Matching HDV with widescreen stills

[zoobie]

Hey now -

I've decided to shoot time lapse with a 16:9 digital camera to match my HDV footage. However, I'm wondering what MP I need to do this. My HDR-HC5 HDV Handycam (CMOS) will shoot about 3MP at 16:9

It seems someone said to use 8-10mp in the widescreen resolution but now I'm wondering if this is correct or overkill.

A 12MP cam will shoot about 9MP at 16:9
A 10MP cam will shoot about 7MP at 16:9
A 6MP cam will shoot about 4MP at 16:9

What's the story with matching my HDV? I would prefer to buy a dig cam that isn't total overkill.
The goal is Blu-ray on HDTV.
Thanks

[edDV]

All will be a downsize.

What is your editor?

Vegas and Premiere will autosize stills to HDV project format.

Otherwise you need to match downsize to 1440x1080i with 1.3333 PAR

[zoobie]

Thanks Ed for the reply. I'm running Vegas Pro 7 and VS 11 for quick edits.
My HC5's manual says it's going to record 16:9 at 2304 x 1296 at 3MP
I was planning on running CHDK on a Powershot for time lapse. Then I'd have a higher resolution like 7MP at 3264 x 1832
Just wondering what's actually going to match the quality of my CMOS HDV.
Thanks

[edDV]

Thanks Ed for the reply. I'm running Vegas Pro 7 and VS 11 for quick edits.
My HC5's manual says it's going to record 16:9 at 2304 x 1296 at 3MP
I was planning on running CHDK on a Powershot for time lapse. Then I'd have a higher resolution like 7MP at 3264 x 1832
Just wondering what's actually going to match the quality of my CMOS HDV.
Thanks

I thought you wanted to put stills into an HDV video project.

Your manual is talking about taking stills with the camcorder.

[zoobie]

Yes...I plan on putting the stills into a HDV project in Vegas. I know my manual is talking about taking stills with the camcorder. But I've read that taking time lapse stills with a regular P & S cam results in better quality, flexibility, and hours in the field. That's why I'm leaning towards buying a compact cam at the mo...

[edDV]

Yes...I plan on putting the stills into a HDV project in Vegas. I know my manual is talking about taking stills with the camcorder. But I've read that taking time lapse stills with a regular P & S cam results in better quality, flexibility, and hours in the field. That's why I'm leaning towards buying a compact cam at the mo...

So if I understand, you want to take time lapse stills then output as HDV (or other HD standard) video to Blu-Ray?

The quality of P&S level cam vs. HC5 will depend on the amount of zoom you will be doing and light levels. Most still cameras will take a higher resolution still but if you need to crop vs. zoom with the camcorder lens, or shooting in low light*, the quality advantage may shift to the HC5.

Instead of HDV format consider 23.976p 1920x1080 for time lapse.


* The HC5 has a 1/3 inch sensor and probably more glass. This combined with larger physical pixels (lower resolution) means other things being equal the HC5 will do better in low light than a smaller sensor point and shoot.

[zoobie]

My shots are all daytime outdoors on a tripod. My timelapses will probably be of sunsets, shadows, and clouds. I searched the internet and posted in different camera forums. Without any results, I figured the MP was probably a crapshoot.
Thanks

PS - The thing I like about Powershot CHDK is that you can shoot huge 16:9 and even turn off the LCD between shots extending the battery life by hours. This simplifies things when shooting for 5 hours.

[edDV]

The Powershot should do fine. I don't recall if the HC5 has adequate manual exposure controls to pull that off over 5 hrs

[zoobie]

This was posted in another forum:

HDV image is only 2 megapixels, so basically any still camera that takes 3 MP shots or better is good enough for HDV timelapse. I have used DSLRs and resized the shots to 2000 pix wide using midquality JPG compression (which is still much better than native HDV).

so, according to this, a new 14MP camera would be a huge overkill if only requiring 3MP

[aedipuss]

only in a strictly technical sense. other factors are more important. an oversized jpeg can always be resized to 1920x1080. a 14mp camera with a cheap plastic lens would create crap anyway. any 3-5mp camera these days is going to be low quality point and shoot. a decent mid priced camera like the newer nikon p100 might be nice and is able to shoot 1920x1080p if you want video from it.

[2Bdecided]

I think the entire discussion is missing the point - what matters is whether the chosen camera takes decent, pleasing (well exposed, in-focus, reasonably sharp) pictures. If it does, then anything from the last five years is going to be fine in terms of pixel count, and more than a match for the image from an HDV camcorder.

Where do you find a camera these days that can't produce a decent looking 2MP image outdoors on a tripod?! In a Christmas cracker?!!?!!

Draw or tape 16x9 markers on the view finder (unless the camera support a 16x9 mode - which doesn't matter in the slightest because it's trivial to crop).

Cheers,
David.

[zoobie]

Well, everyone's altruistic needs and deeds are appreciated...
We may be mixing apples (Handycam CMOS) with oranges (Powershot CCD)
I did learn that HDV was about 2MP, though...give or take

I'll first try my little HC5 which shoots 16:9 at 3MP time lapse stills
Then, with the same cam, I'll try cropping 4:3 at 4MP timelapse stills to 16:9 to compare

The DSLR that shoots HDV will just have to wait a few years until I first wear out this little handycam
Hey...I just saved $2,000
Damn I'm good

[edDV]

Normal HDV is 1440x1080i @ 25Mb/s with 1.333 PAR same as HDCAM and normal AVCHD @17 Mb/s.

If you want to pull a square pixel still to an HDV timeline, the still must be horizontally squeezed to 1.333 PAR.

1440 x 1080 = 1.55 megapixels.

When resampled to square pixel 16:9 display

1920 x 1080 = 2.07 megapixels.

If you downsize to a square pixel 1920x1080 timeline, you don't need to upsample from HDV.