Shooting SD with the HPX170 or HVX200A

[Noah Kadner]

Shoot HD- downconvert in any editing program- done.

Noah

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[Neal Klaeser]

I was trying to save space of the P2 cards by shooting SD. I normally shoot 6 hours of footage in 1 day.

Neal Klaeser
Real to Reel Productions
http://www.realvideopro.com

[Steve Eisen]

[Neal Klaeser] “I have read that some people are less than satisfied with the SD image recorded on the HPX170 compared to the HVX200A”

Due to scene settings. The cameras are virtually identical.

As Noah says, shoot in HD. If you shoot these long meetings in 720/24pn with 64 GB cards, you can go all day.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Neal Klaeser]

If I shoot 720/24pn then that would give me only 4 hours with 2 64 gb cards and I was only planning on buying 2 cards. My other option was the Sony HXR-NX5U because the cards are less expensive but I have heard that the SD footage is recorded in MPEG 2. I would need to transcode the footage in order to edit in FCP.

Neal Klaeser
Real to Reel Productions
http://www.realvideopro.com

[Fernando Mol]

I just did a test in the HPX170 and found this:

The image quality when shooting SD and HD in normal situations (I didn’t test low light) looks almost the same.

The difference I see is the sharpening of the image. I assume that the sharp is lost when reducing HD footage to SD. The still frame of the HD to SD looks softer and less noisy, but that’s actually the detail level (sharp). If you handle this parameter I assume you can get the same result.

Color and detail looks very much the same.

I understand the camera uses the full CCD to capture the image, then it converts it to the video format you selected, so the luminance requirements shouldn’t be different.

Here are the still shots of both shoots (I saved both as JPG with maximum quality).

I hope this helps

[Steve Eisen]

You obviously don’t want to spend money on P2 cards. It’s your money, do what you want with it.

FYI, you don’t have to pay full price ($699) for 64 gb P@ cards.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Chris Tompkins]

SD looks great on that cam, go with it.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC