Does quality affect recording time?

DammitJanet

DammitJanet

Well-known member
One of the other guys where I work went on a trip and shot 1080/60i on a shoot when he was supposed to shoot 1080/24p. He told me he did this to allow for more recording time on the SD card. I didn't think the quality you shot at would make a difference on this camera. Is he sorely mistaken?
 
It makes a huge different depending on what record format you use. on my 8gb cards the PH level modes of recording is 49 minutes and on the lowest level recording it's 186 minutes.
 
Hmmm you felt like kicking him where it hurts the most didn't you ,....no ?

You will only gain recording time shooting on the lower recording modes HA, HE and lower.
This mode shoots 1440 * 1080 i 13 Mbs/ 6 Mbs
PH is ofcourse the higher one: 1280*720p and 1920*1080p/i
 
I'm pretty pissed that he did it since we agreed that all of the footage we shoot for our boss would be in 24p, and he just did it rather than call me from the road to check with me first. So when our boss gets pissed because it doesn't look the way he thought it would I have the pleasure of telling him that my partner is the only one in charge of that footage.

:)
 
DammitJanet said:
He told me he did this to allow for more recording time on the SD card.
Click to expand...


So, did he even shoot the highest quality? HA, HE etc are going to give you longer record times - which means it much lower bit rate then normal 1080/60i.

You will notice the remaining time on the card will change immediately when you change the recording format to a different bit rate.
 
MadHMC150 said:
So, did he even shoot the highest quality? HA, HE etc are going to give you longer record times - which means it much lower bit rate then normal 1080/60i.

You will notice the remaining time on the card will change immediately when you change the recording format to a different bit rate.
Click to expand...

Good question. I'll go through the camera and find out which he shot it on. I believe in FCP his clips said 17mbps in the Browser.
 
17 mbps is the HA mode. It does record full 1920X1080 at 60i.

It's only the HE mode that record 6 mbps 1440x1080.

You have to tell your cameraman or partner which recording format to choose before shooting. And if he choose this lower mode to get more recording time, he really need to buy more SDHC cards!
 
If you want a progressive look and long recording times, shooting in HA/HG with a shutter speed of 1/30 works pretty nicely. The frames are progressive with a nice motion blur, and the compression seems to nicely take advantage of the progressive-y footage and deliver pretty impressive quality. Even HE made can be sorta serviceable in this manner!
 
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