OT: Question about HDV capture

p@mast3rs wrote on 1/10/2005, 7:28 PM
One thing I am still unclear on, is HDV capture. Since HDV cameras can use MiniDV tapes to record on, couldnt one use any MiniDV camera to capture HDV from? What I mean is video on a rented HDV cam and then bring home the MiniDV tapes and use my current MiniDV camera to capture the video to hard drive. Wouldnt this work since all you ar doing is transferring data (1's and 0's)?

If I am wrong, could someone explain why so I can finally understand all aspects of HDV.

Comments

Hulk wrote on 1/10/2005, 8:12 PM
Hi. DV records video in a nontemporal compression scheme (each frame can be individually decoded), kind of like mjpeg. HDV records video using temporal based MPEG compression (some frames can only be decoded with information from other frames). The cameras you are referring to will only play tapes that they "know," that is they must compatible be with their programming. Besides the different data, header information, etc... the tracks are laid down in a completely different manner. Really, there are lots of reasons why it won't work.

If you think about it many DVD players won't even play DVD +-R and RWs and they're supposed to be able to play those discs!

It would be nice if the tape transport would just take any tape and spit out the digital information but there is a lot of communication that occurs between the tape transport, camera, and computer during a firewire transfer.

- Mark
p@mast3rs wrote on 1/10/2005, 8:17 PM
Cool. Much thanks. I was wondering if it was feasible. So I guess when renting a camera one also has to allow for time to capture footage as well.