lossless capture

M

michaelcorvin

Active member
i recall reading somewhere that when you capture dv into final cut that it compresses your footage significantly, even at the highest quality setting. then more compression occurs when you output it back to dv or render within final cut. is this true? if so, what steps can i take to capture and output footage with as little compression as possible. thanks.
-michael
 
Re: lossless capture

No, that's definitely a vicious lie straight from the pit of hell. (That was my impression of typical mac-user venom.)

Seriously, though. It isn't true. The great thing about digital is that it's lossless, both in capture and in output. All that happens in the capture process is that FCP copies the sequence of 1s and 0s from your tape onto your hard drive and then translates them into a form it can process onto your screen. See your Final Cut Pro manual if you have doubts about the process.

Ryan
 
Re: lossless capture

That said, DV is in itself a compression.  It takes 4.4.4 colors you 'see' and turns them into 4.1.1.  4 thingies of Green, 1 of blue and 1 of red.  There isn't anything you can do about that... (kind of.)

Shoot DV50 and get 4.2.2 -- but you have to have a camera that will record DV50.  Some sources like beta or I think DigiBeta might give you 4.4.4 in uncompressed format importing, but you'll need some mondo drives to capture that.

Don't worry about it.  DV25 is fine.

Want more information than you'll ever need (or was THIS more information than you'll ever need?)?

http://www.adamwilt.com

Good luck,

CaptM
 
Re: lossless capture

Yes, DV is quite compressed already. That's why it would be horrible if it got compressed even more on capture!

DVCPro50 is 4:2:2, but I think DigiBeta is too. HD is what you have to shoot if you want completely uncompressed color.

Subject to correction, of course.
 
Re: lossless capture

Just to make sure the original question is completely addressed:

FCP/FCE what ever version, capture is simply the digital transfer from data on your tape into data on the disk. Compression is not part of the process and there are no options for quality settings.

Every render has an effect on the picture quality, that's true, as you're recompiling the data with your associated changes...but there's nothing in the Quicktime codec that deteriorates the picture more then any other codec/rendering scheme.

Finally, when you output to DV, again there is no compression or quality settings. You're taking the data on your disk and putting it back as data on a tape.

Compression, quality setting and the like only come into play when you're jumping formats, standards, or using non-digital sources.

Does that sound right to everyone?
 
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