Digibeta capture woes, please take a look and help.

JCVR

Well-known member
I'm not sure where this topic belongs, but it's ultimately for a project that will be mixed with DVX footage. Here goes...

I shot part of a project with 16mm, I had it telecined and put onto digibeta ( i assume with a pulldown). I recently got my hands on a Sony J-30SDI digibeta deck to get the footage to my harddrive via firewire with Vegas Video.

Something just doesn't seem right, i uploaded the footage but it seems to be uploading at 29.976 without a pulldown, it is uploading at 720x480 instead of digibetas 720x486 and the 18min file came to around 4 gigs instead of the 18gigs that I was expecting for digibeta footage. This leads me to believe that the footage is just uploading um...wrong? perhaps without 4:2:2 color space, i think it's downconverting to miniDV quality or something.

Does anyone know what might be going on? the best way to upload Digibeta to a PC harddrive via firewire? help!
 
I'd have to guess but since you are capturing using firewire I'd say you are capturing at DV settings.
I'm not at all sure but I beleive to capture the full quality you would need an SDI capture card. I'm sure others will chime in if I'm wrong.
 
JCVR said:
it seems to be uploading at 29.976 without a pulldown
I suspect this has something to do with the DigiBeta tape not having flags for easy pulldown removal -- but, perhaps this isn't an issue for Vegas? Are you using a Sony J-30 deck? If so, the converter is DV 4:1:1, as you've found out...
 
Alright, is there any type of alternative for me to upload with SDI with my laptop? Not sure if there is a PCMCIA card to do this. Any help?
 
JCVR said:
Alright, is there any type of alternative for me to upload with SDI with my laptop?
Firewire I/O, AJA.com works with FCP. Can't say for sure if it works with Vegas -- I don't think so.
 
not to sound completely helpless... but which one of these devices is what i'm looking for? There's so many- nothing is strictly PCMCIA, so how i go about getting that into my laptop... oy vey

help?
 
I'm just not sure if editing uncompressed is possible on a laptop -- but, what do I know about these things? I have a hard time configuring a printer on a Windows PC! (mac guy) Unlike DV and DVCPRO50, there isn't an easy way to edit DigiBeta on a laptop that I know of. Sorry I don't enough about these things... Your GM stuff looked good. Good luck with this one.
 
hey wells, sometimes the hardware can be a pain...

Your pressence is making it all the more enjoyable though. Thanks a ton.
 
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