Shooting HDV

Matthew David Wachsman
January 2005

In only a decade, we've come from analog 8mm and VHS to all-digital camcorders good enough for broadcast. Now we are seeing new technology that will push videography well past the abilities of the average television. For less than $5,000, high-definition (HD) video is going consumer. High definition video gives more to the viewer, but it asks more of the shooter.

"Let's watch the DVD first." Frederic Haubrich leads me to a DVD player and small monitor in the white outer office of Lumiere Video, his video production facility near the ocean in Pt. Pleasant, New Jersey.

"I want to show you the quality of the DVD and then we can see it in HD. You know, HD is great, but unless you can show it in a way everyone can see it today, it's useless." Haubrich, 35, has recently made a career move some would call courageous, but many would call crazy. He walked away from a great job as CIO of Hooked on Phonics, with his Canon XL1 in hand, to pursue a career in video production. If the movie he's about to show is good, it will be his calling card. He presses the play button and his short film, Hotel Room, starts with the title fading up over a shot of a dark parking lot.

Hotel Room was shot on JVC's HD-10U. JVC liked Hotel Room so much they used it at NAB to showcase what their HDV cameras could do.

Haubrich moved from California to New Jersey. "I figured [that if] we're putting an ad in the yellow pages, we have to offer something new, something different, so we're going to migrate to HD."The move wasn't trouble-free and he immediately ran into some issues, "I couldn't trust my picture on an SD monitor. I had to be really careful [with focus]."Even scarier was the moment on the first night, when he watched the shutter speed change to a setting which made his images blurry. "When we looked at that I was horrified and we couldn't re-shoot that." Haubrich shrugs. "It kind of worked for the story. Kind of a strange feeling to it."

HD can look incredible, but, like any new technology, it takes work to get there. There are no shortcuts: Learn your camera and check your settings. Yes, fundamentally, it shoots video, just like your current camcorder, but it is different and you'll have to get used to it.

Good focus is possible, but since you probably don't have an HD monitor when you are shooting, you'll have to rely on the LCD, the viewfinder and, ultimately, your experience. On the JVC cameras, you won't be able to monitor your HDV picture at full resolution. You won't have control of your audio levels. You can't control your iris manually. The more you can control your environment, the better your chances of bringing back something you will be happy with.

Fundamentally, HD means higher resolution video. HDV currently comes in two flavors: 1080 lines of vertical resolution or 720 lines. If it were simply a matter of choosing a resolution, more would be better, but there are other factors to consider.

HDV cameras shoot in a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. This means the picture is 16 units wide for every 9 units it is high. Smart shooters will still frame their shots for a standard 4:3 aspect ratio, a technique known as "protecting for 4:3." The toughest challenge when shooting 16:9 is doing interviews when you want a clean single shot of your subject. You will have to position the camera further off-axis, resulting in a look that is more profile.

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