True HD?

[Graeme Nattress]

Well, there’s no camera that records uncompressed HD to tape – they use very big and fast hard drives. All practical HD cameras record compressed HD, but they use different methods:

HDCAM SR – lightly compressed MPEG4, full raster, 4:4:4
HDCAM – highly compressed DCT, 3/4 raster, 3:1:1 chroma
DVCproHD – highly compressed DCT, 3/4 (720p) or 2/3 (1080i) raster, 4:2:2
HDV – extremely compressed MPEG2, full raster(720p), 3/4 raster(1080i), 4:2:0

The HVX200 uses DVCproHD, which makes it less compressed than HDV, but more compressed than HDCAM SR.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Toke]

[Graeme Nattress] “Well, there’s no camera that records uncompressed HD to tape”

Actually there is: D6 aka Voodoo.
Not on the camera, but the van next to the camera 🙂
And yes, price is ridiculous…

[Graeme Nattress]

“All practical HD cameras record compressed…” Sure, you can use D6, but that tape deck aint on the camera, aint portable and aint practical 🙂 But I’m sure the picture would look lovely….

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Noah Kadner]

Or you could shoot this amazing, resolution and van-independent HD format called 35mm. lol

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

>>HDCAM SR – lightly compressed MPEG4, full raster, 4:4:4

At this point in time, there is no such thing as an HDCam SR camcorder. The only Sony camera capable of 4:4:4 operation is the F950, which is a camera head only and requires an external recorder. Any camera using HDCam SR is, by definition, using a separate recorder, either one of the SR studio decks or the portable SRW1.

[Barry Green]

Right. Basically there is no such thing as an uncompressed HD camera or deck.

There are pretty much three levels of quality on the HD scale. At the bottom there’s HDV, a highly compressed format most suitable for consumer cameras. In the middle is HDCAM and DVCPRO-HD, two formats that basically form the basis of every HD camera out there. At the very top is HDCAM SR, a system that uses MPEG-4 compression and 4:4:4 color sampling.

Now, all these cameras can output an uncompressed signal — the HVX,Z1,FX1 and HD100 all output uncompressed via analog component connectors, and the bigger cameras output an uncompressed digital signal through HD-SDI. But capturing and recording uncompressed is a very difficult thing to do, requiring a RAID of fast hard disks that can support about 166 megabytes per second of data transfer; a gigabyte goes by in about six seconds at that rate.

So uncompressed is not a practical option for almost any recording circumstance. Might be most useful in a live switching/studio situation though.

As far as “real HD”, yes the HVX is real HD, and it uses a real HD format. But it’s also a $6,000 camera, and there’s only so much you can expect out of it. It’ll probably be by far the best-performing of the $6,000 HD cameras, due to its much-superior recording format, but it still won’t be in the same class as the $40,000 to $100,000 “big” HD cameras.

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[Toke]

Is that vcr in top of that Panavision’s Genesis, in a place where film mag used to be?
Or is it just processor unit?

[Jesse Rosen]

Indeed, it’s a Sony SRW-1 HDCAM-SR VTR.

—
Jesse Rosen
Director of Technical Development
Abel Cine Tech, Inc.

[Toke]

[Jesse Rosen] “Indeed, it’s a Sony SRW-1 HDCAM-SR VTR.”

So that is indeed the first one-piece 1920x1080p 4:4:4 tape format camera.
Processing units are inside “camera chassis” and tape vtr in film mag’s place.

Viper+Venom is about same, although no tape and much reduced recording time.

[David Massachi]

Graeme,

Thanks for breaking down the formats for us. Very helpful.

Can you add one more bit info to the list, though:

Isn’t HDCAM recording 1080 as 1440 X 1080 instead of actual 1920 X 1080? Is that basically a way of electronially squeezing the image (and making it anamorphic), or is that a pixel aspect ratio difference, or is that the same thing? Is that what you mean by “raster”?

What about the other formats and/or other frame sizes? Do they have pixel aspect ratio differences?

massachi