Filter
Top Products
Though he is not a celebrity, image creator
Shinji Kobukata is well known in the industry as
a major player behind the scenes. (Photo 1)
Among his numerous productions are many
promotion videos for artists belonging to a
Japanese major label. He has also had a major
hand in editing and directing the opening titles of
Japanese TV shows. More recently, he was in
charge of editing the live DVD of Japan’s most
popular female singer, Ayumi Hamasaki. Mr.
Kobukada was a perfect candidate to put the VC-
300HD through its paces.
It was very easy to use and very intuitive. I
was actually able to do nearly everything without
needing to look in the manual. To take full
advantage of it’s feature set, especially the extra
processing features, I looked through the manual.
I was most impressed by the down-converted
picture quality. Right now at home I have an
ordinary HD VTR and it has a built-in down-
converter. The results are so obviously different
to the output of the VC-300HD. I was surprised
when I checked the line between the bright and
dark areas. Usually, along the boundary, you see
blurring. But with the VC-300HD there wasn’t
any. The overall level of detail is incredible. It’s
so beautiful. (Photos 2 and 3)
I also used to do a lot of chroma key editing
with down-conversion. Frequently shooting is
done in HD and editing and final output are in
SD. But after down-conversion the results are not
good. Despite the time it took, I sometimes did
the keying in HD and then down-converted to
SD. I tended to feel that the results of down
conversion could have been better. When
comparing to the output of the VC-300HD, I
discovered that what I’ve done up until now
doesn’t look that great. I think I’ll be making
good use of the VC-300HD.
Ah, yes, it works well, too. You don’t need to
use it but when you do it is good to be able to
adjust the output level. Even so, noise reduction
can do the opposite and make things fuzzy. I
think I can find a use for it around here.
It’s not just a converter. You can make internal
adjustments. It’s good for changing final image
12