Z1 to hard drive

[Jeff Mack]

Thanks to Mannie at Vasst, I confirmed with sony that the z1 outputs 480p, 480i and 1080i UNCOMPRESSED through it's component outs. Now my problem is that my tv broadcast station thinks that the compressed HDV will not look good enough for them to broadcast. When I heard about the uncompression, I thought this might get me in.

Anybody can tell me how to capture uncompresssed?

Jeff Mack

[Rob Lohman]

Welcome aboard DVInfo.net Jeff! First a few things:

1) I have moved your thread to the Z1 forum

2) this topic has been discussed in this Z1 forum already:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=39624
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=38335
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=37427
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=36735
etc..

3) if your statement is true, you will *ONLY* get uncompressed out if you record it directly to a computer and not first to tape, so you need to have a computer that can store uncompressed fast enough with you ALL THE TIME (which usually is not doable for TV if you are doing news for example)

4) "my tv broadcast station thinks". This doesn't help anyone. Thinking something is good or not good does not get you anywhere. You guys should run tests. Most people seem to be very impressed with the HDV footage, it has even been used in a split second on the show JAG (which airs in HD)

5) is the station airing in HD? If not, the it doesn't matter anyway

6) do you know what the datarate for for 1440x1080 uncompressed in 8 bit is? Around 230 MB/s (yes, megabytes per second). There is almost no system that can handle that.

You will need a HD capture board with components in which is
very expensive. You will probably not find much if any true
uncompressed HD boards, but more MJPEG boards (or other
codecs).

All in all in my opinion you should not go down this path. It will
costs tons of money and time and I doubt it will give you that
much better quality.

Don't underestimate the power of point-n-shoot so to speak.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

There are lots of options here, but first thing I'd do is submit a piece of work to the station without telling them how it was shot.
Next, a 4:2:2 compressed file generated by compressed HD looks great, has been stacked up against very high end cameras. Rather than talking about it, go shoot it, do it, edit it, output it, view it.
As Rob mentions, it's expensive to go uncompressed. While I wouldn't put it into the "ton of money" category, it's gonna cost you at least 25K by the time you buy an uncompressed card, SCSI RAIDS to manage the media, etc, etc. And, as Rob mentioned, you'd be shooting to the computer, not to tape.
However;
There are systems that sustain the necessary data rate, and it is doable. We'll be showing a product at NAB that supports this flow, and you'll see other similar products at NAB as well. (Uncompressed input, HD/SDI output)