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Test Drive: Sony HVR-HD1000U, Part 1

Jan 14, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

Smooth Slow Motion

I should mention that the HD1000 shares many components of Sony’s top-end consumer HDV camcorder—the HDR-HC7, in a larger, shoulder-mount form factor. While this raises some eyebrows on the component side, I’m OK on the feature side. I remember when “professional” camcorders didn’t have silly LCD panels or even color viewfinders, not to mention still-image-capture capabilities. Anyway, one interesting feature that worked its way up from the consumer side is Smooth Slow Rec recording, which lets you shoot 3 seconds of video at 400-percent speed, which the HD1000 stores in a buffer, then spreads over 12 seconds of video, slowing down the video to 25 percent of original speed.

The feature is intriguing for a number of uses, including analyzing fast-moving events such as golf swings or producing high-quality slow-motion video for a variety of uses—weddings, music videos, and instruction videos come to mind. Although all editors can slow your video down to 25 percent on the timeline, often this produces a noticeable stuttering effect.

Using the Smooth Slow Rec feature revealed some essential truths about the camcorder—some good, some not so good. Once you turn the feature on, the preview video darkens considerably, no doubt attributable to the high shutter speed necessary for this function. Fortunately, it was a sunny day when I tested this feature, and shooting with my back to sun, I noticed that the HD1000’s LCD was virtually unreadable in direct sunlight and looked like a CSI crime scene, with all fingerprints on the touchscreen clear and distinct. Plan on using the viewfinder when shooting outside. I also noticed that selecting the feature required 27 clicks—fortunately all in the same menu, so it wasn’t confusing, just tedious.

Although most owners of the HC7 love the Smooth Slow Rec feature, they all mention the loss of resolution in the captured slow-motion footage. I spoke about this with a Sony representative, who admitted that there was some loss of resolution, but commented that the resulting video was only slightly lower than SD resolution. I’m not sure what the final numbers are, but my tests revealed significant degradation in resolution. This is shown in Figure 1.

On the left is the normal shot of a resolution chart in DV resolution, with the HD1000 able to resolve at least 400 lines in both axes. On the right, in Smooth Slow Rec mode, you can barely see spaces in the 200 horizontal and vertical boxes. This means a significant loss of resolution that will manifest as blurry video.

Of course, no one buys a camcorder to shoot resolution charts, and the real question is how well the feature performed in a real-world setting. Figure 2, which shows me about halfway through my downswing, is a test of just that. Although the image is a bit fuzzy, the club is crisp, and the detail more than sufficient to identify all relevant swing flaws—including a total (and frustrating) lack of hip rotation in the downswing, which as you know, is often accompanied by the dreaded over-the-top swing action, with its resultant wild slices. Smooth Slow Rec would definitely be a great feature for any coaches who need to analyze 3-second clumps of extremely high motion.

On the other hand, if I were producing a high-definition video for Bridezilla, I’d definitely choose a slight stuttering effect over a fuzzy image. While Smooth Slow Rec may work well in some instances, the lower resolution is definitely a concern. For those who want to see some examples, Google "HC7 'slow motion' and YouTube," and you’ll find several.

That’s it for now. Next time, we tackle quality and low-light performance.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.