Movie Making Manual/Cinematography/Cameras and Formats/Electronic Capture and Storage
Electronic capture and storage
WikiPedia articles:
Betamax
VHS
sVHS
Hi8
DV
Tech specs
- Chroma subsampling: DV or MiniDV(NTSC) = 4:1:1
- Chroma subsampling: DV or MiniDV(PAL) = 4:2:0
DVcam
XDCAM
Recording DVcam onto optical disk
DVCpro, DVCpro50 and DVCproHD
Panasonic's formats.
They all use exactly the same tape medium but the tape runs faster through the mechanism for the higher quality formats.
Tech specs
- DVCPRO = 25Mbit/s 4:1:1
- DVCPRO50 = 50Mbit/s 4:2:2
- DVCPRO100 = 100Mbit/s 4:2:2
P2
Recording of DVCpro, DVCpro50 or DVCproHD onto PCMCIA-sized solid state memory cards.
P2 to hard disk
- http://www.spec-comm.com/cineporter.php
- Focus Enhancment's press-release about a FireStore direct-to-disk system for the HVX200
Cameras
- Panasonic AJ-HDC27 - DVCproHD, variable frame rate
Betacam
MPEG2/IMX
HDV
Tech specs
- Chroma subsampling = 4:2:0
- Bitrate = 25 megabits per second
the 'prosumer' high definition format, recording high definition video onto miniDV tape using MPEG2 compression
HDCAM
Tech specs
- Chroma subsampling = 3:1:1
- Resolution recorded to tape = 1440 x 1080
Cameras
- Sony HDW-F900, 1920x1080 sensors
- Sony HDW-750P
- Sony HDW-730s
HDCAM SR
Tech specs
- Chroma subsampling = 4:4:4
D1
D5 HD
Uncompressed
- Post production is often done uncompressed
- It's now becomming possible to capture uncompressed, too
Preface: data versus video
Formats like 2k and 4k are considered "data" rather than "video". A scanner which produce 2k files from film negative are called "data scanners" as apposed to "telecines". Why? The main difference between "data" and "video" is that "data" doesn't use any chroma subsampling and is always RGB (as apposed to a video colour space like YUV). I.E. data is always 4:4:4 RGB.
Advantages of using uncompressed
- No compression artifacts
- Maintain full latitude (useful if the footage will be graded)
- Very little processing required
Disadvantages of using uncompressed
- Requires lots of storage
- Requires very fast hard disk
Uncompressed formats
- HD <= 1920x1080
- 2k = 2048x1556
- 4k =
- 6k =
- 8k =
see Table of Formats for more details.
Film style electronic cameras
Viper
Arri D-20
- 1920x1080
Panavision Genesis
- 1920x1080
Films made with the Genesis
- Scary Movie 4
- Superman Returns
Kinetta
Dalsa Origin
- 12-stops lattitude
- 4k resolution
Direct to Disk Recording (DDR)
Hard disks for use with DV cameras
- Formax Oxygen (250GB hard disk, good value for money, plugs into a DV camera)
- FireStore
- DVRack software turns a laptop into a hard disk recorder and monitoring system
Hard disks for the JVC GY-HD100 HDV camera
- JVC DR-HD100 recorder records audio, timecode, video, all over firewire. 40 and 80GB capacities for >3 and >7 hrs of HDV recording.
- HD or SD recording
- SD DV25 as .dv, AVI type 1 or 2, 2 type 24p, QuickTime 30i or 24p (and other AVI formats as well for Matrox etc.), in HD it records 720p24, p25, p30 .m2t files for NLE systems
Hard disks for the Panasonic HVX200 DVCproHD camera
- Focus DTE FS100DTE