16mm Film Transfer

[danny bartle]

Hello all,

 

I'm getting some 16mm neg transferred to video by a professional transfer place & I have a couple of questions. They've given me the option of putting it onto mini DV or Betacam tapes. Will I get any better results (resolution or picture quality I mean) transferring it onto Betacam?

 

I own a Sony PDX10 which can connect via the firewire on my PC so it would be easier doing the transfer onto mini DV. But if you do get better results from Betacam, & if I was to hire a Betacam VCR for a day, can it be connected to my PC via the firewire input?

[GeorgeSelinsky]

Mini DV transfer is okay for a working edit, esp. if they transfer DIRECT to mini DV, not do a digibeta first and then recompress which a lot of places prefer to do (it's easier to control the deck that way). I'll leave the Betacam vs. mini DV debate for others.

 

Mini DV is fairly decent so long as you don't try to color correct your signal. Once you reprocess and recompress DV it starts to block up pretty badly, esp. for radical corrections.

 

- G.

[JONATHANEDWARDS]

i had 5 rolls of s16 transferred to DBETA and minidv. the hope was to see the difference. at first there is vary little difference . but by the second generation the minidv copys colour levels were all over the place, mostly the facal tones . i asked the video techs and thay just sad thats the way mini dv behaves. the DBETA copy seamed to be more of a tank, the levels stayed consistent on all the monitors i watched it on. i am no video tech but the dBeta copy looked a lot better in the end.

 

in the end the editor used the minidv copy because he did not want to recapture it all and i cringe looking at the vhs copys :o

 

but this is just my experence, some people can't stop raveing about the quality of minidv.

 

if it is easy to access a beta deck and capture it , why not. but some time its just about logistics

[Rachel Oliver]

I recently had film transfered to both Mini DV and Digi-Beta. we got an EDL from the DV copy via FCP3 and then had a friend who works for a television company perform an uncompressed online

on Avid from the Digi-Beta..... The EDL worked perfectly apart from a few scenes we'd really messed about with, he just re- cut those as closely as possible, turned out great. I agree with GeorgeS that the mini DV copy seemed to get far grainier whenever we made copies. It was a cool way to get a decent master, cut at home on Mini DV then work out a way to get an online done from the DB master (matching timecode ofcourse) when funds or freinds are available.

Olly

[danny bartle]

Hi Rachel, Jonathan & George, thanks for the replies...

 

I'll be a bit more specific in exactly what I'm doing so I can get more answers. I'm entering a short film contest. It will be a combo of Super 8 & 16mm film transferred to video (mini DV or Beta) also with some footage from my 3CCD mini DV Sony.

 

All video will then be transferred to my PC via firewire for editing (prob Premiere or similar NLE). I wont be doing any colour correcting but maybe some slight brightness/contrast adjustments. No special editing, just mostly cuts, fades, dissolves, etc. The final presentation for the contest can be either mini DV or Beta SP.

 

If using Beta, will the Codec still be the same when I transfer it to my PC? Will I be able to output the Beta footage on my PC firewire to my mini DV camera to make back up copies like normal?

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> but by the second generation the minidv copys colour levels were all over the

> place, mostly the facal tones . i asked the video techs and thay just sad thats

> the way mini dv behaves

 

Balls. People do get taken for a ride on this all the damn time. It only happens because people treat the miniDV as a worthless offline and don't take the slightest care with it.

 

Phil

[JONATHANEDWARDS]

I guess it would be important to mention that most transfer houses(not all) have a rate for minidv or beta. You might save more money then you would think(cost of tape) if you just use the mini dv, and from your discription of the project you might not ever see a big difference and you have easy access to a minidv player vs beta. if i were you i would sit in on the transfer so as not to have to make small changes later in FCPro.

 

 

 

 

phil

what else could i have done in the process (or suggested ) to help the overall video quality?