480 to P2

[sdelahoyde]

Just picked up an HVX for use by a sports team client. I'll be shooting at 1080i on big productions and spots, but the team will also be using the camera from time to time on things for the web, likely at 480. They don't want to waste the time capturing from tape, so they'd like to buy either a Firestore drive or a couple of P2 cards. With either, the camera always creates MXF files, right? Not just for the higher-res stuff? I forgot to test it when we were renting a couple of P2 cards, so if anyone's got any answers, that'd be great.

 

[THoff]

Yes, P2 recordings are always wrapped in MXF containers.

If you take a look at the videos posted around here, you'll see that lots of people record 720 and then create 1/2 sized versions of the video for the web. With square pixels, you get 640x360. At a streaming-friendly bitrate of ~1.5Mbps, the video will be of very good quality.

The Firestore gives you a choice of container formats, so you aren't restricted to MXF.

 

[TwistedLincoln]

Raylight can convert DV MXF files into self-contained DV AVIs. Very handy to have it you're using the camera to shoot regular DV on P2.