JVC’s GY-HMQ10

Shooting tips

The camera has two unusual characteristics for a modern HD camcorder. First, the small, high-density chip has a low sensitivity to light. Second, to limit diffraction, the minimum aperture setting is f/5.6. Therefore, when shooting Quad HD, special steps are needed to obtain the best picture quality in both low-light and bright-light conditions.

Outdoors in open shade, or a well-lit area, the camera will be biased toward a 1/30 of a second shutter speed. Thus, wide open at f/2.8, when you set the shutter speed to 1/60 of a second, the picture may be too dark unless you add +6dB gain.

Conversely, in bright situations, you’ll need to use either of the following tactics: Set the shutter speed to 1/120 of a second and mount a 2-stop ND filter; or, use a 4-stop ND filter with a 1/60 of a second shutter speed.

Quad HD ingest

When the camera is connected to a Mac using a USB cable, all four SDHC cards will be mounted on the desktop. (See Figure 2.)

Launch JVC’s 4K Clip Manager utility (it ships with the camcorder). Select the clips you want to ingest and issue the File>Export… command. Next, select the desired version of ProRes 422 and select the export folder. Click the Export button. (See Figure 3.)

Once the clips have been exported, they can be edited using Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Pro X or Media Composer. (Editors working under Windows can move ProRes 422 files to their PC for editing with any NLE that imports ProRes 422, such as Media Composer.)

Quad HD edit — Final Cut Pro X

When a user opens a new project in Final Cut Pro X, define a custom 1080i59.94 (or 720p59.94) setting. (See Figure 4.) Of course, if a user is working with 2160p23.98 source files, he or she will want to create a 1080p23.98 project. For advanced projects, the user can export 1080p59.94 as well as 2160p23.98 and 2160p59.94. (In the latter two cases, 3840 pixels will be pillarboxed within 4096 pixels, and thereby provide a 4K2K export.)

When you import Quad HD source material, Final Cut Pro X can automatically make ProRes Proxy files that play well even on a MacBook Air. During file export, the original Quad HD source material will automatically be downscaled to HD.

For more about editing using Pro X, consult the “Shooting Quad HD for HD projects” article in the November 2012 issue of Broadcast Engineering.

Quad HD edit — Avid Media Composer V6

Though Media Composer cannot export video larger than full HD, it can import Quad HD files. ProRes files can be imported and converted to DNxHD files or be accessed for editing using Media Composer’s AMA function.

Once a Sequence is created, apply static or dynamic crops to timeline clips. Then, apply the Resize filter that downscales 3840 x 2160 to 1920 x 1080. (See Figure 5.) To create a dynamic crop, at the point where a pan begins, set up Position parameters and click the Keyframe button. Move to the pan end. Set up Position parameters, and click the Keyframe button.

The HMQ10 is easy to use in well-illuminated situations and delivers a beautiful HD export.

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—Steve Mullen is the owner of DVC. He can be reached via his website at http://home.mindspring.com/~d-v-c.