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Digitizing Betacam tapes with FCP7
Hello,
We’ve been working almost entirely tapeless with P2HD and FCP7 with a solid workflow.
A client gave us a bunch of Betacam master tapes to digitize into FCP using our Kona LH and wonder what setting you guys use for the best results.
We did a couple of tests:
525 29.97 ProRes HQ resulting in a 720×486 file that is choppy in playback with a size of about 600 MB/min
525 29.97 8 bit resulting in a 720×486 file which is clean but a larger file size of about 1.2 GB/min
Any ideas which settings would provide the best results without producing huge files?
We have a lot of Betacam masters to digitize.
Thanks for your help.
Jeff Cadge
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4 Replies
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Standard ProRes is the perfect setting. HQ is overkill!
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
I agree with Steve. ProRes 422 is the way to go.
Kannan Raghavan
The Big Toad Films Pte. Ltd. -
Make sure you are playing back the media off drives for video editing…
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
Hi,
I have done a bunch of work with Betacam tapes and Kona cards. Never had any problems with playback-we use an XSAN storage system so file size really doesn’t matter to us…
I have also used a Matrox MX02 system to digitize natively to Apple Pro Res (not HQ) and the resolution has been good. Playback was off of FireWire 800 & 400 HDs and we had no problems. File sizes were big but not as big as APR HQ files (which did not playback well from FW).
I would try regular APR instead of HQ.
Caveat: the source footage I have been working with is old and in some cases not the greatest, so all I can say is that the APR footage did not look any worse than the original.
Gryfwalker
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