HVX and HD-SDI

C

chocblu

Member
Hey,


I think this is going to be a stupid question, but if i dont ask, i dont know.

With the HXV, is there any way to get footage via HD-SDI?

maybe this question should be, is there any point? Im not really up on this whole HD-SDI thingo, but im guessing that its one one way of getting a 4:4:4 signal out of SOME cameras. Of course DVCPRO is only 4:2:2 but is this the codec or is the HVX also 4:2:2 only. Also does the P2 card remove the problem the other cameras had in storage format that made some of them use the HD-SDI to harddrive route.

Ive seen some converters like the aja HD10A do analoge to HD-SDI conversion, but im guessing the component video on the side of the HVX doesnt count as this?

Just curious about all the different ways of getting footage off these cameras.

cheers

Mark
 
You would probably have to wait for something like Andromeda for HVX, if it were to happen at all, to get your 4:4:4 signal. The analog component HD out of the HVX is uncompressed 4:2:2 signal, the firewire output is DVCProHD encoded.
 
HD-SDI doesn't do 4:4:4 (unless you're using dual-link, and none of these cameras are going to offer that).

HD-SDI means uncompressed digital video. It's available as-is on two under-$10,000 cameras, as 4:2:2 8-bit. But all the cameras offer uncompressed high-def as analog, and you can get an AJA analog component -> HDSDI converter box for around $800 if you need to stream HDSDI.
Ive seen some converters like the aja HD10A do analoge to HD-SDI conversion, but im guessing the component video on the side of the HVX doesnt count as this?
Click to expand...
I've got one of those, it works perfectly well, and it converts the HVX outputs into being HD-SDI. There is a digital->analog->digital conversion going on, but it's almost irrelevant.

Newer cameras like the V1U and the AVC-HD models are including HDMI, which is another way to get uncompressed digital video straight out of the camera (sort of like a "poor man's HD-SDI").

Of course, while "uncompressed high-def digital video" sounds all wonderful and that, you've got to understand that it's extraordinarily difficult to handle. You're talking data rates that are 58x larger than HDV data rates. Massive amounts of information. You'd need a large RAID of hard disks to handle that.

Also does the P2 card remove the problem the other cameras had in storage format that made some of them use the HD-SDI to harddrive route.
Click to expand...
Yes, because the P2 system is frame-discrete compression whereas the others employ long-GOP and lower color sampling. So you could look at it like this:
HDV: 4:2:0, high compression, plus long-GOP issues
HDSDI: 4:2:2, no compression, no long-GOP issues
P2: 4:2:2, medium compression, no long-GOP issues.

So the P2/DVCPRO-HD system is giving you two of the three benefits that HDSDI would, and is getting you closer to the third.

Consider this: when Canon set out to show off the very highest quality footage they could get from the XLH1 (the "watchmaker" video), they used the HD-SDI capability, and they piped the footage out to be recorded on: a DVCPRO-HD deck. So they used the exact same format that the HVX is using.
 
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So, i can get 4:2:2 uncompressed HD from the analoge component out to HD-SDI. From the HD-SDI what kind of card do i need in the computer to capture it? Im guessing the AJA kone 3 is a bit over kill as it oes 2k and dual Link HD-SDI. is there any others out there? can you suggest an ingest workflow/Hardware needed??

cheers

Mark
 
Perhaps look at a Kona LHe or LH? You can direct record the 4:2:2 HVX component output to the Kona analog input.

I am not sure about the frames available from the HVX component output. Some frame rates may contain the duplicate frames and being analog, I foreshadow there may be issues with determining which frames are the flagged ones, etc. 720p60 would be no problem, however, 720p24 may be an issue. I am not sure about 1080p24. Perhaps someone else may be able to pick up on this point?
 
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