Forums | MacLife

well the blackmagic declink and the 1 tera hardrives it will coast me about 4000$ the one ur talking about is cheaper ?
sometimes i have clients that ask high qualities Like Digital Beta and now HD
so everytime i get this kind of job i want to edit them in my Studio not to rent one , what do u think ?
but what i want to know that the uncompressed HD what are the benefits from it r they alot ?

Look on www.hdforindies.com for a thing called the TEXS SHOOTOUT:

http://www.hdforindies.com/archivedarti … ticle.html

They tested all the low end HD cameras capturing uncompressed.  The only issue you have is that you are really tied to a desktop computer with a capture card and very high speed drives.  Not good if you want to shoot outside of a studio.

avkills wrote:

You will not gain anything from capturing HDV footage uncompressed.

Quality-wise, I agree. However, there is something to gain, in that you don't have to use MPEG or GOP-based files.

Capturing via a capture card and avoiding the HDV tape format bypasses the MPEG-2 compression.  You will then be capturing with an AJA uncompressed codec.  Or Decklink..both are fine.  And both are MUCH better than MPEG-2. 

But again, unless you want to have a G5 strapped to your back while using this camera, it isn't a viable field solution.  You either have to live with the compression, or get a better camera.  Varicam..but that isn't cheap.  HVX-200 is cheap-ish.  $10k with two or 3 P2 cards.

Digital Droo wrote:

avkills wrote:

You will not gain anything from capturing HDV footage uncompressed.

Quality-wise, I agree. However, there is something to gain, in that you don't have to use MPEG or GOP-based files.

  That alone would make me do it.

I generally capture to DVCPRO 50 with our AJA IoLA through analog component video cables coming from either a BetaSP deck or our component Sony DFS-700 rack. DV50 is 4:2:2 as opposed to standard DV which is 4:1:1, so I get twice the color sampling.  I have captured uncompressed 8bit and 10 bit video but the clients I work with would never know the difference.

If I am making a short < 20 minute intro video then I do everything in uncompressed 10bit because I like not having funky banding issues.  It takes up a lot of drive space though.  UC 10bit SD video takes up a lot more space than even DVCPRO HD or HDV and the data rate is much higher also.

-mark

the shooting its not a problem cause sometimes i can rent the camera and shot it on a Hard Drive or we have the XDCAM now or maybe i shoot DigitalBeta it is on tape yes but not mpeg 2
so what i want to know is if i shoot uncompressed and worked uncompressed and then compress it to DVD at last i will hand it on DVD whatever im making of

i think i will have better quality
what do u think ?

Long story short, the better the input the better the potential output.

R-Len wrote:

panasonic shoots on P2 card what about that, can u shoot uncompressed on that ? anyway i read somewhere that if u shoot on a tape and then capture it uncompressed its better than capturing it compressed. what about digital beta they shoot on tape how do they work ?

Okay, there's a fundamental bit of information that's being misunderstood here and that is the issue of compressed vs. uncompressed. Just about all HD cameras will record in some kind of compressed format. HDV, DVCPRO HD, HDCAM, Digital Beta tape--all compressed in some way. The only way to capture "uncompressed" is to feed the camera's signal through cables that go into a system that records uncompressed data to some kind of RAID. That means that wherever the camera goes, your computer, uncompressed HD card, RAID, and all the required cables and power needs to go too. Overkill, in my opinion, if it's not going to be transferred to film for theatrical release. Anyway, whatever tape, disc or flash media (P2) you use--it's all compressed.

HDV is the "consumer" HD format that has bandwidth equivalent to DV, so you can capture it via FireWire 400 to your computer. The issue is, MPEG-2 is not the best format to edit in because of its compression scheme. Therefore, by capturing that MPEG-2 footage using an uncompressed card, you'll be saving to a format that has better color sampling (which doesn't mean it improves the color by the way) and allows you to bypass the issues caused by MPEG-2 compression. This has certain advantages for you as an editor. The client will most likely not notice any difference, but your workflow may improve, you'll potentially have better looking effects, and your transcoding to a DVD format (which is MPEG-2) may give more accurate results.

If you use Panasonic's DVCPRO HD, the footage will still be compressed, but not with MPEG-2 compression, so for example, using the actual media from P2 cards (copied directly to your hard drive) will provide better results than HDV. And again, if you capture the footage with an uncompressed HD card, you gain some of the benefits of the 10-bit uncompressed format.

If you're using HDCAM or Digital Beta, well, you need a card to capture that anyway, so no details needed there.

I really believe that you should think about your pipeline, starting with the camera. If you'll be working with cameras that use a format that can't be captured via FireWire, then yes, you'll want to get a Decklink or AJA product. Whether you choose to capture HDV through FireWire or uncompressed using an HD card is entirely up to you. I'll bet you the client will never know the difference.