Going to Digi Beta

E

ElementFilm

Active member
Does anyone have specific experience exporting out their timeline to digi beta. I've used the "Print to Video" and "Edit to Tape" features in the past for VHS dubs, is it primarily the same workflow?
I'm contemplating renting a machine if it's that simple as opposed to having a dub house do it for me (much more expensive). What possible pro's and con's exist in having the post house do it...
And lastly, has anyone had experience making an mpeg2 from the DigiBeta transfer. I've heard it is much higher quality than going straight from your timeline to compressor or the like, because off the tape there is no compression (or very little comparitively to doing it all digitally).
Just wondering if anyone could share their experience before I have my own.
THANKS
 
I've done countless outputs to digibeta from the timeline. All our shows were mastered/archived to such (well until we made the switch to HD). Yes it is primarily the same workflow (use Edit to Tape).

Now I used it at the company I work for, not as an independent person, so I can't full recall 100% on this, but the one thing I think you do need is a raid. Again, I've not used my own personal equipment to do this, but I think you need the juice of a raid configuration to be able to output to the digibeta. And of course some kind of video card that can feed it (it won't do firewire), like a Blackmagic card for example.

As for you doing it versus a post house doing it, well basically the main advantage there is that they know their own decks. The Digibeta decks have a lot of minor settings that can throw you for a loop (and not allow you to output correctly). I personally know a few friends that have rented the deck and not got their outputs done because they didn't know the deck and had 1 single switch in the wrong position and couldn't make the output work. Its a far cry from a 10-15k priced deck, its got a lot more bells and whistles that you need to manage. That being said, if you can rent from a friendly enough and experienced enough place, they might be able to configure it mostly for you on their end first and make it pratically just plug and play kind of deal, but that fully depends on your rental house.

As for the mpeg-2 prep, that sounds like quite the urban myth you're getting there. If you compress right off the timeline with all the edit points plus say a few compression markers you should be getting a fine mpeg-2. Not to say you won't get one from going out to DB, bringing that back in, and then compressing. But I can't see that giving you much of an improvement. However, if you go out to digibeta and have a compression house use a hardware encoder using your digibeta tape, that may well infact produce better results. But if its all being done in your own system, then no, no advantage to compress from the digibeta tape (unless you to have a hardware encoder as part of your system?).

cheers.
 
I've used Avids and Digis a lot, but never FCP so I don't know if FCP has any "quirks". Like the previous poster said, if you've never used a Digi it can be an intimidating VTR especially if it isn't setup properly. If you have the time & money to trouble shoot the deck should a problem arise then go for it. If not, paying for the convenience and peace of mind of having a dub house do it might be the way to go.


-A
 
as long as you have SDI or component out from your mac, going to digibeta is no different than any other deck really.
 
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