60D uncompressed SD vs compressed HD footage

D

davidstone

Member
I'm looking to produce something that's of acceptable viewing quality for DVD and film festivals with my 60d and started thinking.... How would the uncompressed 1080i and SD footage from a 60D recorded to a device like an Atomos Ninja (or some other device) (via HDMI) stack up against recording internally in HD onto SD cards?

I know there's an issue with the red dot when recording via HDMI to a recording device. I was planning on cropping the frame in post to avoid the red dot and add black tape to my monitor to simulate the crop. Would this work?
 
+1. The HDMI out is only HD in playback, not in record.

Also, there's no uncompressed HD with these cameras, and it's 1080p.
 
Right, I know there's no uncompressed 1080p with these cameras. What if I capture footage directly to an external device, like a Ninja, without pressing the record button? It seems like the footage fed into the device would be uncompressed SD, not HD (since only the 7D's dual processors allow it to output uncompressed footage).

What I want to know is whether the uncompressed SD footage (recorded externally) would outperform the 1080p compressed footage recorded onto the SD card?

The Ninja should, in theory, give me uncompressed SD. If I record directly in-camera, I'm looking at compressed 1080p. Which is better in terms of output quality? I would think that uncompressed SD footage is nicer than compressed 1080p. I'm new to this. Am I wrong? Am I looking at this the wrong way?

Would the quality of the SD footage be improved if I recorded without hitting the record button on the camera and feeding that directly to an external recorder?
 
I think the footage is already heavily compressed and down sampled at the point it comes from the sensor, so there is no uncompressed footage to be captured from these cameras. My guess is that you´ll end up with a better end result if you record 1080p in camera and scale it down to SD, than record SD to an external devise.
 
I think it's not "already heavily compressed and down sampled at the point it comes from the sensor"; only line-skipping is done in the sensor, compression and color subsampling come with the digic IV processing; but the result is the same: HDMI-out is heavily compressed and downsampled
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top