After my last slow motion tests with my Sony HVR-V1P, CDMo reader FANF gave me some quick tips on how to run a resolution test.

Now here is a little protocol for definition testing: Get his first: http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/ISO_12233-reschart.pdf
Print it 350 dpi min, 600 recommended.

Place it in a well lit spot, in the sun for example, fixed to the wall. Use a spirit level. Place your camera with the optical axis perpendicular to the plane of the testchart (measure hight, use spirit level).
You should not see the white triangles on the underscanned image. No white triangle pointing into the image, the black triangles should ideally be pointing to the perfect edge of the screen.

To test the resolution/definition on the full breadth of the lens, do a test at wide angle, mid, and full tele, placing camera/testchart at the right distance for the scale to be right.
It would be equally important to test each focal at iris values 1.6, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11 to have a good idea of how definition rises and falls when you stop down.
To do this, use the “aperture prioriy” or “Av” program mode on your camera for correct exposure.

The definition of your camera, horizontal & vertical being distinct, is read by following the lines along the higher numbers ; the number where you cannot distinguish them from one another is your definition, in n x 100 lines. (Make sure you zoom into digitalised footage to measure the image, and not your screen !)

Now I have to admit that I didn’t quite go through with all of the different angles and apertures, and I’m not entirely certain that the resolution chart was printed to the correct size, but it doesn’t matter, as the difference between different shooting modes is obvious, even without meticulous shooting and calibration.

The images created by this process are reasonably large (1920×1080 to be precise), so I’m going to offer some small crops to discuss, and then offer up the full size images for download and examination at the end of the piece, if the mood takes you.

First up, a couple of 1:1 crops taken from the uncompressed HDMI output of the camera. This is with no HDV compression, so apart from JPG compression for the web these are the pixels as seen by the sensor. Obviously the lighting is a little low, but you can see that the resolution goes down to around 800 lines before it starts getting difficult to distinguish. All of the numbers and markings are easy to distinguish, and there aren’t any hugely obvious compression artifacts.

Since my last little slow motion test I’ve had plenty of quality time with my HVR-V1P, and while I wish it had a slightly more memorable model name - or even that it was printed somewhere on the unit, so I can tell people what it is when asked - I’m having a great time with this camera, enjoying the capabilities HD resolution gives me, and still loving Sony’s Smooth Slow Record feature.

With the last batch of slow-mo clips I had some requests to further slow down the motion in post-processing. I don’t currently have any 3rd party retiming plugins, but it turns out that the 200FPS (240 for NTSC regions) is shot interlaced, so my previous tests were only displaying 100FPS progressive. To get the full motion from 200FPS on a progressive monitor I needed to slow the footage to 50% speed and de-interlace, a trivial task in any editor.

Butterfly Slow-Motion 200FPS

Even this low-tech retiming gives you an idea of how powerful 200FPS can be. I actually had an ND filter in place to keep the shutter speed relatively low and keep a bit of a dreamy look for this shoot (the minimum allowed, of course, being faster than 1/200). With full sunlight you’d have no trouble getting up past 1/1000, which would result in very little motion blur and allow very accurate motion tracking, and some exciting retiming opportunities.

Peter’s post on projector orientation myths prodded my memory on an issue I encountered while picking up my shiny new camera. While finalizing the lease paperwork the sales guy went out of his way to bring my attention to a slice of A4 treeware contained within the box. The text printed on it prophesized a dire future for anyone plugging a firewire cable into their camera while the computer is switched on.

Dan’s recent letter on the subject prompted me to post this to get some feedback from the visualist community. Has this happened to anyone? Has a manufacturer denied you warranty service because they say you plugged in your firewire cable backwards? Here’s the full text of the warning which came with my camera:

Sony Corporation of Hong Kong Limited
Broadcast and Professional Pacific Asia Company

Date: September 1, 2006

Precaution: i.LINK Cable Connection

- Before connecting the i.LINK cable to a computer or Sony unit, please check the direction of the jack. The i.LINK connector on the computer may be damaged or cause the unit to malfunction of you forcefully insert the jack. Please align [up arrow] mark of the i.LINK cable with [down arrow] mark on the Sony unit before insert the i.LINK cable.

- Please connect the i.LINK cable to a computer before connect it to the Sony unit. If you connect the i.LINK cable to the Sony unit first, it may cause the unit to malfunction caused by static electricity.

- When you connecting the Sony unit to any equipment with a 6-pin type i.LINK jack, always connect the cable to the 6-pin i.LINK jack first.

- When you connect the Sony unit to any equipment with a 6-pin type i.LINK jack, always power off the equipment and remove the power cord from the AC outlet while inserting the i.LINK cable. Fail to do above action may result in high current flow between the cable and the equipment, which may cause damage.

… Huh? I thought that hotplugging was part of what makes Firewire so great? Do other manufacturers have issues with this, or have Sony just done something daft in their design and not fixed it? The helpful guy I bought my camera from told me that you can buy a special surge-isolating firewire cable to prevent this, at a price of several hundred dollars.

200 frames per second: that’s the “smooth slow motion capture” speed of Sony’s rather affordable HVR-V1P HDV camera. It really makes slow-motion capture accessible to the rest of us. Jaymis has been testing this mode on his new camera. Here are some early results (all the more impressive if you watch through to the full-motion versions at the end):

Sony Smooth Slow Motion test from Jaymis and Vimeo.

Of course, I’m ready to go even slower, and see what happens if you edit the footage in Final Cut Studio 2 using the new slow motion options. Starting with 200 frames should help.

More on the HVR-V1P soon; consider this a teaser.

Previously: First Impressions: Sony HVR-V1P HDV Camera

After asking CDMo readers for advice and promising various parties that I’d never buy another Sony product, I walked into my local VideoPro with a definite plan of attack: Compare and contrast the Canon XH-A1 and Panasonic HVX-200, and then buy one of them.

What followed is still a little hazy in my mind, but it seems there was a sales guy who actually knew his stuff, listened to my requirements and was able to suggest an alternative which was not only better suited to my needs, but also considerably cheaper. That this alternative was a Sony - a brand I’d sworn never to purchase again - just adds to the confusion. I’m still trying to figure out what happened.

The XH-A1 and HVX-200 are both great cameras, they look good, feel good, and by most accounts shoot exceptional video, generally on par with each other’s performance. Why, then, did I walk out of there with an HVR-V1P?:

• Physically smaller and lighter
• 200FPS “Smooth Slow Record” slow motion mode
• Uncompressed HDMI output
• Good quality Sony shotgun mic included
• External battery bay (as opposed to the XH-A1’s internal one) which is compatible with Sony’s NP-F range, including the batteries I still have from my 10 year old DCR-TRV9.
• AU$1500-3000 cheaper than the Canon and Panasonic offerings

I haven’t had the time to really get to know this camera, but initial impressions are very positive.