thanks for the share! but Im a bit concerned with the quality loss of the Immersion RC Powerplay since it doesn´t record via firewire - any slap pals using this thing?
Yes, I'll try and make my thoughts as clear and concise as possible without rambling too much.
It's AV instead of Firewire, so there's definitely quality loss. From what I looked into, the Powerplay handles deinterlacing the footage and also does some artificial sharpening. When it comes to quality loss, the two main things I noticed were obviously detail loss; certain colours tend to get a strange red almost checkerboard/grain quality to them, and also when shooting fisheye it seems pretty jumpy/jittery which I believe comes down to the powerplay's deinterlacing.
It's a lot easier to put into tiers and you can tally it all up against your own criteria.
Positives:
- no more dealing with tapes - glitches, capturing, cold weather etc.
- can watch stuff back instantly.
- more storage.
- no need to deinterlace/convert stuff, just pull .mov files straight off it.
- cheaper than firewire based devices.
Negatives:
- quality loss.
- another thing to charge.
- the button to record is the same one to scroll through menus so it's fiddly to get used to.
- may need to experiment with AV cables/spacers to find one that works. obviously this product was not meant to be used for tapeless, so you either need a specific cable for audio to work properly, or use a spacer which a guy who i can't recall off the top of my head 3d prints and sells.
Realistically, what it comes down to is the convenience of it all, and I will say it's a lot more convenient using the powerplay over tapes. However, my experiences will be considered anecdotal at best and I'm sure a lot of people absolutely despise the powerplay/prefer firewire/etc. a more apt comparison would've been playing back the original tapes and rerecording them with the Powerplay, but here's 5 clips from tape/firewire and 5 from the Powerplay. Canon GL1, Opteka 0.3x, rendered at 720p 50fps.
For me personally just filming my friends and making videos for us to enjoy, I like the powerplay and will continue using it. If I was say filming for "proper" projects, using vx/mk1 etc, I would go for a firewire based solution. Hope this helps somewhat.