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Odd Compression Issue Layinf Off DV50 footage to Beta
Hello –
Here’s my situation:
Got Panasonic DVCPRO tapes from a client in DV50 format. I rented a Panasonic deck and input the footage via Firewire into my FCP system.
It looked fine. Edited spots in FCP and added titles.Now that the work is approved I need to get the work onto a Beta SP or Digibeta tape. I own beta-sp so that was my first choice.
In order to use the beta deck and my Blackmagic card, I assumed I needed to re-compress the sequence using the BM codec, 8 or 10 bit.
When I did so, the entire spot went VERY SOFT. Bad compression.I tried exporting the sequence at the native DV50 codec and doing the recompression in AE to see if that was better. It wasn’t.
In using AE I set the 720×480 media in a 720×486 composition and didn’t blow up the image at all, simply allowing black at the edges.
Nothing helped. Can anyone suggest a pipeline for getting these spots onto beta tape looking sharp??
Should I rent the Panasonic Deck again, lay-off via Firewire and then have beta dubs made? Will that help?
Should I take an edit list and go someplace and do linear a conform from DV to digibeta?
I’m going to use these new spots over and over with different supers, so this is a problem I need to solve.
I would prefer a way that doesn’t involve regular rental of a deck or going out of house, but I’m willing to do so.Thanks for any suggestions –
Matthew
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2 Replies
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Well, one advantage of using a device like the Decklink is that it sends DV50 (or DV25 for that matter) out through analog component. You only need to use Blackmagic’s DV50 easy set-up. That’s all you need to make Beta SP dubs. DV50 is usually excellent quality for handling Beta SP or going to Beta SP, so if it looks really bad, you’re probably doing something wrong (or as you’ll read below, not doing anything wrong but could be looking at a lo res version).
Bear in mind two things, though. Unlike Uncompressed 8 or 10 bit, DV50 is lower field first. Also, like DV25 and unlike uncompressed, NTSC frame size is 720×480, not 720×486. If you export from AE or FCP to DV50 with upper field first and D1 size, you’ll have field issues.
The other thing that perhaps might help – Just like with DV25, DV50 files captured or rendered from Final Cut Pro have the Quicktime “high quality” flag turned off. The quality is there, but if you open the movies in Quicktime player, you’ll see them at half res. Just in case… You can turn on High quality from within the QT player or watch the results through the Decklink or DV50/Firewire.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Hi Matthew,
Adolfo has covered some tricky issues which might explain your problem but, as he said, the best thing is simply to use a Blackmagic NTSC DV50 or Blackmagic PAL DV50 easy setup. One nice thing about this is that if there are any field inversion issues, the DeckLink card will send the correct field order to tape when you output to the Betacam SP deck.
It is not necessary to undergo the laborious task of rendering your DV50 material to 10-bit as you can simply play your DV50 material through the DeckLink card and it will output as uncompressed video and audio on the fly.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design
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