Image quality: better HDV firewire or Component out?

S

someday

Well-known member
I noticed that the HDV compression adds many artifacts, so i'm wondering if recording from the component out would achieve better image quality, despite it's analog.
Thanks
 
Component out only works during live capture. Once the image has been committed to tape, the information is already lost. Unless you're shooting in a studio environment and don't mind being tethered to a computer all the time, then component capture doesn't make sense. Not to mention the hardware costs (capture card and RAID drive) that will be required to handle this footage.
 
Thanks.
But supposed that i word HDV for SD and capture component with a Beta or DigiBeta. Would this be better than capturing HDV than converting to SD via NLE?
 
someday said:
no improvementi f you capture live? Is this based on your experience?
Click to expand...

There was a thread here a while back, I forgot who the author was, but you can probably find it if you do a search for component capture. In theory, live uncompressed capture from component has a color space advantage, but in practice, this amounts to almost nothing. The author of the thread actually did it through a Black Magic card and posted samples. The results are indistinguishable. You can do it if you think it makes a difference, but understand what the disadvantages are: huge files that are uneditable without a RAID system, an expensive capture card and of course being tethered to a computer all the time. All of that for a theoretical increase in color space that you'll probably never need anyway unless you're doing insane stuff with the footage. Most people think they need that extra edge, but the truth is you;ll never do anything extreme enough that HDV can't handle.
 
If you only need to shoot in SD then switch the camera to SD and avoid the artifacts if they r a concern. This will provide u with the same quality as outputting the SD component signal into an external deck. Personally I have not had a problem - I disagree that the Canon HDV causes many artifacts - if u r having major probs then there may b a problem with your camera?
Anyhow - fact is, if you wanted better quality from the camera you needed to get the G1 with the SDI output.
 
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