thanks a lot to all of you, now its clear
regards
Juergen

Another advantage of recording externally is that you don't have to manually convert the h.264 files to an editor friendly format (like ProRes) before working on them, which is a huge time saver for FCP 7 users.

@Juergen — The D800 footage will look as good as any of the other DSLRs out on the market when recording directly to the card. In fact, most are saying it's a bit sharper than the 5DmkIII footage. Also, despite the fact that the files are more compressed, some have noted that the difference in detail/compression artifacts aren't readily apparent. This means that the Mark III's larger file sizes don't come with any noticeable advantage. I found this to be true when shooting with the Nikon D7000 vs the 5DmkII and the Canon T2i. Bigger files from the Canon's, but the D7000 files graded up just as nicely at the end of the day (they actually looked better to my eye).

The h.264 footage has always looked beautiful to me, as Jonnyapple mentioned. The HDMI out footage is just a whole new level of awesomeness for those that really want it — especially when heavily grading our footage in post.

Thanks, Adamz. That's another HUGE advantage of the HDMI out. Virtually unlimited recording times, at least for all practical application. And I've found the Ninja to be very efficient in the power department. Two batteries will last you a very long time.

I can add one thing, if You want unlimited video storage on Your d800/d4 than You only need to turn the live view on - no need to press any buttons - assuming You have connected external hdmi recorder via hdmi to Your camera.

That's right, Juergen. Don't think that the H.264 stream won't be beautiful, though. It's between beautiful and more beautiful. (ps - I answered this even though I'm not a video expert.)

Dear Video Experts

I am following this thread and I have one question (I am not a video shooter)

Did I understand it right, if I want the best video quality on a D800 I have to record live to an external device via HDMI, otherwise it gets stored on the flash card using some H.264 profile with less quality.

regards
Juergen

"Bob Elkind:
See page 257 of the Nikon D800 manual, to set D800 output to Limited Range, to match the HDMI specification, to match the Ninja, and to conform to corresponding SMPTE and ITU signal standards for 4:2:2 YCbCr video"

Sorry if that was unclear. You CAN monitor the live view stream both on the camera and on the recording device (or a monitor) even when recording (for instance when capturing to the Ninja). When recording to an internal card, I am pretty sure the stream is knocked down to 720p, but in live view mode it is possible to receive a full 1080p stream to an external device. Hopefully I'll be showing some walkthroughs and samples soon.

As for the Ninja's capture bitrate, you have the choice of ProRes HQ (which is up to 220Mbps), or lower quality ProRes formats (if you want/need smaller files). If you are saving to a device which will record fully uncompressed files, you can get in excess of 1,300Mbps!

Thanks for the great info, ronadair. Are you saying you can't monitor with the HDMI while recording video, or is the HDMI stream somehow different when that's happening? I'd love to see samples.

Do you know what bitrate the Ninja-saved video is?

I have both the D800 and an Atomos Ninja. Atomos just released their 2.2 firmware for the Ninja which allows it to communicate properly for the digital "handshake" that enables the Ninja to pull full 1080p streams straight from the D800 through HDMI. There IS a 1080i setting (this is the max resolution in the HDMI menu, but that setting actually outputs 1080i60 (I was told by Atomos that it's actually 1080/24PsF which appeared to be the case based on the interlacing artifacts), which would require that the Ninja then perform the proper pulldown to turn it back into full 1080p24 when it saves as a ProRes file. Fortunately, they were able to get the firmware updated to talk to the D800 when the Nikon is in "Auto" mode (again, in the HDMI menu).

It goes like this:
1) Make sure the Ninja is updated to firmware 2.2
2) Set the Nikon HDMI mode to "Auto"
3) Set the D800 resolution in the movie settings to 1080p24 (or whatever speed/resolution you'd like)
4) Power up the Ninja and connect it to the D800
5) Put the D800 in Live View mode (with the live view switch turned to the movie camera position)
6) Once the "handshake" has occurred (Atomos said this was somewhere around 14 frames I believe) then you should see the option to monitor or record on the Ninja. Either hit record on the Ninja, or hit monitor and then you should have a little record button in the bottom right hand corner right from the monitor screen. Hit it and you're rolling.

The footage looks gorgeous. It is significantly, remarkably sharper, and the color is noticeably improved as well. I am doing some tests, and will be uploading some examples once I have a chance to push it some.

Nikon is saying the D800 and D4 output 8-bit 4:2:2 color.

As for recording to the card and to something like the Ninja, it isn't really possible, at least not at full 1080p. However, I haven't been able to see a difference (at first blush) between recording to HDMI with a card(s) in the slot vs. empty slots, i.e. it doesn't appear to make any difference if there is a card in the slot. I still get a full 1080p24 stream, and the color and sharpness look identical.

I'll take some of the blame for adamz's bad mood. I was AWOL for a few weeks so it was all on him to keep things tidy. Sorry for the misunderstanding, birdman.

On topic, it's definitely better to say less compressed instead of uncompressed, as has been mentioned. 4:2:2 chroma subsampling instead of the 4:2:0 of the H.264 stream, IIRC. I'll go looking to find out what I can about simultaneous HDMI and recording to the card. It would be a big oversight not to let someone use an external monitor, in my opinion.

edit: It looks like HDMI can be used simultaneously with the normal video recording.
I found no specs in the manual about the actual output from the HDMI I don't know where I read 4:2:2 before (here, probably ;-). It's not going to be 4k. They don't include a list of available resolutions, but the best they have on the screenshot in the manual is 1080i. I'll bet 1080p is there and just not on the screenshot. Anyone with a D800 care to check that out? It's in the HDMI settings.

Birdman, audio is included in the HDMI stream. Again, no specs listed.

RE: the value of Uncompressed HDMI Out, per Philip Bloom, on his initial take of d800 from Feb 7, 2012, as a Canon video guru: *LINK REMOVED*

"Clean full HD HDMI out.

This is also huge. Compression is an ugly thing and the H264 compression out of the Canon DSLRs is one of our biggest issues. There is no clean output on the Canons. With this clean output we get 422 8 Bit uncompressed output and can plug into an external recorder like a KiPro mini, Ninja or something similar, letting us record in sweet ProRes or similar. I am not sure if you can do this whilst recording onto the internal cards. If anyone has this information please let me know.

This also makes it a lot better using external monitors and EVFs. A chance to be able to keep focus hopefully!"

PS -- Moderators are usually more careful. It's not the job of a member to interpret some other intent or target to a post when the first word in the post is the member's name. No "insults" would have come forward with a clean reply from the moderator to an earnest question from the member.

colour subsampling is also some sort of compression, D800 does 4:2:2
regards

That's how it appeared to me as well.

To use an imperfect analogy, uncompressed video is similar to having the camera output in TIFF instead of JPEG for stills. The output is not "raw" (e.g., it has been reduced from sensor resolution to HD, processed into a color space, applied a gamma curve, segmented into frames, etc) but the output has not been further compressed using a lossy codec.

Compression typically doesn't change the pixel resolution of the video or image, but may reduce their colors and eliminate fine details. (Think of using JPEG at quality 3 vs. 10, vs. the original image in TIFF; the pixel resolution is the same but image quality degrades with compression.)

I should probably keep my mouth shut for fear of future reprisals, but it seemed to me as well that adamz was speaking to birdman, especially after the sarcastic comment about wikipedia. Not to say birdman's comments are the desired sentiment here, but I can understand why he was frustrated and confused.

It seems to me that, if anything, adamz might offer a simple apology rather than a warning and threat of a ban.

I apologize. It certainly appeared that you were making fun of me for asking a legitimate question. I had no idea you are a moderator. In any case, sorry if my response was less than polite. : )

@birdman - trolling and ads posting wasn't directed towards You. I was absent from forum for almost a week and done a lot of cleaning yesterday. as Your post was the first one I wrote in yesterday I put the info in it - not related to You at all. as for the rest of Your comments... You get first warning now for insulting ppl on forum, next one is ban.

I'm not going to get into the argument, but I am going to answer some questions.

The reality is that anything beyond 1080p isn't really supported by much beyond youtube. Considering the cost and processing power involved in creating 4K videos, and since 3D is basically out, there is very little advantage to have anything beyond 1080p, and actually significant disadvantages. But another key is the transmission. If Nikon wanted to support the higher resolution, then they would also have to switch to a different form of HDMI connector, because the connector they use is an HDMI 1.3 based connector, which while it does support deeper colors than previous versions of HDMI, it isn't until HDMI 1.4 that you start seeing the '4K' resolution being supported. In theory you could save the file, and then just transmit it over firewire, usb, or whatever, but it would make a lot of advantages of having an HDMI pointless. For all these reasons, Nikon's decision to limit it to 1080p actually makes a lot of sense.

2. GPUs are generally output, as adamz mentioned. If you want to record, the best way is to get an external device meant to get a digital signal to your computer. Generally they connect via usb or firewire, or if you have a mac, thunderbird. These are most often used by people converting VHS to DVD or blueray, for example. Camcorders usually have a digital out to usb or fireware, and thats how you get the data to your computer. My Nikon's dont have video (the latest one i have is a d300), but I'd assume they have something similar.

3. HDMI carries both sound and video. The card (be it graphics card or cameras port) either does or doesnt. I find it highly unlikely that Nikon would chose to turn off the channel. It just wouldnt make any sense. So use the HDMI port normally.

OH as an aside, insulting people isnt likely to get you positive answers.

adamz said:
@birdman - for some reason there's a site called wikipedia, and most of the answers You can find there. in very short:
1) 1080P
2) if there's an HDMI input than You can use it - though I doubt there is
3) normally, check the HDMI specification

BTW: Your mod is back on forum, so no more trolling and posting ads :)

I'm at a loss for words. I haven't trolled and posted ads. How would I even begin to do this? I am on a unsecured wireless connection, but posting ads? Trolling? Show me where I did this, please?

Now, regarding your overly rude comment about Wikipedia, I really appreciate the advice Einstein. I know the specs on D800 probably better than you do. What I am not sure of is the advantage of "uncompressed video output". To me, that sounds like he effective resolution of the video could be much greater given the MP count of the D800. Since you love wikipedia so much, The Predator, here is a chart straight from that site on ultra high resolution video, Einstein.

Extra high-definition video modes
Frame size in pixels(WxH) Number of pixels

2K 2,048×1,536 3,145,728
2160p 3,840×2,160 8,294,400
4K 4,096×3,072 12,582,912
2540p 4,520×2,540 11,480,800
4320p 7,680×4,320 33,177,600

@birdman - for some reason there's a site called wikipedia, and most of the answers You can find there. in very short:
1) 1080P
2) if there's an HDMI input than You can use it - though I doubt there is
3) normally, check the HDMI specification

BTW: Your mod is back on forum, so no more trolling and posting ads :)

I have pre-ordered the D800 (hopefully one day it will actually arrive!) and have been reading on the uncompressed HDMI video output.

Couple Questions: 1) What is max resolution you can record with this set up? Would it not be much greater than 1080P?

2) HOW can I, with my custom built gaming PC and a GeForce GTX470 graphics card record the video signal from the D800? Would I need a second, or third device as well?

3) How would audio be handled through HDMI video out?