>Perhaps all is not lost in the prosumer movie filming world with the
>Sony MD Discam after reading Graham Baker's link to a story about the MD
>Discam yesterday that got me to thinking. Evidently the MD Discam can
>record movies in Quick Time via the ethernet connection. I hope you all
>will forgive what to some are going to seem amatuerish questions, but
>all of my computer owning experience is limited to WebTV. So, first off,
>can you download your MD film to Quick Time, assemble it from other MD
>film and create a longer movie by digitally splicing on the web. Once
>there, what would you do? Go out from the IEEE1394 Firewire Link to a
>Mini DV Cam and digitally duplicate DV from there? Is Quick Time quality
>film or does it look not much better than MPEG? If so, why bother? What
>kind of computer and software would be required? How much money would
>need to be invested in a desktop or laptop capable of all this? The
>other option besides the MD Discam would be the slightly older Mini DV
>format and the new Sony DCR-PC100. I suppose if you wanted to do what I
>want to do with the MD Discam you would need a DV recorder of some kind
>anyway and I just sold my TRV900. The PC100 has some neat features, a
>1,070,000 pixel multi CCD lens compared to 1,140,000 total pixels on the
>3CCD's of the TRV900. I was told by one of the mail order camera stores
>that in reality the PC100 has a 680,000 pixel lens-the 1,070,000 pixels
>applies only to still photos and then only those stored on a Memory
>Stick. I would hope this were not true. Does anybody know? Sony promotes
>the Carl Zeiss lens as being one of the best features of their Mini DV
>cameras. The MD Discam, since there is no mention of this, must have a
>Sony lens as does the TRV900. I really don't know if there's a
>difference all that much, does anyone here? I have to admit the Carl
>Zeiss name sounds impressive, but what does it really mean? The PC100
>besides the advantage of being small both it and the MD Discam have over
>the TRV900 also has Nightshot, which does not appear on the TRV900 and
>appears not to be on the Sony Discam. I like this feature, although I
>can honestly say I never needed it, the infra red (?) capability offers
>a nice touch and I wish it had been on the TRV900 and added to the Sony
>Discam. Thanks.
It sounds to me like you don't know that the TRV900 and the DCR-PC100 are
actually the same camera, only the PC100 has a different coloured chassis,
has the buttons organised more for a more professional user and uses the
DVCAM tape format (the primary difference between DVCAM and the consumer DV
is that DVCAM runs at a higher tape speed, and i think cliplink comes into
it somehow, too.) So they have the same 3CCD block, and thus the same
resolution, same lens, it's all very similar, and the main difference that
sony pushes is the tape speed, which they say is more reliable under mobile
conditions.
As for your question If you can get a video file onto a computer then you
can probably edit it, using Adobe Premier or Ulead Media Studio Pro, and if
you have a firewire port then you could probably re-compress out to it, but
i'm not sure what quality the MD camera creates the MPEG files to.
I think i read somewhere that you get 20 mins per 650 MB disc, which is much
lower quality than DV, in which you get 10 about mins to 2 GB (so that
comes to about 32.5MB per min of MDcam Vs 204.8MB per min of DV - and that
assumes that the video isn't compressed more for the conversion to QT.)
By my calculations the video on the MDcam is compressed at approx 30:1,
where DV is 5:1, there are artifacts which are readily noticeable on the DV
when you work with it for more than 20/30 hrs, so i'd immagine that 30:1
would be pretty low quality. It is for this reason that to date, tape has
still been the preferred media for aquisition, both analog and digital.
Christopher Spalding
Genius, generally excellent and gifted person.
(ICQ#: 43270049)
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