Beta, VHS and DVCPro conversion

[Vince Becquiot]

Hi Lillian,

In all of these cases, we always go for the best quality (in that case uncompressed). But that means a lot of space and very fast drives. Depending on how much footage you have, you could capture uncompressed, then throw everything in Adobe Media Encoder and convert to DV in one shot. Then edit with that and replace with the original footage in your project panel when you are done.

As far as transferring data, you would have to mention what card you are working with. If you have no card, it may be worth renting something like a KIPRO and dump everything in there, realtime. You will then be left with ProRes files, which you wouldn’t have to convert to anything.

Vince Becquiot

Indigo Live
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Lillian,

Vince is correct that uncompressed will of course provide the best quality. That said, we don’t know what your system specs are and if they would handle uncompressed storage and editing.

Is this project for broadcast? Do you have a capture card for ingest from these formats? Mac or PC?

There are reasonably-priced options from BlackMagic and Matrox, such as Intensity Pro and MXO2 Mini, that will capture from analog sources to compressed and uncompressed formats. Not sure about Intensity, but MXO2 Mini does offer hardware upconversion, so you could capture your 480i sources directly to 1080i files, either uncompressed or compressed formats with 4:2:2 color.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Walter Biscardi]

If you have access to a system with an AJA Kona I/O card, you can upconvert the footage in realtime from SD to HD. I would capture to Apple’s ProRes or Avid’s DNxHD 145 codec.

Or if you have access to an AJA KiPro, this can also perform the upconvert in realtime and leave you with a ProRes QT file.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.

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[Samantha Pallacarola]

Hey,
Don’t know if you’re still looking for a solution but I like using this converter for vhs tapes but I have never tried it for Beta…dunno if it’ll work for that to be honest. Otherwise I’m sure there’s a conversion service nearby (there is for me at least) where you can take tapes and have them converted into dvds but that might be expensive depending on how many tapes you have. Try going to a local camera/photography shop and maybe get a quote from them. Also, just wanna make sure this is for personal use and you’re not burning copyrighted products 🙂 Hope this helps (if you were still wondering)!