MJPEG Recorder www.FFV.com

[Craig Bellaire]

Yep this seems to what we've been waiting for. 4:2:2 550 line of Resolution and Analoge/Svideo In. It's from www.FFV.com and is due out in 60 days. We've tried our best to find a hard drive 4:2:2 recorder and for some reason this is the only thing we've found. We've tried MJPEG in Premier and FCP and work just fine. USB 2 for drag and drop and quicktime wrapper...So now I'm wondering what you people think.

[Rob Lohman]

If you need an analog recorder this might be fine. Ofcourse the
question remains why you would need an analog portable
recorder. If you only need it in your edit suite there are plenty
of analog <-> DV converters out there.

But if you somehow need it in the field then it might be a good
option if you can't or don't want to use your camera together
with a firestore solution for example.

[Craig Bellaire]

I guess the reason would be that this would be much better quality then DV25, We've had prblems with titles and other graphics that tear at the edges on the screen with DV. This is close to or better then DVCpro 50 but is MJPEG so I guess another question would be is there an up or down side to editing with MJPEG. Remember Matrox built it self on MJPEG but again every one else has gone to some form of DV... Analog cables really isn't a problem for us in the field because we never "Run and Gun"
Thanks

[Rob Lohman]

MJPEG is used A LOT in the analog world. It is THE codec to use
when editing that. So a lot of applications will work fine with it.
Just make sure you have a high quality MJPEG codec on your
machine to work with and do test it out with your NLE.

On the Windows platform the old style (MJPEG) codec are for
the "Video for Windows" API and the newer ones are "DirectShow"
and most applications haven chosen to work with only one of
those interfaces [these days]. There are some out there that
supports both.

[David Lach]

Well I sure ain't the most techno savvy when it comes to this stuff but if the problem is only added graphics, wouldn't it be simpler just to shoot DV, import the footage via firewire, edit, add your titles and graphics and then output your final edited timeline to MJPEG 4:2:2? Or better yet, if you have the hardware power, convert your DV footage to 4:4:4 for editing? Of course this won't help much to get better in-camera color acquisition in the first place but if the problem is just graphics and titles...

Also, what kind of camcorder would be needed to take advantage of an independant 4:2:2 aquisition device such as this? I would bet you'd need unprocessed component outputs on your camcorder as well as an analog component input capable capture card. I fail to see why this would be more of an advantage than just going for a cam that does 4:2:2 like DVCpro. Then again, I'm no expert on the matter so sorry if this seems obvious.

Would someone with a DV cam that has s-video out gain anything using this or would the generation losses due to analog capture in the end negate the advantage of capturing 4:2:2 in the first place?

[Craig Bellaire]

we have an older camera which has a beta cam head. This would help us keep this unit a bit longer and still give us 4:2:2... We also are looking at a new camera but can't get a DVCPRO50 deck, so this looks like it might be the best option the get both. Also we wanted to stay with a hard drive based unit as well. But here are none for 4:2:2 EITHER EXCEPT THIS...Now we have asked why we are so special to need 4:2:2 when the rest of the world is using 4:1:1 DV25.... hhhmmmm... well because I guess if we have the option to get either why not get the better of the two. MJPEG is a digital fotmat and our computers work with it...Also there are Analog to DV converters out there so why not use a analog to MJPEG and get the better quality...But was wondering from everyone if there might be a problem we are over looking. thanks again for the input....

[Dan Euritt]

since you are currently recording in betacam, going from that component format to y/c i/o will be a step down... why not just stay in component mode?

the price on 8 or 10-bit uncompressed i/o cards has dropped a lot recently... i bet that you could do that with a cheap drive array, and come out ahead on the quality end of it... i think that those cards have component i/o.

your delivery format would also be a factor, of course... if you are talking about ending up in dvd, there will be a bunch of format converting going on with the mjpeg recorder... i can't see an advantage to 4:2:2 in that situation, especially if it's going to end up as dv anyway.

the other thing that i'd be wondering about is your dv titler... i don't have a problem with the titlers i'm using for dv.

[Craig Bellaire]

we are using the standard titler that comes with premier and FCP.. it seems to be fine for the standard stuff we do....I guess I didn't explain enough in the previous post. sorry The camera we have is a EVW-300... it's a hi8 camcorder with the 327 head, not a dockable and not beta...SO I guess the whole point here is this... we have 20 grand to spend, we can't get a HD camcorder, We can't get a 4:2:2 camera due to not being able to buy a deck, and we really don't want DV or a tape format.. Here is what we want... A new camera with 4:2:2 no tape but hard drive that will work with FCP and Premier... Yes the 390 and 590 cameras are very very nice but again do we want to be stuck with a camcorder? So we are thinking about a new Hitachi z-4000w camera head "Dockable" with this hard drive recorder from FFV.com and it's in 4:2:2 .. Yep I know it's a bit on the crazy side but we just don't want to get stuck with DV 25... and yes DV25 would work for our needs because we work in a hospital. But then again we won't get 20 grand every time a new format comes out either.... SO what'd your thoughts? Thanks again