4:4:4 Question

[livelikeriley]

Hi all, I.ve been shopping around for my move to digital [from 16mm] and have gotten a lot of good information from these boards. I am currently deciding between either a DVX with the andromeda mod or an HVX. The portability of the andromeda DVX is a slight problem, but not huge as I do mostly staged work. So putting aside that, what is the real quality difference here? I read the HVX is 4:2:2 and the andromeda outputs at 4:4:4...for all of my poking around the internet, this doesn.t mean that much to me. Can I get any sort of definition? Anyone have links to a website that explains in lay man's terms [like I said, I am new to digital] what this is? Also, I read that andromeda can export at a higher frame size 1540x990 whereas the HVX is less [I don.t remember the actual number]...I plan on finishing on DVD/Beta for film festival entry but want to keep my options open for a possible blowup to 35mm. What are the limitations with the HVX and andromeda for this?

ALSO - one last question popped into my head...I see a lot about DVCpro 25, 50 and HD...what is the difference? Does this have to do with shooting 720 vs. 1080 or what? Again, keeping in mind a filmout, what are the strengths and weakness of both?

Thanks so much,
Mark.

[Cheesesailor77]

I asked the same thing after searching everywhere and someone gave me the term "chroma subsampling"

check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

basically, 4:4:4 means that everytime the camera samples light, it also samples color. 4:2:2 means the camera samples color every OTHER time it sample light. 4:1:1 means sampling color every FOUR times it samples light.

im not sure is that is EXACTLY how the camera collects data, but thats the idea behind those numbers.

As far as res, andromeda is nothing to shake a stick at, but HVX still wins out at least in pixel count (i just read that thread with pics comparing the two) and remember that the HVX is a 16x9 chip and the dvx is 4x3, so if your cropping for 16x9 or 2.35 ur chopping of res.

and the DVC stuff, i have an idea, but never used them myself so someone else should tackle that (and correct all my misinfo :) )

[Drew599]

livelikeriley, first off most film festivals have a digital projector running the material not on film...makes sense doesn't it. So you could save yourself a lot of money by not doing a film out until someone picks it up. Then they can pick-up the price of the transfer.

Also I saw the HD100 film output over at the dirctors guild a couple months ago and that looked really good. Plus the guy that shot that had no intention of putting it on film and it was filming at 30p in the worst conditions you could put you or a camera through. Now that was HVD and for the most part it looked like it was shot on film. There were some things in the print that gave it away, like edge enhancing and stuff like that.

I can only imagine how kickass the HVX would look on film with its 4:2:2 color space and better compression. But I've seen the HVX projected on a digital 2K projector and it looked amazing.

But if you want to know about 4:4:4 you really have to see it for yourself. In a film environment I'm sure you won't notice the difference between 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 after color correction and whatever else you do to the movie to make it look like the way you want it to. Plus its way more data to store. I've seen some 4:4:4 HDCAM SR footage and it does look really nice...like its popping off the screen. But that's it being projected digitaly.

[MrPolarBare]

ALSO - one last question popped into my head...I see a lot about DVCpro 25, 50 and HD...what is the difference? Does this have to do with shooting 720 vs. 1080 or what?
DV25, DVCPRO50, and DVCPRO/HD are digital formats. Anytime you see "25" you are getting pretty much the same compression as a MiniDV camera. Only 25mbits per second of data. The resloution is 720x480. On DVCPRO50 you get 2x as much data info (50/mbits/sec), and it uses the same resolution size of 720x480. Basically you are getting much better colors and better (less) compression. Finally you have DVCPRO/HD which is a data rate of 100 mbits/sec. This format is used for HD resolutions (1280x720 and 1920x1080).

So basically DV25 and DVCPRO50 are both standard definition formats. But DVCPRO50 has two times the data stream of the simple DV25 format. And DVCPROHD is a completely different beast that does High Definition.

[Cheesesailor77]

DV25, DVCPRO50, and DVCPRO/HD are digital formats. Anytime you see "25" you are getting pretty much the same compression as a MiniDV camera. Only 25mbits per second of data. The resloution is 720x480. On DVCPRO50 you get 2x as much data info (50/mbits/sec), and it uses the same resolution size of 720x480. Basically you are getting much better colors and better (less) compression. Finally you have DVCPRO/HD which is a data rate of 100 mbits/sec. This format is used for HD resolutions (1280x720 and 1920x1080).

So basically DV25 and DVCPRO50 are both standard definition formats. But DVCPRO50 has two times the data stream of the simple DV25 format. And DVCPROHD is a completely different beast that does High Definition.


much better than how I was going to explain it :)