What SDI card for direct Varicam capture?

[Shane Ross]

[Freeman] “What I want to do is film to tape (with slow motion content!”

Well then why aren’t you shooting film? I don’t understand this statement.

[Freeman] “capture to disk by playing the tape from camera (uncompressed SD, not HD, if possi”

The Varicam is an HD camera, but with a capture card you can get SD. But I am very confused by this post. If you want film…shoot film. If you want SD, shoot SD. Get a DVCPRO 50 camera and use that to shoot. Capture SD…edit SD, output SD.

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Freeman]

Hi,

To clarify my post: Is there a card that can downconvert the VariCam HD-SDI signal realtime to disk, without having problems with the slomo content?

The reason I want to use the Varicam is that it will be cheaper than shooting film, we are as always on a budget. Also I will be shooting with an unexperienced crew and need to know what’s on tape all the time, can’t afford to find out problems later.

I have considered using the setup you are talking about but I need to shoot slowmotion and doing that in post, to 60fps, won’t look nearly as good. Also I think I will have a better quality picture to start with from the VariCam.

Thanks,
Karl

[Shane Ross]

I cannot say as to the workflow for shooting…I will leave that up to the fine Varicam operators on this forum. I just wanted to get some clarification.

But as for the slo-mo…doing it in post looks GOOD. If you use the FRAME RATE CONVERTER that you can download from the Panasonic site, you can take 60P material and slow it to 23.98 and it looks amazing. And I think you can ONLY do the slowing of footage in post.

But I’ll let the others supply better answers.

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Freeman]

Right, what I meant was that the footage from the DVCPRO 50 camera you suggested won’t look good if you slow it down in post. A reason for using the VariCam, it was made to do it so that’s going to look good…

From what I understand the Frame Rate Converter was only released for Final Cut however the BlackMagic card seems able to do it without plugins, according to pressrelease:

“VariCam footage recorded at 59.94 or 60fps can be captured and played back by DeckLink HD series cards at a slower frame rate, such as 24fps, presenting a slow motion playback effect on screen.”

Which is nice only my question remains, can I input HD-SDI and convert and capture in realtime to uncompressed SD, keeping the slomo footage slowed down? Otherwise I’ll have to update my hardware to fast SCSI disks instead of SATA2 RAID, capture and then convert to uncompressed SD. A timeconsuming and costly hassle that it would be nice to avoid…

Thank you for your replies, I have sent this question on to BlackMagic, I’ll post the response here…

/Karl

[Gary Adcock]

[Freeman] ” can I input HD-SDI and convert and capture in realtime to uncompressed SD, keeping the slomo footage slowed down? “

Not with the decklink cards. BMD does down conversion via software so it is not real time.

The AJA’s Kona Boards do not have any issues with the variable frame rate capture in any codec and since they
use a hardware based Downconversion there is no delay or post processing needed. Additionally in the E-E modes on the cards this can be done with out opening FCP.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA