Consumer 1080/30p CCD chip camera? HELP!

[BuddyT]

I need a very specific camera that will record 1080 HD at 30p and has a CCD chip. It also needs to be a consumer level camera, like a home video style camera in the $500 - $1000 range. We are shooting hidden video so we want to look like amateurs, but we need the footage to be captured with these specs for post production reasons.

The panasonic HDC-SD9 is almost there. It would be perfect except it only records 24p or 30i or 60i.

It's 99% likely the right camera will be from about 2008 since everything 1080p today is using CMOS chips. Does anyone have experience with one of those 3CCD chip cameras from roughly 2008 when the full HD camcorder just became a reality which records at 1080/30p?

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-HDC-SD9-Definition-Camcorder-Stabilized/dp/B0011FTKFY - this is almost perfect, but not 30p.

Anyone can help?!

[edDV]

Not many HD CCD consumer cams. The best one would be the 3x CCD $2750 JVC GY-HM100U. You can remove the fancy mic and handle to make it look cheap consumer.



There are other 3ccd options for SD MiniDV.

[BuddyT]

it was all the rage 3 years ago and then CMOS came and blew it all up. I dislike those chips very much right now.

[BuddyT]

thanks for the response edDV. too big and too $$. can't be discreet with those things at all.

Needs to be this:

[edDV]

it was all the rage 3 years ago and then CMOS came and blew it all up. I dislike those chips very much right now.

CMOS is good for cheap HD but suffers the dreaded rolling shutter problem. All serious broadcast cams use 3x CCD.

[poisondeathray]

You can deinterlace 60i to get 30p .

The truth is you're not going to find remotely decent quality in that price range . CCD chips are way more expensive and do not enjoy economies of scale at this point. They run hotter, require larger cooling and housing = even more money

Even the pro/sumer cameras that are $3-4K with CCD's are not 1080p chips. They are 720p chips with upscaled 1080p output

[edDV]

I need a very specific camera that will record 1080 HD at 30p and has a CCD chip. It also needs to be a consumer level camera, like a home video style camera in the $500 - $1000 range. We are shooting hidden video so we want to look like amateurs, but we need the footage to be captured with these specs for post production reasons...

What are the post production reasons?

[BuddyT]

What are the post production reasons?

because we are comping elements into the footage, we can't have the warble problems of the CMOS chips and we also have to avoid interlacing. warble/distortion and interlacing makes it so the element we comp in doesn't blend naturally with the background plate we're shooting on the digital vid camera.

we have done some tests with 60i footage (which seems to be what all these palm camcorders record to if not 24p) and then de-interlace it to get 30p, but there is a noticeable quality loss. it works, but would be preferable to have a native 1080/30p image.

Maybe someone out there remembers if one of those 2008 ccd cameras (a la Panasnic HDC-SD9) just happen to include 30p as one of it's frame rates. I can't seem to find one.

thanks for all the previous responses.

[poisondeathray]

what deinterlacer did you use ? there is continuum of quality from piss poor to very good.

a 1080p30 image from a consumer CCD won't look like 1080p that you're used to now . It will look more like SD upscaled

[aedipuss]

current cmos prosumer cams are 3mos, with 3 cmos sensors that eliminate the problems you mention.

[poisondeathray]

current cmos prosumer cams are 3mos, with 3 cmos sensors that eliminate the problems you mention.

huh ? 3 mos cams still suffer from partial exposure, rolling shutter issues - are you talking about other issues ?

[BuddyT]

current cmos prosumer cams are 3mos, with 3 cmos sensors that eliminate the problems you mention.

We tested the 3MOS chips. not as bad, but still suffer from warble distortion.

[BuddyT]

what deinterlacer did you use ? there is continuum of quality from piss poor to very good.

a 1080p30 image from a consumer CCD won't look like 1080p that you're used to now . It will look more like SD upscaled

we just used the function in After Effects. Can you suggest something better?

[poisondeathray]

Something from avisynth like QTGMC

I would rate AE's deinterlacer as low quality. All it does is drop 1/2 the fields and bicubic resize the remaining ones. Nothing is done to fix the aliasing or jaggies. The jaggies combine in motion and look like shimmering or "marching ants." Motion compensated deinterlacers have antialiasing functions and fill in the missing gaps, so there is less shimmering . You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between native progressive shot footage and interlaced, with the exception of slightly lower resolution and detail

I haven't seen the specific footage you're talking about , but I suspect the lowest common denominator here would be the quality of the original footage. I doubt any amount of processing will improve it.

Consumer CCD "HD" cameras like the HDC-SD9 shot very shabby footage and recorded to 1st generation AVCHD at low bitrates. I wouldn't even call it HD (Sure the frame size is HD, but the content looks like upscaled SD). Consider that the lowest priced full sized (1080) CCD chipped cameras are >$20K , body only. CMOS imagers today at this price point will provide a much higher quality image, but suffer from CMOS issues like "jello"

[BuddyT]

Something from avisynth like QTGMC

I would rate AE's deinterlacer as low quality. All it does is drop 1/2 the fields and bicubic resize the remaining ones. Nothing is done to fix the aliasing or jaggies. The jaggies combine in motion and look like shimmering or "marching ants." Motion compensated deinterlacers have antialiasing functions and fill in the missing gaps, so there is less shimmering . You would be hard pressed to tell the difference between native progressive shot footage and interlaced, with the exception of slightly lower resolution and detail

I haven't seen the specific footage you're talking about , but I suspect the lowest common denominator here would be the quality of the original footage. I doubt any amount of processing will improve it.

Consumer CCD "HD" cameras like the HDC-SD9 shot very shabby footage and recorded to 1st generation AVCHD at low bitrates. I wouldn't even call it HD (Sure the frame size is HD, but the content looks like upscaled SD). Consider that the lowest priced full sized (1080) CCD chipped cameras are >$20K , body only. CMOS imagers today at this price point will provide a much higher quality image, but suffer from CMOS issues like "jello"

can you suggest a better deinterlacer? the shabbiness of the original footage is actually pretty on target for the aesthetic we need, if we could keep it at that level; but, as you correctly suggest, the AE deinterlacer is whack.

[poisondeathray]

I already did avisynth's QTGMC

Pros: highest quality deinterlacing, hundreds of configurable options, free

Cons: very slow to process, bit of a learning curve, hassles trying to get the proper plugins


I would process it , exporting a lossless intermediate then re-import for my background plate . I would actually keep 60p, this gives you better slo mo options, and an easy decimation to 30p




This is a very old comparison example , with the precursor function to QTGMC, TGMC. AE's deinterlacer would rank slightly worse than "yadif" . Right click and "save as" and play in a media player like VLC

https://forum.videohelp.com/images/guides/p1934885/stockholma_0-520_q3_yadif_mvbobmod_t...mca4_tdtmm.avi

[BuddyT]

ah yes. i see now. thanks so much. gonna try this today and report back.

[BuddyT]

blast. should have mentioned i'm working on a mac. any suggestions for an mac OS deinterlacer? the whole avisynth and scripting went far far over my head. i'm a double click icon or chose in the file menu kind of guy. but thank you very much for the suggestions. i will share it with other guys on the team and maybe they can figure it out.

[edDV]

What are the post production reasons?

because we are comping elements into the footage, we can't have the warble problems of the CMOS chips and we also have to avoid interlacing. warble/distortion and interlacing makes it so the element we comp in doesn't blend naturally with the background plate we're shooting on the digital vid camera.

we have done some tests with 60i footage (which seems to be what all these palm camcorders record to if not 24p) and then de-interlace it to get 30p, but there is a noticeable quality loss. it works, but would be preferable to have a native 1080/30p image.

Are you hand holding these cameras or have you found a way to stabilize them while shooting?

Layered compositing with hand held source is always difficult. For GOP based formats even worse. This project cries for a Panasonic DVCProHD HVX-2000 or better which shoots individual frames.

[poisondeathray]

blast. should have mentioned i'm working on a mac. any suggestions for an mac OS deinterlacer? the whole avisynth and scripting went far far over my head. i'm a double click icon or chose in the file menu kind of guy. but thank you very much for the suggestions. i will share it with other guys on the team and maybe they can figure it out.

Unfortunately no. There is jes deinterlacer , and the ones that come with FCP and compressor but they are quite poor - you will find the end results similar to AE's built in deinterlacer. There are some 3rd party plugins for AE from revision fx that do slightly better deinterlacing, but they are still lacking compared to QTGMC

Why is it necessary to use the footage from this camera? Can you use a prop consumer camera and substitute real footage from a different camera? - or is it because the small camera is the "hidden" camera and you're using that as foreground elements for the background plate shot by the other camera ?

[BuddyT]

blast. should have mentioned i'm working on a mac. any suggestions for an mac OS deinterlacer? the whole avisynth and scripting went far far over my head. i'm a double click icon or chose in the file menu kind of guy. but thank you very much for the suggestions. i will share it with other guys on the team and maybe they can figure it out.

Unfortunately no. There is jes deinterlacer , and the ones that come with FCP and compressor but they are quite poor - you will find the end results similar to AE's built in deinterlacer. There are some 3rd party plugins for AE from revision fx that do slightly better deinterlacing, but they are still lacking compared to QTGMC

Why is it necessary to use the footage from this camera? Can you use a prop consumer camera and substitute real footage from a different camera? - or is it because the small camera is the "hidden" camera and you're using that as foreground elements for the background plate shot by the other camera ?

the small camcorder (currently using a pana hdc-sd9) is our production camera. the camera needs to be super lo-pro because we are shooting hidden camera of actors interacting with real people. we want genuine reactions from the real people, so anything bigger than a palm consumer camera is not an option (ie. HVX-200 or better as mentioned above by edDV). something bigger blows our cover every time, but we still need zoom and exposure control for our cam op, so just putting a bigger camera in a bag with a hole doesn't work. in post we are comping in other elements to enhance the video footage of our talent and real people which needs to blend seamlessly, which is why we would like native 1080/30p. it's not an easy task all the way around.

thanks everyone for the advice. we seem to have settled on a solution of using a motion compensated deinterlacer (revision FX). it's not great, but it'll do for our budget, schedule and prod restrictions.

we're open to more suggestions if anyone's been following and has another possibility.