it’s R.I.P.

Next to a stable power supply my big concern is the workstation which includes the RAID. We are proud to be a reseller for Ciprico, maker of excellent drives. There’s one in the rack here. I don’t proclaim to be a technician, so like most people I’m at the mercy of tech support. I do my share of research and reading. It’s a full time gig keeping up with any part of technology. Mine just happens to be video which requires the movement of huge amounts of data. In video greater the data rate means more real-time effects and layers.

The RAID is like the brakes of your car. I’ll try to fix just about anything on my old truck except for the brakes. If you mess up the brakes it’s pretty much lights out. If the RAID is down I can’t edit. This is where Ciprico comes in.

Whenever I call Ciprico they treat it as an emergency. They realize time is money and downtime costs double if work backs up. Through the years I’ve had a couple drives fail, which is a simple plug-n-play operation. Ciprico tech support hangs with me on the phone walking me through the process up to rebuild. What’s that worth? I never complain about the cost of a brake job. Thank you to Lance and Gerry at Ciprico tech support in California.

Why RAID 3: explainedRAID-3 is best in sequential reads and writes. It’s faster than RAID-5 on sequential reads and writes, and nearly as fast as RAID-0, with the all important doubling of data for protection. This means that in applications where large files comprise all of the workload, RAID-3 is a good choice.

Not surprisingly, RAID-3 is most common in applications like video editing, in which huge files transfer speeds must keep up with system speed.

A RAID-3 array tolerates the loss of any single drive and most modern RAID-3 systems support hot spares and automatic rebuilding. While performance doesn’t degrade much in the event of a single-disk failure, rebuilding the array can take hours, as the blocks are checked and the bad ones reconstructed.

Generally speaking, any application that reads and writes large files sequentially is a good candidate for RAID-3 like our video editing station below.

click for larger image

New flash player for blogging adds dimension to info. Let’s see how it works and please: let me know what you think of the quality! Here’s a few clips from HD2O ~ The Keys. Pick up the DVD and relax!
Regards,

We are using a technology that has only been available for weeks. There are a few bugs to iron out. For best video performance click the red title above to open the article’s full page. Videos are not always available in the drop-down page mode. In the interest of quality- videos are being compressed using the H.264 codec which provides about 3:1 advantage over MPEG 2. You will need the latest Flash Player to play some video files! The link will tell you your current Flash version, Mac and PC.

[flashvideo filename="http://hd2o.tv/flog/wp-content/plugins/flash-video-player/videos/13xsample.flv" /]

[flashvideo filename="http://hd2o.tv/flog/wp-content/plugins/flash-video-player/videos/SAMPLE14a.flv" /]

The video samples above are from Key Largo Florida summer 2007.

Watch the HD ‘Fringing’ in high contrast areas:

Recently a colleague was bidding on a video shoot. He shoots multiple formats, like Beta SP through his Sony F-900, so he asked the client what format they needed. Without hesitation they answered, “HD.” He asked to be clarified, “What kind of HD are we talking about?” The client emailed specs with visible cc: to the additional shooters in the hunt. Reviewing the list of suiters the realized many were shooting HDV camcorders. He never submitted a quote. Days later the client asked for his quote. When the shooter explained the difference between cameras, the client said, “HD is HD, its going on the web.”

I tell this story because there is a vast difference between a Sony F-900 and a hand held camcorder costing eight grand or less. Why is it better? How much better? What is the value difference? We wanted to see for ourselves.

With my own shortcomings as a camera op duly noted, we put three cameras side by side. I won’t disclose the brand or model of the camera, only the results; what we could collectively SEE in the images, and in post. Yes, it was unfair to compare. We used the three cameras we had available, but that doesn’t change the results or knowing the difference when asked. Here’s some things to look for.

First issue: The HDV camera was about three years old. It could not get rid of the visible halo edges, called Chromatic Aberration. Jump to this link for more in-depth understanding. Or read the Wikipedia Chromatic_aberration page. In short: It’s caused by (1) high x-factor lens magnification coupled with (2) increased image resolution. C.A. fringing did not show up in the same camera @ DV resolution because the 720 x 480 image with the same zoom is not (also) being scaled up dramatically to HD.

The 4:2:2 camera shoots 1440 x 1080 images that are anamorphic 1920 x 1080. It did not have the fringing, artifact edges. The image also did not tear when we shot streetlights or stage lights. The HDV images shown below display the usual vertical tear. (lens flares were intentional)

The difference here is in both optics and color space. Second issue: HDV sub-sample of color at 4:2:0 (I thought it was 4:3:0 and stand corrected). DVCPRO samples 4:2:2 and Sony F-900 samples 4:4:4. The F-900 uses a $14,000+ lens and overall is a very complex camera to operate. Make no mistake; this is not point-n-shoot. It took a few moments for an experienced shooter to pull the image together, and the resulting image was astonishing.So here are some important concerns.

Color space - so much so that networks won’t even consider content shot at less than 4:2:2 even from the best shooters. Color that is not sampled cannot be corrected. What color would you like to NOT sample in your image? Blue? red? green? How can that stand against content that samples all three? Let’s use some LOGIC people: What will deliver the best color? 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 or 4:2:0? 35Mbs or 100Mbs or 20MBytes (not bits) per second? Answers are in bold, Homer.

Compression - Long GOP is an algorithm to reduce space. 35mbs may not be a sufficient data rate to carry both image and color information. Lenses - many fixed lens cameras do not show Chromatic Aberration because they are engineered and designed around the lens, and employ internal image processing; they literally employ lens specific settings as Chromatic Aberration Compensation, CAC, for the shortcoming of the fixed lens. Some interchangeable lens cameras without CAC Imaging result in a fuzzy halo on high contrasting edges. The findings were worst while shooting a strong sunset and was most annoying when zooming, giving the illusion of being slightly out of focus. The lens is faster and smoother, no auto focus.

I highly recommend follow this link to HD For Indies where Mike Curtis reaches the same conclusion with far more facts. A year old; Excellent article.

HD is wonderful, but shooters and clients have to come to grips with the performance difference. They have to realize the difference between HD cameras and camcorders, pro-sumer and professional, recognize and acknowledge their shortcomings and advantages.

Regards,

WAY BACK, and I mean way-the-heck back in Computer Time: 1982 Media coverage of computer technology was still science fiction to most Americans. Reading the specs of a dinosaur PC is testament to the patience of those souls who were pioneering with those early PCs.

Read this: PCs go Mainstream. Published in Wired, Time Magazine named the personal computer its person of the year 25 years ago today. The article, which we found on Wired, is an entertaining reminder of how computers have changed the way we live and do business. Be grateful for what we’ve got! I guess!

State of the art IBM PC, circa: 1982
Computers were more than a fad, they were the rage.

PC sales hit 2.8 million, double 1981’s 1.4 million, and quadruple the 724,000 in 1980. The article is fun to read as a reminder of what we now take for granted. Do you remember 14.4 K dial-up modems? The article also talks of “a way to transmit messages by connecting a telephone to a PC,” the introduction of “e-mail”. Something your grand mother is most likely using today!

Here’s a link to the PC sales 25-year Anniversary Stats.

In 2006 InfoWorld report was not good for PC vendors, moving 66 million units in the US, 163 million in the rest of the World. Has technology topped out? I believe the average person has enough computer on their desk to do most anything. How much processing power do most users need? That’s as individual as shoe size.

Who wouldn’t like a shinny new machine? But I have a good friend who still runs Windows 2000, MicroSoft does offer a massive support site for every OS. Typically, I don’t suggest any upgrade until it is seemingly necessary. I want to be sure it works before putting my workstation at risk.

No doubt, PCs are a big part of our lives. My wife’s hair curlers have a computer chip! What happens if the power goes off someday? Could you manage without a computer? Without the Internet? I admit trying to turn on the ceiling fan during a blackout. I’m hooked on things that require power. We’re all hooked - to various degrees, so we should all take responsible measures to conserve natural resources so they might be available for not just hundreds, but thousands of years.

We can all do our part to conserve, do no harm, and enjoy life. Happy New Year!