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Capture formats in CS4!
If I’m capturing footage using a matrox axio LE SDI in CS4 what is the best format to capture it in. The source footage was recorded on DVCAM Tapes so it’s 4:3 SD 29.97 interlaced lower field first footage.
I looked at the options in the capture window for SDI and we have:
Matrox MPEG-2 I frame
Matrox DV/DVCAM
Matrox DVCPRO
Matrox DVCPRO50
Matrox 8-bit Uncompressed
Which one is best and why? I understand some of these are uncompressed but I can stand to have a little larger files if it means I will get better quality to start with.
When I have captured footage from the tapes in the past from a deck I have used DV-1394 I don’t know if this is the way to get the best quality. I believe the DV-1394 will give good results since the footage is from DVCAM but what do you think?
Thanks!
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4 Replies
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You have DV (DVCAM) footage, so use DV/DVCAM capture. Everything else will transcode, or flat out not work. You lose nothing going in FireWire, in fact, you’re doing it just as you should (!) You can’t really add to what’s there by going “uncompressed”.
There are some special cases (like extreme color-correction) where uncompressed _might_ give you better output, but it won’t give you better input.(others may disagree)
-jeff -
…also, I think that uncompressed footage is a lot larger than you think.
DV/DVcam/DVC Pro 25 Mbps runs about 225 MBytes/minute…uncompressed 8 bit SD is about 1.25 GBytes/minute.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
That does seem unnecessary. I have been using uncompressed 8 bit to preserve old projects that are finished. The video files were proprietary to an old system that we don’t use anymore. We wanted to have the project preserved in a better format (AVI) for better compatibility with other systems in the future.
So for importing from DVCAM I will stick with the fire wire. There does not seem to be a need to sacrifice all that disk space for a marginal to no return on the quality of the video.
Thank you!
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AVIs that are made through your firewire capture will be very nice as will uncompressed video. Problem with uncompressed video is that is is really large — but if you are doing blue or green-screen keying, it’s a really good idea.
Beware of MPEG and long-GOP material. We converted a large number of previous shows into MPEG that originated on DVCPro, P2 or Betacam SX and the result is not good. While these archives are viewable from the standpoint of being historical shows, they are not good for inserting material into current timelines. We get MPEG motion artifacts that border on the “Max Headroom” objectionable.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
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