DVCProHD to Beta SP 4 Broadcast

Hello again my fine friends!

Shot using my HVX 200 (720p 29.97). Cutting a 30 second spot. I want to transfer from hard drive out to Beta or Beta SP for NTSC broadcast in 4:3 while maintaining the highest quality images and graphics.

The first issue for me. My image is 16x9 and I am delivering 4:3. The manual says to cut in 16x9 and then nest into a 4:3 DV sequnce and then output. Is that correct?

Is there another way to "crop" the sides off of the image without losing and quality by having to scale in?

My next question- Is there any advantage to delivering on hard drive to a post house in DVCPro so that they can transefer to NTSC Betas SP? Do you can you retain a better image quality than doing the transfer to NTSC through QT output?

So, I ask these questions and then wince as I prepare for the slew of obvious issues and solutions that will com flying back at me... but as always, thanks in advance for pointing me in the right direction!

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card

If I had a Beta SP deck in house I would follow the nest procedure and use Edit to Tape for best quality.

Otherwise, master the nested 4:3 to a DVCPro deck (is it SD or HD?) and take it into a dub house. Same result.

Otherwise, master out to a DVCOPro (50 or 100, depending on origin codec) QuickTime and burn it to a DVD via desktop copy. You will check with the dub house to see if they have a way of transferring QT files to tape, of course, and what format DVD you should use.

- Loren
Today's FCP 4 / 5 keytip:
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Thanks for getting back to me Loren.

What we have done is taken the HD footage and dropped into a 4:3 timeline in SD with nor compressor. This of course means render every cut but it is only a :30 spot so I'll live with it... could put masks on the side of a normal HD 16x9 sequence I know... but cover me- I'm already in!

My problem is that for some reason when I nest my 720p 16x9 sequence into a SD 4:3 I have to scale in to make it fit- scaling in of course usually means loss of quality... is that the case here?

When I drop the HD clips into the timeline I am now using, the media show up in a 75% scale. When I change that to 100 it overhangs perfectly croppiing the sides. Funny though it is reading a distort of -50 (and looks correct)

???

Troy Christian

G5 Quad, 8GB RAM, FCP HD Suite 2 6.0.5, OSX 10.5.6
AJA LHe card