Captured Footage Is Softer Than Source Material – FCP7 – DigiBeta, Beta, Umatic

[Shane Ross]

[Michael Gerrity] “I just find it hard to believe/weird that the J-30 would have firewire out and that wouldn’t be the optimal way to capture the footage.”

That option only gives you DV quality. I always wondered why that was on that deck, as you can’t control the deck with it, quality was worse. To feed some sort of monitor? No clue. Maybe as a way to make window dubs on DV for transcribers….who knows (besides the Sony engineers)

[Michael Gerrity] “Do you know if Avid or proprietary Sony software would have been better suited to capture via Firewire from the J-30?”

Nope…it’s not the software you are using to capture that’s the issue, it’s the quality of video that comes out of that connection. It’s DV, and that’s worse than component. (4:1:1 chroma sampling opposed to 4:2:2…LOTS of information lost)

[Michael Gerrity] “Was it just for easy viewing and control from a computer?”

Yeah, wish I knew.

[Michael Gerrity] “So far it looks like I am indeed getting the best results via the component capture.”

Good. Yeah, that’s the proper use of the deck and AJA IO and FCP. That’ll get you the best results by far.

[Michael Gerrity] “I’m curious why I can alter the capture settings, including the compressor it’s using, if it’s totally inadvisable? I know it’s Pro software, so more options are always preferable, but why include options for things you wouldn’t or shouldn’t use?”

That’s meant for higher end options, like altering settings for capturing via the IO or other hardware. But because the settings are alterable, it means you can alter ANY setting. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should…and in a lot of cases it breaks things. This is why it’s always best to use the EASY SETUPS, and only alter if you have more advanced needs. But never alter the DV capture settings…you can alter them because they coded the software to alter settings…but didn’t lock these from being alterable. Lazy coding I assume.

[Michael Gerrity] “Were these settings more so available for capturing offline footage for editing? So you could capture all of your raw footage at a significantly lower quality?”

Yes. You could alter to capture at an offline resolution, or potentially higher resolution. Which is something you can do with the IO…but I would NEVER do with DV. Don’t alter DV settings, results are bad, if they work.

Shane
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[Michael Gerrity]

Brilliant! Thanks again!