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5.1ch surround on betacam?
Do any of the betacam formats support 5.1ch surround sound?
If so, which ones do?
And, what do I tell the audio layback house in terms of encoding?
Is there standard track assignments and so on?I’m not an audio person, so even basic information is very much appreciated.
I have a feature film that I want to project from video onto a theater size screen. I know that HDCAM supports surround sound, but deck+2k projector is too expensive, even more so for making a film print. So, I wanted to find out about the audio capabilities of the betacam formats. The theater says it has the CP500(or something like that) audio card, which can decode surround sound data.
Kent
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3 Replies
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BetaCAM is limited to (at the most) 2 linear audio tracks and 2 AFM (“Hi-Fi”) tracks.
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There’s a way around it. Dolby provides a Dolby E encoder which can fit multichannel audio info into two digital betacam, of course the exhibition facility should proviide the E decoder (dolby E technology is intended for broadcasters only, expensive!).
Other way of doint would be to perform Dolby’s analog version of the multichannel approach (SVA) Stereo Variable Area at poswtproduction stage which could fit onto a conventional betacam and could be decoded via a CP500 processor wich the exhibition facility does have. The result is not discrete decoding but it is a pseudo-surround format, the theory results in L-C-R-Mono Surround instead of L-C-R-Left Surr-Right Surr
Cheaper than the above, not the same audio experience though! -
How about Digital Betacam? Is DigiBeta limited to 4 channels, or does it have 8? I saw in the spec sheet that DVW-M2000 DigiBeta deck has 8 channels of AES/EBU audio out (BNC connectors), so does that mean there are 8 channels on DigiBeta? Is it simply connecting the six channels to the 25pin D-sub audio in connector on the back of CP500?
Or, is the only way to get true 5.1ch audio without a Dolby E en/decoder is to play back from HDCAM using a deck that has 8 discreet outputs?
(The guy at the theater is getting irritated by all my questioning, and insists on playing back from DVD, which is completely unaccaptable. And the show starts on the coming Friday… This whole mess is giving me major heartburn. I should have gone to Thailand to make a 35mm print that would play anywhere)
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