CS4.1 + Digibeta Advice?

[Dave Friend]

[Clint Milner] “Am I correct in thinking that Digibeta is still standard def and that capturing using Firewire and DV is reasonable?”

Personally I would be upset to know that my Digibeta master was being stepped down to DV format prior to encoding for DVD. My expectation would be that the tape was either going straight from the deck to mpeg2 or was captured as an uncompressed file prior to encoding as mpeg2.

Dave

Dave Friend

[Larry S. evans ii]

[Clint Milner] “Also, are high def mediums all tapeless? I’ve worked with AVCHD in PP and it’s very handy to work right off our camera”

Actually I shoot with a couple of Canon HV30 hi-end consumer cameras that use standard Mini-DV tape, the HDV tape brand, and with On Location, will shoot direct to drive.

While I prefer the latter option, it’s not always practical for guerilla shots, etc. so I use a lot of tape. First generation off the Mini-DV is comparable to drive based recording. There’s still the time to transfer, but I usually end up just doing a quick review, setting some log points and then letting the system pull the cuts while I go work on something else.

Tapeless is the direction everyone wants to be heading, but I have a couple of news camera guys here that tell me they don’t shoot full-on HD in the field because they’re still having issues with getting datacards to be even 75% reliable on some of the NGC cameras. Tape, for ancient technology, still works 98% of the time.

Larry S. Evans II
Executive Producer
Digital I Productions

[Tim Kolb]

[Clint Milner] “Am I correct in thinking that Digibeta is still standard def and that capturing using Firewire and DV is reasonable?

Also, are high def mediums all tapeless? I’ve worked with AVCHD in PP and it’s very handy to work right off our camera.”

First..yes Digibeta is standard def, and no, capturing Digibeta would probably not be reasonable for someone who has invested in making a Digibeta master tape…they would have likely given you a much lower quality DV tape if that was acceptable as it would have saved them a lot of money…

You need an AJA LHi card to be able to ingest standard definition video via SDI to work with higher quality source files.

And…no, all HD formats are not tapeless. HDV, HDcam, HDcam SR, DVC ProHD, and the now extinct Phillips D6 Voodoo and the Sony HDD-1000 are all tape-based.

Out of the current tape-based formats, HDcam and HDcam SR are the only two that don’t have a computer resident codec to allow editing the digital data in it’s native mode (though I believe the Sony XPRI system will handle HDcam internally).

DVC ProHD tape is getting a bit rare as Panasonic moves to P2 based acquisition. HDV is still usually tape-based, though there are several ways to acquire HDV right to disk.

Add to all these XDcam on optical disk and also XDcam on Express 34 SxS cards (not cross-compatible file types…don’t ask), and Panasonic’s AVC-Intra, as well as proprietary solutions like Convergent Design’s Flash XDR and nanoFlash, not to mention the various motion RAW acquisition filetypes from cameras such as the Silicon Imaging SI2K, RED One, Panavision Genesis, and the Phantom cameras and you start to see why post production workflows have become confusing for many people.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Clint Milner]

Dave, Larry and Tim,

I wanted to thanks all 3 of you for your helpful comments.

I’m going to take your advice and look for an SDI capture card so I can keep the quality high before mpeg conversion.

Another question, how is CS4’s SDI capturing ability? What project preset would be best? I’m guessing I would just use the 4:3 or 16:9 SD PAL/NTSC settings?

Thanks again guys, it’s very appreciated!

Clint

Adobe CS4 Master Suite
Vista Ultimate 64 SP1
Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.60GHz
12 GB DDR3 RAM
NVidia Quadro FX 3700
Matrox RT.X2 LE Capture Card
4 TB RAID 5

[Jeff Brown]

You will get custom project setting for the SDI card you buy; after the card & software are installed, they should show up in your project choices in Premiere.

-jeff

[Dave Friend]

Clint,

Given a good i/o card Pr works great for SDI capture. Since you’re familiar with Matrox already looking at the Axio LE might make sense.

As Jeff said you will get project setting presets specific to the card when you install the card’s software.