FCP HD/G5/ output to Beta SP

Hey Gang,
Please forgive this newbie-type post. I did a lot of searching on the Cafe' LA forum, but didn't find a simple discussion regarding my question...

My film has been accepted to a couple of film festivals that don't accept DVD as a format for presentation. I shot and edited my film in DV and want to output to Beta SP. (I'm renting a Beta SP deck to do the recording.)

It seems like I need some sort of Decklink product, basic or SP? Right now I'm not so concerned with fancy capturing capabilitites, but I need to output to analog.

What's the best (and most cost-effective) way to accomplish this?

Thanks so much!

Zack

The cheapest? ADVC-100 converter box. Converts DV to analogue. Just output your timeline like normal.

A better way? Decklink SP. For this you will have to make an 8-bit timeline using the decklink 8-bit settings, drop your DV footage into it and render. Then output.

Make DARN SURE you get a Black Burst Generator for the deck to plug into the REF IN...expecially if you go the ADVC route.

hey shane, thanks for the response.
1. what's a black burst generator? why do you recommend it so strongly?
2. if i imported mini-dv and edited everything in that format, isn't it already 8-bit?

zc



Zack Coffman
producer/director
Choppertown: the Sinners [www.choppertown.com]
Brittown: a Brit bike documentary [www.brittown.com]

MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 15" 2.4Ghz
Matte Screen
4 GB Corsair Ram
OWC 1TB Raid
Dell 2405FPW
FCP 6.0.4
OSX 10.5.5

I think the most cost effective way would be for you to take your final sequence output on a hard drive to a post facility. Otherwise you'll eat the cost of the capture card, the blackburst, and the deck rental. After you get a proper tape, Lightening Dubs can run them off for you, if you need more than a few.

[www.fancyfilm.com]
[www.thedrgroup.com]
[www.postgroup.com]



- Justin Barham -

1. A Black Burst Generator is what makes a high-end analogue deck keep sync. Without it you cannot output to tape.

2. No no no no...DV is DV...5:1 compression. 8-bit is by far higher...more the resolution of Beta SP or DVCPRO 50. 10-Bit is like Digibeta.

The best way that is truely the most cost effective is to either have a post facility with FCP and beta decks to output it, or to output to DV and then go to Lightning dubs and have THEM dub it to Betasp.

thanks

8bit refers to colour depth in digital formats. With 8 bit, you have legal luma values from 16 to 235. With 10bit, that jumps to 64 to 940! All digital formats have a bit depth, and it's not strictly a form of compression, but necessary for it to be a digital format.

I think Shane, when you refer to 8bit, you're really meaning "8bit Uncompressed 4:2:2" settings, are you not?

BetaSP being an analogue format has no bits! However it has noise, and equating analogue noise to digital quantisation noise, it's also approximately 8bit, in that 8bit quantisation, when digitising the video, has more than enough levels to adequately describe the signal.

And yes, DV is compressed, but then again, so is BetaSP, but in an analogue fashion. Whereas DV retains a full resolution digital picture, BetaSP has noise and reduced bandwidth. Reducing chroma bandwidth is a technique used in digital video as compression, hence DigiBeta is 4:2:2 (half chroma bandwidth) and DV 4:1:1 (quarter chroma bandwidth). BetaSP reduces chroma bandwidth to about 3/8, so it's somewhere inbetween.

However, BetaSP also reduces luma bandwith, something both DV and DigiBeta so not. BetaSP luma bandwidth is about 75% of that of digital video.

So, if you're editing BetaSP and want to preserve it's full quality, it's best not to add any digital artifacts through compression on top of the already compressed analogue video. However, if you're making a BetaSP master for broadcast, then the broadcaster has already decided that it's willing to accept a bare minimum of quality (they'd want DigiBeta if they really cared abotu quality), and as broadcast resolution is far below that even of BetaSP, I'd just take your DV tape to get dubbed to BetaSP and nobody will ever notice, or even care. IMHO, of course....

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

hey graeme,
thanks for the explanation!

1. since the film is being projected/screened at a festival in Beta SP do you think it is worth it so render an 8bit timeline and take the whole computer to a post house for output? or do you still think the mini DV tapes dubbed to Beta Sp will be ok?

2. Since miniDV tapes are only 60 min in length, but our film is 93 mins... do we need to do anything special or just give the dub house Tape A and Tape B and say stick 'em together?


Zack

THey have MiniDV tapes longer than 60 minutes now.



- Justin Barham -

Another option is to simply rent a DV CAM deck instead of BetaSP. Output your work to DVCAM (pro version of mini-dv). This way, it all stays in the digital domain. Rental price is probably about the same. No format conversion either.

Well I got a quote from an editing house, they will let me plug in my firewire drive into their system and output my self-contained QT movie straight to Beta SP for $300 bucks... They said the quality will be better than taking two miniDV tapes to a dubbing house and dubbing them into Beta SP. What do you guys think?

ZC

Sounds good.