Z1 overviews

[CamDiver]

Hi Guys,
New to the forum but 15 years as an underwater shooter. Looking for real appraisals and faults of the Sony HVR Z1 as I'm thinking about taking this underwater as my new addition to
my shooting formats. Any information and reports gratefully accepted.

Cheers,

Mark Thorpe.

[Alan Roberts]

It's been used underwater quite a bit. Any housing that will take a PD170 will be fine.

[CamDiver]

Hi Alan,
I understand the housing market and have been underwater with a varying array of cameras over the past 15 years. I was just looking for any potential problems with this camera's performance. I have heard talk about artefacting on pans and dropped frames etc. Also one interesting point from a friend of mine.

He uses his underwater too and if after 5 minutes of no usage the camera goes into standby mode, obviously to save battery power etc. BUT when he needs to hit the record button to film something he gets a 1 sometimes 2 second pause on his timecode as if the camera is waking up again. Have you heard of this problem before and do you have any info on the other points made?

Cheers for all,
Mark.

[Alan Roberts]

OK, I understand. Tgere are two issues here.

Artefacts on panning and so on are to do with interlace and MPEG2. The compression is not particularly vicious, but you certainly can see artefacts on some signal sources, but you the n balance that against the aqlternatives, shoot SD or full HD, neither of which looks attractive when you've got a Z1 available. It's a decent performer in its price range. It has problems, but they don't destroy its usefulness. I wouldn't worry too much about it, just go and use it.

Switching off to save power is reasonable in a consumer camera but not in one with pretensions to professional use. So, I'd be amazed if there isn't a menu item somewhere that lets you disable that, or change the idle time. But, since the recoder is MPEG, it takes time to get its act together to record, maybe a second or so. My A1 has a "feature" that lets me quick-start recording, but it does that by starting a new GoP without reference to the existing GoP structure on the tape, so it can crash Avid during ingest (because Avid expects the GoP structure to be uninterrupted). But I've got a menu option to disable that in exdchange for a potentially much longer startup time.

I'm surfe you can fix problems like that in the Z1, it's from the same firm as the Z1 :)

[Dave R Smith]

I'm looking to buy Z1 soon, so I've been watching related posts.
I believe they are not too good in low light (or as good as SD equivalents) - so presumably this will have implications for usable depth, water clarity and use of lights.
Might be worth hiring one to test.

Do you intend to deliver 'HD' or downconvert it?
I believe TV is the only viable commercial option at present for HD delivery.

[CamDiver]

Hi,
From reports from associates this camera performs very well underwater. The low light issue may be more of a concern in non tropical areas and especially at greater depths but seeing as most of my work is in relatively shallow, clear tropical water I really don't see an issue.

Like any new camera we are waiting to see how it delivers. Mine and my associates stock is all intended for HD archiving to compliment future HD productions. We do downconvert some of the imagery to include in specific DVD projects we have in productions of our own for general sales.

Thanks,
Mark.

[CamDiver]

Hi Alan,
So are you saying that there is a function to delay the time it takes for the camera to go into standby mode? Or is it just the "Quck Start Record" feature you are talking about? Sorry if I seem confused.

Regards,
Mark.

[Alan Roberts]

Both.

I'd expect there to be a menu item to alloow you t either select the "inactive" time before it goes to sleep, or to prevent it altogether. It's there on my A1 so I'd expect oit to be on a Z1.

In MPEG2, "quick start" recording can result in the sequence of GoPs on tape having one of abnormal length, and that breaks Avid ingestion. The normal "start of recording" process should involved the tape deck positioning itself on the precise end of the last complete GoP and starting from there with a complete GoP. And the normal "end of recording" process should be to complete the existing GoP such that the next recording can start from there. That's the ideal method, but it can involve a delay of a second or more, so the noption for "quick start" does a dirty start with a broken GoP structure.

Does that help?

[CamDiver]

Alan,
You've been a great help thanks for everything. One last thing. Could you point me to the menu process which allows you to set the interval time on the A1? I have some friends who are also using this camera and would like some feedback on it. We normally meet in the video forum located at wetpixel.com If your presence and knowledge could help out some of the guys there I'm sure they would appreciate it.

Sincere regards,
Mark.

[Alan Roberts]

Sorry, my mistake, it's not the A1 that does this it's the HC1. As far as I can tell, the A1 doesn't switch itself off until the battery dies. Download the settings document referred to in my signature and all will come clear.

[infocus]

Switching off to save power is reasonable in a consumer camera but not in one with pretensions to professional use.
Is it to save power, or is it a case of slackening tape tension after a period of time to avoid tape/head wear? If the latter, I understand this to be the case in cameras costing a lot more - the DSR500 series, for example. In that case, if the camera is switched on and left idle for more than 8 minutes it may take about 6 seconds to start to record - not very good for some news etc type work! And why on critical jobs cameramen rapidly get into the habit of pointing at the ground every five minutes and running for a couple of seconds. Keeps the camera in the fast start up mode.

[shona]

Hi Alan,

What version of Avid are you using to capture HDV tapes?
Are you finding it satisfactory?

How are you storing your HDV edits? On HDV tape I guess?

Thanks.

[Alan Roberts]

Not Avid, Canopus Edius Pro. I don't do much editing with it yet, only used for capture and extraction of frames for analysis. Editing of HD will happen eventually, and the output will probably go back to HDV tape and to SD dvd for the next few years. In 3 years time I expect HD to be much more commonplace and there should be affordable HD dvd machinery for us to play with.