Re: HD Workflow

Before you get permanantly attached to the cinealta, i would really consider the benefits of a DVCPROHD workflow (including acquisition). i just finished a film on HDCAM, and am personally much more excited about the DVCPRO system because of its ease of use (and a few technical superiorities)


DVCPROHD is way easy to move between the worlds of HD and SD, since it is natively recorded as 29.97 material on tape. Thus, no need for additional 2:3 shenanigans to get it to NTSC is you decide to edit that way, and you can easily (like with a single button!) convert it to 24p by using the Advanced Pulldown option. All this over firewire, nonetheless! Plus, the deck rents for a lot less than a HDCAM deck.

of course, you get less resolution than with the HDCAM, but if you are recording to tape, you actually get BETTER color fidelity on the DVCPRO. HDCAM subsamples its color to 3:1:1, while DVCPROHD (and even DVCPRO50) give you 4:2:2 color subsampling. in laymans terms, HDCAM gives you 1/3 of the color info, while DVCPROHD gives you 1/2 of it. YAY!

Additionally, DVCPROHD is easy to clone tapes with, since it does a data copy via firewire. HDCAM only does 1:1 data copying via SDTI interfaces, which are not exactly common. So dubbing tapes or archiving to tape, etc will cause generational loss unless you are connected via SDTI to a sony Xpri station.

of course, i may be suffering from "the grass is always greener" mentality after having a lot of headaches in the 23.98 to 29.97 back to 23.98 rigamarole. Either system is great for filmmaking, but having been there recently, i would at least try to weigh the options of the whole picture before making a decision.