Is the 150 4:2:0 or 4:2:2 or is it both?

E

eric geurts lakin

Active member
On page 14 of Barry Greens HMC 150 book he states that the HMC150 uses 4:2:0 color sampling, but on page 193 where Barry talks about the HDMI port, he states that "For high-def, the HDMI signal is sent as a 4:2:2, 10-bit signal. Eh?? I thought this camera only recorded in 4:2:0 ?? So does this infact mean that if I were to plug an HDMI lead into my 150 and then connect that to an external recorder of some kind, that my 150 would then be producing video in 4:2:2 (which could then be used by the BBC?) and if so, what external recorder can one recommend?
 
Yes the internal codec recording to SDHC cards will record in 4.2.0. But if you record out to an external recorder, it gives you 4.2.2 (since HDMI is able to give 4.2.2). Allthough, IMHO it's not worth the extra fuss as the difference in image is barely noticeable in the best case.
 
Admir said:
Yes the internal codec recording to SDHC cards will record in 4.2.0. But if you record out to an external recorder, it gives you 4.2.2 (since HDMI is able to give 4.2.2). Allthough, IMHO it's not worth the extra fuss as the difference in image is barely noticeable in the best case.
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I see... so the only advantage of using an external recorder then, would be if I were to have my videos shown on the BBC (which only accepts 4.2.2)
So apart from that, I suppose theres not really any point in using the external recorder then. Okay, well thank you for that.
 
I've personally never tried chroma keying w/ the hmc150 so I can't vouch for it's quality, but if you do that often, using the recorder to get 4:2:2 would be beneficial in that instance.

Others here can probably tell you how big of a difference it is in that situation.
 
I don't have any hard facts behind this, but I've heard that some people shoot with an HMC150, then transcode it to DVCPROHD and say that it was shot on an HPX170 (sine BBC accept HPX material in DVCPROHD). So not even BBC can tell the difference =P

Quite interesting approach....
 
Admir said:
I don't have any hard facts behind this, but I've heard that some people shoot with an HMC150, then transcode it to DVCPROHD and say that it was shot on an HPX170 (sine BBC accept HPX material in DVCPROHD). So not even BBC can tell the difference =P

Quite interesting approach....
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I think it's plausible. Unless you pixel peep, in most situations I doubt you could tell the difference.
 
If you do what a recorder the Ninja looks like the best bang for the buck. 422 right into prorez.

But either way most of the people watching wouldn't tell the difference.
 
DBP said:
I've personally never tried chroma keying w/ the hmc150 so I can't vouch for it's quality, but if you do that often, using the recorder to get 4:2:2 would be beneficial in that instance.
Click to expand...

I'm in the midst of a huge all-keyed project with the 150; this does really show the weaknesses of the codec (at least at 4-2-0), things can get blocky pretty quickly. I think there may be a Ninja in my future, would love to be able to test one or see some real A-B comparisons for keying. (150 at 4-2-0 beats the heck out of keying DSLR footage though...)

Things go bad fast with the 150 when you don't feed it enough light. The compression seems to really murk up in the shadows; again, this seems far more apparent when you're pulling keys, maybe it's just the nature of how much zoomed-in tweaking you end up doing on those shots. That said, it's a heck of a bargain for the $3kish price range.
 
422 is also great if you're trying to push the hell out of the footage in grading, but IMO it's not worth it if you're mostly happy with the baked-in looks using the scene files.
 
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