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miniDV vs Beta SP
Hi,
In the past I made masters of my films on miniDV. I was recently asked to make one on Beta SP. What will the difference be in quality?
Thanks.
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7 Replies
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BetaSP will be more prone to dropouts and likely exhibit increased video & chroma noise.
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Beta SP will be more prone to having accurate timecode and is likely to be made/played in a professional quality deck.
DV will be more prone to compression artifacts and is likely to be formatted incorrectly.
The real question is, what system, media quality, hardware would you use to make either? Will it then bet set up, operated properly?
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you need an output card, from a company like AJA or Blackmagic to output to beta SP. Beta SP is still the #1 delivery format of every TV station in the US.
Bob Zelin
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[Bob Zelin] “you need an output card, from a company like AJA or Blackmagic to output to beta SP”
Maybe, but maybe not.
Yes, If the absolute highest quality of a BetaSP master is needed, then using a card out of FCP and the Mac to output to Component Video to the BetaSP is the right method.
OTOH, If the OP is shooting, editing , and outputting to tape in the DV format,
then there’s not an overriding much need to
get a card to output to the BetaSP.Just dub a BetaSP copy from the DV “master” tape, machine-to-machine
(S-Video connection will be much better quality than composite.)Just a less expensive alternative, assuming a DV edited master.
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S-Video is dead. If you were to master back to DV (like a Sony DSR-45, DSR-1800, DSR-2000, or even an old DSR-80), you would take the analog component outputs of one of these professional Sony VTR’s, and connect them to the analog component inputs of the Beta VTR.
NO PROFESSIONAL uses S-Video.
Bob Zelin
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The betaSP is going to look a tad softer, being analog, OTOH beta has a larger color depth than 4:1:1 Dv does, so it’s essentially a tie, if you’re talking just the first generation. Be sure you supply sufficient color bars and tone for good set-up.
Assuming your levels were correct all thru the signal chain, and the recording deck is in good shape (not to be assumed these days) it should still look very good. Any further dubs or editing off the betaSP are going to degrade with each generation, that’s the nature of analog, and the attraction of DV, which thru firewire is a bit for bit perfect clone of the original every time, NO generation loss.
Why would this difference matter? I don’t know what your project’s destination is. But say it is a local spot for the local TV or cable station. In small markets especially, signal chains, and the people in charge of them, are as varied in quality as you could ever imagine.
They might ask you for a beta dub because they have no Dv decks, or no Dv decks that are compatible. Then they might take your beta dub and play it into an analog/digital converter so they can store the spot in a playback server’s hard drive. You have no control over that process, if they set good levels during it, or what quality level that transfer is made at, or what compression quality the server stores at.
Assuming stations always do the cheapest, easiest, fastest thing they can afford (usually true), it will be crammed into mpeg2 at the lowest data rate. So be prepared for your labor of love, that left your computer looking like a million bucks, to finally air looking like a dog’s breakfast. There is deinitely that chance. Beta is now a very old format, I would always try to ask a few probing questions as to why they want that particular format and if there is any other format they use internally that is “cleaner”. Not necessarily in the sense of beta itself being in any way inferior, but what I mean is, see which of their process chains is shortest and promises the best quality. They may not think to tell you, or be shy to admit it. It may turn out that you can give them an mpeg 2 file you spent hours tweaking to perfection, and that will go into their server in one lossless step and look magnificent, compared to something that may need to be cross-converted thru several intermediate anlog-digital generations.
Could be worse: they could ask for it on Umatic 3/4 inch;-)
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Umatic??
AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGgggghhhhhhhhhhhh………(Thats the sound of me running screaming into the woods…)
Tom
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