Video capture cards?

Being a rookie at most here, my question ia do Kona cards or the likes of Aja etc. improve Mini DV video before, during or on export? They don't un-compress as I can tell, they just improve capture abilities , real time effects etc when editing, is this correct. Thanks for any imput.

A capture card for DV is really unnecessary. You cannot improve on the signal, as the compression occured when it was recorded to tape. What it can do is capture as uncompressed, so that during the color correction phase the color space improves and less quality is lost when you render. But it doesn't add anymore RT effects.

Also allows you to output to non-dv formats like digibeta.


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"What it can do is capture as uncompressed, so that during the color correction phase the color space improves and less quality is lost when you render"

"Capture uncompressed", so the card does do something to mini DV upon capture, this is what I don't understand? Does FCP compress upon cature? Also how much is lost from rendering, sorry if this doesn't make sense, just trying to figure out the if I need a card, probably not.

If you are Capturing / Laying Off DV, you don't need a capture device...just FCP and a firewire cable to your camera / deck.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

newptfot Wrote:
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> "Capture uncompressed", so the card does do
> something to mini DV upon capture, this is what I
> don't understand? Does FCP compress upon cature?

Yes...if you capture DV via a capture card as Uncompressed, you are compressing the image...but EVER SO SLIGHTLY. If you capture via firewire, there is no recompression. The difference is, that when you add filters and render, the DV footage captured via firewire gets compressed...worse than if you capture uncompressed and add filters and render. The DV compression is worse when you render than an uncompressed one is.

> Also how much is lost from rendering, sorry if
> this doesn't make sense, just trying to figure out
> the if I need a card, probably not.

Dammit Jim I am a creative editor, not a computer programmer. Or Video engineer. I don't know, I just know it is worse to color correct and render in a DV 4:1:1 colorspace, than in an uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2 color space. Graeme can explain this better, but if you search the forums (for Graeme's posts...he posts about this a lot) then you'll find your answer.


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