DVCAM import into M100 Firewire or SDI? Which DV codec?

[Floh Peters]

[Andy Taplin] “Q1. Firewire or SDI capture?(not keen on the extra expense of an SDI board for my DSR 1500 if it’s not necessary)
“
FireWire capture will give you 1:1 the data from the tape. No transcoding is done, you get exactly what the camera stored. The extraction from 4:1:1/4:2:0 to 4:2:2 is done inside Media 100, and I think it uses the same routines as QuickTime and FCP.

[Andy Taplin] “Q2. And which Codec is going to be best for editing – particularly when going in and out of AFX? M100 does not list vanilla DV as a codec option only DVCPro which is 4:2:0 and not DV/DVCAM 4:1:1 so no bit-for-bit import of DV/DVCAM?
“

You can use the DV PAL or NTSC codec (and DVCam, which is the same as DV) inside Media 100. Not really sure why it is not listed (btw. which list are you referring to?). It definitely is an available codec for editing, and for mastering out via FireWire.
The nice thing is that you can mix all available codecs in realtime (and not only some and only for playback like in FCP). So you should acquire your DV footage into DV codec, and your SDI/DigiBeta or whatever footage e.g. into ProRes and place that on the same timeline without any problems. And if you want to master to FireWire/DV, all non-DV files will get recompressed into DV (or DVCPro if you want) in realtime during playback or mastering.

[Andy Taplin]

Thnaks Floh

The codec list on the M100 website must be incomplete.

So if I should capture via Firewire and then edit using DV PAL there is no transcoding of the material at all?

In theory this should be better than capturing to the M100 MJPEG codec in version 8 and before – So 3.6Mb/s DV will look as good or better than 9Mb/s (360KB) M100 codec?

Andy

[Floh Peters]

[Andy Taplin] “So if I should capture via Firewire and then edit using DV PAL there is no transcoding of the material at all?
“

There is no capturing for storing the data on your HD. If you go out to SDI the material needs to be uncompressed. If you render an effect on your material it gets transcoded. If you just acquire it via FireWire and play it back via FireWire out of Media 100 you play back exactly what is stored on the tape.

[Andy Taplin] “In theory this should be better than capturing to the M100 MJPEG codec in version 8 and before – So 3.6Mb/s DV will look as good or better than 9Mb/s (360KB) M100 codec? “

Better is always very subjective. There are no artifacts introduced I could see or measure from DV transcoded into Media 100 i codec on the V8 systems. The native DV files out of Media 100 SDI output are maybe a little clearer than e.g. compared to the S-video or component output of a DV player, so you probably can see problems better. If this is an advantage or not is up to you. Some like the slight softening that a component transfer of DV footage is doing to the material and think it looks “better”, although a little bit softer. Anyway, when transferring via FireWire you get exactly what is stored on the tape, which in most cases is considered a benefit.

[Andy Taplin]

[Floh] “Anyway, when transferring via FireWire you get exactly what is stored on the tape, which in most cases is considered a benefit.”

So there’s no need to off-line at say 90KB and then On-line at 360KB – which is what I tend to do now with V8 – just acquire to the DV codec at 3.6 MB/s (144KB/s) which will effectively be the maximum quality DV provides and save a lot of disc space?

[Floh Peters]

[Andy Taplin] “So there’s no need to off-line at say 90KB and then On-line at 360KB – which is what I tend to do now with V8 – just acquire to the DV codec at 3.6 MB/s (144KB/s) which will effectively be the maximum quality DV provides and save a lot of disc space?
“

Yes 🙂

Of course you could offline at maybe 40k and online in DV if you really need to save HD space… 😉

[Andy Taplin]

Thansk Floh

Time to upgrade to V12 I think, as soon as Leopard is out. 🙂