Digitizing Uncompressed DV

Well, DV by its very nature is a compressed format.

You're really looking for some kind of "loseless" transfer of the data from your tapes to whatever format you're gonna be working in. Ideally, you might go firewire from source to your master/record device.

Of course, I'm just guessing as to what you're intending to do. Are you getting ready to edit, and simply need to digitize or "capture" your DV media for that purpose? If so, what program are you using to edit?

Some more info would be helpful.

Tim Scarpino

Tim Scarpino

Are you working in HD by chance?

Tim

Tim Scarpino

Well just as there is no unscrambling an egg there's no "uncompressing" a DV source. You have a DV signal that is compressed 5:1 25 Mbit. You can certainly play that out over SDI and capture to uncompressed via a Kona card- but all you'll be doing is wrapping a huge data pipe around a tiny fixed one. You don't get any of that compression back. DV is a decent format but it can't be undone. The only way to get uncompressed video is to shoot out of a camera via SDI directly to an uncompressed RAID and avoid DV in the first place. I think I'm going to write a blog about this because it seems to be a very common misconception in the editor world.

Noah

My FCP Blog. Unlock the secrets of the DVX100, HVX200 and Apple Color. Now featuring the HD Survival Guide!
http://www.callboxlive.com

Sure it can be done- you can't expect miracles though. For the best hardware upconversion I'd go to a transfer house like Fotokem and do it on a Terranex box.

Noah

My FCP Blog. Unlock the secrets of the DVX100, HVX200 and Apple Color. Now featuring the HD Survival Guide!
http://www.callboxlive.com

Yeah that was a great piece. mediastorm.org is incredible for that kind of high-end doc work.