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Author Topic: Other digital format recommendations Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-30-2009 11:08 AM                        More and more with indie films, especially docs, they are available "digital only" by which they mean DVD/Digi Beta /DV CAM. We have DVD and will probably go BluRay next year. My question: Is it worthwhile to hunt down a digi beta or DV Cam deck on ebay? Is the quality that much different? If we were doing these shows full time, or even frequently, I would consider getting the newest bestest decks. But for occasional shows, DVD seems good enough (except for all of the problems with DVD's. And would these other formats send the proper signal to our CP650 to have Dolby Surround? Enlighten me.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-30-2009 11:56 AM                        Can you rent decks locally and, if so, how would the rental cost compare with the purchase price of the deck? For Digi-Beta, the minimum investment is about $15k for a J30. You could get quite a few $350/day rentals for that price, especially if you have a good relationship with the rental house. DVCAM decks are cheaper, but not all of them have SDI or component analog outputs--be careful and know what you are buying. As with Digi-Beta, make sure that you have a deck that will play both NTSC and PAL tapes. As for picture quality, Digi-Beta (and, often, Beta SP) is a definite win over DVD, and the format is much more reliable. DVCAM has not impressed me with its image quality, but it is a more reliable format than DVD. Personally, I would be reluctant to spend $$$ on anything SD at this point in time, unless video is _very_ important to your programming. HD is clearly the future, and I'd be amazed if anyone will want to exhibit anything in SD in a couple of years. The deck that you really want is the HDW-D1800, which will play both HDCAM and Digi-Beta (though not Beta SP, which is a dying format, anyway), but you don't want to see the price (just under $40k). I would be reluctant to buy any of this equipment off of Ebay without the advice of someone who knows these decks inside and out. They are complicated beasts, and repairs can be expensive.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-30-2009 11:58 AM                     Digibeta, DV Cam, HD CAM are pretty common formats used by indies. In these formats you can buy a player only type of unit so you're not paying for expensive and unnecessary record electronics that you'll probably never use. Check E-Bay for these items and if you buy used from a reputable source it'll be safe and get a good unit. quote: Scott Norwood though not Beta SP, which is a dying format, anyway HA? It's still THE most used tape format in the world!!! Don't forget that most of the world is still SD... Mark  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-30-2009 12:15 PM                        I don't doubt the importance of Beta SP in the broadcast industry, where I am sure that it is still common. I have just seen very little of it lately in the indie-film end of things. The major limitation is that the longest tape only runs for 90 minutes, which is shorter than many feature-length "film" productions. The other issue is that Digi-Beta (usually) looks better and has better sound quality. For festivals, HDCAM has been the dominant video format for the last couple of years. The material in other formats is usually shorts and foreign productions, or is produced for TV broadcast. SD material will soon look _very_ dated.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-30-2009 01:26 PM                     Though not cheap, the HDWM2100 is the uber playback deck (no record)...it plays back HDCAM and below...no HDCAM SR though. It would be cheaper to get a J30/SDI deck for the Dbeta and below and a JH3 if you needed HDCAM. Steve  |  IP: Logged Mike Olpin Chop Chop! Posts: 1852 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-30-2009 03:10 PM                     We have a JH3 and a J30 installed. No problems with either, except we cant play Dolby E tapes with them. I'm trying out an M-2000 right now for a film festival we have running, and it's an impressive deck, though at 60k it should be. The advantage of beta and hdcam over dvd and bluray has to do with color space. DVD and BluRay are 4:2:2 and beta and hdcam have 4:4:4. With 4:2:2, the luminance (brightness information) is much sharper than the chrominance (color information). Think about it this way. A high resolution black and white image with a low resolution color transparency placed over it. You can see fine details due to the luminance, but the color often bleeds slightly over its edge. 4:4:4 has the same sharpness in chrominance as it does in luminance, so colors stay attached to the details they belong to.  |  IP: Logged Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-30-2009 09:03 PM                        Thanks for all of the info. It's good to know they are way out of our budget range for awhile. We don't do anywhere near enough business to justify that kind of cost. And no one in town rents anything like them. I guess our next upgrade is a really good BluRay.  |  IP: Logged Cameron Glendinning Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 845 From: West Ryde, Sydney, NSW Australia Registered: Dec 2005 posted 07-30-2009 09:43 PM                     Perhaps an home HD media server like this Rip the dvd to a hard drive and know it will play to the end! Ask film makers for the content to arrive on a hard drive or usb drive? Is it possible to rip a blu ray yet? Anyway its just a low cost suggestion that may be worth looking into.  |  IP: Logged Peter Castle Expert Film Handler Posts: 220 From: Wollongong University, NSW ,Australia Registered: Oct 2003 posted 07-30-2009 10:22 PM                     Yes Cameron, I bought one of these . Plays e-cinema files as well as our e-cinema server.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-30-2009 11:16 PM                     Mike...RE Dolby-E on the J series...you can play Dolby E on the J30/SDI...if no SDI then no on the Dolby-E. The key is that the SDI single will not only have the video but also the audio as well! Thus, all you really need is a de-embedder like the AJA HD10AM Or the Black Magic SDI to Audio Converter On channels 3/4 in AES form will be the Dolby-E stream. Embedded audio supports Dolby-E  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-31-2009 08:07 AM                        I have used the HDW-M2000 (play/record variant of the model that Steve recommends), but not recently. Does it upconvert SD material when the HD-SDI output is used? My favorite feature of the HDW-D1800 is its upconversion function (menu option 950), which allows SD tapes to be output as HD by pillerboxing a 4x3 image, unsqueezing a 16x9 anamorphic image, or blowing up a letterbox image. This avoids having to make adjustments to a scaler or projector on the fly during a shorts program. If the -M2000 and -M2100 do this, then they are definitely the decks to get. As for Dolby-E: is the DMA8 still the proper tool to decode that format, or is there something better or cheaper.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 07-31-2009 08:38 AM                     The trouble with video standards is that there are too many of them. It must have been about 25 years ago now when the debate was over which 1" format, 'B' or 'C', should replace Quad. Somebody told me that it didn't really matter as within a few years everything would be digital, and everything would be on just one format again. How wrong he was, on both counts.  |  IP: Logged Mike Olpin Chop Chop! Posts: 1852 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-31-2009 12:30 PM                     Thanks for the info on Dolby E - We use component video for our routing, so SDI is unused - I'll look into it some more and see if a de-embeder is in our budget. We already have a DMA-8, so I just need something to take the audio from the SDI and feed it into an AES input. The M-2000 does scale using the same menu item. (950)  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-31-2009 03:48 PM                     Note, the M2000 does need the proper boards to do all of the scaling and such. When we do an installation, we normally use the SDI outputs for SD material and the HDSDI outputs only for HD. If you just use the HDSDI output and you get a letterboxed DigiBeta or like tape, you will have a 16:9 image within a 4:3 image within a 16:9 image. Now you can use the 900s menus to have the deck do the resizing for you but that is far less convienent and intuitive than to use an outboard scaler or even the projector to deal with the SD source. As for the DMA8...the original DMA8 had an option board for it to work with the SDI signal and de-embed the audio. The DMA8 Plus does not have this option, unfortunately. The DMA8 Plus is the cheapest way to decode Dolby-E period. The Broadcast way is to use a DP572 decoder...which still has the decoded audio in AES form so you will need something like the USL or DMA8 to decode the digital audio down to analog in most cases. Also, the DP572 only handles bi-level sync, 50/60Hz material. If you want to run tri-level sync stuff and 23.98/24p material, you'll need the DP579 sync converter as well...which costs more than the DP572 itself. And also add into the complication that the DP572 has to have a reference signal for it to decode (often the site's black-burst generator) or it won't do a damn thing. Stick with the DMA8 Plus. Steve  |  IP: Logged James B Gardiner Film Handler Posts: 91 From: North Altona, Victoria, Ausrtalia Registered: Feb 2009 posted 08-06-2009 08:53 AM                     One trend we should all consider is that Tape based distribution formats are going away. Anyone considering a purchase of these expensive devices should think twice. Every media files comes of a editing system some where. And all you need for them to do is export it to a reasonable eCinema format of decent quality. Tape is likely only to stay around for master formats like HDcamSR, which NONE of you will ever be able to afford. They are amazingly expensive. You only ever see them in Post Mastering houses. File based distribution is the way to go and eCinema products are likely to fill that void. It makes the best economic sense.  |  IP: Logged

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