F900R Tape vs Flash card

[Miguel Bunster]

Hi,

I am shooting a movie pretty soon in the F900R and originally we were going to tape but Ideally I wanted to go to P2 cards though the panasonic deck to get 1920x1080 at 4:2:2

 

The production company has a Nanoflash recorder (or something like that) that takes 32GB cards and what we will be recording from the F900r is 1920x1080 at 4:2:2 at 160mb/s not 220mb/s because of the cards limitation.

 

So my questions is what is better. I understand and know 4:2:2 is better over 3:1:1 but I am curious how compressed is the higher color space of 4:2:2 at 160mb/s vs 3:1:1 at 140mb/s and as well I think the tape records 1440x1080 and the card 1920x1080 out of the HDSI.

 

So is better to go with the higher color space and pixel count at a similar data rate or go to tape?

 

best and thanks!

m

[Phil Rhodes]

It's very difficult to get a solid idea of how good P2 is on paper, because Panasonic don't seem very clear on how it works themselves!

 

I think tests would be required to figure out what's best here. AVC Intra is a subset of h.264, but which overlooks quite a lot of that codec's compression techniques to make it easier to handle. While this is valid, you've then really just got a per-frame DCT codec, which is exactly what HDCAM is, and you're asking that DCT codec to fit a chunk more data into it than HDCAM does. While the data rate is somewhat higher than HDCAM, I think you'll find benefits marginal in this case, and the added equipment burden of using P2 might not be worthwhile.

 

There may of course be extenuating circumstances, such as a lack of access to HDCAM decks, that makes P2 more attractive.

 

P

[Miguel Bunster]

phil,

thanks for your response.

 

Yes I agree with what you said.

But this mini deck is so small is ridiculous. It hooks to the back of the camera and thats it. I think money wise for the small production it makes more sense vs the tapes need plus the HDCAM deck. The expenses are pretty much the same.

 

Originally i we were going to tape but I emntioned I would like to use the P2 deck and get 4:2:2 for better color correction range and the rental house got this other deck called something I cant remember but s like a Nanomicro deck and goes to flash cards. It can record up to 220mb but the cards they have can go only to 160mb/s.

 

I think everything is set to go this way its just that I found alter it went 160mb/s and as you said is a lot of info to put in a smaller data rate.

 

From a practical point of view is not more complicated to go with the cards.

 

I will play with ti tomorrow but we start next week.

 

any other ideas would be great!

thank you

m