How to know the exact fps number from the "memory" mode through firewire? How to record the video through NLE i.e. Adobe premiere Pro 1.5? What screen resolution will be recorded? i.e. 720x480 or photo mode 2000 x 1700?

TIA
Leigh

Take a one second clip of the video, zoom in a lot in a NLE, and using the next frame key, count the frames in the one second clip.

I doubt the resolution it captures at is higher but that's something to look into.

Hi Ben,

How you capture the video footage through 1394? Just create normal project in adobe premiere pro? No need special settings for the project?

I failed, premiere complain about play slowness.

Regards
Leigh

Yup. Capture in the footage as if you were transferring from tape--but obviously it will be live footage.

No, I failed. Premiere Pro complained about "play slowness" and no frame was captured, but if I switched to live footage, it is obviously ok.

Regards
Leigh

Well I tried it myself, and here's what I basically discovered:

The camera, whether or not it's in card or tape mode, will output at regular 720 resolution. It's the part of the camera hardwire-wise that does this, so there's no changing that or getting better resolution, sorry. You have to have a DVX100a and the Andromeda mod to get this, and they perform surgery on your camera for that to work.

In most cameras, the card mode is a preview output only. The quality difference is minimal at best. Heck, I even had to deinterlace the Card mode footage to get it to look halfway decent.

Card Mode Frame Capture

Tape Mode Frame Capture

The images recorded by photo mode are different resolution jpegs and compression qualities, if a particular camera outputs in this mode DV capture won't work. Even if all cameras output at DV resolutions, it might be worth checking out if the output is true 4:2:2 or 4:4:4, or at a lower compression (before the software codec re-compresses it to standard Mini-DV, it maybe there is no capture mode that doesn't do this). So there is a couple of things worth checking out.

You do need a better video card, maybe an HD capture card to see if you can get better quality footage through this method. Again, mine is looking great, so I have no complaints - but I do want to try with a better capture card.

The camera doesn't and can't ouput its picure mode quality as a stream of video. you can use a regular firewire port and capture as usual if you want HD capture; the only thing that changes is the driver used software-wise. You can get an HD update of Premiere Pro from Adobe's website. But the video stream, at least from a GL2, is most certainly not the quality of its picture mode.

Some the people in some of the other forums might have these cards and cameras. You could use some HD TV's that will give you stats on it's info display function (sometimes the wrong ones) to get some idea. Does any of these TV's have a real freeze frame function?