What's better than firewire for quality?

[macgvyer]

I know that firewire is the only way to get video into your computer from a 3ccd camera. But firewire is not the best quality. The professional production houses get the video into there computers at full high resolution using boards that cost $10,000 or more.
My question is what is the least expensive way to get video into the computer other than firewire, but get full high resolution. There must be boards out there that cost under $1,000

The reason I ask this question is because I just bought a new 3ccd camera and would like to see the quality when I burn a DVD.

[redwudz]

Don't know why Firewire would have anything to do with the quality. It just transfers what your camera puts out. DV on the other hand may be the limitation as far as quality goes. If you want better quality video, you need to have a better quality output from the camera.

[ZippyP.]

Yup, firewire gives you an exact copy of the video that is on the tape, in DV format. Using some other way to tranfer will only reduce the quality. Production houses use higher resolution cameras than consumer grade DV camcorders.

[choirislife923]

I know that firewire is the only way to get video into your computer from a 3ccd camera. But firewire is not the best quality. The professional production houses get the video into there computers at full high resolution using boards that cost $10,000 or more.
My question is what is the least expensive way to get video into the computer other than firewire, but get full high resolution. There must be boards out there that cost under $1,000

The reason I ask this question is because I just bought a new 3ccd camera and would like to see the quality when I burn a DVD.

i think you are a bit confused.

unlike the analog world where Component is better than S-Video which is better than composite which is better than RF, digital is all about transfer speed. Firewire is the fastest with 400mbits, USB2 trailing a little behind. There is no loss of quality from Firewire. The production houses you are thinking about use high-end professional DV camcorders, about $2,000. Even the most widely used pro camcorder (Sony DCR-VX2000) has color depth loss -- this is mainly due to the DV codec compression and the CCD capturing. 3CCD camcorders only makes the color depth loss not as great. The boards you are thinking about are problably mixing boards or color correction boards -- which can be done using software, but production studios use hardware cause it saves time (but its linear editing). As for full resolution, the resolution you get should be 720x525 converted for NTSC or 720x625 converted for PAL (while the standards are this, most DV camcorders do not capture at 525 or 625 but rather they upconvert it to the standards).

[mracer]

Firewire is the best quality transfer from a DV camera to a computer. There is no loss with firewire transfers.

Maybe what you meant is that you want better than DV video. If that's the case, then you have to go beyond the DV format. Here are some options for you to consider.

1. use a D-9 or a DV50 camera recorder and studio VTR instead of standard DV devices. JVC's D-9 (formerly known as Digital-S) and Panasonic's DVCPRO50 use two DV codecs in parallel. The tape data rate is doubled to 50 Mbps (video) and the compression work is split between the two codecs. The result is a 4:2:2 image compressed about 3.3:1. It's visually lossless and utterly gorgeous.

2. Sony's Digital Betacam format camera and studio VTR's for playback via Serial Digital to an AVID Media Composer edit system. Serial Digital from Digital Betacam is unreal quality, much, much better than DV and slightly better than even DV 50. The only way to go higher than this is to shoot High Definition video or 35mm film.

So there are a couple of ways to go way beyond DV, but keep in mind they are very costly.


Edit: I almost forgot this. You can get a professional studio DV/DVCAM VTR from Sony that outputs serial digital format. You can also get serial digital from D-9 and DVCPRO50 studio VTR's. It's the original capture format that makes the difference in video quality. DV is less than DVCPRO is less than Digital Betacam.


Found this on the internet:

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is just barely video and 10 is as good as it gets, you could arrogantly rate assorted formats as follows:

D-5 (10-bit uncompressed digital) 10.0
D-1 (8-bit uncompressed digital) 9.9
Digital Betacam, Ampex DCT 9.7
D-9 (Digital-S), DVCPRO50 9.6
DV, DVCAM, D-7 (DVCPRO), Digital8 9.0
MII, Betacam SP 8.9
1" Type C 8.7
3/4" SP 6.5
3/4", Hi8, SVHS 5.0
Video 8, Betamax 4.0
VHS 3.0
EIAJ Type 1, Fisher-Price Pixelvision 1.0

[Vadah]

So any IEEE1394 "iLink" cable should do the job the same? No quality loss?
I bought today a 10' QVS (generic kind) "iLink" cable to transfer to the mac. I got it at MicroCenter, cost $19.99.
I wouldn't want to loose qualitiy transfering, but it seems like it is just straight data transfer.

[ZippyP.]

So any IEEE1394 "iLink" cable should do the job the same? No quality loss?

Yes.

[burnman99]

What about Sony Digital 8? Is it about the same as DV?

Tbanks!

Rog

[burnman99]

Doh! Just saw it on the list. Thanks anyways!

Rog

[lenti_75]

NOTHING......