Comments

TielBr wrote on 12/15/2004, 12:53 AM
Not farmiliar with that particular camera, but have used Pro decks, and there are 2 versions of Pro media of this type. Both are reffered to as DVC-pro.

I know the record decks we used were Sony DVC-pro decks, and could accept the standard DVC and the smaller version used in the cameras. The flap on the front of the deck had 2 openings.

I'm not sure how it accomplished physically handling the smaller cassetts, but the fact that the same deck plays both leads me to believe that the media inside the cassettes to be the same, and therefore a physically wider tape than the consumer Mini DV.

Sory I can't be more concrete at the moment, as I just run camera on a freelance basis. I can ask the Technical Director from that shoot if you like to really know though. This is probaly like when S-VHS came out years back... Based on the same idea, but at a higher resolution.

farss wrote on 12/15/2004, 2:38 AM
Pretty much so. The camera shoots good 16:9, excellent CCD matrix and accepts broadcast lenses, so you could spend more on the glass than the camera if that's your thing.
There's also the DSR 570, now going pretty cheap as Sony are discontinuing it.

None of these are technically 'pro' according to some in the industry as they're DV25 which means 4:1:1, if you're in NTSC land. Then again if you're in NTSC land I serious doubt if more than 1% of the TVs are good enough to see the difference between 4:1:1 and 4:2:2. Remember a lot of stuff in the US is still I'm told shot on SP cameras (can't give 'em away down here).

But where this kind of camera sees a lot of service is in ENG (particularly the 570 as it shoots DVCAM), risk to camera is fairly high so performance for dollar is of more concern than ultimate video quality.

A lot of people knock VD25, I think part of the problem is that very few of the cameras used to shoot it can realise it's full potential, well that and not enough care is taken over how it's shot.

Bob.
winrockpost wrote on 12/15/2004, 6:59 AM
Pro has as much to to do with the videographer as the camera,, I'll take a good shooter with a 5K mini dv cam over an inexperienced shooter with a digibeta any day.
skibumm101 wrote on 12/15/2004, 8:51 AM
you can give me one? hehe
Coursedesign wrote on 12/15/2004, 8:54 AM
"I serious doubt if more than 1% of the TVs are good enough to see the difference between 4:1:1 and 4:2:2."

Closer to 99% I think, but it very much depends on what is being shown.

However, people don't sit there and think "this picture doesn't look like it was shot in ABC's studio" unless the content is criminally boring.

When you see crystal clear footage from major networks, it's shot not only in 4:2:2 but also uncompressed. Standard definition can look pretty astonishing when everything is set up correctly.

Don't judge either SD or HD by what you see via cable or satellite, these downgrade the signal through heavy compression (as much as 70:1 for HD content).

I'm enjoying my TV over the air (remember antennas?) and the picture is *astonishingly* good (as is the price, I always liked a good deal... :O).

For feature films I cross a fairly narrow street and get DVDs from Blockbusters for the moment, although I may switch to Netflix (rent DVD by mail). I only buy very few DVDs that may not become available again, or are not available for rent. For vanilla films, to pay even $10 now is too much as you can bet your sweet bippy most feature films will be available in a string of new formats as the years go by...

I have seen used Panasonic DV50 cameras go for $6K on eBay, these are models used at the Winter Olympics in Utah.

Bob is right though, to take advantage of DV50 you need to work harder on camera setup especially (do you know what a chip chart is?) and the tape decks are pricier than DV25 by far.

Next solution is to shoot direct to hard drive, DV50 is pretty low bandwidth so you don't need a mega PC.