DV to Beta SP transfer

D

DVXSanDiego

Well-known member
Hey all, a question I am thrilled to be asking: we just got our first festival acceptance for our first film, a DVX 100 feature we edited in Vegas. The festival requires either a 35mm blowup or Beta SP exhibition copy. As we don't intend to go to film, what is the best way to make the jump to Beta SP? I believe DSE said he saves uncompressed Quicktime to a portable HD for print to HDCam at a post house; would this be the best route for us? Any way to print an 87-minute feature to DV tape in our DVX and then have them dub the DV tape to Beta SP? And why do so many festivals require Beta SP? It seems some would be offering digital HD projection at this point...anyhow, any advice is appreciated.
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

bring your DV-tape to someone who has a Betadeck. you can simply copy from tapedeck to tapedeck via the component inputs on the Betadeck. even YC can work, but i think you lose a little colourinfo there.
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

YCB is better than component. From DV to Beta you'll loose a little info anyway. I do like 15 of those per day at my new job. It's no biggy at all. Just bring the DV tape to the transfer house.

EDIT - WITH COLORBARS!
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

Also correct me if I'm wrong but watch the audio levels going to Betacam as DV doesn't have the range of Betacam....so you'll have to turn it up.

I know the other route of Betacam to DV...audio off the Betacam can be way to hot for DV.
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

Yes, listen to these guys. DV to BetaSP is no big deal at all, it's a simple deck-to-deck copy, no need for quicktimes or anything like that.

If possible, try to get a "component" dub done, it'll retain more quality than an s-video (Y/C) dub will.
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

Yes Barry,

Thats the reason I was asking what is YCB, because I always use component for copy DV to Beta SP or vice-versa, what is better than Y/C.
Beta SP is analog. but 4:2:2 and no compression. I always got great quality in the Beta copy.

Ulisses
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

YCB is shorthand notation for component video, shorthand for YCrCb.

For clarification, BetaSP is not 4:2:2. 4:2:2 is a digital notation, and BetaSP is an analog medium, so it gets measured in MHz of bandwidth, etc.

However, if one were to translate the sampling frequencies of BetaSP and attempt to correlate them to digital, BetaSP would clock in at around 3:1:1. That's halfway between DV's 4:1:1 and DVCPRO50/Digital Betacam's 4:2:2.
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

Yes, looks like beta sp has more color information than DV, mainly in blue, my chroma-keys from beta were better than the DV ones :)

Thanks,
Ulisses
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

Thanks for all the replies, guys, but what about the tape length issue - the longest mini-dv tape I know of is 83 minutes, our feature is 87 minutes, so how do we even print to tape for the tape-to-tape transfer?
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

Betacam has 90 minutes tapes and you can assemble 2 DV tapes (60min each) on it.

Ulisses
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

You guys talk too much about pull downs and pull ups, things I don't know very much how they work… I'm sorry if it sounds stupid, but what is it exactly?? I have a short film shot w/a DSR 370, I had a tape to tape in a transfer house for color adjustments and then a final copy in beta-sp and it realy looks way better than the original, was there any pull-up or down and what's the real issue?    ???
 
Re: DV to Beta SP transfer

Maybe yes, maybe not... the only way to know if your film has pulldown is checking frame by frame, some frames should be full, some with fields, but you recorded in DV 60i and I don't believe a pulldown was applied in your footage, but maybe they removed the fields.

Ulisses
 
What I've done is to rent a DVCam deck and firewire my project (when longer than 1 hr.) to DVCam and then I use a facility here in town that can dub component from DVCam to BetaCam. Great results.

If you're going to dub from your camera, I suppose you could firewire to the DVX recording in LP mode. Supposedly there isn't a quality issue with LP mode just a compatibility issue, as far as any other camera playing it back.

I have also exported a Quicktime of my project onto either a FireWire or USB2 external drive and carried that to a post/duplication house then loaded it into their Final Cut system and made my DVCam & BetaCam masters from there. . .

MR
 
You'll have to print to tape using a deck that takes large size DV or DVCAM cassetes.
Sony DSR-11, DSR-30, or similar Panasonic models. Just make sure the transfer house has a true component out from the deck to the Betacam record deck. Many dubbing houses here in LA use the Sony 1500 decks with real YCB outs (Quad One Video in Burbank is a great place...very careful and reliable).
Hope this helps.
Ken
 
Thanks to everyone who posted here, I needed to see this thread, I expect I'll be doing much of this later this summer when I finish my film. - CK
 
If you want to be sure you get the best copy to the Beta SP. Put a color bar and a test tone on your DV tape. If you also record an ID graphic in front of your film there will be no confuses. E.G. color bar from time code 00:00:00 to 00:01:30, then ID to TC 00:01:50, black till 00:02:00 were your film starts. If the copy company do it right your bars, test tone (and the 00:02:00 start time) will be perfect on the Beta SP copy
 
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