cheezweezl
Veteran
So while I am waiting to figure out which external recorder to buy, I decided to see what the visual difference even is between AVCHD and Prores HQ. So I shot to the card and captured to the mac at the same time via HDMI.
Settings: 1080/24P FX. HDMI output was set to 1080i. I captured into FCP at 1080i/59.94 Prores HQ. After capture I removed the pulldown using cinema tools. I captured the AVCHD from the camera via log and transfer and transcoded to Prores HQ, leaving me with two almost identical files. The only difference is length as I had to manually hit record on the cam and capture now on the mac.
I focussed on my hand about a foot from the lens and waved my two hands across the screen rapidly to give both codecs a workout.
Watching on a 42" plasma, I really couldn't see a difference. However, looking at individual frames, i could see it every time. The AVCHD tends to soften details when taxed with moving objects. At it's worst (on my example) I saw banding and blotches of color. I picked out one of the nastier frames as an example. I exported directly from the FCP timeline in JPG format. I used the highest quality and bit depth to minimize the jpeg compression. The stills here look identical to what I see on my screen in FCP. Below the pics are links to the full size 1920x1080 stills, which show quite a bit of difference between the two.
AVCHD in cam
Prores HQ via HDMI
AVCHD in cam (full size)
Prores HQ via HDMI (full size)
Settings: 1080/24P FX. HDMI output was set to 1080i. I captured into FCP at 1080i/59.94 Prores HQ. After capture I removed the pulldown using cinema tools. I captured the AVCHD from the camera via log and transfer and transcoded to Prores HQ, leaving me with two almost identical files. The only difference is length as I had to manually hit record on the cam and capture now on the mac.
I focussed on my hand about a foot from the lens and waved my two hands across the screen rapidly to give both codecs a workout.
Watching on a 42" plasma, I really couldn't see a difference. However, looking at individual frames, i could see it every time. The AVCHD tends to soften details when taxed with moving objects. At it's worst (on my example) I saw banding and blotches of color. I picked out one of the nastier frames as an example. I exported directly from the FCP timeline in JPG format. I used the highest quality and bit depth to minimize the jpeg compression. The stills here look identical to what I see on my screen in FCP. Below the pics are links to the full size 1920x1080 stills, which show quite a bit of difference between the two.
AVCHD in cam
Prores HQ via HDMI
AVCHD in cam (full size)
Prores HQ via HDMI (full size)
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