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  1. I'm a little lost in these varities of media. I'm going to need to archive my MiniDV and VHS media eventually. I've found the Betacam SP is the best format for this. It's durable, long lasting, and high quality. But can it preserve HD video? Now that I'm working on my first HD project, I'd prefer to have my media archive somewha conformed so that if I get a deck for whatever format I only have one. i.e. Betacam SP or DigiBeta not both. If anyone could help me out it would be much appreciated.
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  2. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by The Sumerian
    I'm a little lost in these varities of media. I'm going to need to archive my MiniDV and VHS media eventually. I've found the Betacam SP is the best format for this. It's durable, long lasting, and high quality. But can it preserve HD video? Now that I'm working on my first HD project, I'd prefer to have my media archive somewha conformed so that if I get a deck for whatever format I only have one. i.e. Betacam SP or DigiBeta not both. If anyone could help me out it would be much appreciated.
    I would suspect a digital format will outlast an analog format in general. Analog playback from old tapes adds noise and generation loss. If the digital signal is extractable, the copy is a 100% duplicate. So Digital Betacam will beat Betacam SP any day.

    But neither will record HD, only SD (720x480/576 for Digital Betacam, Y, R-Y, B-Y for Betacam SP).

    Used Digital Betacam decks are running $25k-35K on eBay.
    http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-DVW-M2000-Digital-Betacam-Recorder-Player_W0QQitemZ2601268593...QQcmdZViewItem

    For HD save it back to tape for now.
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  3. Thanks for the info. From the looks of things it'll probably be worth it to get an HDV, DVCAM deck. And have SD final projects archived to DigiBeta. Thanks again.
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  4. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by The Sumerian
    Thanks for the info. From the looks of things it'll probably be worth it to get an HDV, DVCAM deck. And have SD final projects archived to DigiBeta. Thanks again.
    Maybe. What are your master formats? If your project was DV or DVCAM, the best archive is that format.

    If your HD project was HDCAM or DVCProHD then archive in those formats.
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  5. What Ed Said:

    You'd be wasting away money and/or time archiving to Digi from DV


    ????
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  6. If your project is MiniDV or S-VHS/VHS a DV tape in DV-SP or DVCAM mode works fine for SD. If your video is from VHS/S-VHS be prepared to do some restoration and figure out your upconversion later -- you might need to add in a "digital" SD step and create "Fake HD" via upconversion during capture.

    If your footage is already digital (e.g. MiniDV Tape,) plug your camcorder in and capture it into an HD format of your choosing. HDV and DVCProHD are the two common ones, HDCAM is a little less common.

    As for DVCAM, to the best of my knowledge, DVCAM is SD-only, and HDCAM is an HD Disc -- not tape, and I'd avoid putting my masters on any optical disc be it HD or SD.

    Advantages of HDV:
    - Price/Consumer models available
    - Availability -- easily accessable to average consumers
    - HDV uses DV/MiniDV tapes so you won't need a new "format" for storage as you would with DVCProHD

    Advantages of DVCProHD:
    - "Hollywood" Industry standard; considered to be the "best" HD format for professional video archival.
    - Superior to HDV on a technical level in several ways
    - DVCProHD tape decks are compatible with DVCPro and DV tapes, and will play back DVCAM mode tapes, although they won't record in that format giving them more versatility than most other decks available, any DV/MiniDV tapes will require an adapter though.
    - Intra-frame compression: Unlike HDV which uses extremely lossy MPEG-2 compression, DVCProHD uses intra-frame compression similar to that of DV tape. Does this take up more space? Yes, but it's also better quality and there's a noticable difference between DVCProHD and HDV. While not noticable enough to make HDV useless, it's noticable enough to push me toward DVCProHD.

    Disadvantages of HDV:
    - Quality: Color banding is apparent in some HDV footage due to MPEG-2 compression, certain "fast-action" scenes suffer from macroblocking.
    - MPEG-2 Compression: 'nuff said, it's overcompressed HD.
    - Consumer format: Not designed for professional use, HDV is really just that HD DV tape, it's primarily associated with soap operas, reality TV, and home movies which gives it a bad rep. It's not that bad, but it's also not that great either.

    Disadvantages of DVCProHD:
    - Cost: Decent DVCProHD equipment is expensive, and Panasonic doesn't seem to be addressing this by creating cheaper (in price,) DVCProHD cameras.
    - Availability: Panasonic is really the big backer of this format; if I want a JVC Camera or deck, I need HDV, ditto for Sony, meaning that if you're not a fan of Panasonic you're somewhat screwed. (Although I believe Fuji makes tapes for DVCProHD use.)

    DVCProHD is really the best of the best, but it could be a little more accessable to semi-professionals who want to use DVCProHD. JVC's lack of support for the format is annoying, Sony's backing of HDV is somewhat disappointing and as much as I like Panasonic, I also like a choice. I chose a Sony camera because I was familiar with it for DV, I chose JVC for S-VHS since they invented it and had the best deck available at the time, I chose Sony for VHS decks and had a Panasonic VHS camera. I'd like to use a JVC camera in the future since I'm soured by Sony's recent blunders across the entire company, but I don't want my HD footage compressed into MPEG-2 while mastering. Once it's edited though, that's another story.

    My suggestion: Purchase a deck/camera/hard drive of your choosing and decent NLE software -- any of the "three A's" (Apple/Avid/Adobe,) will do. With this software, connect your master tapes' deck -- be it VHS, Beta, or in the case of DV/MiniDV deck or camera to an IEEE1394 cable, connect the analog equipment to the camera (make sure it has a pass-thru function,) and connect the firewire cable to your PC. Open your NLE software, select the HD format of your choice and capture in HD on-the-fly using the camera to convert the signal to digital if it's not digital already. Take the file on your computer, restore it as necessary, and export to the HD Format of your choice, you now have a finished HD video.

    So for MiniDV/DV tape: Camera --> IEEE 1934 Cable --> NLE --> DVCProHD/HDV/Hard Drive as data.

    For Analog: Analog tape deck --> DV Camera w/Pass-Thru --> IEEE1394 Cable --> NLE --> DVCProHD/HDV/Hard Drive as data.

    Hope this helps.
    Specs: Mac Mini (Early 2006): 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo CPU, 320GB HDD, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics card, Matshita UJ-846 Superdrive, Mac OS X 10.5.7 and various peripherals. System runs Final Cut Express 3.5 for editing.
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