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  1. hey guys, new to the forum, have found some posts really helpful, and thanks to anyone in advance who can shed some insight on this...

    i shot a short documentary on Digital8. i can capture my footage via the DV out into firewire, but am interested in capturing the analog playback for one reason. there's a digital effect on the camcorder called Flash, which plays back at 24 frames per second. i read how the low budget Hall of Mirrors was filmed on digital8 with this effect, and using diffusion filters and applicable lighting, people thought the film was shot on 16mm. because you can apply the digital effect to your footage after you've recorded your footage, i did not apply the effect during shooting, in case i didnt like the flash effect for some reason. i did use different diffusion filters and lighting setups. but i now know and realize after looking through the manual that you cannot apply the digital effect Flash and have it be transmitted through the DV out, only the analog video outs.

    1) so my first question is, does anyone have any insight as to whether this effect on the camcorder would be better than applying the same effect in adobe premiere? (i am currently taking a class in adobe premiere). my original idea was to transfer my footage from the camcorder to the computer digitally, and then also via the analog with the flash effect, and decide which "look" i like better and then transfer all the tapes one way or the other.

    the camcorder's specs in the manual say it has a 1/4 inch CCD at approximately 460,000 pixels, saying Effective: approximately 290,000 pixels. i've been looking at getting a used ADS Tech Pyro A/V Link. here's a link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815255020

    the specs state that this analog capture box has a capture resolution of: NTSC: 720 x 480 @ 30 frames per second.

    2) so since this is a better resolution than my original footage, then shouldn't there be no compression or loss in the video quality? I know the A/V Link has some compression algorithm of its own, but since it's at a substantially better video quality than my original digital8 footage, then there should be no loss whatsoever in video quality, am I correct?

    i'm new to video. as far as i can tell, HDMI Clean is truly uncompressed video, but I cannot find via google any HDMI Clean analog video capture devices. and i assume this is unnecessary due to my logic in question 2. all analog video has a threshold of some digital format where there would be no loss or compression, i just don't know what that digital format is theoretically. like if we call this format digital format X, converting any analog video to a higher digital video quality than digital format X would look no different. they would be identical because the analog video quality has peaked with being converted to digital format X. no higher resolution will make it look any different/better. I hope that makes sense.

    i have some standard 8 film footage that was transferred to VHS that i'm including a small bit of in the short documentary, so i need an analog video capture converter anyway. (obviously i'm not worried about the conversion of the standard 8/VHS footage; i'm fine with its low fidelity aesthetic, but i want the digital8 footage to look as good as possible).

    so i guess my two basic questions are: would the Flash effect in the camcorder possibly look/perform better than applying the effect digitally in adobe premiere or after effects? and if I capture the analog out of my camcorder using the ADS Tech Pyro A/V Link, will my footage remain uncompressed with no loss in video quality? (other than the compression already applied by the camcorder itself when i shot the video footage).

    damn, i just remembered one more question. my digital8 camcorder is a Sony DCR TRV 7000, one of the first ones made without a pull out LCD screen.
    3) does anyone know if this camcorder could work as a pass through device?
    so for the VHS footage, i run the VCR's video outs into the camcorder, hit record with no tape in the camcorder, and run the DV out into my computer. i just dont know if these Sony digital8 camcorders analog outs also work as analog ins. thanks to anyone familiar with this old technology who might know the answer. if the pass through would work for the VHS tape, and the camcorder's Flash effect would be no better than applying the effect digitally later, than i guess i wouldn't need a video capture converter.
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I'm sure others will add their input, but I'll try to go through these stepwise with my $0.02.

    Without reading your manual, it sounds like one cannot apply that "affect" except while the camera is recording, and since you have already recorded your footage (without that in-camera effect), I would expect you to not be able to make use of it. If you want to create an effect, I'm sure Premiere has a load of effects for you to make use of.

    I'm not exactly sure just what you mean by a Flash effect, but on the face of it, it sounds to me like "Image->quick burst of white->frozen image" as if a photo camera were taking a flash photograph. If this IS like what you want, I can guarantee you that ANY decent NLE can do that.

    About effects such as that, I would say: ALWAYS shoot clean shots in the camera/recorder (unless you have a duplicate/spare) and then process in post.

    You don't mention the model #, but knowing D8 cams, none of them are great shakes. I would even say none of them fully utilize the resolution potential of the DV spec (not counting colorspace). The DV spec (for NTSC) is 720x480 = 345,600 pixels. If your cam has more, yet the optical quality is less than DV's, it sounds like it uses the extra sensor pixels for widescreen, anti-shake, low-light improvement, etc.

    However, the DV/Firewire transfer from that camera to a PC is a Lossless process, retaining whatever remaining quality is available to a DV-compressed stream. If you were to output it to Analog and then go back to Digital, you have added 2 generations of colorspace conversion plus the smearing/rez loss due to D->A and A->D cycles, as well as a loss of a generation in compression (unless you were saving from the cap card in Uncompressed/Lossless format). And that is ON TOP of the compression effects from the already-compressed DV stream.
    So even if this analog device is fantastic, I would say it would rarely be the first choice. IT DOESN'T HURT, however, to have an alternative and to be able to compare and choose the better of the 2 (if you can afford the time & money).

    If you did go with the analog capture, you would likely have to choose some form of compression in the capturing app (or drivers). Uncompressed and/or Losslessly compressed is the BEST quality option, but depending on the device, those may or may not be available choices. If they AREN'T available, the chances of your analog chain footage looking BETTER than your DV chain version are very slim, because now you WILL have artifacts from whatever additional compression you've used.

    No matter which way you go, you are capturing Standard Def (SD) footage.I don't know where you are getting this "HDMI Clean" business, but HDMI is a Digital-only uncompressed transmission medium, and is meant primarily for HD footage. Neither of the chains that you've discussed make use of HDMI, nor would they really benefit from its use, since you've only got SD material.

    Since you need an analog cap card for the other stuff, go for it. 8mm footage could have CONCEIVEABLY looked better than regular SD video, but only if the conversion from film-to-tape was done using improved methods and went direct to HD. Yours did not; it now is "VHS quality" regardless.

    ....OK, so I didn't find YOUR manual, but I found a similar model's manual. The "Flash" refers to "Flash Motion", aka similar to Time-lapse or Low-Framerate video. BOTH of these things can be done in Premiere (though it might be a little tricky, and could possibly be better done in something like Virtualdub or AVISynth). And this kind of effect should IMO almost NEVER be done in-camera, because you'll never get back those lost frames, should you need them later.
    I don't know about your cam, but a number of the D8 cams have a feature known as "Analog Pass-through" (though there might be different nomenclature for it in the manual). This feature allows you camera to also serve as a Analog to Digital converter (and thus sending a LIVE dv stream out of the Firewire cable). This could override the necessity of getting a separate analog capture card, as you could then ALSO capture all your analog material as DV-based footage. Sorry, without the manual specific to your model, I couldn't say whether it does or doesn't. And I couldn't find that particular model listed on the Sony site.

    What does your manual say?

    Scott
    Last edited by Cornucopia; 7th Mar 2014 at 00:44.
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  3. Older DV and D8 camcorders with 24 fps modes shot 24p but packaged it (on the tape) as 30i with 2:3:3:2 pulldown. You then used software on the computer to restore the 24p frames. Otherwise, you cannot cleanly convert 30i or 30p video to 24p. Also, you cannot send 24p over a composite or s-video cable -- no device would be able to display or capture it, analog NTSC video is always 59.94 fields per second, captured as 29.97 interlaced frames per second. So you should forget about 24p if you didn't shoot the video in 24p mode.

    Capturing the camcorder's analog output will only degrade the video. Forget that too.
    Last edited by jagabo; 7th Mar 2014 at 08:06.
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  4. Member 2Bdecided's Avatar
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    You can probably simulate this "Flash" mode in software. You'd losslessly capture your Digital8 source via firewire to DV-AVI and go from there. There are AVIsynth scripts that will come close, and people are always applying the fake-film effect to video these days. It rarely actually looks like film IMO. At least you can get 30fps or (with luck) 24fps cleanly this way. As jagabo hints above, going via analogue to capture what the camera is doing may not give you clean frames - this can be overcome, but is another hurdle you can do without.


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_of_Mirrors_(2001_film)

    The cinematic lighting and diffusion filter needed to be used when filming.


    As you are new, start with small expectations and do your best. If you want an AVIsynth script to convert 60i to 24p, have a google, and if you get stuck, ask. Or just use the "film" look filter in whatever you have.

    Keep your original DV-AVI footage.

    Cheers,
    David.
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  5. Multimedia storyteller bigass's Avatar
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    Others have said it longer and in more detail, but you're not going to get better raw footage from your camcorder than by transferring it by firewire as plain DV. Do the rest in post, but get your original video bit-for-bit as recorded by using that firewire cable.
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