Duplication Masters
 

I'm looking to produce a master for a 2 hour production for multiple dupes onto VHS. Since MiniDV does not come in a 120 flavor, I see my choices as:

a) Master to a 80 min DV recorded at LP.

b) Master to 2-60 min. DVs, then record a Dub Master to a T120 SVHS. Use the SVHS for the VHS dubs.

I don't have capibility to master to DVC Pro or DVCAM.

Any other ideas?

If you computer can hold two hours of DV you also should be able
to edit it there, and then output (through your DV camera) to
VHS tape directly, bypassing all of your problems.

Thanks for the reply, Rob. I guess I didn't state the problem clearly.

I need to make a 2 hour long mastertape to be used in making multiple VHS duplicates for distribution. Since Mini DVs don't come in 2 hour versions, I was wondering about the potential quality loss by mastering to SVHS. Then using the SVHS as the master tape for the 40 or 50 VHS dupes I'll need.

Anyone with thoughts? Other ways of doing it?

Who's running the dubs?

If you're taking it to a duplication house, I'd call them and see what the options are. They might be able to take an external HD with the footage on it.

Otherwise I'd make a DVD and use that as the master before I'd do an SVHS one.

You don't know anyone that's got a DSR-11 deck to borrow or rent?

Thanks Bryan,

I thought with the DVD compression, it would be lower quality, but I may be wrong.

Don't know anyone with a DSR-11 up here... You need local contacts or are you doing something in Texas?

I know that Sony makes both a 120min and a 180min DV tape, both of which are obviously over 2 hours. Why don't you use one of those? You could either rent a small deck or have a local shop run it off for you. You could probably even (as stated earlier) take the project to the duplication house (on a hard drive) and have them dump it to DV for you.
I'd call the duplication house and see how they can help you. They're usually very flexible.

I'd much rather master from a DVD than SVHS, just crank your bitrate up in the DVD and get the best possible image. Much better than SVHS.

S-VHS is unpredictable but if you actually used the high end S-VHS decks (the ones that originally sold for 5-7 thousand dollars), you might find that you can improve the overall picture quality if you had grainiess issues on your digital master.

However, if you have high contrast digital video wide shots sometimes the S-VHS decks interprets them as drop-outs.

The best low-cost solution nowadays maybe the DVD standalone recorders. Firewire into the harddrive, set your bit-rate and then run the signal off of the harddrive.

<<<-- Originally posted by Bryan McCullough : I'd much rather master from a DVD than SVHS, just crank your bitrate up in the DVD and get the best possible image. Much better than SVHS. -->>>

How can you crank up the bit rate on a two hour DVD master? Did you mean crank down"?

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I'm not a hundred percent sold on using an NLE hard drive as a duplication master, however, if you use a standalone DVD recorder hard drive, you might have a higher chance of error free copies.

Output your NLE master to DV tape via firewire, then reinput the master to your DVD standalone recorder harddrive via firewire onto the harddrive at a high quality setting, around 7.8 bits.

The beauty of this is one doesn't have to use their primary computer as both an editing and duplication station. I currently have over a dozen masters housed on a DVD stand alone recorder harddrive and I can burn DVD's whenever necessary without affecting any other editing job.