Re: The second elephant in the room

Chris,

Yeah, Kevin just posted a great response, but that's where I think the confusion is arising from. 100 mega bytes (mb/sec - small b) as opposed to 100 mega bytes (mB/sec - capital B).

As far as 25 mb/sec being the "limit" on mini dv tapes- it's a function of mini dv tapes. You could run the tape at twice the speed to get a DVCPRO50 signal, or at 4 times the speed to get a DVCPRO HD signal, but dv tape is too flimsy to run at four times speed and be reliable.

And, yes, I had posted earlier that it cost $800 per pair of HD record tape heads (Panasonic's cost to build- not even the selling price), and there's 8 pairs ($6400). So, a tape transport that can record HD would be really expensive, and could only take HD tape. There's a camera that already has this, and it's called the Varicam. And it's pretty expensive comapred to the P2 camera. Even with the cost of P2 cards.

One thing, however, that's interesting to think about is that the mini-DV that the P2 camera does record to tape does originate off an HD chip, so it may look better than most mini-dv out there. If it's a downconveted HD signal, I mean.

jeremiah black
dual 2 gig G5
2.5 gigs of RAM
Decklink Extreme capture card