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Convert from Betacam to what?
Hi all:
I’ve been given two Betacam tapes with footage to be added to a project I’m working on; one of them is SP, while the other is Digital Betacam. Alas, we don’t have any Betacam decks at work (the only tape-based formats we can digitize are MiniDV and HDV), but we can get another facility to convert them to a different format, which brings the question: which one, in order to preserve as much quality as possible?
Ideally I’d like to have them converted to DVCPRO 50, but we can’t read that format either. Would be it worth the hassle, quality-wise, to tell the other facility to capture it as DVCPRO 50 and give it to us already digitized, i.e. in Quicktime files?
(FWIW, the project has a lot of mixed footage: DVCPRO HD, HDV and even some (not much) SD DV. The final product will be a SD DVD, but we want to master in DVCPRO HD, just in case we’re asked for a Blu-Ray/HD DVD/whatever HD version in the future).
Paulo.
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3 Replies
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If you are working with DVCPRO HD and HDV, and you want this to be eventually mastered to DVCPRO HD…why not have a facilty capture this footage as DVCPRO HD? Find a place that has a Terranex box, or FCP and a Kona 3 and you’ll be good to go.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
Mmmm… good question! Guess I was stuck in the “if it’s SD, capture it in SD” mindset.
And what if they can’t capture it to media files, but only transfer it to another tape? My boss asked me the other day about transferring it to HDV and I flatly said no: both HDV and DV are 4:2:0, so the added color resolution of Betacam would be lost anyway, and the added pixels (1080i vs. 720×576) are useless, since they aren’t in the source in the first place. So it will have to be either DVCPRO HD or MiniDV, I guess. Am I right, or would HDV give me some advantage that I’m not seeing?
Paulo.
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Paul,
DV is 4:1:1, different from HDV. Any place that has a Terranex and or a Kona 2 or 3 will be able to give you digital files as Shane suggested. A good way to go.
Especially if you do end up going to a BlueRay disc at some point.
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