Clarification of Color Please

[Alex 3D]

I'm just about to purchase a spankin' new HVX and had a question. I've been reading about the different recording modes and that it can capture 4:2:2 color. I can't seem to find anything telling me if all the modes capture 4:2:2 or just the DVCPRO 50 mode?

Right now, the main reason for getting the HVX is the color. Can I shoot in DVCPRO (25 mbps) and have 4:2:2? I'm really trying to determine how much mass storage I may need. I do have a 2.5 TB Apple RAID and was wondering if I really needed to get something larger, or a few extra 500 MB FW 800s floating around.

We produce :30 TV spots, so we won't have hours of footage every month. Maybe an hour to cover the different versions of the spots for the different dealers.

Thanks for your help and this site!

--Alex

[Anders Holck]

DV and DVCPRO 25Mb are 4:1:1. All the other modes are 4:2:2.

If you shoot 720p/24n it's only recording 40mb or around 5,5 MB/s, and that way you get a way better picture and get the flexible overcrank features as well. (720p/24n at 60fps is around 14 MB/s)

Even if you shoot in the higest res, 1080i60 you only need 100mbps or around 14 MB/s

[Alex 3D]

So, if I want 4:2:2, I need to shoot in in HD and sample down? Now I'm hearing maybe we just need to learn the AG DVX100A better to get the color we're looking for. I say the HVX will always give better results than the older model tweaked to the max.

What say the others that have used both?

[toddeastman]

You can shoot SD in DVCPro 50 and get 4:2:2.

[mikkowilson]

you get 4:2:2 in DVCPRO-50 and -HD (that's what's so special about -50)

DV - 4:1:1
DVCPRO(25) - 4:1:1
DVCPRO-50 - 4:2:2
DVCPRO-HD (720 & 1080) - 4:2:2

- Mikko

[limo991]

I agree that chroma is the best thing about HD cameras. 180 to 640 pixels horizontal chroma lines is a huge change. Luma is also higher but not as important (720 to 960 horizontally, 480 to 600 perhaps vertically). If you shoot dvcpro50 you are not only loosing luma and future possibilities, but also lots of chroma.

On 720x480 SD from 1280x1080 conversion, you will have downsampled luma which looks much better due to filtering of aliasing and huge benefit in MTF from the downsampling process. Your chroma will be 640x480 also and free from aliasing with great MTF. Practically 4:4:4. You can handle double the storage space I believe for your application. Go for 1080p.

[SalaTar]

"DVCPRO50 is often described as two DV-codecs in parallel. The DVCPRO50 standard doubles the coded video bitrate from 25 Mbit/s to 50 Mbit/s, and improves color-sampling resolution by using a 4:2:2 structure. DVCPRO50 was created for high-value ENG compatibility. The higher datarate cuts recording-time in half (compared to DVCPRO25), but the resulting picture-quality is reputed to rival Digital Betacam, a more expensive studio format.
DVCPRO HD, also known as DVCPRO100, uses four parallel codecs and a coded video bitrate of 100 Mbit/s. Despite HD in its name, DVCPROHD downsamples native 720p/1080i signals to a lower resolution. 720p is downsampled from 1280x720 to 960x720, and 1080i is downsampled from 1920x1080 to 1280x1080 for 59.94i and 1440x1080 for 50i. Compression ratio is approximately 7:1. To maintain compatibility with HDSDI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDSDI), DVCPRO100 equipment internally downsamples video during recording, and subsequently upsamples video during playback. A camcorder using as special variable-framerate (from 4 to 60 frame/s) variant of DVCPRO HD called VariCam is also available. All these variants are backward compatible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_compatibility) but not forward compatible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_compatibility)."