Broadcast Quality Backups of Tapes

D

davidblumenfeld

Active member
I'm shooting a little documentary (on PAL) for a client and want to make (broadcast quality) back-ups of everything I'm shooting for them. My question is what is the best method of backing tapes up? Should we spend the $$ and back-up on Beta SP tapes or can I go from the original mini-DV to another mini-DV without any loss in quality? Any suggestions? THANKS!
 
Re: Broadcast Quality Backups of Tapes

A digital transfer (e.g. minidv-minidv) is a bit-for-bit copy of the original.  There are no differences, there is no loss in quality.

Even if you were to backup to BetaSP or any other media using an analogue transfer method, you'd lose a generation, and thus image quality would suffer regardless of whether or not the backup media is of higher quality.
 
Re: Broadcast Quality Backups of Tapes

Thanks for the answer! Can I then go from my camera to another dv camera without losing anything? My friend has a sony pd-170...
 
Re: Broadcast Quality Backups of Tapes

You can indeed - as long as it's connected through a firewire, there will be absolutely no loss of quality whatsoever.
 
Re: Broadcast Quality Backups of Tapes

One thing to consider: make sure your backup tapes are the same brand/type as you shoot with. You want to avoid contamination of the wet/dry lubes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top