-
How To: Capture at a different codec than the native?
Am I doing it right? That’s the question. Can’t seem to find what I’m looking for on the archives or in the manuals. I’m sure it’s there though – maybe someone could tell me where. I’m digitizing from 3 different formats (dvcpro25, betacam, and digital-s) via the almighty AJA IO, and I want to capture them all at dvcpro50. The video is being fed to my workstation from an across-the-hall SDI cable run. Now, how do I capture it at dvcpro50 compression? I selected the “AJA IO SDI 8-bit Uncompressed” preset, clicked the edit tab, and changed the “compression” setting from “8-bit Uncompressed” to “dv50”. Is it as simple as that? (The AJA manual warns me that the “compression” setting should be the same as the “digitizer” setting.) Everything seemed to work fine, but I have a fear in the back of my mind that the video is coming out of the deck at it’s native quality, running across the hall, and then having a second level of dvcpro50 compression added to it.
Which way does it work?
1. Capturing anything with a different compression setting other than it’s native format recompresses it and degrades the quality.
or…
2. If native quality is higher compression setting dumbs it down, but if the same as native or lower it remains untouched.
I’ve worded this all in a terribly confusing manner – possibly because I’m confused. I know the AJA will upconvert or downconvert, but can I bring it in on an SDI preset and change the compression settings? And is it double compression?
Thanks a mil.
Nick
-
7 Replies
-
[Nick Ryan] “The video is being fed to my workstation from an across-the-hall SDI cable run. Now, how do I capture it at dvcpro50 compression?”
There should be a preset of something like AJA Io Uncompressed to DVCPro 50. But the way you did it is fine.
Just be sure to make your Sequences DVCPro 50.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
-
Are you editing in the DVCPro50 codec because it’s cleaner than uncompressed? Walter, have you compared the two? I edit uncompressed but would change if there are good reasons to.
Rick
-
Rick,
Why would DVCPro50, a compressed format, be cleaner than uncompressed? More importantly, what is your original?
-
The reason for my post is that Nick is capturing multiple sources none of which are DVCPro50. Instead of using uncompressed as his editing codec of choice, he is using the DVCPro50 codec. That begged the question, why DVCPro50 instead of uncompressed?
My sources are all flavors of analog and DVCam.
Rick
-
Nick is probably capturing to DVCPro 50 to save some storage space as I once was doing when I worked on his system. DVCPro 50 will give you roughly double the storage capacity over uncompressed and the quality isn’t that bad. Uncompressed is better of course since it doesn’t recompress the footage. The only disadvantage for DVCPro 50 is that you won’t be able to caption the edited program with MacCaption. If captions aren’t going to enter into the project, then DVCPro 50 should be fine. Like Walter said be sure the capture preset and the timeline preset match so you won’t have to render the footage after placing it on the timeline.
Doug Olin
Desert Vistas Multimedia -
I thought I’d do dvcpro50 only because I know my final release is going to be DVCAM (which obviously is even worse yet). I figured dvcpro50 would be less number-crunching for the G5 than Uncompressed would. Maybe I should just convert to DVCAM upon capture? I was hoping if I editied in the 50 codec and then output to DVCAM, the end result would be cleaner than editing in DVCAM to start with. Now that I’m stating it, it sounds wrong.
Nick
-
Use the SDI A/V 8 bit to DVCPRO 50 easy setup with the aja io and you will be fine. No reason to convert to DVCam cuz you’ll take yet another hit converting your sources to that. Might as well digitize from the original into the codec of your choice. This will provide the best quality and also ease of use. If you don’t see the DV50 easy setup, make sure you hit the “show all” tickbox when you hit control-q to bring up the easy setups.
Jeremy
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up