Hi All,

Sorry if this question has already been answered, I did search with no luck.

First, a little background.

I'm working off a Non-Intel, Dual 1.8Ghz PowerPC G5 with Final Cut Studio 2 and 3.5GB RAM.

My goal: Capture uncompressed footage from Digibeta / DVCam / HDV tapes.

Main question: What connection would successfully capture uncompressed Digibeta / DVcam / HDV footage?

Secondary Question: What video card do you suggest I purchase for said purpose?

I've been looking into these:

http://www.aja.com/html/products_macintosh_kona.html

Third Question: Does anybody know how much Hard Drive Space 1 minute of uncompressed Digibeta footage takes up?

Thanks a million, guys! Any feedback is much appreciated!

Ok well just to update my own questions here is what I have found:

Using the Sony DVW-A500 and the AJA Kona 3 LH I can transfer 4:2:2 into the computer. I plan on renting the Sony deck and buying the Kona. (Anybody know any local deck rental facilities in the Maryland/Virginia/D.C. area?)

Now, my ultimate questions are;

Does FCP 6 capture uncompressed via SDI (BNC connector) ?

What settings should I use? Is the ProRess422 codec involved in this somehow?

At this point I might be confusing myself. Any help is much appreciated!

P.S. I'll have a workflow diagram up here soon

Does this make sense to you guys?

Let me know if I'm taking the right steps here.

Thanks!



http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/1121/digibetaworkflowxh7.jpg

If you want to capture uncompressed, you will need hard drives that are fast enough. Usually you capture to a RAID array of 2 or more drives.

Alternatives would be...
A- Capture into the ProRes codec. I'm not sure if you need the new AJA IO box to do that. This captures with compression so that you can use a single hard drive.
B- Use Sheervideo's codec for lossless video compression. I haven't worked with this... I don't think you get real-time effects with this codec.
C- Capture with FCP transcoding the video into some sort of compressed format. The Aja cards for example can transcode to DV (and I think DV50) as you capture.
D- Dub the tapes to DVCAM or DV.

If you are looking for online quality, your best option is likely to get a RAID array and to get a Kona capture card. Various vendors sell RAID enclosures.

To hook up the dbeta deck to your system, use a single BNC cable from SDI out to the SDI in on your capture card.

Use a serial cable for deck/VTR control. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_cable
You'll need deck control if you want to log & capture. Log & capture is a PITA but it saves drive space (as opposed to capturing entire tapes, laying markers at the cut points, and making subclips).

For Digibeta and DVCAM the uncompressed stream is the same size (it's both SD, only with different compression ratios on tape)

R,G,B with 4:4:4 is 324 Mbit/s (=40,5 MB/s)
Y, CR, CB with 4:2:2 @ 10 bit is 270 Mbit/s (=33,75 MB/s)
Y, CR, CB with 4:2:2 @ 8 bit is 216 Mbit/s (=27 MB/s)
(For PAL, I'm not sure if it's exactly the same for ntsc)

This is video only, you'll additionally get 2 or 4 uncompressed audio channels @ 48kHz, 16 bit.

For HDV the data rates will be a lot higher uncompressed, but I can't tell you how much because my books are too old to feature HD resolutions and I'm not much of a mathematician ;)