What makes the GY-HD100U Good for Green Screens?

Scott Perry used the JVC GY-HD100U HDV camcorder to shoot a western called Sixgun, which is now in post-production. The production, which makes extensive use of green-screen effects and composites, will be shown digitally throughout Texas in a variety of outdoor “digital drive-in” theaters and other alternative venues, aside from traditional movie theaters.
Q: What makes the GY-HD100U good for green-screen segments?
A: The camera handles green-screen very well because the lion’s share of the format’s compression is in the green channel. The compression artifacts we got with DV previously had a different color sampling scheme and were a big problems for us, but HDV has worked out fine. The HDV format seems to have bypassed the problems completely and it makes gorgeous green-screen elements that match up well with the CGI.Of course, proper lighting is key, but in general, the JVC camera makes green screens that are indistinguishable from much more expensive cameras.
Q: Do you feel you have to make compromises by shooting with HDV?
A: Well, nobody likes compression, and I wish there had been an outboard box that used the raw RGB output of the camera to record an uncompressed signal when I was using it [JVC’s 250U includes the capability]. However, everyone who sees the footage I’ve shot is blown away by the images and dumbfounded that’s it’s captured with an HDV camera. That’s what makes me most excited. Because I’m shooting in 720p24 (I’m a big fan of progressive images), people think it’s film.
Q: What’s the most challenging part of HDV production?
A: I think it’s really a post-production challenge at this point. The long-GOP format has a lot of technical issues that have yet to be resolved – things like the ability to edit cleanly, and the multi-generation issues (reduced quality) when moving between different codecs. This includes having to render titles in a third-party program, whether you go back into a 4:4:4 mastering format and how you get to that format [via transcoding or recapturing from analog]. That’s the real headache of HDV at this point. It’s just that the format is so new and there are no standards. Decks won’t play footage from one camera but they will another. It takes some figuring out, but the problems are not insurmountable.