Capturing 1:1 from Compact Flash Cards

[Dino]

RAW only applies to DV. HDV is recorded as an MPEG-2 transport stream. I’m no familiar with this unit but I believe it appears to Media Composer as a deck would. Capturing HDV over firewire only allows the creation of HDV native files. No conversion on capture. If you really don’t want HDV, transcode after digitize.

If there is some way to use AMA with this, it still requires a transcode. If you just want to work as NTSC then change to NTSC in the format tab after digitize (or PAL of course). You will be working as SD and MC will fit your media to the frame (as anamorphic).

[Dan Roland]

Hey that’s great, really appreciate your help and advice there – I think I understand most of it!

So the HDV stream in MPEG-2 that is recorded on the Compact Flash card and is then captured in Avid as HDV will be high resolution then?

Best,

Dan

[Dino]

The files created by the Avid will be the same exact material encoded by the camera, just packaged in an Avid friendly way. That is, the quality will be exactly the same as the tape or files written by the camera.

A post ingest transcode to 1:1 SD will be roughly the same quality as a process that converts on capture though the only way to get downconvert on capture from an HDV source is using a deck that outputs HD-SDI and capturing through something like an AJA Kona (though not with Avid). And if you have that deck, it too will downconvert to SD-SDI, so then just capture that. The choice is cost of hardware vs. cost of time vs. the need to bother at all (HD media in an SD sequence works fine). Best of luck.

[Dan Roland]

Hi Dino,

Thanks so much for your advice, it makes sense. As you can tell I’m a novice when it comes to Avid, so what you say is very valuable.

Cheers (as ew say in the UK),

Dan