AJA and final cut

[Graeme Nattress]

[Eric Nichols] “When I capture I know the video gets compressed and I loose quality,”

No, this is not the case. It’s a direct transfer of what’s on tape. No quality is lost in the process.

[Eric Nichols] “If I set up an AJA system to capture uncompressed video would this work better with the deck, rather then using a deck and firewire like I currently do?”

Absolutely not. You’ll get worse results actually.

[Eric Nichols] “I mostly loose the quality with my DVDs I make in DVD studio. But I think there is quality loss when I print to video as well.”

That’s the nature of the beast. Best way to avoid DVD problems is to do your final render of video to “uncompressed” and hence you don’t add in an extra layer of DV compression.

When going to DV tape, there is no way to avoid that second DV compression.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Eric N]

cool thanks. Also when i capture somtimees the audio is a fraction of a second out of sync, but i dont get it because im recording at 48Khz and importing at that too, so do you know why that would be?

thanks,
Eric

[Gary Bassford]

Graeme:
I’m new to FCP after many years on M100. If footage is shot on DVCAM and captured component 10 bit uncompressed via AJA, is quality better or worse than firewire capture in DV? Seems like 10 bit uncompressed component captures lots more information since the capture files are so much larger.

[Graeme Nattress]

Does capturing VHS at 10bit uncompressed make it look any better? No.

DV is DV is DV, and taking a digital video format over an analogue link can only reduce quality.

Especially if you’re mastering back to DV, you really want to avoid analogue.

With DV the compression is done in the camera at shooting time. Transfer over firewire is just that, a transfer of the as-shot data. You can’t get any better than that – it’s a perfect transfer of what’s on tape.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP