NewYorkLion
Well-known member
DVcam, is pretty much the same as DV, but at 50m a second instead of 25. it's noticeably better.
Fx DVcam vs Dvx100
- Thread starter BertG
- Start date
reflex
Well-known member
Don't be fooled by people saying that if you shoot in HDV then edit in HDV, THEN downconvert that you will get a MUCH better product. No. I have tested it myself on multiple tv's (from a 4:3 inexpensive sharp to a 42" Sony plasma) There is no difference to the final product.
Always shoot HDV because there really is no extra work in doing so. But if you aren't going to need a HD final product then just downconvert upon capture. You will save computer resources and save time in rendering. From my tests, there was 0 visible difference between downconverting in cam while capturing vs downconverting after your edit.
SD is SD, HDV is HDV
But if you want options, then capture and edit in HDV. You can then export in 1080, 720, 480, 240 etc... for any medium or place you want. Like Ill shoot something in 1080i but then I know my final product will end up on the web, I will downconvert in camera and save myself lots of time. The end product will not look any worse than if you waited to export the web version till the end. Trust me.
Always shoot HDV because there really is no extra work in doing so. But if you aren't going to need a HD final product then just downconvert upon capture. You will save computer resources and save time in rendering. From my tests, there was 0 visible difference between downconverting in cam while capturing vs downconverting after your edit.
SD is SD, HDV is HDV
But if you want options, then capture and edit in HDV. You can then export in 1080, 720, 480, 240 etc... for any medium or place you want. Like Ill shoot something in 1080i but then I know my final product will end up on the web, I will downconvert in camera and save myself lots of time. The end product will not look any worse than if you waited to export the web version till the end. Trust me.
I agree, it's all about how you compress the end product anyway. Use a crappy codec and your SD video comes out like crap, and if you encode it well then it'll look good no matter if it's an SD source or HD; the difference (if there is any) simply isn't noticeable. I always edit HD and then compress for the web because I like having a good HD version to look back on.
So you'd be just as happy shooting Pixelvision as Digibeta?
I'm not convinced there's a huge difference, but I'd rather do edit, grading and effects in HDV and downconvert to an SD 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 file to feed into the DVD compression than start with DV footage. The former will give you the best quality you can possibly get from the footage you shot, and that's particularly true if you shoot NTSC and would have to do a 4:1:1 to 4:2:0 color conversion for the DVD if you edit DV.
Of course if you downconvert your HDV to DV before DVD compression, you lose all those benefits anyway. But that would be silly for that very reason.