Transfering mini DV to Digibeta
 

Hi,

I have a couple of newbie questions for you guys. I just finished my documentary short and I want to start entering it into the festivals. Basically, all of the festivals want Digibeta or BetaSP to exhibite on. So, could somebody explain to me or show me a guide on the ways to transfer my film(mini DV, which I have burned onto a DVD right now) to Digibeta. Is there a cheap route to do this? How do you do this process? Do the festivals actually screen right off the Digibeta tapes? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

You'll probably want to locate a local production house that will do the transfer for you, since you don't have the equipment yourself. You will just be providing them a finished master on MiniDV and they do the rest.

Side note - even though many fests take digibeta for the final exhibition format, you'll notice that pretty much all of them will take BetaSP. If you want a format that will open you to the most festivals out there, BetaSP is by far much more widespread. I'm only saying this because I'm in the submissions process myself right now, and I'm finding this to be wholeheartedly true.

Agree with you, Jake. It's far better to transfer to Beta SP, since even digibetas support SP playback. Just little advise - make sure that transferring is made with component I/O. I've seen some companies transferring material via S-cable, which will degrade your picture.

Is there any quality difference between BetaSP and Digibeta if both transfers are done right?

Well, from my experience you can have dropouts on SP, but that is quite rare. On both,I think, you will have almoust identical copy. I cannot see the difference when dubbed via component. On the other side colors were horrible when transferred with composite.

Also, BetaSP is analog unlike DigiBeta. A very reliable analog used wideley in the broadcast and commercial world, but analog nonetheless. So the usual gradual decline in play would apply, I imagine. Though of course not as terrible as a VHS tape.

However, I would love it if someone with some solid experience in the two formats would chime in. My knowledge in this is limited to what I've already said.

I agree to just call around to your local post production house and find out what they charge to dub for you. For what it's worth, I work at a post house and just asked our dub manager what she would do in this situation. She said if it is miniDV she would dub it to BetaSP and if it is DVcam she would dub it to DigiBeta for slightly higher quality. So in your situation it sounds like you would get about the same quality with a BetaSP as a Digi, except the BetaSP is much cheaper. Hope that helps.

Hi, guys! I'm diffenetly going with betaSP now. I found a dub house to do the transfer for $25 and they provide the tape also. This is the best deal I've found, so far and I think it may be the best deal I'll even get. Thanks again for all your feedback.

I have another question, sorry this one is off topic. What program do you guys use to take still frame shots from your video to send to the festivals?

that is a heck of a deal! I dont know how long your short is, but considering the cost of the tape, they are basically doing it for free. Good find!

> She said if it is miniDV she would dub it to BetaSP and
> if it is DVcam she would dub it to DigiBeta

This is so weird. There are still people who think that DVCAM is better quality than DV.

Anyway, I discoverd the recording studio where I work has --for some strange reason-- a recording BetaSP deck. When I first mentioned I wanted to copy MiniDV to it, everybody here said it couldn't be done, a TBC was needed or a DV deck that could sync to time base generator and so on. But I discovered that if I feed the Beta's sync input with composite video from the cam (and used S-video for the dub) the deck syncs perfectly to the camera's video.

Of course S-video is not ideal, but my camera doesn't have component output.

Looks great to me.

For the still frame shots, I've exported single frames from AVID (my NLE) and I touch them up with Adobe Photoshop. There are a billion different ways you can tweak your stills, after you export them.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it matters what program you use to export your still, as long as it exports two fields of video into an uncompressed image format. Unless you are using some sort of program that specifically exports frame grabs.