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SX and SP Beta transfer: Firewire vs SDI
Hello to all. My company is working to do a lot more in house production. In times past, we worked with outside sources with a number of different formats. Many people comment on how nice it would be if we had our own Beta deck. I’ve worked with Beta for a long time and I understand the differences between SP, DIGI, and SX. I just never paid attention to the format we used most. I need to make a recommendation on what we need to improve our workflow. Therefore, I wonder if recording to Beta SP is a bad buy considering we deal with news stations and production houses that have Beta SX. The other thing I need to consider is the transfer for editing. We have a basic DV editing setup based on Vegas Video. I thought I needed to upgrade for SDI input but I see you can by playback decks with fire wire. Are we talking apples to apples here? If I input a SX feed via fire wire or SDI do I need to come out SX in order to maintain acceptable quality?
Any help would be appreciated. Even if you show where to look for this info, it would help.
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7 Replies
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Sony doesn’t support the SP format anymore. Any spare parts you might need are rapidly drying up. I would think you’d want to buy the minimum format required by your customers. Can any of them accept DV? As far as SDI v. Firewire, I’m not sure – anyone?
“So you want to throw out the old you – but the old you is old enough to know it won’t make it better”
Del Amitri – “Make it Better” -
You could do no worse than buy a Sony J30SDI. This relatively cheap player will playback BetaSP, SX, DigiBeta and MPEG IMX. It has SDI as well as a Firewire output and can be controlled from your NLE via the Firewire or RS422 ports.
Note that this is a player only. For recording you could easily pick-up a BetaSP recorder secondhand or possibly an SX machine although these are largely restricted to the ENG operation. DigiBeta is by far the best option quality wise but they come at a big price.
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I guess I wouldn’t want to output to SP and it not be supported by most people. I doubt that’s the case, but with all the new formats I wonder if SP was still used and accepted by the masses.
My concern with fire wire was that DV has a 25mbps rate vs and Beta SX has a 50mbps. If I was to use the firewire channel would it transfer in the DV standered or is the port just as good as the SDI.
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Sony seams to be straying away from SX, Digibeta and of course SP. IMX is King of the SD realm. Their Video File Transfer over IP at 2.5x realtime. Is the Best. Get the eVTR MXF file transfer option.
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The firewire port will transfer at 25Mbs.
However, the SDI output operates at the full rate fully supporting SX and DigiBeta.
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Firewire is actually 400Mbs, and the newest version (1394b) is 800Mbs, so it is more than fast enough. There is Firewire support for formats up to 100Mbs (DVCPRO-HD). All of the tests that I have seen show no difference between Firewire and SDI transfers. They are both digital after all. Having said that, SDI is much more of an industry standard, so it may be easier to build a workflow with SDI. Many of the new decks are incorporating Firewire, however, so it’s entirely possible to use Firewire.
This is unfortunately, a time of great transistion in the broadcast arena. There are LOTS of formats out there, and manufacturers keep dumping more on us every year (check NAB again this year). I would check with your clients to see if you can find a format that they prefer. In the small market that I work in, the local stations still prefer Beta SP while they try to find the “next great thing”.
Ralph
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Buy a Sony J30SDI and a Sony DV-Cam deck for recording and start using firewire. That
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