DSE

Hope to see you tomorrow. Busy days, no doubt. Lots of training, lots of loads both skyvan and Otters. Night jumps happened tonight. LouDiamond jumped the XDCAM EX on a wingsuit jump, and it's the first jump in the world with this camera, pretty sweet to see the super slo-mo on the big screen in the hangar. Balloon up in morning and in afternoon. Lots of activity. Mornings are very cold, (as in ice in the wet divots in the parking lot). Daytime temps are very comfortable. Saw many people being quietly talked to for landing in opposite directions yesterday, none of that seemed to be taking place today.

Fun stuff! Haven't seen the new LG, but have seen something that Motorola is unveiling at CES next month. Nah....just get an EX for those super fast/slow motion recordings. up to 60fps at 1280x720. But it's a lot more spendy than a cell phone. The folks outside the US get all the cool phones. I wish we had the same infrastructure you do.

The A/V port (the one that looks like a letter "D" can be used for control, and a self-powered indicator. The problem is in the language the port uses, which means more electronix. It has a lot of issues compared to LANC, so isn't an easy tweak like LANC is.

Specifically, what happens when you hit the end search option? You can get a manual HERE

If I did nothing and was about to be clubbed? Hell yes. But I doubt that will ever happen to me. And I've seen maybe 3 mounted police in my life, and all of them were when I was travelling. So-let me see if i got this right-if a cop pulled his night stick and was about to hit you with it you would pull out a gun and shoot him? But you don't feel a cop should be able to taser someone who is refusing to settle down and continues to act irrationally and unpredictably? What makes your safety worth taking a cops life, but a cop's safety, and that of others around, isn't worth tasering an irate and uncooperative woman? After all, the chances of her being killed by the taser are extremely remote yet if you shoot someone they stand a very real chance of dying. Behaving irrationally and unpredictably don't equal "unsafe" or "threat to public safety." Otherwise, we'd be seeing every skydiver and Harley-rider wanna-be as potential Taser victims. That is one of the tenets officers follow prior to drawing a weapon. Officers DON'T possess the right to use a taser to "calm someone down." A taser is an escalation of force, not a de-escalation of force.

I'll go out on a limb and say that anyone who gets irate enough over a credit card to have the cops called probably isn't the most stable person in the store. Bullshit. Cops are called by retailers if you only look at them cross-eyed. Cops are called when clerks are too stoopid to communicate. Cops are called when the word "f***" is said too loudly. Cops are called when someone merely looks "different." No one knows the circumstances behind this tasing incident, and I agree the cop shouldn't be fried without all the facts. However... Being "called" doesn't justify shit. If the woman verbally threatened the officer, the officer has the responsibility to warn the subject. In that video, there doesn't appear to be that dialog, or the potential for that dialog. It's more as if the officer has the attitude of "I don't want to deal with this shit today" and fires. Go get a CCW permit, whether you carry or not. It's a good way to really f*** up an officers day if they shoot you w/a Taser.

Almost went away, yes. I'm getting on the plane, so if they fix what's broke and I'm gone after the repair, not much I can do about it. Besides, your happy demeanor at dinner has me realizing I need to get out into the world more. See ya when your slackin' ass shows up.

Yeah...as a user of both, I love/laugh reading the "if you do this with your Mac, it'll just work" when much of that stuff is on the PC. On the flip side, some Mac stuff that works sweet/easy on the PC isn't so sweet/easy on the Mac and vice versa. Since I've gotten my MacBook Pro, life is SO wonderful with Boot Camp and Parallels. No more hauling two laptops. My back loves Mac

What about us slackers showing up today?

If you're using a Mac or PC, just plug in the firewire cable and the Mac or PC knows it's there and you can capture for any application on either platform.

No experience w/skydiving, but Jim Peterson, a fairly known sports photographer for the Packers, merely dropped it and it broke. He claims it's quite flimsy. I picked one up at a trade event, and it didn't feel like a substantial camera, but then again, neither does the 18-55 lens that comes with some of the Canons, and many folks like this lens for skydiving.

Already been there, done that, got the Tshirt. It wasn't *nearly* as bad as folks make it out to be, but in the heat of a moment....

You've got the wrong culture there, Bill. That would only happen in Saudi to a woman who had been raped. I feel all Americans should step up to the plate and be practice-Tasered. Then when/if it happens for real, it won't be such a shock.

I understand how it works, I've burned red layer for BD, but have had to do so via an authoring tool such as burning an image from DVD Studio Pro or Sony Vegas, then using the image via any number of tools. what I didn't understand, was that I thought you were burning HD DVD compiled discs, to play in a BD player. BTW, HD DVD can also play DVD 5 discs. Before BD could, actually. I'm a BD-camper, however, so am happy to be working with the format. What I didn't know (and we do own an SD5), is that I can one-touch it to a disc. Then again, we edit everything shot, so it doesn't do much for me. I'm not clear on why you're saying "AVC in it's compressed state." AVC is only a compressed format, there is no "uncompressed AVCHD."

I've burned standard DVDs using a variety of tools for BD playback with AVCHD on the disc. What I don't understand you to be doing is burning straight from the camcorder to red ray, with no authoring. You're doing this and playing straight out on a BD player unit? Or is there an Xfer involved?

That's great but FCP now natively supports 24p. Your work around solution is no longer needed. As previous post indicated, FCS *now* (nearly 3 years after the fact) supports 24p GOP. So does Avid Xpress and Media Composer. Please note the dates of the first edition of the HDV book being November 2004, and the second edition being December, 2006. A lot has changed since both of those editions, as will be reflected in the third addition. I'd imagine you could find *many* skydiving articles on the web that aren't related to today's technology; the point wasn't about what is valid today, but rather to demonstrate that we've been working with this format for a while. I don't mind at all having the discussion, until it devolves into a pissing contest related to opinions. I'm attempting to stick to facts so that my personal opinions don't fall into the discussion. Facts are hard to disagree with, so I'll fly my own flag along with the facts here: ~JVC HD100 U is a discontinued, 24p/30p camcorder. It never enjoyed 24p GOP support from any NLE system during its short life. Sony Vegas and Canopus Edius were the first to support it. ~JVC replaced camera with the HD110U, and offered "ProHD," which is JVC nomenclature for how they use the additional bitrate that the 720p HDV format doesn't use in the 25Mbps medium, for audio. No NLE currently supports capture of the ProHD format audio, therefore it may as well not exist. It requires separate passes or paths at the capture stage. It's a very useful thing, however, *if* you don't mind double capture or 2 passes. ~VASST (my company) published a variety of non-native workarounds for the JVC 24p format for not only FCP, but also for every other NLE back in 2004. We've continued to publish various methods of how to work with 24p GOP as relates to Sony, Canon, and JVC. It's a tricky animal no matter how you slice it. ~CMOS chips are the future. Agilent has said that they'll be killing CCD chips in the "near future" (could be 2 days, could be 2 years) , and the new high end camcorders are also going to triple or single CMOS imagers. CCD does not offer the ability to address specific pixels, nor to sample individual pixels in a specific area. Among other benefits, CMOS brings this to the table. CMOS is significantly less temperate and temperature sensitive. The concept of CCD being superior to CMOS is very subjective on an individual basis. Doesn't matter if we're discussing Mysterium or Farges CMOS, the concept is exactly the same. ~I'm one of the guys that announced the HD250 for JVC at Sundance Film Festival last year. In other words, I feel I'm being painted into an anti-JVC corner, and that couldn't be further from the truth. The truth is, the 110U was an early adopters camcorder, and had many problems, thus damaging its name, hence the reason JVC discontinued the camera. It's absurd to suggest JVC discontinued it in favor of the 110U simply to tack $500.00 onto the camera. Retooling, remolding, etc would require far more camera sales than they could possibly make simply to add such a small profit margin. Additionally, the VP of JVC is a close, personal friend, and I've heard both his professional and person position on this subject. They're identical. At the end of the day, this is more a discussion for DVInfo.net or CreativeCow.net, rather than here, as we're not skydiving with HD100U's, are we? I know I couldn't. Maybe Laszlo? {edited to add} Geez, Scott, after going back and re-reading this thread, I sound like a real dick. Didn't mean to.

OK, whatever you say. Craig Yanagi, Vice Pres of Marketing/Sales National for JVC says different. The first published tutorial on getting 24p GOP into FCP is published on my website, and in my book. Heath MacKnight also has written a couple of tutorials on the subject, he works for me. But what do we know? Apparently not enough.

To be more precise, the burner that comes with the SD5 is a standard red-laser burner that uses cheap 4.7GB blank DVD's. However, you cannot burn standard definition DVD's that play on standard DVD players. You can only play the disc back on a Blu-Ray player or through the camera if you need to watch it on a standard def TV. It's basically burning HD content to a standard blank DVD. Kinda neat when you think about it. Backwards compatibility is always a plus! When you get that red-laser HD content so it'll play on a BD player, let us know.

Scott, you're missing every point I've made. You feel CCD's are better. Fine. Explain that to Sony, Ikegami, Canon, JVC, Panasonic, Grass Valley, who are all using CMOS in their lower end, and in some of the higher end camcorders. CMOS is the future, my friend. See it how you wish to see it, but this is the one thing I do every day, 24/7. I work in this industry. You want to point to a film made with the JVC 100? Who cares? For every one of those, I can point to features made with PD150's. So what? Means nothing. The HD100 is discontinued. Theproblem with the camcorder wasn't due to QC, it's due to faulty components that couldn't be switched out electronically, otherwise it would have been a firmware fix. Look at page 61 of the second edition of the "HDV: What You NEED to Know" book, the split screen that you earlier said you had no problems with. The point was, and still is, the HD100U is the shortest-lived camcorder in HDV history. Regardless of whether it's electronically identical to the HD100. There is a reason the model number was changed out, and it's entirely due to the multitude of problems the HD100U had. And I have one. You're invited to purchase it if you're interested. Either way, no point in arguing this further. There are the facts, and there are opinions. I've done what I could to separate the two. You choose to be selective, that's OK too. no one purchased the HD100U for 30p, whether we're talking about how "24" experimented with it on their set, or we're talking about independent film. Film out can't happen from 30p. 30p as an acquisition source is predominantly an also-ran. 24p, 25p, 50p, and 60p are where the money is, and always has been. You said "All major NLE's have supported the 100U. OK, they supported HALF the 100U, and not the half that the industry bought. I'm not a big fan of 24p for most functions, but in this discussion, it's really all that matters. The HD100U was aimed at independent film, just as the 110/200/250 are. BTW, please see last year's Sundance Film Festival HD House presentation where I presented the HD250 with Angie lenses. I love the cam for what it is.

Not True. 3-CCD is still better than CMOS. It's also good when matching footage to other 3-CCD video cameras. The HD100 records MPEG layer 2 audio at 384Kbps not uncompressed PCM. This is incorporated into the 19.2Mbps stream. Every major NLE system supports the HD100. Never had split screen problems on my camera, and the HD 100/200 series camera is by no means dead. It's been quite sucessful despite it's quirks. Why? My HD100 has a max frame rate of 30p. The idea was to match the footage to my main camera to see how they compared. At the end of the day, neither of our opinions really matter, it's what you like vs what you don't. My world in terms of testing the cameras, is fairly clinical. In a clinical setting the SD5 doesn't match the quality of the CX7. In an emotional one (which can't be measured) perhaps it does. I own both, and prefer the cleaner image the CX7 has. I like the better manual features of the Panny, but at the end of the day, it's about pictures, not convenience. The RED camera, for example, is probably the least convenient camera on the market today, but it offers tremendous pictures at an affordable price, so you're seeing very high end directors of photography using it, even though it means employing a couple of extra people on the set. It's only about the pictures. And the picture quality in great part, is determined by bitrate.

DVD players/optical disc players will be with us for a LONG time. At least 10 years. NLE's? I'm a fan of Sony Vegas, myself. Adobe Premiere Elements is a great lil' tool, and even the freebie "Moviemaker" on your PC is pretty good. iMovie on the Mac is quite powerful too. Any family home video will be good with these tools, IMO. Dave explained it well, reusing DV tape is a very bad idea, because it's metal particles bonded to plastic. Essentially, it's rust on plastic. Each time it plays through, the rust becomes 'polished' and eventually the particles don't allow for data to adhere to them. I've reused tape, always on a wing and a prayer. Reusing tape isn't good for your tape player/camcorder, either.

No. It's not. 3 chip vs single chip is a myth, legend, and market BS. As time marches on, *all* camcorders shall eventually be single chip. *All* of the new ground-breaking high end cams are single sensor CMOS. CCD reached end of life long ago, and is developmentally dead. CCD is cheaper than CMOS now. I'm not sure where you're getting the delineation of "professional" HDV and "HDV." There is no divider. 720p is always 19Mbps regardless of the camera that shoots it. 1080i/p is always 25Mbps regardless of the camera that shoots it. JVC has a marketing nomer called "ProHD" which is entirely hype, the *only* difference between JVC's proprietary ProHD and everyone else' HDV is that JVC, being 19Mbps on a recording medium designed for 25Mbps, uses the additional storage space to store off PCM audio vs MPEG audio. And that's a good thing. Excepting that no NLE on the planet can read it, so if you can't access it, it's of zero value. DVCProHD doesn't figure into the mix at all. Aside from bitrate, your SD5 has greater spatial resolution than any camera that supports the DVCProHD format. It's ALL about the compression and bitrate. Glass is very important too, as is the spatial and temporal resolution. All things being more or less equal (which the CX7, HR10, and SD5 are), it boils down to bitrate. Nothing more, nothing less. Not going to get into the debate of 720p vs 1080p, because it's moot, but the HD100U is indeed, a sucky camera. Even after the repair to the split screen issue. Which is why it was the shortest-lived HDV camcorder ever. However, if you're going to do conversions, do them properly and convert 1080i into 720p60, not p30.

Howzabout: "Good King Wenslas car backed out, on a piece of Stephen, Steven's brains spread all about, His mommy was a' screamin, Stephen was a stupid boy, Always dumb and foolish When Good King Wenslas car backed out, It was for everyone's own good..." Or the other famous bit: "While shepherds washed their socks by night, All seated on the ground...." Personally, I can't stand any of em'. Call me a humbug.

"Breaking up on pans" has nothing to do with tapeless. Panasonic HVX is tapeless, doesn't break up on pans, Sony XDCAM and XDCAM EX are tapeless, no breakup. The problem is in the compression, and while compression can be a good thing, a low bitrate will bite your ass. You might feel the SD5 is the "closest" to HDV, but you'll find most discerning camera ops will disagree with varying intensity. 2.5Mbps slower than it's competitor, plus a weaker imager (which Panasonic obtains from it's competitor) means its one of the weaker cameras in the class. Canon and Sony have higher bitrates and better imagers. The math and hardware don't matter much if you're happy with the camera, but it's quite a stretch to suggest that the SD5 is close or closest to HDV. The CX7 is a slightly better camera as is the HR10 from Canon. Neither of them are close to HDV either. Just as HDV isn't XDCAM, and XDCAM isn't HDCAM. The predominant variant between these formats is bitrate.

It works OK. The OIS does completely disengage, which is the problem with the Canon. On the flip side, the SD5 has a low bitrate, which isn't a problem for low-motion scenes. If you're shooting tandems, it'll squeak by fine. If you're freeflying and shooting lots of flappy fabric that shifts around a lot, you might be less than thrilled. Very nice little cam, BTW.