Z5 resolution?

[Thomas Morter-laing]

Oh right yeah I didn’t think of that, especially as to look in the manual do you not hve to own a manual? Or am I mistaken?

[Thomas Morter-laing]

Ps I OBVIOUSLY don’t have a manual, otherwise I would have looked. Please excuse my rudeness but it appears as ifthe reply to my original question was both unhelpful and provocatively sarcastic which didn’t achieve anything….. Unless I’m mistaken and have misinterpreted in which case I apologise.

[Michael Gissing]

Simple answer is that a 1920 x 1080 sensor is required to capture a true 16:9 image. HDV however then applies an anamorphic squeeze the image so that it saves bandwidth within the codec.

Some HDV cameras have SDI outputs so that a full square pixel 1920 x 1080 signal is available. Some also use Firestore type storage drives that capture full raster square pixel mpeg2 signals so the sensor needs to be in that format.

The anamorphic squeeze is also a common practice with Panasonic cameras and codecs. Yes it will cause a degradation of the signal but it is an excellent way to reduce bandwidth by 30%.

[Thomas Morter-laing]

Thanks you very much for ur informative and helpful answer 🙂 Does the z5 have any of those abilities do you know? Also what preset should I use in fcp to capture it?

[Michael Gissing]

I don’t know the specifics of that camera but it records HDV format to tape so use the HDV capture preset in the FCP Easy Setups to capture via firewire. This will capture as 1440 x 1080 but display as 1920 x 1080.

Also do some research on capturing and converting via firewire to ProRes codec. Chris Poisson wrote an excellent tutorial which can be found by searching this COW forum as it has been covered here many times with comments from experienced users here about the pros and cons of this technique.