HDV vs. DVCAM

I have a HVR-A1U camcorder, and usually shoot video in the HDV 1080i recording format. When would it be better to shoot in the DVCam format, and not the HDV? Is one format better for shooting fast action like remote control planes?

Thanks.
Mike

sorry i can not help in your question, however do you edit your hdv footage and what are your system specs. speed, processor, etc. I have been looking at buying the A1 for a while now and want to be sure I can edit the footage with an Asus P5GD2 motherboard, 1Gig ddr2 ram, and a overclocked bfg nvidia 6800 graphics card. If you or anyone could shed any light it would be great.

sorry i can not help in your question, however do you edit your hdv footage and what are your system specs. speed, processor, etc. I have been looking at buying the A1 for a while now and want to be sure I can edit the footage with an Asus P5GD2 motherboard, 1Gig ddr2 ram, and a overclocked bfg nvidia 6800 graphics card. If you or anyone could shed any light it would be great.

Hi,

Sorry I did not see your post earlier. I have a ASUS P4P800 SE motherboard, and recently increased my ram to 1.5 GB from .5 GB. My graphics card is a Radeon 9600XT, and I have a Pentium 4, 3 Ghz processor.

I edit my videos with Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 6.0 software. A must have (I believe) is software called Connect HD or any similar product which makes video editing much smoother for HD video.
http://www.cineform.com/products/ConnectHD.htm

I have a HVR-A1U camcorder, and usually shoot video in the HDV 1080i recording format. When would it be better to shoot in the DVCam format, and not the HDV? Is one format better for shooting fast action like remote control planes?

Thanks.
MikeShooting in DVcam mode is basically shooting in DV mode BUT with the one difference that the tape is travelling more quickly past the recording heads and so out of one tape you get 40mins instead of one hour. Now because the tape is moving faster, the 'data-density' of the signal recorded onto the tape is less, and so in theory this is "safer" and less prone to tape glitches and dropouts. It's really a historical thing to be honest and Sony tend to include this mode on all their "professional" Borascast camcorders of which the A1U is one. Others are the Z1U and the new V1U.

It records in DV resolution which for an USA-purchased machine is at a resolution of 740 x 480 pixels. As it's DV mode, the encoding method is just 1 frame at a time, unlike HDV which encodes frames in 15-frame groups. So an advantage is that tape glitches IF THEY HAPPEN AT ALL will be MUCH less noticeable in DV or DVCAM mode than HDV mode. In DV or DVCAM mode it might affect one or two frames, but in HDV mode it is probably going to give a dropout of up to 0.5seconds.

Also, and this is maybe the key point, since there is MORE data in HDV mode, the data has to be squashed and compressed more than DV mode and this MIGHT lead to compression artefacts and stuff like that when shooting REALLY fast moving objects OR panning the camera very fast. So the answer to your question it's POSSIBLE that shooting in DV mode might help if there's *huge* amounts of movement in the shot, but my guess is you will NOT see this happen and so bottom line is after all this chit-chat is.......... shoot it in HDV, it's 99% likely to be fine and better-quality footage due to the resolution. If you want to then make a DVD or whatever you cna do an in-camera downconversion when capturing or later in your editing software.

Hope this helps.

Sorry for the "why use 1 word when 25 will do...."

Thanks Doughie for this good information. I am using the recommended tape, and so far I have not experienced dropoffs so that is good.

Any recommendations on keeping focus on moving objects? The auto focus mode does a pretty good job, but seems to go out of focus occasionally when the subject gets farther away from the camera.

Mike