I was just watching lord of the rings on my dvd yesterday and wondered why everything looks amazing and crisp and all when its not even HD.

Using my HC3 and post editing, is it possible to replicate something that crisp and vivid such as a LOTR DVD (which is supposed to not be as high quality as HD simply because it is downconverted.

Also, in all the footage I have seen on the forum, there is great footage of the HC3, but nothing extremely crisp....am I simply asking for too much?

anyway, expectnig the hc3 here in a few days. thanks guys

In a word, Yes!!

Hollywood filmmakers use cameras that cost much, much, much more than ours do as consumers. They also mainly use film which is much more sensitive to lighting conditions and has probably 3-4 times more resolution that HDV cams.
They also know how to use lighting, sound, composition, depth of field, etc.
Also, the final product you get on dvd was made with extremely expensive equipment. They don't use the dvd burners that we do.
Also, the compression devices they use to scale down to standard dvds is much better than our equipment.

Look at the credits and see how many people worked on that film.

Thats not to say you won't be happy with your HC3, I'm sure you will.
You just can't expect to match movies made with a $100 million budget when you use a $1000 camcorder and a $1000 computer.
You're going to get some great quality with the HC3, just not Lord of the Rings great.

With proper shooting techniques and video processing you should be able to get very good DVD's. However it would not surpise me if all the equipment used to create The Lord of the Rings cost more than a million dollars.

Most commercial movies are still shot in film with 35mm film being popular. Expensive cameras/lens, excellent lighting and a lot of photography experience. To reach the DVD stage they go through a variety of processing which includes individual scenes or segments being encoded. Commercial DVD's are "pressed" rather than "burned" and they end up with the same image size as what you would shoot in "Standard Definition" (SD).

They also use Dual Layer DVD's to double the data capacity.

I have a dual layer burner, but have not yet burned a dual layer disk...


Rich

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So with the HC3, how close to professional am I planning to see. LOTR is out of the question (I just wanted to compare something extremely professiona like LOTR to a consumer product)...should I expect quality like a TV broadcast? Maybe something like ESPN HD (which is very crisp).

They still use much more expensive equipment, but yes, that is much closer to what you can expect.

A lot of this depends not only on the camera but on the editors, the editing machinery, and how much time you want to spend editing. Shooting the video is only a small part of the entire spectrum. The raw footage goes to the editing room where it will spend months getting "cleaned up" by a whole crew of very talented people. These guys will spend literally days perfecting a single frame of video, with 100's of thousands of frames sitting beside patiently waiting their turn. It's time consuming, tedious work.

Sorry... don't mean to make you feel small, but you with your tiny little HC3, your single processor computer, your of-the-shelf store bought (or maybe even freeware) editing program, haven't got a hope in he$$ of coming even CLOSE to a hollywod style movie.

There are not too many ways to tell you what you should expect, but I will say that if lighting and such is proper and I have set the cam properly, I can get something a little better than wha you see on espn. The best way to see the differences is to go to your local cam store and ask them to set up a comparison for you... the HC3 against a comparable dv or something like that. Most stores will accomidate your request.

Thanks for your input, I definately know that I won't replicate a hollywood style movie, I was just wondering on both ends of the spectrum, what the Hc3 would produce if filmed in proper lighting, etc. I produced some beautiful stuff on my old Sanyo Xacti hd1, very broadcast-ish quality in fact and I am expecting a lot more from my hc3.

I have absolutily no experience with the Sanyo Xacti hd1 so I am literally talking out of the side of my face but it would seem to me that the HC3 would produce a higher quality... it shoots 1080i which is a better resolution than the 720p capacity of your Sanyo. And I could be wrong but I believe the HC3 has a better lens.

So personally, since you and a few others seem to only be on this board or responding at least, how has your hc3 footage come out? How about after editing....and the complete package? I would love to see more footage and stuff.

thanks!

Put it this way... I had the panasonic gs400 prior to the HC3... I'll never go back to normal DV.


Most of the time at present I'l shoot in hd and render over to standard dvd (720x480), and will continue to do so until the price of blu-ray comes down. But even when rendering the hd over to standard, the picture is still remarkable.

Man I'm really excited as hell when this camcorder gets in tomorrow morning. What kind of stuff have you shot already?

Me too. Mine should get here on Wednesday (just ordered it about 5 hours ago).

Just got it, what a beauty. can't wait to pop in a dv tape and use it

If I play a dvd on my computer screen with Windows Media Player and play at original size, the video size barely takes up a quarter of the screen.
If I play one of my HC3 videos I have to play it back about 50% to make it fit.
I find it as clear as any dvd.
Check out this clip and tell me what you think...
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M9RNCG1F

The only settings I change on the camera (for video and stills) are color -1 sharpness +2

great stuff, any other settings that people use to achieve the best video in both low light and good light/outdoors?