Most of our friends make the big camcorder purchase decision when they have their first child. There’s some sort of parental angst about not having home movies of your kid’s first views of the world. Well don’t look now, but for people with an HDTV, the ante was just upped, as the first HDTV camcorders are starting to hit the market.

That’s right, now you can start capturing live and in vivid HDTV color anything you want. (While your guests might be bored with the home movies, at least they’ll appreciate that they’ve got wonderful high-definition clarity!). Going HDTV for a camcorder will cost you — at the time of this writing, there was only one consumer HDTV camcorder on the market, the JVC (www.jvc.com) GR HD1, and that model runs about $3,500. Still, we expect the natural progression of HDTV into camcorders to continue; soon there will be lots more choice in the marketplace. In this article, we explore how standard SD camcorders fit into your HDTV system, and then go into what distinguishes an HDTV camcorder from this standard off-the-shelf fare, using the JVC GR HD1 as a case study. Your Run-of-the-Mill SD Camcorder Most of the concepts covered elsewhere in this article — in terms of SD resolution, viewing SD images on your HDTV, connecting SD devices to your HDTV, and the like — also apply to SD camcorders. Whether you are using 8mm, VHS, DV, or some other analog or digital format, you can view it on your HDTV. Connecting your camcorder to your HDTV If you think back to Article 3, you have an idea about a concept we strongly believe in: a hierarchy among the many connection options available on most video sources (including camcorders). That is to say, there’s a definite good-better-best rank order among these connections.

-  Going digital: If your HDTV has a FireWire (1394) input, you may be able to use the FireWire connection on your camcorder (found on most miniDV camcorders) to connect digitally. If this works with your camcorder (and it doesn’t always work), it produces the best-quality picture on your HDTV. We expect to see digital connections (either FireWire, DVI or HDMI) to become available on more and more camcorders. Even if both your HDTV and your camcorder have FireWire connections, you may not be able to use them to connect the two together. Check your camcorder’s manual — many times you can only use FireWire for connecting to a PC. You can use the FireWire connection to send your video to your PC, edit it (using iMovie on a Mac, or Windows Movie Maker on Windows XP), and then burn your own DVD or copy to your D-VHS recorder (see Article 13). This gives you a very highquality video source for HDTV based on your home movies.

-  Go with S-Video: Most modern camcorders (particularly miniDV models) include an S-Video output. The S-Video connection provides a better picture by separating the color and brightness portions of your video onto separate cables — allowing your HDTV to display them without having to use the comb filter to separate these picture elements.

-  The composite solution: The least attractive solution for connecting your camcorder to your HDTV is to use the yellow composite-video connection. We always recommend using S-Video over composite video, but some older camcorders simply don’t give you that option. Why the wait for HDTV camcorders? If you’ve been waiting for HDTV to come to your camcorder, it’s only been recently that this has been made possible, for largely two reasons: -  It’s only been recently that the digital signal processors (DSPs) have become small and smart enough to be able to handle the immense volume of data created by the high-definition CCD imaging sensors in your camcorder. Each frame offers a megapixel of resolution or more, and this has to be processed and recorded in real time to digital video tape. -  It’s only been recently that consumers have cared! As the 4:3 television sets get replaced by 16:9 sets, people can see HDTV in its native mode, and that means a bigger market for the camcorder manufacturers to sell to. Some day in the future, we expect that non-HDTV camcorders will also offer the component-video cable connection method — this will make sense as more camcorders become capable of dealing with progressive-scan video. Right now, only HDTV camcorders can use this connection method. In terms of our hierarchy, we place component video below the digital connection methods, and above S-Video. So while you may not know it, merely buying this article is helping get more HDTV camcorders to market! Thanks for helping out. Enter HD Camcorders So if you can link your SD camcorder to your regular TV, what’s the big deal with HD versions? Lots of pixels, for one thing — three times as many pixels as the best offered by NTSC versions, encoded as a standard MPEG-2 stream. Ever wonder why the SD camcorders look so poor on your HDTV? It’s simply a reflection of the lower resolution of the SD stream when scaled up and viewed on your HD screen — the two were simply not meant for each other. But lots of pixels mean lots of megabytes, too. An uncompressed 1280 x 720 BMP file can be almost 3 megabytes in size — that’s just a single frame of video (1/30th or 1/60th of a second’s worth of video!). That’s the price of high-definition. Of course, HD camcorders use a ton of computer horsepower to compress these video frames down so they use less storage space — but HDTV video still uses a ton! Camcorders that record in HD formats are called HDV camcorders, after the standard they use for recording (similar to the way many standard definition camcorders are called MiniDV or Super8). But with an HD camcorder, you’ll have lots of recording and playback modes that you can choose from.

-  480i: Just like any 480 interlaced digital-video camcorder on the market, you can create regular 4:3 30-frame-per-second video streams, with the same old standard PCM 32 kHz 4-channel (or 48 kHz stereo) audio.

-  480p: A step up is 480 progressive-scan video at 60 frames per second (fps). Here the camera records at double the frame rate.

-  720p: This widescreen 16:9 HD format is what you buy an HD camcorder for. Current camcorders are providing 30 fps for 720p video, but we expect in the future we’ll see full 60 fps 720p.

-  1080i: HDTV camcorders may also be capable of converting their 720p video to 1080i. This could be useful if you’re connecting your camcorder to an HDTV that expects (and requires) a 1080i input — some CRT-based HDTVs work this way. If you’re confused by all the FPS and progressive/interlaced information, check out Article 21, where we explain it all in detail! When dealing with the higher resolution and more detailed image of a high-definition camcorder movie and its display, everything is more noticeable. Errors such as shaky handheld shots, too much panning, and zooming too fast can make people dizzy (if not nauseated) when viewed on large display. Think about using a tripod more or bracing yourself more securely when making videos. Other than the resolution, much of the camcorder will look familiar to you — expect the same high-speed interfaces (such as FireWire) and the same tape formats (such as DV). Checking Out the First HDV Camcorder While there have been specialty camcorders that offer HD, and for some time (see sidebar, “Live from outer space — in HDTV”), the first consumer-oriented and -priced product came from JVC: the GR-HD1 camcorder, which retails around $3,500 but can be had on the street (or Internet) for $2,700 or less. The GR-HD1 camcorder gives you a way to get your personally recorded 1280-by-720-pixel content to your HDTV system and even archived on your D-VHS VCRs (discussed in Article 13), which are also sold by JVC and can play back prerecorded D-Theater HDTV movies. JVC includes a FireWire interface and software with the camcorder that converts 720-lines-of-resolution, progressive-scan HD footage (720p) into progressive-scan, anamorphic widescreen DVDs using your PC — that’s cool! Material recorded either in DV or HD format can be downconverted or upconverted as needed for playback (depending upon what format your HDTV requires). If you have a Macintosh, you’re going to be disappointed. Editing with the JVC is done in the Windows XP environment with bundled software. There are also a couple of manufacturers that sell a plugin for HDV editing with Final Cut Pro. You can record at 480i, 480p, or 720p, depending on your preferences. JVC supports 720p at 30 fps (actually 29.97fps, but who’s counting?), and some people prefer filming at the 60fps of 480p in order to get a smoother flow of the action. The 480p format is lower in resolution, but looks smoother due to the higher frame rate, and retains the 16:9 widescreen format — so it’s great for creating DVDs (which can’t handle 720p anyway). Note that when shooting video with the JVC camcorder in standard 480 DV mode, you can record to the DV tape in both SP and LP modes — as you can with your existing SD camcorder. But when you shift to recording in either the 1080i or 720p mode, the unit shoots only in SP mode. This limits how much you can tape in HD mode to a one-hour maximum per tape. Stop the presses! While JVC is the first with a consumer HDTV-capable camcorder, it’s not the only big consumer electronics company to get into the act. As we were finishing HDTV For Dummies, Sony announced the HDR-FX1 – a new three-CCD design (meaning it has a separate chip for recording red, green, and blue images). The HDR-FX1 isn’t on the market yet, but will retail for 400,000 yen on the Japanese market. The HDR-FX1 is expected to be available outside Japan by the end of 2004. Audio is recorded using MPEG-2 compression at 384 Kbps for both the 480p and 720p modes. Unfortunately, the GR-HD1 does not support four-channel audio or audio overdub, as does standard DV. To get the best possible quality, play back your high-definition recordings on a high-definition monitor. On the JVC GR-HD1, this is possible only through an analog component-video or FireWire output interface. The recorder hooks up to computers and other devices via FireWire. One great thing about the JVC is that they did not complicate the move to an HDTV camcorder by introducing a new tape format, too (and the last thing we need is another gaggle of tape formats). The JVC uses standard Mini DV tapes to store HDTV content. You’re using three times the pixels of a standard NTSC DVD stream when you’re in 720p mode with a speed of 30 fps; naturally you need three times the bandwidth.

Live from outer space — in HDTV We’re used to having ultra-nice pictures from space of the Earth in all its glory, but we bet you’d never guess that HDTV was involved. That’s right, even the space shuttle crew is into HDTV camcorders. HDTV equipment flew as early as STS-95 (1998), and included a Sony HDW-700A high-definition television camcorder, wide-angle lens, battery packs, and video recording tapes. NASA is using the high-resolution images to provide clearer pictures about life on the Space Station and to improve the documentation of space exploration. The system is enhancing the capability of NASA scientists, researchers, and engineers to conduct their research, monitor experiments, and record the data visually. HDTV also allows the public to experience NASA’s explorations more realistically by making the footage available over NASA TV. So here’s a tip from those who learned the hard way: Next time you’re in space, watch out for space radiation — it can cause degradation in your Charge Coupled Device (CCD) image sensor (the silicon chip inside the camera — a rectangular array of light-sensitive cells). The degradation showed up on NASA pictures early on, as a loss of several pixels on images taken on board. The camera lost between 5 and 15 pixels per day. So they created a self-correcting camera that replaces the bad pixels with an average of the luminance and chroma from adjacent pixels. Problem solved. (That’s your tax money at work!)