What is the video quality hierarchy? (FW/S/C)
 

I've no idea if this is the right forum, but here goes:

When using a digital camcorder with FW, S video and composite outputs all available, which would provide the best video quality in the end?

I'd be going XL1s > Nnovia A2D (records any of the 3) > FCP

Any facts or opinions would be appreciated!

Best, Scott Loiselle

Using this device, you want to use firewire.

The nNovia box records to DV codec anyway from the analog inputs, so if you used those inputs, it would be doing twice what the camera has already done once to the signal.

Again, use the firewire.

Best - FireWire

Connect your camera directly to the computer. After capturing disconnect the camera and attach your nNovia box. This way you can watch the results of your edit on a regular monitor (thru the nNovia device) and your camera is reserved for recording and tape playback only.

Thanks to you both, that's the info I needed. William, I appreciate the thought but this is all for location. I've been going out with 2 cams & 2 powerbooks and it's an unmentionable pain in the tukus, hence wanting something small and dedicated like the A2D.

Best, Scott

To answer your question in full, the best quality is, as noted already, Firewire. Next would be component video (if you would have that option) having three separate cables for the three primary colors. Then down the line follows S-Video where you have one wire for your luminance signal and another one for your color signal (three color signals combined). Lowest quality comes with composite where everything is mixed together.

It should be noted that the tape records the same quality of the nNovia!

Usually in component, the signal is Y'PbPr (I can't remember if that is the correct term). In this signalling, one wire carries the luma and the other two wires carry chroma (two color difference signals, with scaling different than YUV and different than Y'CbCr).

On other cameras, there are of course other interfaces coming off them like SDI, HD SDI, and dual link HD SDI. They can have a higher quality signal than firewire (but not in the case of some XDCAM I believe).

Correct Glen, thank you for completing my post. YPbPr is the term used for analog component signals, while YCbCr is for digital component signals. Y carries the complete luminance signal plus sync data. Pb is the blue signal, Pr is the red - green is re-created extracting blue and red from the whole luma signal.

This is a short, non-technical description. For those interested in details, Wikipedia has an excellent article.

On the current XDCAM HD units, it's true the HD-SDI is decimated to 4:2:0, but it's still pre-MPEG2 compression. It's a very worthwhile connection still if you need it.

Also, the FW connection on those units do NOT stream HDV (only DV). The XDCAM HD decks have an option board to stream HDV/Firewire, but they don't do it stock.

Ah, good to know.

Well it's not quite as simple as that... :D