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Capturing Betacam redux
Hi all:
A few weeks ago I asked about how to capture some Betacam tapes that I had to use in an DVCPRO HD project I’m working on, and the advice I got was to capture it directly to DVCPRO HD, using an AJA. The problem is that, after several weeks, I can’t seem to find any facility that can capture it to DVCPRO HD (they can capture it to a Quicktime file, or transfer it to all kinds of tape-based formats, just not DVCPRO HD). I want to preserve as much of the quality of the original, so that rules out transferring to MiniDV or DVD; leaving those aside, the best solution I was offered was to capture the tapes to an uncompressed AVI file, so that, once they are in my computer, I can pick the clips I need and reencode them to DVCPRO HD using Compressor.
Now, I know this all sounds terribly cumbersome, but I can’t seem to find a better way, so I just need to check with you guys whether my figures for the space that an uncompressed AVI will take are right. If I’m not mistaken, here in PAL land an uncompressed AVI would take 720 x 576 x 3 (bytes per pixel) x 25 (fps) bytes per second. Is that right or I’m missing something? Because if that’s the case, my 500 GB. external HD will be enough to fit everything I need to capture, but if AVI has some additional overhead that I don’t know about, there might be a problem.
Thanks in advance,
Paulo.
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10 Replies
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That is very cumbersome. Where are you located?
“No job is worth doing more than once…”
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles -
paulo
acording to my handy dandy “digital heaven disk space calculator” 30 min of 8 bit uncompressed PAL takes up 35.8 gB. (if you would like your own, go to digitlalheaven.com)
uncompressed AVI would probably work fine, do a test to see. I would advice transcoding it OUTSIDE of final cut, either using QT or Windows Media Player for Mac
then at least you do not have to keep rendering your timline.
as far as capturing on a mac, It doesnt need to be just via an aja card. decklink will support it as well, or even an aja IO. any mac with any capture card (or firewire device) should be able to capture dvcproHD, as the codec comes with macs.
It sounds like you have the opportunity to use a PC to capture the stuff. there are DVCPROHD codecs for the PC as well, but you have to pay for them. Raylight is one we use.
hope this helps
bee eph
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
Now that they’re on Beta tapes they’re no longer HD, so the very best image you can get is 8bit uncompressed. Digitizing them to DVCProHD is not going to be the highest quality. And why do it to AVI? You’re working in FCP, right? Digitize it to QT.
Ed -
I was advised in this forum to digitize it to DVCPRO HD, since that’s what the rest of my project uses; it’s about ease of use, not getting HD where there wasn’t any HD to begin with.
As for using AVI… well, the facility I’m working with is a PC shop, so that’s what they use. I’ll probably select the clips that I want, “cut” them out with QT Player or Virtualdub, and then reencode all of them to DVCPRO HD.
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My point is, that although it would be great if you could digitize to DVCProHD, you said yourself you couldn’t find anyone that had a system with that codec to digitize it for you. So the very best quality you can get is UC 8Bit from Beta (DVCPro50 is a good 2nd choice). Once you capture it you can convert it to many codecs. UC is the best you can get. And if I remember correctly, this is the FCP forum, which implies that you’re using FCP (meaning Mac, not PC). It’s a logical assumption to think you’re on a Mac if you’re using this forum.
Good luck,
Ed -
Yeah Paul, what are you cutting with?
AVIs in general aren’t the best format for FCP, which prefers QT MOVs. They work, but not as well as they could.
You needed to find a post shop with FCP and a Kona 3 that could upconvert…IF you are editing with FCP.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
[Ed Dooley] “So the very best quality you can get is UC 8Bit from Beta (DVCPro50 is a good 2nd choice).”
the best you can get is 10bit uncompressed from Dbeta or any other tape based format
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows -
I just heard Beta, Gary, not Digi-Beta, and if it’s Beta-SP then I beg to differ. 10bit doesn’t gain you *any* quality over 8bit with Beta-SP.
Now, if you’re talking about adding graphics, etc. over Beta in a timeline (which we weren’t) you get better quality in the end with the graphics, but not in the Beta itself.
Ed“[Ed Dooley] “So the very best quality you can get is UC 8Bit from Beta (DVCPro50 is a good 2nd choice).”
[gary adcock]
the best you can get is 10bit uncompressed from Dbeta or any other tape based format” -
I *am* cutting with FCP. Dude, why the interrogation? 🙂
When I talked about “the facility I’m working with”, I meant the company that usually handles tape transfers for us. They told me they are a PC shop, so the best they could do was an uncompressed AVI (well, the guy also told me that he could transfer it to a DVD, since “it would have better quality than DV” (WTF???)). Ideally I’d like to have it in DVCPRO50, but the only tape-based format that we can read is MiniDV.
The workflow I’m thinking of, once I’ve got the uncompressed AVI, is to take it to my PC at home, extract the clips I want to smaller uncompressed AVIs, take them to the Macs at work, drop them into Compressor and convert them into DVCPRO HD Quicktimes. And *then* import them into FCP. (I know, I know).
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Paulo,
I believe your disk space calculation is correct. I have not observed any unusual overhead with uncompressed AVI that would push it above 31MB per second. Bob Flood comes up with a smaller number using the Digital Heaven calculator. If anything, your higher calculation will give you a safety factor.I agree with your method of extracting the clips you need in Quicktime and then using Advanced Format Conversion in Compressor to batch convert them correctly to DVCProHD. At that point you can deal with the aspect conversion and deinterlacing if needed.
Could you go to this PC shop and do the extracting? If they have this in Premiere Pro or something similar, you could edit it down there and then export just the part you need. It might save drudgery.
You should try a small end-to-end test of the workflow. Depending on the actual codec used for these “uncompressed AVIs”, they can be cumbersome to work with in Quicktime Pro.
-Tom
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