DVCPRO 50 vs DigiBeta

[Chris Tompkins]

From what I’ve read – DVCPRO 50 is just like DigiBeta. At a much better cost.
If You master on DVCPro. Shoot DVCPro and capture to the Digibeta codec and it’ll look great. FWIW

Chris

[Kelly]

They are both 4:2:2 color space, which is much better than regular dv (although they have the same resolution as dv). The main differences are bit depth: Digibeta is a 10 bit format and DVCpro50 is an 8 bit format (like dv). In most situations, you will not be able to tell the difference. The only place where the 10 bit will really stand out is if you are shooting objects with lots of gradiated color. The digibeta will have more (and therefore smoother) steps between adjacent colors in a gradiation. Certainly, if you are going to be broadcasting over satellite, the compression there will eliminate any advantage the 10 bit may have given you to begin with.

Given that the advantage of Digibeta over DVCpro50 is minimal by the time the end user at home sees it, I would recommend going DVCpro50. Tape stock is cheaper, and of course the big advantage is that it can be imported natively over firewire into FCP. You can edit it on fairly low speed drives (it only requires twice the storage and speed of regular dv). With Digibeta, although it too is compressed on tape, Sony has never made the codec used available to outside editors. Therefore you can’t import it into FCP in its compressed form, leaving uncompressed SDI as your only option. This means raided drives, and big ones at that (which of course means more money). Well, not ONLY option. You could compress down to a motion-JPEG format or some such thing as you bring it in over SDI to save disk space, but then you’re throwing away quality (which is why you asked the question in the first place, right?). The one small advantage of an uncompressed format within FCP is that you will have more real-time effects, since the computer isn’t wasting some of it’s horsepower decompressing a format like DVCpro50. Having said that however, Apple and Panasonic have worked hard to optimize FCP’s handling of DVCpro50 to the point that it is very fast (practically as fast as as uncompressed).

Well, this has turned into a bit of a book! Sorry about that. SHORT ANSWER: unless you squint hard at very testing footage, you won’t see the difference between DVCpro50 and Digibeta. And, DVCpro50 is less money, offers greater workflow advantages and the added benefits of having some backwards compatibilty with your existing library of dv footage.

TV is called a medium, because it is neither rare, nor well done (He..he…)

[Andy Mees]

DVCPRO50 is widely regarded as equivalent in picture quality to Digibeta.
as far as compressed 8 bit codecs go, IMX50 is suppsed to be a little better.

We’ve been using DVCPRO50 to master all our promos since the start of the year … fwiw we broadcast over 50 television services in eight languages to more than 300 million viewers across 53 Asian countries … I’m not aware if any of our viewers ever noticed the difference (but then some of our viewers are probably watching in balck and white)

[Tom Matthies]

Also, aside from the bit-depth, Digibeta uses slightly lower compression, 2-1 as opposed to DVC50 which is about 3-1.
I’ve been using DVC50 for editing the past year or so. It’s a good compromise between quality and storage.
tom

[Martin Baker]

and here’s another rave review of DVCPRO50! On real world footage (i.e. not test gradients and stuff like that), I defy anyone to spot compression artifacts on screen. The codec is very good and a significant step up from DV25.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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[Kim Rowley]

Wow, what a group of people with great technical know-how! Since I think that the first post was answered well, can I throw out another? What about DV-CAM vs. Digital Beta. I am in roughly the same position as the person in the first post (non-profit organization with a passion for quality). Top notch quality has always been our goal – our footage has remarkable archive value in the sense that it will be consulted and used for many years to come. The money crunch has hit and a few people in my organization are starting to question the cost of DigiBeta (head changes are a big hit to the budget) as opposed to investing in top of the line DVcam. I have been holding out as a DigiBeta supporter stating the tape durability and the 5:1 compression issues. But the DVCam quality at least perceptively seems pretty darn good. Any other arguments on the issue? I of course would prefer to stick with DigiBeta but then again I don’t pay the bills. A DigiBeta head change can run

[Martin Baker]

In my experience there are two sides to the DV debate:

DV25 for acquisition is actually pretty good and for most material is perfectly good enough. If you shoot with a decent camera like a DSR570 then you can get excellent results. I did a corporate job a while back (shot well on a DSR570 with a experienced cameraman) and once the shots were colour corrected and film effected you would never guess that it hadn’t been shot on digibeta. In short, for acquisition a good quality camera is far more important than the codec.

DVCAM for post production is a different story…the DVCAM codec is lousy – the reduced colour space is a real problem so you should aim to work in either DV50 or uncompressed for final output.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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[Sean Oneil]

[Martin Baker] “On real world footage (i.e. not test gradients and stuff like that), I defy anyone to spot compression artifacts on screen”

Of course you can’t from one generation. The problem is this. Someone shoots on DVCPro50. Then it’s edited, color corrected, and mastered back to DVCPro50. Then someone else takes it and edits it some more using effects that requires another recompression.

Then it needs to be compressed yet again, this time much more lossy with MPEG-2 for broadcast or DVD. Then someone takes the DVD and creates web videos from it for promotional purposes or whatever.

If the show was instead shot on Digibeta and always mastered to D5, the DVD and web videos will look better. Now I’m not saying that’s always practical. Don’t get me wrong, I think DV50 is great and is almost as good as Digibeta. But nobody should every go under the misconception that if it looks great then and there, there’s no damage done from lossy compression.

[Kelly]

As I said earlier in the thread, the resolution of digibeta and dvcam are exactly the same, the main differences are color sampling (digi 4:2:2 and dv 4:1:1) and bit depth. If you are just doing a moderate amount of editing with little effect work, and you shot the DVcam on a comparable camera to the digibeta (ie. three 2/3 inch chips, quality Canon/Fuji lens), then for 80% of what you do, the reults will be “good enough”. Now. Re-read that sentence. There are a lot of qualifiers in there. You are going to see a quality hit, there is no getting around it. You have to decide if the loss in quality is worth saving what I would typify as a quantum leap in costs difference. Quality is a highly flexible word (just read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to find out how flexible). Some might judge the small loss of picture quality to be unacceptable. I would argue that being able to have 2 cameras on a shoot would give a better quality final product. Being able add another edit suite and a laptop to edit on the road would enhance the quality of your shows. Being able to have instant access to more footage online, and therefore more options, increases your quality.

Something else to think about if you have to do intensive editing is this: if you are already geared up to edit digibeta, that might help you. With a quality DVCAM camera for aquisition, you could edit everything uncompressed. You are already geared up to do that with digibeta, so you could do all the effects work you wanted with no loss of quality. Then, dump that pristine copy out to DVcam in the end.

One final note: if you decide you have the budget to continue the “high price” route, I would get out of digibeta altogether and originate and edit in high definition. A Varicam and decks are cheaper than Digibeta, and just as practical to edit with. Plus, you future proof yourself. Have fun!

TV is called a medium, because it is neither rare, nor well done (He..he…)

[Martin Baker]

I’m fully aware that multiple generations through a lossy codec will technically lose quality on each generation but it boils down to this – for some post workflows the advantages of using a 4:2:2 compressed codec such as DV50 (low datarate balanced against perfectly good broadcast quality) outweigh any disadvantages. Simple as that.

I’ve worked exclusively with a “digibeta footage > DV50 codec in FCP > digibeta playout” workflow for two years now and in this particular situation the choice of DV50 as the intermediate codec was the right one. As you say, the visible deterioration of the image does in fact come further down the chain…

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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