D5000 Test
Nikon D5000 Video Test. Video, 720P 24f @10mbit, 134.9MB, runtime: 1:51
Camera Tested: Nikon D5000 DSLR + Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens.
Lens Settings: AF, VC
Post Processing: iMovie ‘09 with Image Stabilization from 101%-109%.
Since HD cable broadcast started to gain consumer momentum in 2005, I wanted to create my own HD content. There were no camcorders back then and everything was expensive. Many people still did not have digital cable. I was one of them. In 2006 I moved from Chandler to Gilbert, Arizona and took my analogue projection HDTV with me. It was 3 years old already and not once did it have an HD signal displayed on it. I think this was pretty typical of most early HD adopters.
Then after reading the reviews carefully of set top boxes, I found there was one stable enough for me to grab. Enter the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 HD. At the time, there were around 5 channels to watch with little content. But, the programs they did have were captivating. I found myself watching Sunrise Earth because it just “looked so good”.
Since then, I swapped out the TV for an LCD HDTV and added some more HD capable devices. COX cable added 29 standard HD channels to their lineup. HD cameras went from $3000 to $1000 pretty quickly but prices are still nowhere near consumer penatration levels.
I finally got around to picking up a very cheap HD camera this Summer, the $200 Aiptek ActionHD, and took some vacation video with it. The only reason for jumping into this now was the pricepoint. The camera lacks almost all features that sell a consumer camera. It has no manual focus which will constantly focus in and out in low light, limited contrast that ‘jumps’ between ranges noticeably when moving from dark to light shots, no image stabilization (all shots need to slow or very quick, always use a tripod or VERY sturdy hand), and no lens cover in the box .. wait what? Yes that is right.
The 8MP still camera is very iffy. I used it a few times it good light and still had pretty bad pictures. My 2MP iPhone can take comparable photos. I used a prosumer point and click camera for the almost 100% of the still shots.
It records in 1440 x 1080p (1.33 pixel aspect ratio) 30f which is what most all pro and consumer 1080 cameras achieve. The big difference between this camera and more prosumer cams is that the bit rate is pretty low, around 8Mbit/s. Other cams will be in the 25 Mbit/s range and professional systems will record around 35-38.6 Mbit/s like the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II. The video format used in the Aiptek is the widely adopted AVCHD. In the future, most cameras will offer 1080P 60f.
I recorded a bit over an hour of raw footage for my first project. After added still pictures the finally end movie was 1 hour, 20 minutes. Not matter what you do, you will need a bunch of free hard drive space to work with your project. I used Apple’s iMovie 08 for everything, although I did edit some test scenes in iMovie HD and Final Cut Express 4. In my experience iM08 is great for layout and simple camera work. If you want something slow-motion a quick jump into iMHD can do the trick. If you need some impressive titles, camera A / camera B transitions, or pretty much anything else, fire up FCE. iM08 is just too quick and easy to ignore as editing tools go.
I had both 720p and 1080p shots which iM08 was able to merge during final export rendering without any issues. The exported movie was around 4GB and was compressed as true 1900 x 1080P @ 6.4 Mbit/s H.264, MPEG4 (For 720P 60f I use 5 Mbit/s). For contrast the 6.4 Mbit/s H.264 is much better than the 8 Mbit/s AVCHD in terms of quality since the compression is higher. It took literally a day to encode everything on a Core 2 Duo MacBook.
The movie played best on a Playstation 3 which hooks up nicely to any HDTV. The movie can be put on a memory stick or DVD and played fine on PS3 as long as the extension is .mp4 and the file is in the root/VIDEO folder. I have not tried to play it on my Xbox 360. For playing on an Apple TV, you will need to encode the video at the lower resolution of 720p. I would recommend creating your 1080P files first and then transcoding them using either iTunes or Handbrake. Apple touts the 540p format as ‘good enough HD’. That is just pure lunacy. Future proof yourself and go with 1080p.
The Aiptek camera does a good job in daylight video but if you want an idiot proof solution I’d wait for the name brands to dip into the sub $400 range maybe sometime late ‘09. As of 1/09 you can pick up a 1080P camcorder from Sanyo for $570, JVC for $600, Hitachi for $730, Panasonic for $750, Sony for $850, Canon for $990.
If you are editing on a Mac, even Apple has not brought the magic of the first iMovie to HD. While iM08 does a good job, it is in no way the solution I would have expected from them. FCE is just too hard and expensive for most consumers. iMHD doesn’t work with mixed formats like 720P/1080P/480P because it doesn’t work with meta data. Instead everything must be pre-rendered into the final format before editing. There are a lot of people who have written about this discontinuity in the Apple HD editing lineup. I’m hoping that there is a new release of iM08 soon which may added the missing features of iMHD.
Bottom line: Until the camera prices drop a bit the dream of an all 1080P HD world for the common guy is a bit off. It is doable if you can get a bargain on a camera and are willing to work with some editing ambiguity.
If you have any questions about HD video editing feel free to ask them on
twitter: listre or email me at michael.macal@gmail.com
Sample Video:
1) Low light 1080P with marco – FILE0014.MOV (22.4MB)
2) http://vimeo.com/2221062?pg=embed&sec=2221062
Pretty good blog review: http://www.iotashan.com/index.php/2008/05/08/review-aiptek-action-hd-camcorder/
The Apple keynote at MacWorld 2009 has been a delight as far as HD video editing goes. The new iMovie 09 comes out at the end of the month and has added all of my requested features and then some. Other than addressing things like slow-motion and other must have effects, the image stabilization feature promises to fix some of the short comings of the ultra-low end cameras for now. Since there is no steady shot in the Aiptek, this is a welcome post production software feature. I look forward to using the software soon.
