HDV or DVCAM??

[Gra]

Hi Guys

I've just invested in a Sony HVR-Z1E and my basic question is this camcorder allows for HDV, DVCAM and normal DV. Which of these three formats offers the best quality?

I know this is a simple question for those light years ahead on HDV but until a week or two ago I never thought I'd own an HDV camcorder for a year or two.

[troppo]

You can fit 60 minutes of HDV on a standard miniDV tape, as opposed to 40 minutes of DVCAM. This tells me that DVCAM has a much higher bitrate, theoretically resulting in less compression artifacts. However, those pictures will only be standard definition.
I've used all three formats, and to be perfectly honest, can't see any quality difference (Other than the obvious frame size difference with HDV). Maybe it would be obvious on a broadcast monitor, which I don't have (but then, neither do my clients...)
If your output is standard def (DVD) then it wont matter either.
You will find DV or DVCAM faster to render than HDV.
I use HDV for everything except TV news stuff, only because I like to have all my footage archived in HDV for that time in the future when everyone owns a HDTV and a blueray player.

Great choice of camera by the way. I love the NTSC/PAL switchable feature. And they are a bargain now that the new Z7 has been released.
Enjoy!

[Devil]

You can fit 60 minutes of HDV on a standard miniDV tape, as opposed to 40 minutes of DVCAM. This tells me that DVCAM has a much higher bitrate, theoretically resulting in less compression artifacts.

Sorry, that is very misleading and is, in fact, totally wrong.

DVCAM is identical to DV. The signals from each both conform to the DV25 standard. The only difference is that the helical tracks on the tape are wider with the DVCAM, forcing the tape-speed up. The SONY theory is that the wider track reduces the noise level, which is largely hypothetical with a digital recording, anyway. The real reason that Sony don't announce is that once you are hooked into DVCAM, you have to keep with it and, of course, that means continuing with Sony products for the rest of your life.

Use DV if you want compatibility. Between HDV (another non-standard tape format) and DV, the choice is yours, but you will have least hassle with DV.

[Gra]

Thanks for your feedback gentlemen.

I'll be installing a Blueray writer in a few days, so I'll be able to output in HD as well (where I should see some quality difference if played back on a Blueray player(?))

If I've understood the camcorder's blurb correctly I can film in HDV but down-convert to DV for capture and editing. I note what you say about DVCam, Devil, so I'll be a bit careful about using that feature.

[Devil]

HDV via BR should give you a better visual experience that DV to DVD, provided your editing is minimised.

[troppo]

Sorry, that is very misleading and is, in fact, totally wrong.

Awesome. Thanks for the heads up.

[cgould]

Thanks for your feedback gentlemen.

I'll be installing a Blueray writer in a few days, so I'll be able to output in HD as well (where I should see some quality difference if played back on a Blueray player(?))

If I've understood the camcorder's blurb correctly I can film in HDV but down-convert to DV for capture and editing. I note what you say about DVCam, Devil, so I'll be a bit careful about using that feature.

I have a Canon HV10, very nice consumer HDV camcorder, and I'm extremely happy with HDV format. The picture quality on my old 1080i 56" RP-CRT HDTV is extremely good, MUCH better than SD, in fact it often looks nicer than DiscoveryHD or other HD TV channels (due to higher 25Mbps HDV bitrate vs ~12-15Mbps TV). On smaller TVs or viewing in SD it won't be as improved, but the HDV cams should have much better initial source quality (and focus, color etc) than plain DV cams.

Yes, you can record in HDV to be future-proof and record the best quality source, and you should be able to down-convert in-camera to SD DV over firewire if you are staying with SD editing/output. (This works mostly OK for me, except I noticed w/ MSPro that the scene splits seemed to be a few frames late.)
I've seen the DV down-convert quality to be very good, YMMV w/ other cameras... I still haven't done an actual side-by-side comparison of HDV->SD DVD(software) vs downconvert-DV -> SD DVD (camera), but to my eyes, the DV downconvert to SD looked better than a straight DV camcorder (eg vs my old Optura Pi.) I also have not bothered much testing recording DV on the camcorder since I figured best-source possible was the primary goal.

If you are planning to get BluRay or some other HD playback device, go for HDV recording. It should make a large difference.
Problem will be rendering time to AVCHD format for bluray... BD recorders may support MPG2 HDV format straight on the disk, but DVD-R 4/9 regular disks for bluray (AVCHD "minidisk") only support AVCHD h.264 encoding. MSPro doesn't support this, but VideoStudio11.5+ (w/ free powerpack) does.

[Devil]

What could be interesting is to do a side-by-side comparison of HDV>downconverted to DV>DVD>upconverted to HD against the original HD. One would think it would not be good, BUT my 32" LCD upscales SD to 720p and I'm stupefied by the quality, even with my nose against the screen. The edges of letters, for example, are absolutely pixel-by-pixel smooth, with no sign of 576i staircasing. As I've said before, the only time I've seen upscaling artefacts is when there is a near-horizontal line of <3 or 4 pixels height with a sharp contrast. I see this most often when watching someone playing the violin, where the strings are sometimes not upscaled and show 576 staircasing. How they achieve such upscaling is almost beyond my imagination, but I know the processing takes about ½ second.