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DigiBeta, DVCAM, MiniDV etc for screening at Film Festival?
Hello everyone!
My clay animation project is ready:-) I have worked on a stop-motion animation project for the last 5-6 months, I have had many difficulties along the way, and have received many helpful comments from people on this as well as other forums. Now I would like to submit it to film festivals and have encountered another problem…
The submission copy that they require can usually be a DVD (which I was never happy with how the quality turned out on, but that´s not so urgent this time)
But when it comes to the screening copy, most festivals require something like a DigiBeta copy, or also DVCam or MiniDV. After reading a little bit on this, it seems like DigiBeta gives the best quality, but is also the most expensive format.I have a newly bough macbook pro at home, with FCP 7on it (although I actually started my project in imovie and decided to complete it in the same program).
What would you recommend me to do next? Could I create a DigiBeta copy at home with my own equipment or would I need to go to a PostProduction company to help me do this?
And should I go via FCP in this process?
If somebody would like to give me some help on these formats and how to convert my imovie project in a screenable copy, I would very my appreciate it!
Thank you!
Lia
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7 Replies
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For Digibeta, DVcam, MiniDv
You will need a deck.
Mini DV will be the cheapest.
Last I looked Digibeta was in the tens of thousands to buy.
Probably best to go to a post house.
Best.
Steven Gladstone
https://www.gladstonefilms.com -
Ok, thank you for your reply!
All the best,
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You can render out a digital master. Take that file to a post house and output to Digibeta.
Alt. you can borrow a friends DV camera and lay out to tape from your laptop via firewire.
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
The things that make the most difference to the look of your piece is the aquisition format – a cheap DV camera, or a Canon 5D – and the lighting.
Very few people can tell the difference between something shown from DigiBeta and something shown from DV. Master it initially on MiniDV usuing a borrowed camera, which will cost a few pence for the tape. If someone wants your film for a major festival and will only take Digi, copy it across or re-master it.
B
bernie
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Thank you Chris and Bernard for for your suggestions. As a matter of fact I used to have a miniDV camera, but I didn´t bring it with me when moving abroad. I never thought I would need it again since I have a digital video camera now. My miniDV camera is about 6 years old so I thought that it was getting useless now having a digital camera,so I learnt something new!
I will see if I can have it sent to where I live now.I also wanted to ask you about rendering a master? Would that mean just creating a quicktime file, for example, compressed with as best quality as possible (h.264 I have heard it supposed to be very good) and that file is my digital master?
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I haven´t worked so much with digital video before.
Thank you and have a good weekend!
Lia
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For your master, export in the format of your sequence, don’t change anything. I don’t know what format you’ve been editing in, but you should make a self contained Quicktime file with the current settings. If you change stuff, you’ll lose quality which won’t come back.
B
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Ok, thank you for your reply!
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