Pull MPEG-4 SP bitstream off an HDCAM-SR tape

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hey folks,

Has anyone ever heard of a method to direct stream copy (aka DV "capture") the MPEG-4 video stream of an HDCAM-SR tape? AFAIK it's just vanilla MPEG-4 at an absurdly high bitrate (probably with massive wads of padding)...

Obviously everyone typically works with the HD-SDI output of these decks - aka 10 bit 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 uncompressed video. But I was thinking it would be nice sometimes to capture the video stream as-is..

Am I chasing a pipe dream here?

Derek

[kieranrk]

I saw a massive sample on the internet once that supposedly was a direct copy from the HDCAM-SR tape. Equally it could have been a re-encode.

EDIT: apparently possibly with the SRW-5800/2 deck.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Indeed. I did more research and found out this has been possible for awhile - only for deck to deck copies or working with Sony's proprietary NLE system targeted at ENG applications.

It looks like the 5800/2 deck supports this over ethernet for any application. Very cool :)

Misfit

[Gser]

SR supports 1920×1080, doesn't it?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Yes it does.