Telecine to DVCPro HD

[dominicwitherow]

Can anyone comment on the relative merits of having 16mm rushes telecined to DVCProHD over Digibeta?

I am particularly interested in which format would look better when blown up for cinema projection, or even if there would be a noticeable difference at all. The DVCPro HD workflow is much better/cheaper/easier for me, but it will only suffice if the quality of image doesn't suffer.

Thanks very much for any views.

Dominic

[Unicorn]

DVCPro HD is almost certainly going to look better as it has 4x as many pixels as Digibeta, though it's a bit more compressed.

[simond83]

Go for HDCAM SR

[dominicwitherow]

Simon, I'd love to go for HDCAM, but my budget won't allow me anywhere near it (nor can the final projection handle it). With DVCProHD, I can edit on my Mac without having to spend any extra cash (TK and output is to hard disk, so no decks involved).

Unicorn, do you know if the compression of TKd material would be likely to show up artefacts etc?

Thanks for your advice chaps
Dominic

[ClaireTall]

Dominic, I'b interested to know how the DVCProHD is handled by the Apple, how do you get it in and how many GB per hour, what's the compression?

[dominicwitherow]

So far DVCProHD has been a breeze on my Mac (G5 Dual 2.7GHz, 2GB RAM, 2 internal SATA drives, OSX 1.4). It uses about 42 GB an hour (750 MB per minute), with a compression of 6.8:1. I have been working with an internal SATA media drive without any issues at all. Import and export have been to Firewire drives, the original footage having been captured elsewhere.

I also convert all my HDV to DVCProHD, as it makes final output to DVD and any Quicktime compression much better (very visibly so).

Dominic

[PaulD]

Hi
Put simply DVCProHD is DV-quality HD footage achieved by using 4 parallel DV compression chips to handle the increased pixel-resolution. The data rate is fps dependant (24-60fps)5.8-14MBytes/sec. The chroma resolution at 4.2.2 is better than DV's 4.2.0/4.1.1.

It can be captured via FW, although a FW-equipped tape deck is quite expensive, but HVX200 P2 camcorder footage can be captured via FW, or directly off the P2 card as a computer file.

Alternatively BlackMagic or Kona HD capture cards can transcode incoming footage to DVCProHD on-the-fly from component or HD-SDI sources.