As shocking as it seems, there is one member of the AVSForum, Ken Ross, that has accused me of doctoring the Canon HV20 shots to make them look bad. We have gone back and forth on the matter a few times with me asking him to post an unaltered screen grab from actual video he shot with his HV20 that shows it can do better than my grabs indicate. He has repeated skirted around the issue, claiming he cannot attach a file that size. I then linked to another AVSforum thread where I myself had linked a file that size, to demonstrate that he was not telling the truth and to please come forward with a full sized captured frame. He continued to dance around the issue, becoming increasingly combatant and accusing me of all sorts of nefarious behavior. That thread can be seen here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=849489&goto=newpost

As the moderator has deleted the entire thread to cover his conspiracy, I have placed a cache of the page  HERE.

This morning, I received a private message from the moderator of AVSforum. I immediately responded. Here's his quote, followed by my response:

"[QUOTE=Kysersose]I happen to know, Wes. The fact that you took frame grabs (poorly ones I might add) from his Cat footage without any credit to him is a bad move.

 Why not just use his own pristine frame grabs rather than your own soft and less detailed grabs? 

I think the answer is obvious.

You have altered your frame grab to make the HV20 look terrible. 

He's not pleased, neither am I. 

I'm send this because I see that you have logged on.

Respond immediately as I asked in your thread or your account will be suspended, possible banned. 

Kyser[/QUOTE]

 I have to say that I am SHOCKED and dismayed by both Ken's behavior AND yours. Both of you accuse me of altering images grabbed from actual video m2t files that I have found on the net, in a search for sample footage. Furthermore, you locked the thread, allowing your dishonest friend to have the last word. And your threat to ban me from the forum is more appropriate to a person who has just made a bomb threat, or a threat on someone’s life, not a person who has presented facts in a rational manner. This I cannot forgive you for. 

The footage was chosen because of its availability. In fact, there were three separate m2t files downloaded from various sites, by different owners and camera serial numbers. The capture process involved loading them to the timeline in Vegas 7e, stopping at a frame where everything was in focus and still enough to hide the interlacing artifacts and clicking the "Save snapshot to file" button just above the screen. To my eyes, the snapshots look the same as the video displayed on my 47" LCD, so I don't believe that Vegas modified them, but I will also try grabbing a print screen shot from Windows Media Player as well, just to be sure it isn't a Vegas issue.

 As for Ken, I've given him NUMEROUS opportunities to come forth with an un-modified screen grab from his HV20. All I've gotten back is a lot of lip service, accusations and, what appear to be downright lies. If his HV20 is so much better than the ones I sampled, let him post the un-PhotoShopped stills FROM VIDEO, not from the still camera portion of the HV20. I've already discovered that his "stills" are from the still camera function of the HV20, not video (just read the EXIF data on the image or open it with a HEX editor and see for yourself).

 I've also invited Ken to e-mail me some footage so that I can grab a frame from his supposedly-better footage. He has not done either of these things, so all I have to go on is the footage downloaded from around the 'net.

 I find it hard to believe that three different HV20 owners can shoot "soft" footage and that it's not a normal example of the camera's picture quality. They can't all be that bad at shooting.

 Neither of you noticed that the still from footage I grabbed from the Sony FX1 is equally soft. The various cameras have differing picture quality.

 Furthermore, Ken's inability to point me to these difficult-to-find URLs where "good" footage can be found, and my inability to find them with Google, or on the Canon web site (like finding a needle in a haystack) seem to suggest that maybe it doesn't exist.

 Frankly, I don't expect vindication on this subject, as it appears you are clearly on the side of Ken, your personal friend, and I am but a stranger to you who has inconveniently upset your "Canon alliance" with hard evidence, none of which either of you are willing to counter with facts in the form of UNRETOUCHED screen shots from VIDEO shot by the HV20.

 I'm not biased against Canon at all. I want the best camera for my business and personal uses. In fact, the comparison frame page started out as an effort to show that a $1000 camera looked as good or better than a $4800 camera, so I could present that to Sony and raise a stink about how backwards they've gone with light sensitivity on the last few HDV cameras they're brought to market. I'm angry about the bad audio as well. These are things that, in a camera costing this much, should be at least AS GOOD as on their flagship DV prosumer models from 7 years ago. So, I guess you could say there was bias in my intentions--bias against Sony. But then I started putting the screen grabs on the same page and the evidence was starting to ruin my little rant against Sony.

 PS: As to Ken's claim that my other "screen grab" in the other thread was scaled up to 1920x1080 from a 720P image (hey, I thought he said it was impossible to put such a large image on AVS), that was a digital photo off my 1920x1080P LCD and I wanted to try to keep it pixel for pixel at the TV's resolution to best show the quality of the broadcast signal.

 Whether you can be fair and impartial on this matter is an issue with how internally honest you are, but I won’t hold my breath expecting you to be unbiased about it. Your friends on AVS are more important to you than truth, as the tone of your PM indicates in spades, and I don’t see any point to further discussing the matter, as I have said all I can, and provided numerous examples of what each of the cameras produces. I mean you no malice, but for goodness sake, taking sides in a dispute is not appropriate moderator behavior."

 While I was busy writing my response above, the moderator was busy banning me from the forum, demonstrating how impatient, unreasonable and flippant he was being. He is clearly unqualified to be a moderator.

May 24, 2007:

It's truly amazing how much effort one person can go to to defame another person's reputation. It seems that Ken is now spreading his contrived thoughts about my testing methods in the most libelous manner, in other forums now. A new thread has taken life HERE. It seems that I know the forum administrator from several years back via a different set of interests, so I've written him a friendly note, expressing my dissatisfaction with persons defaming my character in his forums. Normally, I wouldn't care, but the malice and the dishonesty of one individual who has, for the past 20 hours, made it a personal vendetta to slander my name in public forums has gone too far.

As of 2:44PM yesterday afternoon, my server has received 545,000 HTTP requests--far more than the number of people who are aware of the controversy. It appears that some sort of Denial of Service attack may have been in progress. It started up immediately after I was banned from AVSforum.com, which, coincidentally, seems curious due to the timing of the ban being followed immediately by the ramp up in traffic. I'd wager that even Microsoft's web site doesn't see 545,000 hits in an hour.

A friend of mine joked about me buying a HV20, just to satisfy the malcontents and to post my own footage. For a moment, I considered that thought, but then I realized that nothing will satisfy these people because they will claim that I shot the footage improperly on purpose. By using footage shot by Canon enthusiasts, I figure their motivation is to put up clips representing the BEST of their shooting, that way no one can argue that I shot the footage with biased settings. Since I can't control other people's shooting methods, it can't be argued that I shot bad footage on purpose just to make Canon look bad.

What seems interesting about this conflict is that the majority of forum members are acting like Muslims who are silent about suicide bombers--no one is speaking up publicly about the ridiculousness of the claims made by one or two persons. However, I have received a couple of rude e-mails, which I categorically ignore, since I don't grant an audience to people who lack the civility to communicate with politeness. I have also received e-mails expressing support for me, seeing how unfairly my writings were treated on AVSforum.com. I DO find it amusing that a simple web page with some still frame captures can garner so much animosity from a small minority of one or two individuals. Even more amazing is that saner minds have not prevailed to shut down the slander machinery that is making claims it cannot prove. Odd too is that no one commented about the EXIF data on Ken's still photos, a dead giveaway that these were not video frames. Do that few folks know how to use a HEX editor to read headers on JPEG files? The evidence is overwhelming that this guy is pulling a fast one on everybody, and a few unfortunate souls seem to blindly believe what he says without analyzing the data for themselves. A video frame grab doesn't have EXIF header data!