Capture uncompressed

[Bill Anderson]

Is it possible to capture FireStore Raw Data to an uncompessed NLE Quick Time environment? - In the same sense that we capture "uncompressed" DV into 10 bit for heavy effects work. If so do we still need a special configuration of Video cards and fast arrays? Transfer rate?
Thank's for any info on this topic.
Bill Anderson.

[Rob Lohman]

I'm not following your question. DV is not 10 bit nor uncompressed.
A firestore will just store what it gets from the camera over
firewire which is plain DV.

You cannot go any better with any DV cam since it only has DV
out (and analog).

[Bill Anderson]

Rob it's not that uncommon to capture DV to an "uncompressed' 10 bit environment in order to sustain as little degradation as possible with heavy effects and renderings, and subsequently output to film or i.e digibeta etc.
I can't quite figure out if that option is still open with the firestore drive. Can it deliver the larger bit rate for so called uncompressed environments etc? I think I might be making the mistake of veiwing the drive as a tape deck rather than a holding device which is simply accessed by the nle.
Any thoughts?

[Rob Lohman]

Well you might capture to uncompressed 10 bit but that still does
not give you anymore starting bitdepth since DV is 8 bit. So unless
you have a camera with uncompressed SDI out I don't see how
you can gain anything. Ofcourse, once it is in that format you have
more room to play in, but that can also be done after a DV
capture so that doesn't change a thing.

Again, a DTE device simply records the signal from the camera
which is DV in this case. Yes it is also a normal drive so if you
hook it up to a computer you can put whatever you want on the
disc. The DTE will however not know what to do with anything
it doesn't understand.

So yes you can store an uncompressed 10 bit file format on that
drive if you wanted to. But it I don't see what this will gain you
since you can use any drive you want to do that.

[Bill Anderson]

Rob you can not "use any drive" to capture or work in an 10 bit environment. Most stock drives are simply not capable of handling the added bit fate, which is considerably more than DV firewires 3.6 MB/sec. "Faster" or array drives are usually required for "uncompressed" work. And I am still not sure whether this hard drive will afford the possibility of working in an equivalent manner. Again, I might be missing something obvious here, but whatever that is it is not the benefit of working in 10 bit even though DV is 8 bit.

[Rob Lohman]

I have to disagree there Bill. I can do uncompressed 10 bit with
a harddisk that does 1 MB/s if I wanted to. It just wouldn't be
realtime. Now that's not something you have said.

Uncompressed 10 bit will take approx. 37 MB/s. So if you want
to do it realtime then you will either have to use a disk array
indeed or go with a lossless compression codec.

All I said was you can STORE the information on such a drive
if you wanted to. I've never said it would be fast enough or
large enough (37 MB/s fills up a drive FAST).

Still not sure why you would want to do this and looking from
your last line in your previous post neither do you Bill?

But back to the original question. I've re-read it and perhaps
have a better idea at what you are doing or wanting to do.

It sounds like you have a camera that you hook up to some
uncompressed 10-bit system via I presume an analog connection
(could also be firewire, but those systems rarely use it).

Then you want to know if you can also do this with a DTE device?

Please try to describe the workflow as detailed as possible please.

[Bill Anderson]

Rob, you seem to miss the point of working in an "uncompressed" environment. But why I, or anyone else, would choose to do this is moot. My query was aimed at whether this device would allow for this workflow and not "why". There are many valid reasons to decide on an "uncompressed 10 bit" workflow and you should understand this. Does this device's capture rate or any other factor preclude this being a viable option?

I can bring DV tape aquisition to my NLE at 10 bit uncompressed. Can I perform this with this hard drive? When I talk about an 10 bit DV environment to anyone with the most rudamentary knowledge of video I can safely assume that they understand the ramifications. And safely (usually) assume that they know that this involves more than just a 10 bit process, or for that matter a 16 bit process that we commonly use in Photoshop etc.

Can you tell me of a 1 MB/sec hard drive capable of capturing 10 bit "uncompressed video? - I am all ears.
I admit that there might be something obvious that I do not understand with this method of capture as it might (or might not) translate to a
10 bit 4:2:2 environment and that is why I have aked this reasonably simple question. Reading between the lines my guess would be that I continue to use tape for any "upconversions". ???

[Barry Green]

The drive can only capture what the camera puts out. All DV cameras output compressed 8-bit DV on the firewire. So that's what the drive will capture.

No camera (with the possible exception of the SDX900) outputs anything other than compressed 8-bit DV over the firewire.

[Rob Lohman]

Bill: I don't know what else I can say. Either one of us or the
both of us do not understand what the other is talking about.

I'm not so interested in the why either. I'm interested in trying
to understand where you are coming from and what you are
trying to do. It is often the case that people ask the "wrong"
question (not saying you do!).

In the end it's just a harddisk with a system around it, but from
a camera it can only capture 8-bit DV as Barry and myself have
pointed out. Can you transform this to 10-bit uncompressed,
sure. No problem. Can you store this back on the device from
a computer. Yep, no problem as well. Will it be fast enough /
realtime (this might be your "does it work" line). No.

I understand very well what the advantages of 10-bit are. I
also understand very well that most people do not like to work
in uncompressed for various reasons (harddisk speed and
storage requirements). I also know that a lot of applications
cannot work in more than 8 bits unless you go to professional
systems.

Again I was (and still am) trying to understand the exact
question and what the workflow is. Perhaps I'm just not
understanding it. But from the lack of other people responding
in this thread (besides Barry above) I don't know.

[Bill Anderson]

Thanks Barry and Rob for your input. I do understand that this is a drive like most others and that it will capture what the camera delivers: 8 bit DV
4:1:1. NTSC. But then so does tape, and yet it can be captured to a 10 bit uncompressed environment for, hell, whatever reason.

Rob, regarding the disc drive in question, you state, "Can you transform this to 10-bit uncompressed, sure. No problem."

Now we might be getting somewhere. How WOULD YOU transform this to "10 bit uncompressed" ? For output to, for arguments sake, Digi Beta.
Thanks again.

[Rob Lohman]

With the right sofware. For example, if you have FCP HD you can
simply load the footage in there and export to an uncompressed
10-bit format (as I understand it, I don't have FCP myself).

I don't own any software myself that can do this (as I said in
my previous post most software still works in 8-bit!). I can easily
export to 8-bit uncompressed for example, that's no problem.

When you say: "and yet it can be captured to a 10 bit uncompressed environment"

If I write some software I could even capture in 16 bit uncompressed
if I wanted to. You can *ALWAYS* expand footage to uncompressed
or to more bits whatever the source is (with the right tools).

The question is why would you want to and why do you need it.
Again, there isn't a lot of software in the pro-sumer market that
supports that. Only higher end gear.

It sounds like you have worked, or know someone who does,
with a system that allows you to capture in 10-bit uncompressed.
This is probably a professional system as well. And my guess is
that it is also analog only (or perhaps SDI). It's hard to compare
such systems because the DTE devices we are talking about are
native DV. So you can't hook them up to such a capture board.

But again, with the right tools (which such a system probably
has, not 100% sure on that) you can convert the file in the
digital world to 10-bit uncompressed.

[Bill Anderson]

Thanks Rob. Yes indeed I have access to a FCP system which, unlike my own, can capture to an 10 bit uncompressed environment through the usual means of fast array drives, video card etc. My reasoning (if you can call it that) was that there might just be a way, with the FireStore drive, to bypass the need for arrays and video card etc. and yet work in such a desirable environment. Desirable? Well, if you plan on doing a lot of effects, collor correction and chroma keying, it certainly helps to work in an 10 bit 4:2:2 color space. And it mostly has to do with the destructive nature of rendering, which is far less pronounced in this space. And when you're out to film, this is certainly not a bad thing.
Again, thanks for hanging in there.
I had this idea stuck in my head and couldn't quite resolve whether there was a way to cheat the footage into this space without the usual hardware.

[Mark Whittle]

Quote: "I can bring DV tape aquisition to my NLE at 10 bit uncompressed."

Bill,

Just out of interest, How do you ingest from tape to your uncompressed system?
That is, how is the tape deck attached to the editing machine for capture?

Mark

[Bill Anderson]

Mark there are various video cards on the market that, once installed into your computer, will allow you to capture SDI from your deck, (if it has SDI) with a BNC type video cable. The data rate is increased to the point where you will need a way to sustain capture speeds, which in turn means faster drives than are generaly found in off the shelf computers. The drives are stacked in various configurations, "arrays". It's not an inexpensive setup and "uncompressed" is not always required. Check out Marco Solorio's article
"DEPRESSED ABOUT UNCOMPRESSED?" @ www.kenstone.net Final Cut Pro site.
Hope this helps.

[Joshua Starnes]

<<<-- Originally posted by Bill Anderson : Mark there are various video cards on the market that, once installed into your computer, will allow you to capture SDI from your deck, (if it has SDI) with a BNC type video cable. The data rate is increased to the point where you will need a way to sustain capture speeds, which in turn means faster drives than are generaly found in off the shelf computers. The drives are stacked in various configurations, "arrays". It's not an inexpensive setup and "uncompressed" is not always required. Check out Marco Solorio's article
"DEPRESSED ABOUT UNCOMPRESSED?" @ www.kenstone.net Final Cut Pro site.
Hope this helps. -->>>

I think I understand what you're asking, Bill. And, unfortunately, I think the answer is no - at least, not without some major modifications to the Firestore.

As I understand them to work (keeping in mind that I've only used one once, at a show) the video is already 'captured' as files on the Firestore's harddrive. That means, I think, that you're not going to be able to bring it directly into a different space than native DV. You will almost certainly have to bring the DV files into FCP and use it to convert them to uncompressed 10-bit (or use some similar workaround).

The only way I can see that you would be able to go directly to uncompressed 10-bit in FCP from the Firestore would be if the Firestore were actually capturing in uncompressed 10-bit, which I'm pretty sure isn't possible right now.

You might try calling the manufacturer and asking them, however.