Capturing with Black Magic

[David Roth weiss]

[Jerry49] “I want to capture RGB”

Jerry,

Do you mean via component inputs through your Blackmagic card?
Those are labeled YRB, where Y=green R=red B=blue

And, why not capture via firewire? Much easier…

Choose the Easy Setup “DV 48khz NTSC” — that also covers DVCAM.

Hope this helps,
David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Rafael Amador]

Jerry,
It would be wonderful that DVCam would have a 422 pattern. However if you are in NTSC land you will get a 411 and if in PAL land a 420. The only difference between DVCam and MiniDV is in the audio (locked, not locked).
I would do what David suggest you and download the footage with a DV easy set-up.
Cheers,
rafael

[Chris Borjis]

[rafalaos] “The only difference between DVCam and MiniDV is in the audio (locked, not locked).”

DVCAM runs the tape faster as well to reduce the chances of dropouts.

I have heard of situations where capturing via analog component is better than over firewire because it softens the chroma channel up a bit to help keying.

Though you could just as easily capture via firewire and use graeme N’s chroma plugin to do the same thing.

[David Roth weiss]

[Borjis] “DVCAM runs the tape faster as well”

Well, sort of…

It is actually helical scan, meaning that instead of recording length-wize along the tape, it records on a bias along the tape, which means that more information is recorded along the same length of tape. So, though it runs at the same speed as DV, it emulates and has the same benfits of tapes running at a higher speed.

[Rafael Amador]

Borjis: There is not mean that you can get something better from componet than from Firewire. Through Firewire your geting a clone of what you got in the tape. What ever “visual improvement” you can get downloading trough a video card, you can get it by software in your time-line.
[David Roth Weiss] “t is actually helical scan, meaning that instead of recording length-wize along the tape, it records on a bias along the tape, which means that more information is recorded along the same length of tape”
David: Sorry to say that you are wrong. All the video recoders excet the old AMPEX 2 inches (that made a transversal scaning) make helical scan. When you use a DVCam camara, you can select DVCam or MiniDV mode. The only difference when selecting DVCam is that the tape run a 25% faster, so the video-tracks are a 25% wider. But what you get recorded in any case is exactly the same. Wider video-tracks can be useful when working in dirty environements because you got less chances of drop-outs due to dust. Even the suposed advantage of the lock-audio is something theoreticall as SONY recognize in the DVCam brochure.
Cheers,
Rafael