Forums » General Questions

1. robgrauert
   Member

   

    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. 

   Posted 2 months ago # Login to Send PM

2. cadaver
   Member

   

    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

   Posted 2 months ago # Login to Send PM

3. robinleeedwardsyahoocom
   Member

   

    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

   Posted 2 months ago # Login to Send PM

4. robgrauert
   Member

   

    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.

    

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5. ralck
   Member

   

   Robgaruert,

   You might want to also consider something like a Zoom H4 player.  It's a separate audio recorder and has 4 XLR inputs.  I've never used one, but heard a lot of good things about them.  I think I saw it on B&H for about 300, so it might be cheaper than getting a firestore.

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6. robgrauert
   Member

   

    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. 

    

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7. robinvid
   Member

   

   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

   Posted 2 weeks ago # Login to Send PM

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