HC-7 & Indoor Sports

[saints]

Hi, I'm looking to get an HDV camcorder to record some sporting events that takes place indoors (i.e. basketball). I'd also like to use a wide angle lens to capture the entire court.
Anyone with experience with the Sony HDR series, particularly the HC-3/HC-7, with recording sports indoors?
Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[lovehateHDV]

Get HV10.

In my opinion Canon has better compression techniques.

I have HC3, owned HC1. Those two guys are beautiful in bright light, but when there is too much motion, or very busy background the picture becomes very blocky and noisy as the cam tries to cope with limited bandwith.

Canons on the other hand handle motion very good. Very little artifacts.

[don360]

I dont have that much experience with any HDV camcorders yet, only from things I heard and read. I shorty saw some footage shoot with the canon HV10 and with the HC7 which both had wave line and blurs on moving objects in the picture. What was that all about, is that usual or was that some kind of handling mistake from the user's side.

[lovehateHDV]

Welcome to the imperfect world of HDV...

Blurring occurs because HDV takes two quality pictures every one second, all other time the cam simply records the movement and addition of pixels. Basically, if you don't like the blurring part- get a cam with less or different compression.

As for all of us, HDV folks, we have to put up with the slightest motion blurring the picture. I think we have to learn to go to the basics of shooting. Use a tripod and do not pan or tilt unless you are following a subject that is going to stay perfectly in the middle of the frame.

[lovehateHDV]

forgot to mention,

you could be seeing tv ghosting. LCD tv's are the worst in this case.

The problem is the slow speed of pixel color change. (response time is what they call it)

[don360]

No, I found out what the problem was, it was because I played the HD footage on my computer which doesn't have an HD screen which is why the blurring occured when I played the video in full screen format but once I minimized it a bit, it worked just fine and no more waves appeared on moving objects.

[lovehateHDV]

It's the "aha!" moment.

The waves were the interlacing. If your player does not de-interlace video it shows as thick vertical waves. I get it now. Used to happen to me before.

[don360]

So what would you suggest should i change on my desktop pc in order for me to play full screen HD footage without having those problems anymore

[rbrtpetersen]

Originally Posted by lovehateHDV

Get HV10.

In my opinion Canon has better compression techniques.

I have HC3, owned HC1. Those two guys are beautiful in bright light, but when there is too much motion, or very busy background the picture becomes very blocky and noisy as the cam tries to cope with limited bandwith.

Canons on the other hand handle motion very good. Very little artifacts.

Can you give me more information? Did you use an HV10 in a comparable situation to get a valid comparison? Also, how did the overall video noise compare? I plan to purchase an HDV camcorder soon. I currently own two DV camcorders, a Canon GL1 and a Sony DSR-PDX10; The Canon has had several significant build quality issues and had to be sent to the factory for repair. The Sony has been rock solid, with no issues, and produces a superior image (just as sharp, but much cleaner image).

[rehoot]

I saw example videos from two different people who had the HC7, and at first the video looked good, but there were jagged lines along some of the high-contrast edges. When there was motion, the edges were even more distracting.