Sony HVR-V1
Sony HVR-V1
By Adam Wilt
The HVR-V1 marks an important milestone in the evolution of HD camcorders: it's the first 3-chip handheld that's as small, light, and easy to maneuver as its standard-definition counterparts. The camera clearly takes inspiration from the iconic DSR-PD150 DVCAM camcorder and its follow-on, the PD170. The V1 is almost identical in size, weight, and operational philosophy to these predecessors with additional refinements: crisp 60i and 24p 1080-line HDV recording, and improved ergonomics.
A few compromises were made along the way. The camera is less light-sensitive than others in its class, and boosting gain can lower resolution. The 24p implementation can cause postproduction annoyances. The zoom ring isn't up to Sony's usual standards. Specialized cables are needed for video output.
Owners of F900/R CineAltas needn't worry that the $4,800 V1 has made their $85,000 investments obsolete, but CineAlta users might want to look at the little V1 as a B-roll camera.
Design and operation
As previously mentioned in the "First Look" (Feb. '07 DV), the V1 is a svelte camera in the PD150 form factor. The V1 tips the scales at less than four pounds (it's 2 ounces lighter than the PD150) with battery and tape loaded-making it nearly a pound lighter than the HVRZ1 (Reviews, May '06 DV) and Canon XH-series handhelds (Featured Review, Mar. '07 DV), and a veritable featherweight compared to the hefty Panasonic HVX200 (Reviews, June '06 DV). The V1's narrow body and longitudinally centralized grip make the camera balance naturally on the hand, so it feels even lighter than it is. The new camera is the least fatiguing of any of the 3-chip HD handhelds I've used for extended handheld work.
Control layout and operation will feel natural to people using other Sony cameras. Separate auto/manual buttons for gain, shutter speed, and white balance are arrayed down the rear panel, just above the menu button and setting thumbwheel. The auto/manual buttons operate just like their counterparts on the PD150/170 and VX2000/2100 cameras.
Free-spinning zoom and focus rings surround the 20x lens. The camera's 1/4-inch CMOS chips make wide angles challenging: The V1's 35 mm still-camera equivalent wide angle is 37.4 mm, compared to the Z1's and HVX200's 32.5 mm, but the telephoto equivalent is a pleasingly long 748 mm. The lens opens up to f/1.6 at the wide end, ramping down to f/2.8 at full telephoto. Optical SteadyShot stabilization is up to Sony's usual high standards, and it's available in three levels of aggressiveness, plus a setting for wide-angle adapters.
The zoom lags the ring slightly, beginning to move a fraction of a second after you start turning the ring. When you stop turning, the zoom coasts smoothly to a stop, overshooting your desired stopping place. On the one hand, it's almost impossible to have a jerky zoom. Even abrupt ring movements result in silky-smooth zooms with perfect eases. On the other, it forces you to anticipate the servo's performance and start and stop your zooms just a bit sooner than you would otherwise. The V1 zoom ring is more predictable than the one on a Canon, but compared to a PD150 or Z1, it feels a bit imprecise.
An exposure/iris thumbwheel is placed behind the zoom ring, right where it belongs, for easy, fumble-free access while shooting, and the auto/manual button is just above the thumbwheel. The thumbwheel operates in one of three modes: Exposure 1 controls both iris and gain, leaving shutter speed fixed on manual; Exposure 2 controls only the iris, with both gain and shutter set manually; and Iris mode controls only iris while letting gain and shutter be controlled automatically or manually. The first two modes handily shortcut the usual process of setting up a Sony for full manual control by forcing all exposure controls into manual at the press of a single button.
A three-position ND filter selector (off, ND 1, ND 2) is further aft on the lens barrel, providing 2 and 4 stops of light reduction respectively. The push-auto focus button sits below the iris wheel, but pushbuttons for auto/manual focus selection and expanded focus are inexplicably located far from the other focus controls, on the camera's side where other cameras often put gain and white-balance toggles. I quickly committed other controls to muscle memory and was able to run the camera by touch, yet I repeatedly fumbled for these two focus buttons.
Three assignable buttons in black chrome sit along the upper right side of the lens barrel, while three more reside behind the 3.5-inch 16 x 9 flip-out LCD. Transport controls, a volume rocker, and a zebra switch (off, 70 percent, 100 percent) also lurk behind the LCD. Below the LCD and accessible with the LCD closed are a Memory Stick slot, USB and HDMI connectors (all behind a flip-down door), a headphone jack, and Picture Profile and Status Check pushbuttons. Picture Profiles can be saved to Memory Stick.
Tapes load on the right side, inside the handgrip, which can be opened with the camera on a tripod. The top of the handgrip offers a LANC (remote control) jack, a zoom rocker, and a push-button that either engages expanded focus mode or grabs a photo to Memory Stick, depending on your preferences.
A bank of connectors at the left rear of the camera provide power (the battery can be charged oncamera), 1394, and multipin jacks for Sony-specific adapter cables for analog I/O. Analog component uses the same cable as the HVR-Z1 and other Sony HDV cameras, while audio, composite, and Y/C share a separate custom connector. Sony breakout cables must be used to get to any of these signals-there are no RCAs, BNCs, or Y/C connectors to be found on the camera body-so if you forget your cables at home, you can forget about monitoring pictures and sound. Unforgivably, the supplied video/audio cable only offers composite video and stereo audio on RCA plugs. If you want to use Y/C for monitoring, you'll need to buy a separate cable.
A pod on the front of the handgrip handles audio. Dual XLRs provide connections, while chromed slide switches toggle between line and mic levels, enable +48 V phantom power, and determine whether a source on input 1 feeds channel 1 only or channels 1 and 2. Thumbwheels control input gain. Like the PD150 and PD170, the V1 has no built-in mic, but comes with a short shotgun of tolerable quality that fits in the included shock mount.
The LCD and viewfinder are bright, daylight-readable displays with good off-axis tone and color. In a welcome and much-appreciated enhancement, the status displays let you view aperture, shutter, gain, and white balance readouts even when they're in auto mode (a small "A" by the readout indicates auto mode). A live exposure histogram supplements zebras for exposure monitoring. All this info can be banished at the press of a button for distraction-free framing. Both displays only resolve around 300 lines of resolution, so they're unhelpful for focusing. A digital peaking overlay helps, but like other cameras in this price range you'll need a separate HD monitor for precise work. As on the Z1, expanded focus (2x magnification) cannot be used while shooting, but the V1 lets you engage both zebra and peaking simultaneously.
You can down-convert live or recorded HD video as anamorphic or letterboxed, or as center-cut 4:3. Down-conversion quality is very good.
CMOS and 24p
The V1 uses CMOS imagers instead of CCDs, but the resulting pictures track those of the CCD-based HVR-Z1 very closely in tonal response. I measured dynamic range at 8.3-9 stops, and highlight handling is comparable to other cameras in this class. Pictures shot at the same time with the Z1, Canon XH A1, and Panasonic HVX200 look virtually identical in how overexposure is handled (it doesn't hurt that the V1 offers high, medium, low, and auto knee settings, black stretch and compress, normal and two Cinegamma settings, and normal and Cinematone color settings). Pictures from the V1 at 0 dB are very clean, and its CMOS imagers do not show vertical smear.
The imagers use rolling shutter readout: instead of capturing the entire frame (or field) simultaneously, it's read sequentially from top to bottom. As a result, fast pans show tilts in normally vertical lines (because the camera moves between the time the top of the frame is captured and the bottom is captured). While I could generate obvious tilting during whip-pans past test charts, in normal shooting I never found it to be an issue.
I measured the production-model V1 as being about 2/3 stop slower than an HVR-Z1, just over 1 stop slower than a Canon XH A1, and 1.5 stops slower than a Panasonic HVX200.
The V1 offers four frame rates: 60i, 30p, 24p, and 24A. 60i and 30p work as expected; the V1 uses a true progressive CCD, so 30p images show slightly more vertical resolution than 60i images do. The V1 is also the first Sony HVD camera with true 24p; the camera records 24 fps images in 60i using 3:2 pulldown, so the tapes can be played back in any 60i-capable camera or deck.
The 24p mode records 24 fps clips cleanly back-to-back, but the pulldown cadence is not synchronized to the start of the clip nor to the timecode. The 24A mode (not to be confused with the 24PA mode pioneered by Panasonic) records each clip starting on an A frame (see www.adamwilt.com/24p/index.html#24pRecording), so that postproduction tools can more easily extract the 24 unique frames in every 30 frames recorded. However, there is a disruption-a break in the data recorded on tape-between scenes.
While Sony's Vegas NLE is said to handle 24A mode recordings, Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 could not. FCP cleanly captured 24p clips across scene changes, but 24A caused FCP to pause between scenes, waiting for data-and FCP missed the first few seconds of each 24A clip as a result. In either case, I had to export captured clips using an intraframe codec (DVCPRO HD, AIC, or uncompressed) and use Cinema Tools to manually extract the original 24 frames for use on a 24-fps timeline. In this instance, 24p was a better choice than 24A. I mention this not because it's a fatal flaw-FCP will surely handle 24A properly in a future version-but as a warning that it may take your chosen NLE a while to catch up with the V1's 24 fps recording modes.
Of course, if you're just shooting 24 fps for the look but editing as 60i, this is not an issue. The clips work perfectly well as 60i clips, just as they come out of the camera.
Resolution and detail
The V1's 960 x 1080 CMOS chips use diagonally arrayed photosites. Practically speaking, this means that each photosite is diamond-shaped, which should reduce the harshness of aliasing. All odd scanlines are pixel-shifted with respect to even scanlines, so that in interlaced scanning, where dual-row readout is employed to reduce twitter, the horizontal sampling is virtually doubled.
Each scanline is further enhanced by phantom photosites in between each of the real photosites. The V1's image processor synthesizes an intervening sample by averaging four adjacent samples: the two to either side, and the two pixel-shifted ones immediately above and below.
The resulting images are very sharp, showing more fine detail than a conventional 960 x 1080 sensor would, but with traces of 960-sample (540 TVl/ph) aliasing superimposed. In interlaced mode, test charts show cleanly distinguishable 800+ TVl/ph with faint aliasing. In progressive mode the aliasing is stronger, fighting with the 800-line test patches and appearing atop 1000-line patches that were smoothly gray in interlaced mode. (See test chart below; images are in full resolution.) A surprising amount of color aliasing appears along horizontal lines of the test chart in both modes, although this is not evident in real-world pictures. Diagonally arrayed photosites result in diagonal aliasing. In the real world this shows as slightly lower resolution diagonally than horizontally or vertically, but unless you're shooting diagonally patterned subjects this is rarely evident.
Moving away from test charts, the V1 shows impressive amounts of fine detail, whether or not in-camera sharpening is used. Unlike the HVR-Z1, turning the sharpness down doesn't result in mush. The V1's pictures hold up extremely well. The V1 rivals the class-leading Canon XL H1 and XH series cameras in terms of sharpness and detail, although the residual aliasing, especially in progressive mode, renders the images slightly more granular or textured than those from Canons with 1440-pixel CCDs. These are, however, fine distinctions. Compared to previous Sony 3-chip HDV cameras and the Panasonic HVX200, the V1's images are clearly crisper and more detailed.
Boosting gain affects the V1's sharpness more than one might expect. Interlaced images start losing high-frequency detail around +12 to +15 dB, but it's a fairly harmless softening of fine detail in the 800-line region. Progressive images show substantial softening (and, on test charts, wildly different moirŽ patterns) as gain is raised. At 6 dB, resolution is down to 600 lines. At 9 dB and above resolution is down to 540 lines or less. In all cases, both H and V resolution are affected.
The resolution loss sounds dramatic, but consider that at 6 dB the V1's progressive images are still sharper than those from an HVX200, though they degrade from there. What's happening? The V1's design engineer, when asked, had this to say:
"As gain increases, generally, noise will become visible. To reduce this noise, the V1 applies a proprietary noise reduction. The V1's NR algorithm is optimized for both interlace and progressive modes, and automatically senses which mode is being used. Also, different NR processes at high gain may cause the issues experienced, but any such effects would not be visible when shooting natural pictures."
CMOS chips have traditionally been noted for noisy images in low light, and the V1 is already at a disadvantage by cramming so many photosites onto 1/4-inch chips. Sony's implementation, which appears to use pixel averaging to reduce noise at high gain, keeps the noise levels comparable to those from the HVR-Z1-a camera noted for its quiet images-which is no small accomplishment. The V1's lowered resolution at high gain is not the end of the world. It's just a tradeoff to be aware of. In practice, moderate gain boost in interlace is visually harmless, and slight gain boost in progressive is perfectly usable, as long as you're not intercutting the pix with other images shot at 0 dB.
Conclusions
The HVR-V1 proves that you no longer need pay a size and weight penalty for choosing HDV over DV. It's a great handheld camera with smooth controls and pin-sharp pictures, at least as long as you have plenty of light. Its detail-which is why you shoot HD in the first place-is up there with the best of them. It's the first Sony HDV camera with true 24 fps capabilities, too, although not all NLEs are ready to extract the V1's 24p material from its 60i recordings. Its status displays are in a class by themselves, providing operational awareness far beyond the impoverished screens of competing cameras. It's a superb run-Ôn'-gun machine.
Is it a knockout win for Sony? It lacks 50 Hz/60 Hz switchability, which the Z1 has. It doesn't provide the complete customizability and comprehensive image tweaking of the Canons. It's missing the Panasonic HVX200's variable frame rates (though it'll capture short bursts of highly compressed, reduced-resolution 120 fps video in Smooth Slow Recording mode). And while the V1 is a great handheld camera, it can't quite equal the ergonomics of the shoulder-mounted JVC HD100 and 200 series cameras. It's less light-sensitive than all of them, and needs custom cables for any video output at all.
But these are quibbles. No camera in this price range is a picture of perfection. The V1 is a very strong competitor and well worth considering.
Contributing editor Adam Wilt (www.adamwilt.com) writes the Technical Difficulties column for DV when he isn't too busy testing cameras and writing broadcast software.
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