A good camera?

[loops]

That's all very well in a studio but running an FCP rig on location seems a bit silly

[choza]

Down here in darkest Africa we find all kinds of weird ways to get around problems. And this one was creatively invented by one of our clients Atomic vfx in Cape Town.
They are using JVC HD-100 HDV cameras which have a HD-component output on the camera which bypasses the MPEG compression between the camera and tape.
They take this HD-component out through a AJA HD-10A convertor which converts HD component into HD-SDI and record direct to disk using FCP/blackMagic capture card.
They claim this gives them a 10bit 4:4:4 image which is remarkably clean and eliminates all the usual problems with trying to pull a key with a 25m/bit image.
Just another way to skin the digital cat

regards
TW.

but the jvc compress the video to 4:2:0 or 4:1:1 and that is the pulled up for the output component or it is capable of going out of component wiyhout compression?
also there should be a little loss in component-->SDI
btw have you heard them arguing about:
Split screen at low light?
dead pixels in the video?
color aberration? ( i saw some pics on the net of this happening near the edges of the pic and was AWWWFUUL)

thx for the feedback
cheers

[TurboWidget]

Hi Loops,
I agree about the FCP rig on location, but frankly anyone who's shooting blue/green screen stuff on location with a DV camcorder deserves the headaches they're creating for themselves.

Choza - as I understand it, the HD output on the HDV camera is a signal prior to it hitting the HDV compression stage. So you get the full 1080 res at (probably) 4:2:2. It's not as good as true HD-CAM imagery, but thats also due to the CCD and lenses found on HDV cameras. But it should be considerably better than the 4:2:0 or 4:1:1 DV delivers.
Another consideration is the value of a perfectly flat lit blue/green screen background. Without seriously professional lighting kits, it's really tough to get a consistant background to pull your key from. An option might be to look at some of the "holoring" type of products out there. Basically it's a blue/green light emitting ring that fits round the lens and your talent/actor stands in front of a reflective material which bounces the light back to the camera. I've seen some of these in action at shows like IBC and the results are pretty good. (It all depends on much the little lady is prepared to let you spend)

TW