Beta SP????

[Bret Williams]

I agree. What does he think they broadcast on? We didn’t have digital playback, and digibeta is a different beast. It IS a compressed format. “In camera compression” is a bizarre term. Digibeta and Beta can use the same camera. But digibeta is a 2:1 compressed digital format. BetaSP is a component analog format with it’s uniqe signal and noise characteristics based on the head pitch, tape speed, and recording mechanism.

While we’re at it, it sounds like DV50 is the right choice for this guy. It’s digibeta quality (real close – just a little more than 2:1 compression) and it has the 4.2.2 color space. But it’s less than 1/2 the 8 bit uncompressed file size.

I miss the days when most systems used 8 bit and had variable compression. Seems everything now is offline or online. But 2:1 or even 5:1 8bit compression can be nearly indistinguishable from uncompressed. It depends on the material. But alas with fast, inexpensive drives and sdi lossless capture of uncompressed material this doesn’t seem to be the norm.

[Rafael Amador]

Dear Mark,
I’m working with magnetoscopes since 1985, and except the 2 inches and the MII I think that I’ve been working with all the analog formats that has been in the market. And sorry to tell you that after SONY make that 1’C not any other analoge broadcast machine has been put to sell.
BCamSP has been the choice format for many reasons:
a) Working in Components you don’t need to filter the Chroma for Post-production.
b) You get rid of the “Color Framing” problem of the composite formats (the nightmare in PAL was double than in NTSC).
c) You don’t need a trolley to carry the VTR and you can record in a tape.
d)..
But if you read the specs (SMPT, EBU,..) of what was considered a Broadcast format, you will know that BCamSP it doesn’t because is not able to acommodate a full band-with video signal. The Color information is quite compressed. Much less if we talk about U-Matic even if we talk about the U-M High band.
Cheers,
Rafael

[Mark Raudonis]

rafael,

OK. I see where you’re coming from. You’re taking a pure “engineering” point of view. I’m taking a “real world” operational view.

You may be technically correct, but the term “broadcast format” has really become meaningless. In an era where cell phone video can and WILL be broadcast if it’s interesting enough, the tech specs of the pure “broadcast signal” format have really become meaningless.

mark

[Graeme Nattress]

Chroma resolution of NTSC BetaSP is about half way between that of NTSC DV (4:1:1) and NTSC DigiBeta (4:2:2), however, it’s luma resolution is about 75% of that of NTSC DV, or NTSC Digibeta, which are both as good as each other in terms of luma resolution.

By analogue compression, I mean the process of whereby you take a signal from the camera head that has a certain bandwidth, and that bandwidth gets reduced enough to fit on tape. This is usually noticed by an increase in noise, and a lowering of resolution. Analogue artifacts can include filter ringing, shimmer, subtle timebase errors, noise etc.

8 bit uncompressed will capture BetaSP without making it any worse at all. DV50 would be almost imperceptibly different, and a lot smaller file size.

PAL complicates things as there, PAL DV is 4:2:0, and with the way PAL works, you don’t see the extra vertical chroma resolution of 4:2:2, so a PAL DV copy of a BetaSP original would probably be, overall, better than an NTSC DV dub of a NTSC BetaSP. I do have a couple PAL betaSP to PAL DV dubs and they’ve always looked very good to me.

As Dave pointed out, 4:4:4, even if there was such an SD capture codec, would be uber-overkill.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Devin Crane]

If you encode it to the IMX 50 or 30 from the SDI feed depending on how much space you want to save. IMX 50 is Virtually lossless at a qtr of the space that Uncompressed 8bit is. We use IMX for just about everything here and cannot tell the diff between the 2. IMX 30 is amlost lossless when viewed on a Broadcast Monitor, it’s so much better than DV at roughly the same bandwidth.

[Rafael Amador]

No Mark:
I’ve been for many years a Video editor-operator twith quite short technicall background, and also with quite hort technicall support. Yes you are right that many terms has loose theyr meaning. The truth is that when I started to learn about video I had to learn a lot about NTSC and PAl standard, magnetic recording, etc. At that time if you wanted to get a job editing video you have to show a good knoledge about those technologies. Working in a studio with video-editors, video-mixers, effects-generators, wave-forms and few video-desks, all in sync was fun.
Any way I think that we have lost a good opportunity to clarify and unify a bit the technicall language. Since the digital video is being developed for the manufacturers without much intervention from the governmets, as used to be, each one use a different terminology.
And sorry if I get excited when I talk about these old artifacts (not digital compression artifacts:-) I love them.
Cheers,
Rafael

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Davin,
That sounds quite interesting. I have to mamake a try.
Cheers,
rafael