HDV Canon Vs. HDMI Sony For Chromakey!

[Derek Green]

Originally Posted by Mike Schell

The native HDMI output from all these cameras is 1920x1080i YCbCr 4:2:2 with 8-bits of resolution (same as HD-SDI).

Awesome. Thanks for answering that.

HDMI does not support a 1440x1080 video format.

Good to know.

I am working on an update to our HDMI white paper with a compatibility chart for playback of Sony, Canon and JVC tapes in the variious camcorder and decks.

That would be very handy I'm sure.

[Derek Green]

Originally Posted by Ken Hodson

I have never heard of anyone doing live capture using SheerVideo codec. It would still need a fair amount of drive speed and space. ProspectHD is a proven codec for this application. It can do 10-bit although only 8-bit is needed. Its downside is high price and a fast PC for capture. I think it can capture to a single 7200rpm drive, but who wouldn't want to use a cheap big RAID 0, for overall speed.

I'll be honest I have zero experience with the Sheer codec. I just came across the website the other day and it claims on the homepage that you capture HD video using a two-disk SATA RAID, while encoding or decoding on the fly in real time. Do you have experience capturing with the Sheer? Did it not work for you? Seems like an inexpensive solution if it works.

[Ken Hodson]

Never used it for capture, only in AE for render when I was beta tester for the PC version a while back. I notice that they do now promote the codec for HD capture on a two drive array on their web site, as you say. That is exciting news given its lossless quality and price. It is hard to pin down the numbers but it seems to be a 55-60% space savings over uncompressed 4:2:2. This is still a fair sized chunk, but might now be the leading candidate for a home brew portable uncompressed capture PC. Which is what we all want isn't it?

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Ken Hodson

I have never heard of anyone doing live capture using SheerVideo codec. It would still need a fair amount of drive speed and space. ProspectHD is a proven codec for this application. It can do 10-bit although only 8-bit is needed. Its downside is high price and a fast PC for capture. I think it can capture to a single 7200rpm drive, but who wouldn't want to use a cheap big RAID 0, for overall speed.

I've done live SDI (raw) capture to the Sheer codec with a single SATA drive. I can only capture to the outer sectors of the disk for maybe up to 10 min. without dropping frames, but 2 drive SATA raid can definitely do it...and the quality is truly lossless compared to uncompressed.

Edit: btw, the codec is 50% off for a limited time right now. Well worth the $!

Here's an email I got from bitjazz:

Hi Barlow Elton,

anniversary sale:
To celebrate the 4th anniversary of SheerVideo, we're offering a discount of 50% through January 14 through our online store:

http://www.bitjazz.com/en/shop/sheervideo/
new website:
We've completely redesigned our website for ease of use:

http://www.bitjazz.com/
new version: v2.4.9
The latest version of SheerVideo fixes important bugs on Windows and Mac:

Windows color-shift fix
Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 crasher fix
For details, see:

http://www.bitjazz.com/en/support/sh...ease_notes.php
download:
You can download the latest version through our website:

http://www.bitjazz.com/en/products/sheervideo/
Mac universal edition: soon
We plan to release a “universal binary” edition for Intel+Mac by the end of January. Customers who buy SheerVideo Pro for Mac OS X now will receive a free upgrade to the universal edition.