D90 HDMI Capture - What's the available aspect?
 

The question has been asked many times, but I have yet to hear the answer... How many vertical pixels do you get from the D90 in HDMI Capture that are not covered by the menu graphics? Can one get a clean 2.35:1 aspect?

From my calculations, that would be 1,280 wide and 1280/2.35 = 545 tall. That would allow uncompressed capture with the Blackmagic Intensity card into a RAID. By cropping all but 545 lines, one would end up with a cinema-like aspect ratio.

Sure, there's still rolling shutter. You'd be tethered to a PC. It ain't RAW. There might be aliasing, noise reduction or other artifacts. But it would bypass the Motion JPEG compression.

Anybody got any HDMI captures to measure?

Thanks!

A possible answer
 

I own a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro card and would like to know how useful the camera could be with live HDMI capture.. Sounds like there are handshake problems with some HDTVs and no way to get rid of the display information.. bummer.

Check out the page below to get an idea of what aspect ratio it supports..

Nikon D90 Review: 10. Displays: Digital Photography Review

Thanks Robert,

Well... I saved the pic of the LCD image during video capture and did a rough measurement of the unobscured area. The result is a 2.16:1 aspect - more than enough lines for a 2.35:1 result.

Hopefully, the HDMI image is as clean as the D3 captures at the bottom of the screen. There's some aliasing, but it should be okay when scaled to SD or the web. You wouldn't want this for a film out, but the lens options and possibility of uncompressed capture are interesting to be sure - especially at the price of an HV30 or so.

ordered mine today
 

Hi John,

I ordered mine today, not specifically for video use (though that is appealing) but as an enthusiast DSLR.. I will definitely be giving it a full battery of tests on my intensity capture station and will let you know my results.

-Robert

Much appreciated, Robert!