HD Camera shooting SD or Down-convert during import?

[Rob]

Hey Guy,

I’m thinking about getting a HDV camera since they’re cheaper and I want to down-convert to SD right away anyway. It makes for very nice SD video and HDV is kind of buggy anyway…

I’m looking at the Canon A1. Does anyone know if there is a difference between recording SD right away and recording onto HD tape and then down-converting on the import? If recording SD will give me the same results as recording HD and then down-converting, I can save myself money from buying the more expensive HD tapes and a new tape deck (I’m not a fan of using cameras as decks.)

Thanks,

Rob G.

[steve78]

hi,

what i heard is that,

HDV to HDV will not be the same as the HDV to DV, but the image quality of the (HDV TO DV ) will be mutch better than a average DV cam

[robinleeedwardsyahoocom]

Hi Rob:

I’ve got the HX-A1 and shoot HDV on regular blue sony dv tapes, not the “spensive” ones. Never a problem in dozens of tapes. Notice that the stores are not even stocking the HD tapes as much as they did??

Consider shooting and editing in HDV and then down-converting afterwards to SD for export. Here’s what I know from experience, Green-screen work is so much better in HDV than SD (sampling), Skin tone, and sky tone and blowouts are all superior.

One negative I’ve read, but haven’t experienced is that audio is better (compression) on SD than HDV. Go figure.

Robin Edwards

[Rob]

robinleeedwards,

Thanks for the input. I was hoping that shooting SD right away would be just as good as shooting HDV, editing HDV, and exporting SD. I guess not though. Either way, it saves me time, effort and money. So thank you.

And to your last comment about the audio, I’ve heard that recording HDV to tape sacrifices audio quality a bit to make room for the HDV image. I don’t know the engineering behind it though. Apparently recording to a hard drive is the solution to having better audio quality though.

Thanks.

[ralck]

Robgaruert,

You might want toalsoconsidersomethinglikea Zoom H4 player.It’s aseparate audiorecorderandhas 4 XLRinputs.I’veneverused one, buthearda lotofgoodthings aboutthem. IthinkIsawit on B&Hfor about300,soit might be cheaperthan getting a firestore.

[Rob]

yea, i’d rather just a get a firestore if I got an HDV camera. Then I could have the benefits of that work flow. I hate capturing tapes.

[robinvid]

Hi other Robs,

Although it is on the expensive side, geared towards the professional market, Edirol has just come out with the F-1 Video hard drive recorder. I am going to try one out, hopefully with a Sony EX1 and a couple of older DVCAMS that we have. It takes firewire in and records directly to a hard drive and gives two additional XLR inputs for recording two channels of uncompressed audio that are synced to your video. These audio channels are in addition to whatever audio gets recorded through the firewire (which is compressed audio). It records in HDV or SD. Don’t know much more than that about it at this point, but it is just under 3 grand. It certainly eliminates tape capture and gives a better quality audio recording. By the way; Robs Rule

[Author]

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