tape to tape transfer

Jacqueline Donaldson · March 7, 2006

Hi guys,

I've been out of film for several years, but now I want to get back into it, unfortunately all my show reel stuff and films are stored with my family in another country, I want to know what is the best way to duplicate my VHS copies of my stuff ( i don't dare let anyone in my family touch the Beta Masters). Can I transfer the information from VHS to Mini-DV, or is that not possible ( this would be ideal as I can then load it into the computer and cut an updated showreel together. Or is it possible to transfer to DVD? If so can Ithen transfer the information from the DVD to the comp for editing? I have no idea about this.

thanks

Jay Gladwell · March 7, 2006

Yes, you can trasfer from one medium to another, i.e., VHS to DVD, with the proper equipment. But my question would be why would you want to? If it were me, I would go back to the Beta masters and start from there. Then, and only then, I would transfer the finished reel to DVD.

Michael Collier · March 7, 2006

Its much higher quality straight from the Beta (VHS, thank god, look very 1990s these days, and even the average home viewer now can see the difference between VHS and beta, 10 years ago I'm not sure they would. DVDs have upped our expectations.)

When I edit my show reel, I hook the Beta machine up to a converter box. This takes analoge in and converts it to IEEE1394 (firewire) just like a mini-DV. I save this to hard drive using Premiere's capture tool and edit as normal.

Once the final show reel is done you can use Adobe Media Encoder (included with premiere) to encode the video down to an MPEG-2 and put that on DVD. (I recomend adobes DVD mastering software. I just made my first few disks with it the other night and it feels very powerful, but is simple to use right out of the gate.)

Chien Huey · March 8, 2006

Totally understand why you have reservations about letting someone else handle your Beta masters. Though as stated by Jay and Michael, quality takes a hit when you use VHS dubs.

That said, you could have your family buy a VHS/DVD recorder deck to transfer the VHS to DVD. It's quick and easy -- a good solution for technical neophytes. Here's a link to some CNET reviews of these units. They're about $300USD. Mind you, these devices are consumer-level designed to transfer home movies to DVD.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4521-6531_7-502143...html?tag=subnav

Jacqueline Donaldson · March 10, 2006

Hi there,

well the reason is because I don't want anyone but me to touch the masters, and they are half way around the world, so I don't want them sent to me either just incase they get damaged. But my family know someone who can duplicate them for me.

Quality is not such a problem at the moment as I went to art school, the philosophy was content over quality, (the quality of some of my stuff was quite gritty, which worked as I was tackling gritty issues)in our school the idea was that the poorest film student was an equal with the wealthy, ie. money and aesthetics were not the highest priority and also most of my work was as a Director / Producer, not cinematogrpher, though I did light and shoot all the stuff myself, actually it was very autuerish (can't spell this) anyway, it'd would just be great to have some of my work cut together to show when needed.

SO I think duplicating to DV is the best thing right??

thanks for all your suggestions

jacqueline

Chien Huey · March 10, 2006

Yeah, I'd say DV would be the easiest format for you to work with in terms of getting the footage and editing it into your reel. It depends on what the person who's duplicating it can handle. I guess DVD would be next best choice but it's more compressed than DV and you have to have software to pull it off the DVD.