Composite vrs. Firewire Transfer

[tfunch24]

I recently transferred some S8 footage via composite and firewire. You can compare and contrast the two clips here: http://www.angelfire.com/indie/tfunch24/test.avi

The white mark on the left edge of the digital firewire clip is not a telecine artifact--it's the right edge of the sprocket hole. And I know about the flicker in the DV clip, too--my camera was set to the wrong shutter speed.

The only other problem I had was that the analog camcorder has a greater optical
zoom (32X) compared to that of the digital camcorder (15X). Therefore, the
composite image is more cropped than the firewire image

Feel free to comment.

Tom

[paul]

The VHS looked better to me, colours were more "full" than in the fire wire one. Didn't look like exposure settings were the same of both camera's. Wonder if your setup makes good comparing possible.

Paul

[crimsonson]

The VHS was pretty good - though slightly underxposed (on the video not S8 cam) and showing limited contrast range (expected of video). The grain is bigger however, that may be from the compression- dont know.

The firewire cam was OVERexposed - you may want to drop the iris to about 1/2 stop or more. The grain is smaller. The contrast also is smoother even though it was blown.

Try both again and you will get better results, though I still think the firewire will come up (or can come up) with much better images.

FYI - the middle zoom range of the lens is almost always the sweet spot (if your cam is 15x zoom, use around 7x zoom). It will give the best performance. Same with iris though for this purpose you probably have less control.

[tfunch24]

The VHS camcorder I used for this experiment was fully automatic, meaning no manual control over the exposure, white balance, focus, etc. I think the Firewire's "overexposure" might be a result of compression--I used the Cinepak codec. The uncompressed clip looks a titch darker.

I'm using the Microsoft's firewire DV codecs that came installed on my computer, FYI.

Having watched the original film projected, I feel that the DV cam did a better job of capturing the film to video. I shot the film at ten o'clock in the morning on a bright sunny day. In the DV clip, it looks like a sunny morning while in the VHS clip it looks much more like evening is coming on or the late afternoon of an overcast day.

The purpose of this experiment was to see how an "off-the-shelf" consumer analog camcorder would compare with a middle-of-the-road prosumer DV camcorder (the VHS camcorder was an RCA VHS camcorder that I've owned for about five years; the DV camcorder was a Sony DCR-TRV840) in doing telecine transfers. I'm sure someone with a more sophisticated VHS camcorder could do a better job capturing the film than my VHS camcorder.

My setup probably is not the best way to compare composite and firewire, but I just thought I would share the results of my experiment.

The telecine projector is a Moviestuff Video Cinemate 20.

Tom

[tfunch24]

Oh, I forgot to mention in my last post--the overexposure in the firewire clip may have been a result of my DV camcorder not being set to the correct shutter speed. I've transferred other films and they've come out fine.

Tom