HVR-V1U and other Test Footage, compressed to Windows Media Video at 8Mb/S

MORE CANON HV20 NEWS (7/23/2007)
I purchased a Canon HV20 at the end of the first week of July 2007. I have been able to glean a lot of information just by testing it. I have confirmed an important piece of information about why the images are soft sometimes and not at other times. The softness is traceable to the Cinema Mode. When in Cinema mode, the HV20 uses some filtering to soften the edges, and when compared to a shot of the same object in P mode, the Cinema mode shot looks as if someone put Vaseline over the lens (that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the difference is quite dramatic on side-by-side comparisons).

UPDATED INFORMATION ABOUT THE CANON HV20 STILLS:
Do to the controversy over the HV20 stills quality, I have done extensive research into the quality of the frame captures and the original footage, and, despite equal settings used for capture of all footage below, for some reason, Vegas created a very slight blurring of the HV20 images. After much experimentation, I found out that Vegas' deinterlacing scheme was producing a slight softening of the HV20 images that were interlaced. It wasn't affecting the V1U images at all, so I suspected nothing for the longest time. My tests with and without deinterlacing turned on, reveal slightly sharper images, though they are still relatively soft as compared with the V1U images. Together with the Cinema mode softening, the two factors combined to make HV20 footage look soft to some owners who commented on the softness.

Downloadable Windows Media Clips are compressed to 1440x1080 and may display squashed on certain players and combinations of video cards.

Sample stills, extracted from the actual video, are available in the right hand column. These are raw captures; nothing was done to enhance or sharpen them in any way.

UPDATED 7/25/2007 Below are new still frames that I pulled from my own Canon HV20 footage that I shot on July 25th. The HV20 gives excellent bang for the buck, given that it can be had for as cheap as $1,014 and shoots 1080i HDV and 24P. These shots are from some of that footage, captured using the same application as used for the Sony HVR-V1U frames. These frames were taken from footage shot in Shutter Priority mode. I found that this mode is MUCH sharper, as Cinema mode seems to apply a lot of softening to the images and I am convinced now that this is what was causing the soft images on earlier footage that I grabbed off the internet.

Please note that the footage on the rest of this page was accumulated, over a span of two years, from various web sites as part of the process of evaluating various HDV cameras. Let me make it abundantly clear that these are not my images. At the time of download, I could not foresee ever presenting any frame from that footage on a web site. As this page has suddenly garnered a lot of attention lately, I am adding a generic "thanks" to all of the shooters who have captured and made the footage below available on the public internet. Legal disclaimer: The following images are used in accordance with sections 107 through 118 of the Copyright Act (title 17, U. S. Code), more commonly known as "Fair Use."

Below are some sample still frames that I pulled from some Sony HDR-FX7 footage.

Below are some sample still frames that I pulled from some Sony HDR-FX1 footage.

Below are some still frames that I pulled from Canon HV10 footage submitted to me by Joe Busch. These images look substantially sharper to me than some of the HV20 images that I obtained from various unknown sources over the past few months. Joe said that he de-interlaced this footage before sending it, so that may be playing a role in the sharpness (perhaps Vegas has to do less work to capture the frames?)

Below are some sample still frames that I pulled from some Canon XL-H1 footage. Canon charges about $9,000 for this model.

SEE THIS VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE ABOUT MY DISPUTE WITH
AVSFORUMS MODERATOR ON THIS COMPARISON.

Last Updated 08/14/2007 06:42 AM