Buy The Hd250 Or Wait For The Hd200

[Daniel Patton]

Originally Posted by Scott Harper

Daniel, forgive my ignorance but what does the HDSDI do that's so important except faster uncompressed transfer? I don't think I understand its importance so I would appreciate it if you could enlighten me.

Sott

The image quality you get from SDI and direct to drive setup (avoiding tape and HD) going either ucomprssed or DVC PRO HD is night and day in image quality over the component out. Tonight I tried some back to back runs through both SDI and Component, it looked like a different camera when comparing these two outs. I mean wow. SDI was much cleaner, sharper. The component was soft, and looking out of focus.

I have not tried comparing the SDI footage
against HDV shot to tape and digitize, Pitfalls would be obvious with HDV though

[Warren Gentry]

Originally Posted by Daniel Patton

Sott

The image quality you get from SDI and direct to drive setup (avoiding tape and HD) going either ucomprssed or DVC PRO HD is night and day in image quality over the component out.

That sounds good. Is my understanding correct that if you record to the DR-100 you would/could select DVC PRO HD? How much record time would you get using that codec? Are there pitfalls (time consuming) when editing in FCP with that codec? I have the Kona LH card.

[Daniel Patton]

Warren Gentry,

Sorry but I don't know about the file formats or pitfalls of the DR-100 (other than the more obvious maybe).

When I mention Direct to Drive I'm speaking of Black Magic or Kona via SDI straight to the disk/drive array from the camera. The DR-100 still uses HDV compression, same as tape and is via 1394, so although it saves you time digitizing, from my understanding it does nothing to improve quality of picture like the SDI route.

Sorry to take this Off Topic a bit, so back on.


To answer the original question from Werner Wesp...

If you do not intend to ever use the SDI on the 250 (it's best feature IMO)then it sounds like you can save a few dollars and buy the 200.

[Carl Hicks]

Originally Posted by Warren Gentry

That sounds good. Is my understanding correct that if you record to the DR-100 you would/could select DVC PRO HD? How much record time would you get using that codec? Are there pitfalls (time consuming) when editing in FCP with that codec? I have the Kona LH card.

Warren,

The DR-HD100 records the exact same MPEG-2 data stream as what goes to tape. You have no choice of different codecs, because this unit does not do the encoding (the compression) - the camera does the encoding. Record time with the 40 GB drive is about 3.5 hours; 7 hours with the 80 GB version. The unit can do 30p HDV in the Quicktime format, so it's drag & drop into FCP. 24P Quicktime in HDV will be supported soon via an update.

If you want to record at higher bit rates, like DVCPro HD (100 MB/Sec. DV compression), you can connect the camera to a capture card like a AJA Kona or a BlackMagic Decklink and capture live to FCP. OF course, that ties you down to a "non-portable" shooting situation.