Best V5-compatible camcorder for slomo video

flippin wrote on 4/23/2004, 1:34 PM
Hi Folks,

I've been reading at this forum for quite awhile, this is my first post to it. I am an amateur, hobby-level videographer; however, I do strive diligently to improve my abilities with NLE techniques and digital capture methods. Congratulations and kudos to you all, and the sponsor, for a very informative discussion group with a generally pretty low BS-quotient (Zippy excepted...).

I'll be stepping up from V V 3, which I've used for about 2 years, directly to Vegas 5 when it arrives in the mail; it will be running on my P4/2 GHz/1 Gig of RAM/120GigHD(7200 rpm).

So far I've been capturing video on a Sony DCR740--this is strictly a consumer grade camcorder, of course. Even so, using velocity envelopes and resampling in V V 3 I can get some pretty nice slow motion from the video recorded with this camcorder. A little success, however, has made me want to try for much more...

I'm starting to believe (from reading the fairly limited info that I can find) that a camcorder that records at 60 fps (progressive) is probably necessary for making higher quality slo mo video. For example, I'd like to capture video that can give a reasonable account of a thrown baseball and a swung bat; however, with my current camcorder this type of motion is not captured very well. Unfortunately, a prosumer-level camcorder is all that I can consider seriously for next hardware purchase.

Anyone in this forum have experience with recording/editing for high quality slow motion? Advice from someone knowledgeable in this area would be greatly appreciated.

One prosumer camcorder that I've been thinking about is the JVC JY-HD10U; however, I've found little in the way of in depth critical review of this machine. Instead, I've found a somewhat confusing mixture of advertising hype, lite review, and some cranky-sounding stuff like, "...only one CCD, hey, what is this sh-t!!?". Again, any personal experience from reasonably mature folks using this machine for slo mo work, especially in conjunction with Vegas Video NLE software, would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Lee


Comments

Jimmy_W wrote on 4/23/2004, 1:45 PM
GL2 IS A GREAT CHOICE!
busterkeaton wrote on 4/23/2004, 1:49 PM
Have you tried rendering a slowmo file and then reapply another slowmo velocity envelope?
Jimmy_W wrote on 4/23/2004, 1:51 PM
CANON GL2 IS A GREAT CHOICE!
flippin wrote on 4/23/2004, 1:53 PM
Thanks for the quick reply, Jimmyw.

I've heard some very nice things about the GL2 and its definitely in my price zone. Do you, or others, have relevant experience using the GL2 for slow motion work?

I thought (will look again to make sure) that this machine does not record at 60 fps (progressive), but maybe interlaced. Is that a problem for getting decent slow motion of events at about the rate of speed I was talking about (i.e., thrown ball, swung bat)?

Thanks, and best regards,

Lee

flippin wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:02 PM
busterkeaton,

no, i've never tried the idea that you suggest. that being said, i don't actually see how it could work. using velocity envelopes in V V 3 one can easily slow an event down to 3% of the original speed--but the poor quality of the captured information starts to show through for relatively fast moving events.

i think the essence of good slow motion is really in the frame rate of the capture. if limited to the standard 30 fps, there is no way that digital manipulation can properly create new, high quality information to make up for the information that was lost because of the original low frame rate.

i think the GL2 might do 60 fps (interlaced). at least some prosumers do this. i don't understand whether that gets me to where i want to be, though.

best regards,

lee
Rain Mooder wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:08 PM
It would be nice to find a camera that could to 60fps progressive but
I don't think know of any off the top of my head. The GL-2 certainly isn't
60fps progressive. It will do 30fps progressive, though.

I'm not sure, in my mind, which is better:
30 fps interlaced (60 fields per second)
or
30 fps progressive

The 30fps progressive will certainly show less interlacing artificats but
it may be "jumpier" in the sense that there was less temporal change
information. The 60 fields per second (standard interlace) will have
more interlacing artififacts but there's more temporal intformation so it
should be smoother.

Certainly the JY-HD10U would be good because it can do 60P in one
resolution. I don't know anything about the compression rate, though,
and I worry that with MPEG2 you are going to see compression artificats
if you slow down the video. (You wouldn't see these artifacts with a DV
camera as DV has no inter-frame compression). The fact that the JY-* is
recording to a DV cassette leads me to believe that it's bitrate is comperable
to DV and then makes me wonder if the artifacts might be a problem because
of the higher compression necessary to squeeze twice as much information
into the same stream. (I'm not dissing consumer HDTV, there's just going to
be some limits on the video quality when you are stuck at 25 mbps).

Before you buy an HDTV cam for slow mo work you definiately should
do an experiment. It might not turn out the way you (or I) think it will.

I think that, for those of us with limited means doing slow-mo, that a decent
camera semi-pro camera like a GL-2 or VX-2000 operating in regular
interlaced mode is probably the best we are going to do. We can upgrade
our software, though! I know there are some pretty sophisticated
interpolation alorithms out there that used motion sensing and
fancier-than-Vegas techniques.


Cheesehole wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:18 PM
regarding 30p vs 60i - When doing slow motion work I prefer to have as many time samples as possible, so I prefer 60i. I have a GL-1 and while I shoot at 30P for the vast majority of the time, I switch to 60i when I know I'm shooting something for slow motion.

You can get devices that record at 120fps too - but they don't have tape / transport. You have to capture directly to a PC or laptop. From what I understand, they are only a few hundred dollars.
flippin wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:22 PM
potatophysics,

thanks very much for your informative reply. doing some experiments with a GL-2 or VX2000 before buying is an excellent idea. slight moral dilemma with that is that experiments will have to be done at a retail shop and i have no intention of buying at a retail shop. oh well.

best regards,

lee
busterkeaton wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:23 PM
i think the essence of good slow motion is really in the frame rate of the capture.

Absolutely. But you are not going to find anything like that in the consumer space.

Also the speeds you are talking about are 60 mph for little league, up to 80 mph for high school. So that's is really going to be hard to capture even at 60 fps.

Just in general, I would shy away from the JY-HD10U, but if you can figure out the workflow, it may be your best choice. But definitely try to find folks who have done slowmo with it.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?s=09460cba5396e8b64b895d22ad24fde0&forumid=63
this forum is probably the place to go for hdv editing
flippin wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:27 PM
cheesehole,

thanks very much.

what is the range of speeds of the events that you typically capture well with 60i fps?

between your comments, and some others, it is starting to sound like this might work pretty well with the GL-2 level of camcorder.

best regards,

Lee
johnmeyer wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:43 PM
You can get devices that record at 120fps too

You don't happen to have the name of such a device?
flippin wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:48 PM
a google search on high speed digital video turns up lots of sites like the following:

http://www.digitalwestimaging.com/sys-tmpl/door/

these are a bit more extreme than i was looking for, though.

best regards,

lee
BarryGreen wrote on 4/23/2004, 2:58 PM
Quality slow motion requires a faster capture rate. 60i produces better slow motion than 30P.

The JVC HD1/HD10 is an abhorrent camera, with one very useful feature: it can shoot a full-res DV-sized frame at a full 60p, which is the fastest capture rate you can get in a prosumer camera.

Your other alternative is to explore a program like Twixtor, which occasionally produces fantastic slow motion results from standard 60i video.
flippin wrote on 4/23/2004, 3:03 PM
thanks for replying, Barry,

would you elaborate on why you think the jy-hd10u is abhorrent (with the one exception of 60fps progressive?

what are the major problems with that camcorder?

best regards,

Lee
Cheesehole wrote on 4/23/2004, 3:12 PM
re: Devices for high res / high framerate shooting

Haven't tried any, but this is what I'm talking about. How about 1000fps?

http://www.siliconimaging.com/
http://www.compumodules.com/image-processing/cmos-usb2.shtml

People on the 3dtv Yahoo group use them for high resolution 3d shooting. You can capture dual high res / high framerate streams onto a good laptop. Most are USB 2.0
Cheesehole wrote on 4/23/2004, 3:15 PM
re: these are a bit more extreme than i was looking for, though.

Yikes 120,000 fps?! That sounds like fun. :D
farss wrote on 4/23/2004, 3:47 PM
You really need two things for this kind of work.
Fast shutter speeds and high frame rates. No off the shelf video camera will give you the later and not many of them will give you the former. I'm looking into cameras from SiliconImage for a similar application but you have to accept that to get that amount of data out of a camera and into a data storage medium something has to give.
Firstly you have to limit the amount of resolution that the CCD works at, it just takes too long to scan the pixels. Secondly you need to write the data directly to hard disks. And thirdly you could end up needing a HUGE amount of data storage.
With a DV camcorder certainly being able to shoot 60p would be great but I don't have a clue as to how you would ingest that. So the best you can hope for is using fast shutter speeds to limit motion blurring. Fast shutter means less light, so you need a camera with a fast (read large) lens. But then be warned your depth of field is going to be very limited. Try watching most sporting events on TV, you'll notice the effects of fast shutter, fast motion if it's near full frame looks stroboscopic.
farss wrote on 4/23/2004, 4:01 PM
One of the things I love about Vegas is it's great for experimenting. In this game it can be very difficult to isolate what's happening in the camera from what's happening elsewhere. Using generated media you can create video from an 'ideal' camera.
Try making an object that moves at the same rate as what you want to slo mo. Vegas generated media has an infinitly fast shutter, absolutely no motion blur. You can easily see that you can extract perfect still images from it. But if you render it out and try to slow it down it starts to get very jerky if you don't have some form of interpolation happening. But you should be able to create the generated media at a much higher frame rate. Then try slowing that down and see what the results are.

I don't think this is going to solve your problem but a little experimentation can let you clearly see the issues involved and study them by changing only one parameter at a time. Then when you hit a problem you can go back to your experiment and easily see what in the real world situation is happening.