DV Info Net - Newbie question

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I saw a website...sorry I can't remember the address...but it made casual reference to direct to disk resolution being vastly superior to images captured on tape first then dumped via firewire. Is this true? And to what degree? Would it be worth it even for a lower end camera such as an Optura Xi? (even though your DTD will probably end up costing more than your camera).

Thanks,

Matt

edit: I mean this primarily in terms of subjective resolution as oppossed to pixel count.

There will be no difference whatsoever, when working with a DV camera. What gets recorded on the tape is bit-for-bit identical to what would get recorded by the direct-to-disk recorder, through the firewire port.

ok i went back and found the site I was talking about..and your right..he was doing more of an evaluation with lenses...though he did have a brighter capture DTD...it wasn't higher res.

However, scattered around this forum are people saying they are getting better (psuedo-progressive) images out of cams under $1000 by setting it into photo mode and capturing direct to disk. Can anyone elaborate on this...or maybe even give some technical info on how this is working?

That will not yield better results (usually), because:

- it usually is still encoded into DV (unless it is recorded to a memory stick)
- you will not get a full frame rate

etc.

You can stop your quest for better results. You cannot get better
results out of a normal DV camera unless you go with an uncompressed
modification that is currently being finalized for only the DVX100
(for other camera's it might come, but isn't yet available. This mod
is being made by a member on the boards here and voids your
warranty!).

An other option is to build your own camera or buy a high-end
camera etc.

but there are people already saying this is giving them good results...there are posts scattered all around about this. But unfortunatly these are only subjectively measured results as opposed to something that explains just how much improvement is occuring in a technical sense. Here is one such post taken from the Optura board

Quote:

Interesting thread. I am a real newbie at video. However, I have been playing around with capture from my Canon Optura 300 direct to my new computer I put together. I put the Optura on still photo mode and use Vegas to capture to disk in Dv format. My family actually looked at some video transfered from the Canon to the hard drive via firewire then at some video captured to disk with the 300 on still photo mode with the SD card out of the camera. Many people asked me why the direct to disk in still camera mode looks so vivid, clear and sharp looking. I wanted to put a firewire card in my wife's laptop and use the camera on the go like that....

Posted by Michael Sinclair

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ght=photo+mode

I'm not looking for HD quality magic or anything...but if I can get something like an optura XI to look good enough using a simple trick like that and a program like WinDV...i want to, because its small and relatively cheap and I can use the rest of my money building a static 35mm adaptor.

Actually, I would think that recording direct to disk would wield better quality. I was reading a book recently that mentioned that miniDV tapes have a compression ratio of 5:1, because of the small size. If you recorded direct to disk, wouldn't that eliminate any compression you'd get? I don't think it is the camera that compresses the image, but the tape. The book said that the cameras produce better images than are finally recorded. I don't know, I'm probably wrong, but those are just my thoughts.

Matthew Overstreet

After alot of searching, I managed to find it...a technical analysis of what I'm talking about.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ght=photo+mode

About 12th or so post from the top by Johann Adler. It pretty much answered all my questions but I thought it might be good to post it so everyone could see it. Apparently, you lose the wonderful native 16:9 aspect of the canon's, and you may have to correct colors in post ...but you gain additional resolution as well as a progressive scan (acording to Johann). Now...the next question is this only true for the canon's with photo mode, or for other brands as well...and then which one is best?

Also, to anyone who might be doing this...can you still white balance in photo mode?

Matt

Quote:

If you recorded direct to disk, wouldn't that eliminate any compression you'd get? I don't think it is the camera that compresses the image, but the tape.

No, the compression occurs in the camera, and any output via firewire will be compressed data. All DV cameras can only send compressed DV data streams out their firewire ports.

Anything that comes out of the firewire port of a DV camera will be 720 x 480 compressed video streams (or 720x576 in PAL territory).

Also note in your earlier post that you said it recorded to DV (on
disk), so that will yield the same compression (level) as through
firewire.

That this method gives you a different looking picture than through
firewire (the normal way) is VERY odd. Since you posted this
question in a general disk recording area I responded in that
manner.

This might be some weird trick that works out for that specific
camera, but any "normal" (heh) camera with a commercial direct
to disk recorder attached will record 100% the same information
as you would on tape (not taking things like tape dropouts or
harddisk crashes into account etc.).