On Wed, 6 Mar 2002 13:00:34 -0500, "JD" wrote:

[...]
>I wasn't advocating D9, but showing that worrying about differences in sensors
>is only a small part of the issue at hand. A full resolution sensor array, and
>a DV encoder that creates it's own artifacts, not being able to handle the
>best tradeoffs associated with high resolution, would create lots of mosquitos,
>for example.
>
>I do think that the XL1 is substandard in alot of ways, and it is pretty clear
>that Sony gets it right more often than most of the competition. I wish that
>more pressure would occur to push the high end quality rather than wasting
>time in situations where the image is crippled to begin with.
>
>Again, everytime that I hear about a camcorder looking okay, but tends towards
>stairstepping or somesuch, and then hear extreme arguments about resolution
>or other issues, it seems that the discussion becomes biased. My guess is that
>there is alot that can be done at the codec level so as to improve the DV artifacting
>rather than worrying about the last 20 lines of resolution!!! That last 20-40
>lines of resolution might marginally increase sharpness, but create lots
>of mosquitos or force a choice that creates more stairstepping.
>
>One experiment that I'd like to try (when I get the time), is to enable full vertical
>resolution on my camcorder, and high resolution images onto DV (using D9 as
>the source material -- because of architectural limitations, not for comparing
>between D9 and DV.) My suspicion is that mosquitos or diagonal stairstepping would
>be very obvious. Better codecs would be able to help. This is NOT an argument
>for D9, but is an argument for improving DV.
>
>A side-note: I have some DVDs (Superbit) that have marginally higher resolution, but
>it seems like they have more mosquitos. Don't normally see them on normal TVs,
>but on high resolution sets (and high end DVD players), the mosquitos become quite
>obvious. As material gets upconverted, this will be more and more important...
>
>John

Thanks for some interesting posts. As I compared
various Mini-DV camcorders of different brands
(www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder-comparison.htm,
and www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/sony_dcr-vx2000.htm)
and five of the Sony Mini-DV imaging types
(www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder--comparison),
it became obvious that the artifacting evident on
various camcorders was so varied in quantity and
type that something was going on beyond inherent
Mini-DV format problems (though these were evident,
too...). Other bits: the low-end BetaSP camera
used as an analogue reference was copied to Mini-DV
tape, and this did not show many of the problems
often associated with Mini-DV; and Mini-DV footage
transferred RGB to an Avid appeared to lose some
of the artifacting seen in the original (I am
not sure of this, though, not having checked this
out carefully enough...). It is evident, though,
in the progression of the Sony one-chip Mini-DV
camcorder models, that as the resolution becomes
very high, artifacting becomes correspondingly
very annoying. The 3-chip Sony VX2000/PD150,
though, appears to have both a smooth-with-motion
low-noise image, and also excellent resolution
(though not entirely without artifacting). You
have raised an excellent question (one I have
"danced around" in the reviews, with the comments
on the motion-video characteristics), and it would
be interesting to see tests for these effects...
Thanks.