Casual shooting
* A steady tripod, specifically with a fluid head ($120)
* A rubber band (info, $0.01)
* A bigger, extra, battery ($40)
* A spacious camera bag ($10)
* Enough tapes ($20)
* A polarizer filter ($35)
* An ND 0.6 filter ($20)
* A UV filter ($20)

Special Interest (macro)
All of the above, plus:
* Tiffen 2x, 3x, 4x close-up kit lenses ($30)

Documentaries
All of the above, plus:
* A Canon or Raynox telephoto lens (make sure it’s specific to HD, $200)
* An HD wide angle lens (e.g. Canon WD-H43, the Raynox 7000Pro, $200)
* A white balance gray card (usage, $5)
* A shotgun microphone with windscreen support (e.g. Canon DM-50, $150)
* A lavalier microphone (e.g. the Audio-Technica ATR-35S, $40)
* Extension cord for the lavalier mic ($15)
* Tiffen Universal Dolly (to be used only on thick carpet, $50)
* A shoulder bracket (e.g. B&H sells one for $45)
* A reflector (e.g. the Westcott 5-in-1 Reflector Kit, $100)
* A focus wheel (DIY, or from Irvb, $40)
* A lens cleanser, blower, and brush ($20)
* A lens hood ($20)
* [Optional] The Tiffen HDTV-FX3 filter (low-contrast movie look, $200)

Music videos
All of the above, plus:
* A steadycam (e.g. $170 Hauge MMC, or a DIY $15 one)
* 1000W Smith Victor KT1000 continuous lights (e.g. from Adorama, $130)
* A portable CD player for lip-syncing ($70)
* A clap, to synchronize the audio with the sped-up lipsyncing in post processing ($10)
* A 35mm adapter (e.g. TwoNeilHD, or JAG35Pro, with a 5m GG, achromat & condenser)
* Bogen / Manfrotto 293 Lens Support with Quick Release ($70)
* Actual 35mm lenses (price varies)
* Lens hoods for the various 35mm lenses (price varies)
* An external monitor: the Sony DVP-FX820 (NTSC) or DVP-FX870 (PAL) ($180)
* A female-to-female RCA adapter to connect the external monitor ($8)
* A DIY monitor holder (instructions, $7)
* A second, cheaper, tripod to hold the monitor and the monitor holder ($20)
* External monitor Hoodman H900, for when shooting in sunlight ($100)

[Alternatively, you can mount the monitor and monitor holder on the main tripod itself like this, above the camera (instead of on a separate tripod), but you will need the Shrig Rig ($125) for that, instead of the suggested ‘Manfrotto lens support’.]

Short films
All of the above, plus:
* Rode Stereo Videomic ($250)
* Rode Boompole ($120)
* Rode Dead Kitten windscreen ($30)
* A second person holding the boom mic (beg someone)
* Good 3.5mm headphones, to evaluate audio during shooting ($60)
* Tiffen Steady Stick, or this trick, to be used as a small crane ($100)
* A smooth dolly (e.g. a DIY one, or the Glidetrack, $170)
* Car charging kit for external camera, mic, monitor ($70)
* A power strip for battery charging on location ($10)
* A folding director’s chair for the shots not requiring camera movement ($10)

Full featured films
You don’t use an HV20/30 in that case, silly.

In any case, you always need a good plan. Plan ahead your shots by sketching, and leaving notes on a notepad about camera movement and composition.

After a few months since we got this 35mm vibrating adapter (with achromat) from Worley, JBQ and I tested it tonight. I am concerned about the extreme vignetting that I am getting. I can’t zoom in any more towards the ground glass because the HV20 wouldn’t focus that close, so I am not happy about that part. If you have any tips, I am all ears. I am wondering if I need a different ground glass.

As a moderator of many channels at Vimeo, I get to watch a fair bit of HD videos uploaded daily by its users. One thing has stroke me in the last 8 months though, that’s pretty unsettling: most mini-stories written and directed by kids (and their friends), usually younger than 16 years old, are ALL end in death. Usually by a gunshot.

It’s one thing to watch 2-3 videos that are like that and let it be as “kids fooling around”, but when the huge majority of story-fied teenage videos end up with a gunshot, it’s very disturbing. Especially when to come to think of it from the point of view that the kids who actually do sit down and direct a story, are the most creative ones. So if the most creative of our kids are so violent and single-dimensional, what good are the rest ones?

I don’t want to sound like a 60 year old whining about the youth and where it’s heading, but truth is, there is definitely something wrong with the upbringing of these kids. I don’t believe that any kid from my class would have written such grim stories in that age. Also, please note that I am not against grim movies (heh, my own short story ends in death too), but there’s a difference between a deeper story that sadly ends in death, and a story written as a plot device for that death scene only.

Update: Here’s one today.

Special thanks to [too smart, too hawt] Sony engineer Dennis Adams for the tip!

This tip allows you to change the speed rate of your video at an exact percentage that makes it compatible with a target frame rate. For example, when you want to re-time a 24.00 video to 23.976 fps, or a 30.00 to 29.97 fps, or from 24p to 25p, etc. This method is how DVD makers export 24.00 fps film movies for PAL or IVTC 24p DVDs, for example. Also useful if your digicam doesn’t record in exact NTSC 29.97 (e.g. the Canon 5D, Kodak).

If you just drop a different-than-in-project-properties frame rate video in your timeline, your video will “resample” instead of “retime”, and that’s not what you want to do for media that they have similar but not exact frame rates. With this method there should be no ghosting introduced, and stretched audio will preserve its pitch. If you do see ghosting, “disable resample” for the media before step 10.

This trick should not be used with HDV PF24 or other pulldown-added formats. You need to first remove pulldown and have a “clean” progressive image before you do such frame rate transformations correctly.

1. In Project Properties set the ruler time format to ?Absolute Frames?, and make sure that the ruler offset is 0.
2. Make sure that in the “Options” menu, “enable snapping” is ON and “Ignore Event Grouping” is OFF.
3. Set project frame rate to match the current media frame rate (e.g. 24p). You can use the ?Match Media Settings? yellow button in the Video tab of the “Project Properties” dialog if it is not a common frame rate and you want to be exact (e.g. cheap digicams are never exact 29.97 or 30.00).
4. Place media at the very start of a video track (time 0).
5. Place cursor at the end of media. After Vegas 8, the cursor will snap at the end.
6. Hit Ctrl+G, Ctrl+C (Selection Start, Copy).
7. Set the project properties to the desired framerate (e.g. PAL 25.00)
8. Focus on the timeline again, make sure cursor is at the end of the media, and hit Ctrl+G, Ctrl+V (Selection Start, Paste).
9. Ctrl+drag right edge of media to new cursor position, snapping to it (like you are time-stretching it).
10. Now, export using a lossless codec (e.g. Cineform, Huffyuv) following your project properties as a guideline as to how exactly to export (e.g. for the Canon 5D 30.00->29.97 fps conversion, it would be 1920×1080, progressive, 29.97 fps, 1.000 aspect ratio).
11. Do the same (steps 1 to 10) for all your clips that need re-timing.
12. Import all the exported clips to a new project, and edit using project properties generated by the “match media” function for these new clips.

Once retimed, if you don’t want to transcode to an intermediate format in step 10, you are free to chop up and trim the clips and use them in your project as is. The step 4, about starting the clip at time 0, was to make the math easy, but clips can be moved later and will stay “retimed”. Just don’t time-stretch them even more (e.g. adding slow-mo) after using this method because they would lose their time frame sync (which is why I suggest you export to an intermediate codec first before really editing the retimed clips).

Hopefully, someone will step up to write a C# Vegas script for it, or even better, Sony adds proper support for it (by letting you edit the frame rate on the media’s properties dialog).

For DVX-100 users read here instead.

I got my hands on two Canon 5D-MII video files to try them on my new shiny PC (quad 2.4Ghz). Well, this shiny PC plays back the files in the astonishing 3 fps through Sony Vegas (and 15 fps in Quicktime). It’s of course impossible to edit at 3 fps. Here are the two solutions I found so far.

A. Use proxy files, as discussed here.

The only thing you need to do in addition before you follow the tutorial above, IF you want to export in NTSC 29.97, is to retime the video clip (5D shoots in 30.00 fps you see). Simply dropping a 30 fps video in the timeline and exporting as 29.97 asks for trouble (lost frames or ghosting will be the result if you don’t properly retime it).

B. Buy Cineform NeoHD ($600).

Unfortunately, Cineform’s HDLink utility does not support the MOV format of the 5D so far, while when rewrapping the MOV to MP4 (so CoreAVC/Haali’s h.264 codec can support it and feed it to Cineform), Cineform crashes (at least on my new PC). This means that to get this MOV h.264 format to Cineform’s AVI format, you need to do it via Vegas instead. Because as I said above Vegas is not fast to decode these MOV files, it will take an unusual longer time to export them. But at least it will work.

So, create a new project on Vegas. Use the “project properties” dialog’s icon called “Match Media” to match the properties of such a MOV file, but then manually change the frame rate to 29.97, change the quality to “best” and the de-interlacing to “none” or “interpolate”. Place only one of the MOV files in the Vegas timeline, right click its video event, select “properties”, and then “disable resample”.

Then, select “File”, “Render As”. Select the AVI filetype, and then press “custom”. In the Video tab select, 1920×1080 resolution, 29.97 fps, Progressive field order, 1.000 aspect ratio, and Cineform as the video format. Click “configure” and on Cineform’s 4.x version dialog, select “high” encoding quality and “up convert…”. Do not use “Higher” quality because I found this to actually have lesser quality than plain “High”! So, select “ok” a couple of times, and then “save” to render out the .avi file.

Do the same for the rest of your MOV clips. They have to be exported out one by one (until Cineform’s HDLink utility adds support for these files directly where you can export in batches). When you are finished, import the .avi files on a new project (where you “match media” in the project properties dialog, and use “best” quality again).

On the preview window, right click, and select “simulate…”, but uncheck “scale video…”. If you don’t use a second monitor, select “preview(auto)” for your preview quality. If you do use a second display as a preview monitor, select “preview (half)”, as at least on my machine, that’s the only setup that provides full 30p playback without stutter (before adding plugins/transitions that is) for Cineform files. Apparently, “preview(half)” is a bit faster than the “draft(full)” quality, without missing out in the quality. However, always use “preview (full)” or “preview(auto)” if you use the proxy file method instead of the Cineform method. Then edit, and finally export to your liking.

There are pros and cons between the two methods. Here are some:
- The first method is free, the second one costs $600 (or $400 for HV20/30 users).
- The first method is faster to encode to.
- The first method creates much smaller files.
- The first method creates much faster files to edit.
- The second method creates high quality video that helps you to make educated guesses while editing as to if a scene is worthwhile to keep or not.
- The second method can somewhat handle color grading before exporting, while on the first method, because the color grading must be done after switching back to the high-res MOV files, it will make previewing impossibly slow.
- The second method is generally faster during the final export because the Cineform decoder is faster (and so it feeds the encoder faster).
- The second method is a better intermediate format solution, especially if you are collaborating with others for your video projects.
- The SUPER utility used in the first method only works in Windows administrative mode. If your Windows account is a plain user one, you are out of luck.

This guide is relevant for AVCHD too, provided that:
a. SUPER’s AVCHD support is better than it used to be a month ago, which sucked.
b. Cineform’s HDLink utility requires paid solutions to read AVCHD.

You know that I am not really a proponent of 24p. However, I DO like the choice of shooting in 24p when the situation warrants it (and that’s not for casual situations of course). The lack of NTSC and IVTC Film frame rates in the Canon 5D-MII is the reason we are currently not going for it. I am holding off my husband from getting one because of this (if we replace his existing 5D, it would be for the usage of both of us). And he blogged about it.

So what do you think? Is asking for 24p too much? Is it even needed? Leave a comment on his blog with your thoughts.

I spent the night searching for music videos that were shot on either the HV20 or HV30, and added them to a new group on Vimeo. The music videos must look like there was an effort to make them look professional, rather than just one-take random live shots, in order to be added to the group.

I estimate that there are about ~100 music videos shot for promotional reasons using the HV20/30 cameras, which confirms the revolution these little cheap gems brought to the amateur filmmaking. Also, most of these videos were shot with the HV20 rather than the HV30. The few videos missing from this collection can be found on Youtube.

One question that I am asked regularly by new videographers is about what codec they should use for archival and collaboration, in other words, for “intermediate” usage rather than user playback usage. So I spent all afternoon today making tests with some of the most popular and modern intermediate codecs for PCs: Avid DNxHD & Meridien, Lagarith, Cineform, Matrox i-Frame HD, Huffyuv, FFdshow TryOut’s FFV1 & MJPEG, and finally, HDV MPEG-2 by MainConcept.

Setup

I used Vegas Pro 8.0c as my vehicle for these experiments. The PC used is DELL Dimension 8400 with a Pentium4 at 3.06 Ghz with Hyperthreading, 3 GB of RAM, two SATA drives one of which holds the temp files and the other one the source HDV file (and rendering back to the first one), and a 256 MB GeForce 86000GTS, under Windows XP Pro 32bit. The source file is a typical 15″.00 sec HDV .m2t file: 25mbps, 1440×1080/60i (interlaced). The 1080/60i template was used on Vegas’ Project Properties dialog, but with the “interpolate” algorithm selected (everything else was left in their defaults).

For the playback speed benchmarks the preview windows used the Vegas default “preview (full)” and “preview (auto)” qualities. The “preview(auto)” was exactly set to 1/4th HD window, meaning, a playback area of 640×360. The “preview (full)” was displaying on my second full-HD PC monitor, meaning that the video was displaying exactly in 1:1 1920×1080 size (no resizing). I benchmarked the playback speed on both windowed 1/4th HD and full 1:1 sizes because in full size the graphics card is taxed much more because of the bandwidth involved, and so it’s usually slower. Normal users would usually use it in 1/4 HD preview windows on their home PCs, but professionals are more likely to use full HD preview second-monitors, so I thought it would be good to test both.

Notes on some of the codecs

Cineform NeoHD v3.8.0 used in three different qualities: Medium standard, High upconverted to 4:4:4 and Higher upconverted to 4:4:4. For some weird reason that probably has to do with their “clean artifacts” algorithm, as you can see in the “quality difference” chart the quality seems to be better in High mode rather than in Higher.

For Avid DNxHD, I used its 10bit, 220mbps and 8bit, 145mbps modes, both exported at its highest 1080/60i preset. However, as you can see below, there is a UI bug on their codec preferences dialog, which didn’t let me choose anything for the “alpha” option. I wonder how can Avid release such a buggy interface. I should also mention that Avid installed its codecs to work under the Quicktime .MOV container rather than the AVI or MXF containers, which has a speed impact under the PC (just because Quicktime under Windows sucks goats).

The Matrox Mpeg2 i-Frame HD was used at 100 mbps, just so it emulates the product that it tried to replace: DVCPro HD. I should note two things with this codec: first, it won’t let me export above 1440×1080 (although I used a 2006 version, I don’t have a newer one as Matrox doesn’t give these for free), and it won’t playback in the 1/4th-HD preview window under Vegas because it refuses to resize itself (I get a black screen). It requires either a 1:1 playback size, or to be viewed in “good (auto)” preview quality mode rather than “preview (auto)” that’s Vegas’ default.

For the MJPEG codec, I used July’s FFDshow tryout’s preference panels, selected 95% quality, and I specifically told it to optimize “for quality”.

For the FFV1 codec, again FFDshow tryout’s pref panels were used, using the default 422p quality and everything else was left as is.

For Lagarith, I told it that my CPU is multithreaded, and I tried it in three different modes. I tried Huffyuv in YUY2 mode only, as its other modes create too huge files.

From all these codecs, Cineform NeoHD and Matrox’s i-FrameHD codecs are available only via purchase (in Matrox’s case you must buy their hardware to get access to these codecs, they don’t distribute them otherwise, even if they do work without the said hardware). All the other codecs are either freeware, open standards, or open source.

Test 1: Encoding times

MJPEG, Cineform and Huffyuv are the fastest contenders in this first competing category. The MSU codec should just suicide. The rest are just “ok”.

Please note that on Vegas Pro 8+ and Vegas Platinum 9+, HDV source footage doesn’t need to be re-compressed again in HDV if you didn’t modify that footage in any way in the timeline other than split/cut (e.g. adding plugins, pan, crop, transitions will force Vegas to re-encode). I disabled the “no-recompression” trick and force Vegas to re-encode in order to measure its encoding speed for this test.

Test 2: Filesizes created

This test is not exactly comparable as some bitrates were decided by the user (e.g. I specifically told Matrox to use 100mbps instead of its default 50mbps) or by the format (HDV is always 25mbps), but for some codecs it’s the codec itself that decides how much bitrate will use. So at least for these codecs, this test is still relevant.

HDV here creates the smallest file size, being a format that’s in between of being a delivery-grade format and an intermediate-format (it kinda feels like it has an identity crisis). MJPEG also created a small file, but the best file size — in conjunction to the quality it also delivered in the test below — was Matrox’s. Cineform is a very good choice too here.

As for Lagarith’s RGB (and Huffyuv RGB which was not tested specifically, but it’s similar to Lagarith’s RGB), yes, it’s a big file, but as you will see below, it had zero quality degradation. The only one that was truly lossless.

Test 3: 640×360 preview playback

Please note that the speed of playback can be different from application to application. I use Vegas here as my vehicle because, well, that’s what I use daily. Vegas is popular lately with the “geek” side of the new wave of amateur artistic videographers too, so it’s relevant to the kind of readers I have on this blog.

So, as you can see, HDV and Cineform Medium and High quality, and to a lesser extend its Higher quality, are speedy. They playback on a Vegas 1/4th HD preview window under “preview (auto)” mode (which is what most people would use it as), on full speed at 29.97fps. The rest, are one, big, fat, disaster. Admittedly, Avid’s DNxHD might have fared better if it was under the AVI container that Vegas prefers.

Please note that Matrox’s codec failed to work in this test, as explained above. [Note: I used “0″ frames for Matrox to create this chart, but we used “9 fps” in order to create the last chart at the very end of the article (same value as in its full HD preview playback), because without it, the chart’s formula was dividing by zero and was going berserk.]

Test 4: 1920×1080 preview playback

HDV is maintaining its full speed on this test, but every other codec comes to its knees, including Cineform. The playback difference for Cineform is staggering in 1:1 size compared to the 640×360 playback window. However, I have found that Cineform is pretty usable at that speed anyway, and that it also uses a notorious caching system that when playing back the clips in the timeline a lot of times, it gets faster and faster each time.

As for FFV1 and MSU, they should just die together. I have no mercy for poor engineering.

Test 5: Quality degradation after 1 re-encoding

I used the “perceptual image diff” utility to conduct this test (thanks goes to my husband JBQ, for the tip). Because all these codecs are either true lossless or visually lossless or barely-lossy, I needed to quantify their quality loss rather than let my eyes fool me (or Cineform’s David Newman would eat me alive). I selected the same frame each time I was testing a codec, de-interlaced it, export it as PNG, and compared it with the same (de-interlaced) frame of the original HDV source footage.

What you see here is that FFV1 has a serious bug in 422p that made 1.4+ million pixels look different over the original 2+ million pixels that exist on a 1920×1080 playback area. It is visibly different, and I can only hope that this is a bug and not how it would really perform. We also see that MJPEG sucks as an intermediate format (and I am writing this because many users under Linux use that same MJPEG codec for intermediate needs). HDV is only “ok” and Cineform is looking good to the eyes, but not as good when you look at the numbers (curious, huh?). Instead, Avid’s new DVxHD codec does an amazing job.

The biggest surprise is from Matrox’s i-Frame HD codec though, that it manages to have a minimal degradation even if it only used 100 mbps for its encoding compared to most other codecs in this test. If only Matrox had some clue to make this an open codec or even sell it.

Lagarith RGB here had 0 pixels of difference (meaning, 0 degradation of quality), it was the only codec that did a real lossless job. But of course, as you see above, its file size was big. Huffyuv in YUY2 mode seems to be a good choice overall too.

UPDATE: Cineform’s David Newman was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the Cineform Neo4k variant, which allows for 4:4:4 encoding and decoding. When using this feature to encode/decode a progressive source (rather than an interlaced one), the pixel differentiation is around 20,000 pixels, which places that aspect of comparison around the same (or better) level than the DNxHD codec. However, Neo4k costs $1000.

Test 6: Quality degradation after 5 re-encodings

The true value of an intermediate format is to sustain quality after many generations of re-encodings — something that’s normal to happen in a broadcast environment where different editor workers are sharing footage and each one modify it before it goes on air.

I only used four codecs in this test because it was getting late and I had to manually go around the fact that Vegas would not re-encode footage that didn’t change and used AVI or HDV as its container: I created TIFF uncompressed files from the same frame used earlier for the perceptual diff utility, and was re-encoding that in progressive mode, taking another grab as TIFF from that and re-encoding, etc etc, 5 times over. I hope it makes some sense.

For Avid DNxHD the TIFF workaround for Vegas’s no-re-encoding ability was not necessary, as Vegas doesn’t support the no-re-encoding trick for MOV containers. One thing to note here is that MOV is slower on PCs, so while in the first export from the source HDV it only took DNxHD 1′.53″ to encode the 15 second file, when going from MOV to MOV it took nine minutes! Avid, please give us some AVI love too.

Anways, this test not only show us how terribly sucky HDV is when it’s re-encoded over and over, but it also shows us that the perceptual diff utility is not always tell us the whole truth as you would think it would. Numbers can lie, in a way. You see, the Avid DNxHD codec was having a weird bug. It was screwing up the interlacing as you can see in the picture below. After 5 re-encodings, wherever there is some motion in the frame, it now looks like crap! The only reason why the DNxHD scores so well in the chart below, it’s because only a small part of the frame was in motion. If this was a high-motion frame, the DNxHD would have been in huge, huge trouble.

The Matrox’s 100mbps i-Frame HD codec had the smallest degradation percentage compared to its first generation version according to the numbers. However, looking at the picture, there are some visible artifacts.

Now, because I am difficult to convince that Matrox’s codec is that good, I did one additional test for the Matrox i-Frame HD. You see, I am using HDV MPEG-2 as my source footage, and the i-Frame is also MPEG-2. It is very possible that the codec might “recognize” the kinds of artifacts HDV creates, and “play ball” with them as its own artifacts would be similar in a way. So what I did was to use an AVCHD h.264 1440×1080/60i .mts file instead of HDV, export using the i-Frame HD 100mbps codec, and then compare with the perceptual diff utility their first frames for any changes. For this AVCHD frame compared, the i-Frame HD yielded 105,737 pixels of difference over the original 2 million pixels, which is again, a good performance. And given that this AVCHD frame I used had really high-motion in it, it does make it clear that the i-Frame is a good codec when it comes to its filesize/quality ratio.

However, Cineform is a weird contender here. If you see their 5th generation picture, there are no artifacts. And yet, the perceptual diff says that there is quite some difference over the original HDV. It gets weirder: Cineform visibly has in fact fewer artifacts over the original. Obviously, a “cleaning sweep” algorithm is at work here. It analyzes the image and removes everything that looks like an artifact. This way, it’s able to keep a good overall quality after many re-encodings, by cleaning up after itself. While the numbers in the chart say otherwise (show some degradation), to the eyes, the Cineform codec is the most pleasing.

Conclusion

So, what’s the best codec? Well, it depends. If everything was black and white we would already be having a monopoly, now wouldn’t we?

If your source footage is HDV (and nothing else), and you don’t use any plugins/transitions/pan/crop, Vegas’ no-re-encoding ability will help you in that regard. HDV scores high in the overall performance/quality chart below (performance is an average of the first four tests and quality is the percentage of the fifth one), but it really is useful for Vegas HDV users only and if re-encodings are needed, it loses quality way too much.

If you have the money, go for Cineform. It’s overall very good, and fast to playback during editing. It has a good average performance/quality ratio. Personally, this is what I will be using (the NeoHD variant).

Avid’s DNxHD is one codec that could take over the world if Avid was more careful of its implementation: fix the stupid interface bug, support 4k resolutions, optimize playback speed, give the user the choice of also installing the codecs under the AVI or MXF containers, and of course, fix the terrible interlacing bug that is very visible after a few generations of re-encodings. I just have the feeling that this is one great codec going bad during implementation.

Matrox’s i-Frame HD is also another favorite, but I can’t suggest it because it requires you buy hardware from them before you can get your hands on it. It could do with some playback speed, and fixing of the Vegas bug where it won’t work under the “preview (auto)” mode, but other than that, this is one great codec because of its filesize/quality and low-degradation ratio.

If you really don’t have the money for Cineform, or you can’t stand Avid’s bugs, and you need a visually lossless codec right now, Huffyuv in YUY2 mode is your best choice. I was originally pushing Lagarith to my readers, but overall, Huffyuv proves to be a better rounded codec (and it works also on Linux, Mac and in freeware utilities like the popular “SUPER”).

Overall, stay away from FFV1, MSU and MJPEG (at least of the version of MJPEG FFDshow uses, which I believe is the same as used by Linux users).

View the spreadsheet that includes all the results and the charts, here.

Special thanks to my JBQ for all his help, especially with the spreadsheet formulas that go beyond my abilities.

A few days ago Nikon did a splash in the camcorder circles with the announcement that its D90 DSLR can also grab 720/24p footage. Many videographers were quick to think that they can finally replace their bulky HD camcorder and digicam with a single device.

While there is definitely value in the “one device does it all” camp, the video feature in the D90 is under par for serious enthusiasts (serious enough that they paid over $1000 for a DSLR too). Some of the problems:
1. Can’t focus continuously.
2. Focus breathing.
3. Discrete exposure. This is extremely problematic and visible on any sample file. The camera does a lot of exposure decisions, and this creates these “flashes” of exposure compensation during recording.
4. It does not record in 23.976 but in 24.000384 fps. This is a huge problem in editing, as editors will try to resample when you try to export to “proper” IVTC 24p frame rate at 23.976, and resampling means “ghosting” artifacts. I have the same problem with my Kodak camera that records in 30.xx fps (xx is always a variable, to make things worse) instead of NTSC’s 29.97 exactly.
5. MJPEG eats away storage. It’s extremely inefficient. AVCHD at 12 mbps would have been a better choice.
6. No microphone input, for those who might want to go a bit further with filmmaking.

On the other hand, quality is not too bad (better than Kodak’s HD digicams for example). And eventually, maybe in 3-5 years, the problems above are fixed. But for now, the video element on a DSLR remains a toy, a “by the way” feature for semi-pro photographers who might want to snap some video clips occasionally for one reason or another. But it definitely can’t replace an HD camcorder, even if it is convenient for being a single multi-function device. For more serious amateur videographers (like many are on Vimeo for example), this device is a no-go.

The most dumb question that someone could ask me, and usually I am asked, is this:
“How to export my video to get the best possible quality“.

If I was to take that question literally, the right answer would be “use a lossless codec, like Huffyuv, or uncompressed”. This would create a file that’s several GBs per minute.

But that’s not what these people want as an answer. They usually ask this question meaning how to export in a codec that it’s viewable at a reasonable bitrate, and it’s web (youtube/Vimeo), DVD, PS3/XBoX360, and PC friendly — and by retaining a good visual quality.

Problem is, there is not a single format or way that covers well all these viewing platforms. Depending what the user wants to do, different options or codecs must be used. In general though, h.264/AAC in the MP4 container, progressive, is the best way to export. In detail (assuming HD camera):

DVDs: just use the way your video editor usually exports for DVDs. On Sony Vegas for example, you export separately audio (AC3) and video (mpeg2 template), and the Sony DVD Architect app puts them back together.
Vimeo: 1280×720 at 4-5 mbps MP4. Example.
iPod/iPhone/YouTube: 640×360 at 2mbps MP4 is more than enough. Adapt tutorial above.
PS3/XBoX360: Same as Vimeo above if you own a 1080i TV, or 1920×1080 at 12 mbps if you own a 1080p TV. These devices don’t support h.264/AAC in MOV btw, but only in MP4.
PC/Mac: Like Vimeo if your computer is not very fast, or in 1080p if it is.

Of course, then there’s the problem of your video editor not supporting h.264/AAC in MP4, in which case you might want to investigate XViD AVI or WMV. No matter the codec used, just use the same bitrate/settings as discussed above.

If you don’t use an HD camera, then it gets more complicated as PAL/NTSC use different resolutions and there’s the point of 4:3 vs widescreen. Some ideas here.

So next time you want to ask me this question, always tell me four things:
1. Format that video was shot (e.g. miniDV PAL 50i, HDV NTSC PF24).
2. Aspect ratio of the said video (e.g. 4:3, widescreen).
3. Video editor or video tools owned.
4. Target viewing platform.

A handful of people wrote lately online saying that they “expected more of me” in terms of video. They marked my latest video as “half-assed”, despite my explanation of the tiny timeframe we had to shoot it and the lack of locations.

Well, see, here’s the real problem. When you are a very public person, like I am, people expect from you more than they would expect from others. Even if I have never excelled, studied, or even offer suggestions in art. I offer suggestions regarding software problems and software tricks, which is where I excel. But I never wrote an article or forum thread to say “if you use this angle you will be able to achieve this”, or “if you use that shutter speed you can then get this look and then couple it with that scene” etc etc. My filmmaking advices are all software-related, and how to best use software to get an acceptable result, not how to put together an Oscar-worthy movie. Even my recent article on how I do travel videos, was just a description of how I do things, not necessarily how travel videos should be done.

But from the moment you get “known” in that small community and gaining some authority because of that side of knowledge, then the expectations go through the roof. They want to see you excel in places that you don’t really have much to do with (I am just an amateur filmmaker like most in that community, started shooting just a year ago), and they will crucify you if you release something imperfect. It comes with the territory I guess.

Make no mistake, I don’t mind critique of my work. But when they say that they “expected more of me”, me in particular, I find this to be unfair. It’s like telling me that “Joe Videographer can release an imperfect video, but you Eugenia, are not. We only expect the best from you”.

As I have said many times in the past, the HV20/30 are the best consumer cameras in terms of picture quality. Various high-end AVCHD models (HF100, SR11/SR12, SD9) tried to compete this year with the HV series, but they were still lacking that bit of extra quality that you can squeeze out of the HV20/30.

Well, that’s all the past now.

Canon has just announced in Japan two new models, the HF11 and the HG11, which can record in 24mbps AVC, which is the highest bitrate that the AVCHD standard is asking for (higher bitrate is used by some prosumer camcorders, but that’s not part of the official standard).

With the HF11 and HG11 recording at full 1920×1080@24mbps MPEG4-AVC, the HV20/30 with its 1440×1080@25mbps MPEG-2 has no chance in hell to keep the reigns any longer.

Today the tape died, as far as I am concerned, with this fall of the HV20/30.

The HF11 is largely the same camera model as the HF10, but the HG11 was completely reworked compared to the HG10. It has a brand new body, better lens, better usability, 120 GB drive with ability to also record in SD card, 12x zoom instead of 10x. I would have considered the HG11 if it wasn’t for the stupidity of Canon of going down to 37mm filter thread, and not staying with HG10’s 43mm. I have a gazillion accessories for the HV20 that would have work with any 43mm camera. Step-down rings are not good in my case as large and heavy lenses and adapters would break the step-down ring and the camera’s filter thread if I was to mount them in the HG11. It sucks to be stuck in something as trivial as a filter thread.

Update 1: Vimeo has server problems.
Update 2: Video is back up.