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Digibeta to DVD
I am receiving Digibeta tapes of full length movies from a distributor where I am supposed to convert it to a DVD master with menu/layout options to fit a single 4.7gb dvd. What would be the ideal setup to get the maximum quality for the capture then burn onto DVD. This can include hardware and software setups including capture cards/mac setup/design program etc etc. Needs to be professional SD quality as we are sending the masters off to the manufacturer for “mass production.”
Cheers for the help,
Dan
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7 Replies
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Do you know how to capture a DigiBeta tape? DO you have a capture card?
You can produce 1st rate DVDs with a number of software programs but what do you have, what type of system do you have.
You have to give us something to go on.
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Right, sorry. Yes we have a digibeta deck to ingest and a Blackmagic card, possibly also an Aja Kona card too. Currently use FCP to capture in and possibly going to use Encore to encode to DVD, either that or Studio Pro. Using a Mac tower.
If there is a better capture card and software to use we will purchase it. Trying to find a system so we can keep quality to a premium when compressing to fit on a single side DVD.
Basically we’ll be ingesting into the Mac, adding a DVD menu then encoding to DVD and sending off to the manufacturers.
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Either capture card will work fine, I would capture as ProRes SD.
Compressor does a great job with well produced SD from DigiBeta, so you may want to give it a shot. If you movie is long and need lower bitrate you may want to look into other encoders. CinemaCraft is probably one of the best but it is $$, BitVise is really affordable and does a little better at lower bitrates than compressor. Don’t know how good adobe’s encoder is so I cannot comment on that.
DVDSP can produce Professional DVDs.
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Thank you. I use compressor, it’s not that great to be honest when encoding feature length films to DVD. Basically, I want the quality to be shop-shelf quality. Maybe it’s my settings but I just don’t seem to get that quality with Compressor. Episode is ok, a lot faster but I just find the image quality goes down too far.
I’m looking for something a little bit more specific with regards to specifications and equipment. Compression is the most important part of this project, does anybody know what the professional manufacturers use when compressing large files to DVD that get it looking so clean?
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High end authoring house and major studios have encoding stations that start at about $25K and go up to $250K. CinemaCraft engine is the basis for many of them and it now available for the Mac and is very reasonable at $800.
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Not sure what you mean but Top Shelf Quality, but that only come from expensive encoders, people who know how to use them and well produced source footage. Well….most of the time anyway 🙂 Not something you’ll get using Adobe’s media encoder. Many of the title you’ve seen originated from 4k or 2k files, down converted correctly, then encoded with the equipment mentioned by Micheal.
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Eric, by top shelf I should have said “off the shelf” quality. ie) These DVDs are going out to retail stores I would like them to look as good as any other DVD you buy. The source footage is great, just need to make sure it looks 95% as good when compressed.
Cheers Michael for the tip, I will look into that.
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