-
stay with betacam or go digital?
Hi, we built a TV studio and have about 12k to buy a second camera. our main camera to this point is a sony dxc-d50 BETA CAM. The director wants a second beta cam. I am thinking digital would be better. we did a comparison of the dxc-d50 and a sony PD 150 and trv900 and panasonic dvx100a and they all got their respective clocks cleaned by the D50. 2/3″ ccd and precision glass probably made the difference. at any rate, what would be the advantage of going digital? or even hi def? we do lots of green screen and compositing and currently capture with a digisuite LE with premiere 6.0 and a dual processor G5 with a AJA iola analog to digital converter. capturing uncompressed with the digisuite is fine but the G5 is usually capturing in dv ntsc which is not too good for compositing. it can capture uncompressed analog but the file size is huge and after three layers in final cut frame drops occur. so we’ll usually use dv but that crimps the compositing stuff we do. any suggestions?
so far someone has recommended using digibeta or dvcpro50 formats. another issue is of course the problem of mathcing digibeta and betacam footage. are there workarounds?
-
25 Replies
-
Going digital will greatly reduce the dropouts inherent in BetaCam tape recordings but will require more investment.
I certainly wouldn’t go down the DV route as a second camera. Unless you buy in the DSR-390/570/400/450 with a good quality lens. Going to a 1/3″ camera would be a backward step.
You could buy a good secondhand BetaCam camera – they’re at almost giveaway prices now in the UK.
At the end of the day you need to look at the final output and balance cost with experience of what you already have.
-
Making me drool, Dave. Almost makes me want to go back into broadcast………….nah, been there done that. I like my semi-retirement job. (But I’m still drooling.)
Charlie
-
If you’re still looking, we use a D-35 w/ a DSR-1 Back (DVCAM). I believe this back will work on the D-50. This could off-set your cost by not having to purchase an entire new camera, and you still have all the power and picture you’re used to with the D-50. It works for our needs, however we’re only DVCAM around here. We rarely do Chroma Key, so we don’t have many of those problems. For everything else, the quality is fine, and we only broadcast off our server at 25mbps.
-
The one thing that eveyone glanced over is your post problems. You shouldn’t be getting drop frames with 3 layers of video and, yes, the files for uncompress video are going to be huge! Sounds like you already have a workflow for your current gear, you just need to get it to work correctly. If you have 12k left to spend, I would seriously consider investing in a array that’s big (1Tb or larger) and fast (so you won’t lose frames of video). You’ll probably spend around 10k for a good array with Raid 3 protection, but it will be worth every penny. Plus it can grow with you. Also, if you only have 12k to spend, your not going to get anything that people have recommended to you (aside from a use BetaCam)
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be loving a new DVCPro camera or a Sony optical. (whatever your choice, go tapeless) DigiBeta is great, a true mastering format, but Sony is shifting away from DigiBeta as an aquisition format. Inotherwords, lots of decisions based on workflow, format, price, etc.
Good luck,
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
PANASONIC and JVC are releasing prosumer hi def cameras in the near future, the units appear to be of superiour quality than the current consumer hi def cameras out there. any word on thier suitability for green screen? perhaps they are an option.
-
Hi Todd,
I’ve been recommending a tapeless setup to the creative director. is the firestore considered the best choice? I mean, I figure if we’re in a studio, we should be able to go straight from the camera head to some form of tapeless digital format.
brian
-
Brian,
The FireStore is a good device but as far as I’m aware it is restricted to DV25 format only. You’re back to DV at 25Mbits again. You will get no improvement in quality using the FireStore over DV tape other than possibly reducing ingest time. They’re also far more expensive than tape!
-
Brian, Brian, Brian,
you’re all over the map! shifting from one focus to another. 😛[brianluce] “I’ve been recommending a tapeless setup to the creative director. is the firestore considered the best choice? I mean, I figure if we’re in a studio, we should be able to go straight from the camera head to some form of tapeless digital format. “
As Dave and Hewitt said, your still standard ‘DV’ So… if you’re not going to be switching formats any time soon and you already are using DV in your work flow then Firestore isn’t that bad of an idea. We have one, but rarely use it. The thing that you need to get straight before using a Firestore is how well it can intergrate into your post-workflow. Case and point: Firestores only use NTSF formatted drives, so when they first came out, they were primarily for PC edit enviroments. If you wanted to use it on a Mac you had to capture to the Firestore drive, then transfer all the footage to another drive before you could import it into FCP, because Mac’s don’t like NTSF drives. Mac OS has improved a lot in regards to drives and NTFS, so I don’t know if it’s still an issue. Also, Firestore uses a couple different codecs, but if you are using a propritery codec (i.e. AJA, Canopus, etc) then even after you capture to the Firestore you still would need to re-encode the footage to your codec. By that point, not much reason to use Firestore. So the Firestore is good-IF you design your workflow to maximize is potietial.
I know everyone here aviods DV and green screen like the plague!! I don’t think the DV is as much of any issue in aquisition as it is in post. I’ve done about a half a dozen green screens on an XL-1 and I have never had an artifacting problems. But I DON’T edit in DV, I edit in 10-bit uncompressed. So the footage isn’t using a DV codec to pull a green screen. Although, if I have to do green screens again, I would use our Panasonic SDX900 (DVCPro 50).
FWIW
Todd at UCSB
Television Production -
[Todd at UCSB] “But I DON’T edit in DV, I edit in 10-bit uncompressed. So the footage isn’t using a DV codec to pull a green screen. Although, if I have to do green screens again, I would use our Panasonic SDX900 (DVCPro 50).”
HUH? Edit in 10 bit uncompressed using footage shot with a DV highly compressed video, how did you get into this uncompressed state? Or do you mean you don’t compress it any more through transfer? Once compressed, always compressed. Lost signal is never fully regained.
Charlie
-
Hi Charlie,
In other words, I shot on XL-1, then digitize the footage-thru a DVCPro deck’s SDI-into a 10 bit uncompressed system. So, yes it’s compressed when it’s shot. But then the edit system ‘converts’ the footage to a 4:2:2 colorspace and uncompressed. So then when you pull your chroma key, or add effects, etc. it’s using more info than just a DV codec. I don’t know how well this works for FCP or systems that can do it thru software? But digitzing thru the hardware conversion seems to hold up well.
Of course all of this is mute if you have a crappy lite chroma key! Which is more often the case in bad green screen footage. 🙂Hope that cleared it up?
Todd at UCSB
Television Production
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up