Firstly, let me say I have seen HVX footage and it does look very nice. I haven't seen enough of it and Canon footage to say where I would rate all of the affordable HD cameras at this point, but certainly what I have seen looks nice.
However, two claims that have been made by diehards it seems are simply not true.
Firstly, pixel count of CCD's is actually 960x540 , that is less than the vertical resolution of PAL Standard definition. How the camera compensates for this is through "spatial offset" which offsets the lines of pixels to accomplish a higher resolution. Of course, this explains the HVX's low lux capability as well because larger actual area on a CCD that captures light = more low light capability. These CCD's are progressive however.
Second, a 540 CCD means 4:2:0 sampling, which means that it holds no CCD chroma advantage over Mpeg-2 HDV like was originally marketed, but the DVCPro codec does handle fast motion better due to not GOP limitation (the tradeoff being much higher bandwith usage). It does not sample at 4:2:2 at the source, but it is converted to 4:2:2 once it hits the DSP.
All of this means, that although the HVX does produce a nice picture, have 24p recording, and utilize DVCPro, it's true CCD resolution is much less than the competitors on the market, and the chroma potential that was originally thought to be head and tails above the HDV cameras out there, is in fact only marginally better natively, and in most situations, does not equate to any advantage.
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I am posting this because I think its very important to forget brand names when looking for a camera and think about what your needs are, what camera's true factual specifications are, and what the resultant image is. I think way too many people are making up their minds over what they will buy similar to the IPOD phenomenon, based on name alone. Nevermind that there are quite a few other models out there that provide equal or superior quality for less price.
Now 24p native recording is a huge deal if you are shooting cinema especially with plans for a filmmout. But in this scenario, intelligent deinterlacing of a higher pixel count CCD (especially Canon's), could result in a much higher quality output.
This is all very important when you're going to lay out $3-$15k on a camera.
However, two claims that have been made by diehards it seems are simply not true.
Firstly, pixel count of CCD's is actually 960x540 , that is less than the vertical resolution of PAL Standard definition. How the camera compensates for this is through "spatial offset" which offsets the lines of pixels to accomplish a higher resolution. Of course, this explains the HVX's low lux capability as well because larger actual area on a CCD that captures light = more low light capability. These CCD's are progressive however.
Second, a 540 CCD means 4:2:0 sampling, which means that it holds no CCD chroma advantage over Mpeg-2 HDV like was originally marketed, but the DVCPro codec does handle fast motion better due to not GOP limitation (the tradeoff being much higher bandwith usage). It does not sample at 4:2:2 at the source, but it is converted to 4:2:2 once it hits the DSP.
All of this means, that although the HVX does produce a nice picture, have 24p recording, and utilize DVCPro, it's true CCD resolution is much less than the competitors on the market, and the chroma potential that was originally thought to be head and tails above the HDV cameras out there, is in fact only marginally better natively, and in most situations, does not equate to any advantage.
---
I am posting this because I think its very important to forget brand names when looking for a camera and think about what your needs are, what camera's true factual specifications are, and what the resultant image is. I think way too many people are making up their minds over what they will buy similar to the IPOD phenomenon, based on name alone. Nevermind that there are quite a few other models out there that provide equal or superior quality for less price.
Now 24p native recording is a huge deal if you are shooting cinema especially with plans for a filmmout. But in this scenario, intelligent deinterlacing of a higher pixel count CCD (especially Canon's), could result in a much higher quality output.
This is all very important when you're going to lay out $3-$15k on a camera.