S-Video from XL2 - Uncompressed?
 

Hi me again!

Just been having a chat with a colleague at work who also uses this forum about how good my new XL2 is. He is excited to see it working.

Anyway, he mentioned that if you take the video signal out f the s-video connector from the camera, then you by-pass the DV-Codec compression. My eyes lit up, surely if this is true it seems promising.

More questions popped into my head, which I shall ask here.

If it is uncompressed video, then what kind of uncompressed would it be (I am referring to PAL by the way) Would it be 4:4:4? or would it be 4:0:2 uncompressed?

He said that the colour sampling was noticeably better from the S-Video link, reds have less jaggy edges etc. Now he mention that a company makes a product similar to the new firestore FS-4 coming out, so it can be attached to the camera, except that it records from an S-Video input.

So what I would like people to think about is if it is uncompressed, is it just skipping the 5:1 MiniDV compression, but keeping the same colour sampling of 4:0:2. He aslo mentioned of a product that can be attached to the camera that converts S-Video to SDI.

I think this sounds exciting. Anyone know about these ideas, or has anyone tried them?

Lawrence

I hate to burst your bubble, but the s-video out from the camera, has indeed gone through the DV compression, it is just part of the downfall of sub $10,000 cameras. However, you should check out www.realstream.com for more info on how it may be possible in the future to get uncompressed footage from your camera.

If the XL2 follows the general architecture of the XL1, the live camera output (not playback from tape) from the S-video does not go thorugh DV compression. However, it does go though A/D conversion, DSP, and D/A conversion.

On the other hand, playback from tape to the S-video output will go though DV compression during recording to tape, and then decompression during playback in addition to the A/D, DSP, and D/A conversions.

Stefan: how do you know that for sure?

There have been lots of talk on this board on using analog
connections as a poor mans uncompressed, HOWEVER, it will
never be truly uncompressed due to at least the following:

1. s-video/composite are another form of compression (analog)

2. analog noise/problems will be introduced into the signal

You will also need a high-quality analog capture board which
usually isn't cheap and needs to be at least high bitrate MJPEG.

As said time and time again on this board a test would be very
interesting to do, IF someone has a high-quality capture board,
the time and the resources to do such a comparison.

No-one I know of here has done this comparison yet. So it is
basically uknown whether the trouble and money is worth the
result in the end.

Also the only way you **might** get any benefit to using this
method is when you record the footage straight to the PC (and
you then need to lug this PC around all the time). Since if you
record to tape you compress to DV and if you then record that
through analog your footage is even worse than if you capture
just the DV.

All in all I doubt it would really be worth it.

Personally I'm suprised at how many people "complain" about DV.
Why? It looks really really good. No-one will look down upon a
very good looking DVD (which you CAN make with a DV source!)
with a good movie/story if it was shot on DV.

It is far easier shot down for a bad story, bad acting, bad lighting,
camera moves, framing, editing and audio/sound/music.

Put your time in those areas, they are far, far, FAR more important
than DV versus some uncompressed analog issue.