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8 bit blackmagic AVI file Vs. MiniDV


Nick Norton

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I am about to transfer six 50ft rolls of super 8 through Frame Discreet. However, i'm not sure if i should transfer them to miniDV, or have them exported as 8 bit blackmagic AVI files to a hard drive.

 

Is there a noticeable increase in quality in the 8 bit blackmagic file over a miniDV image?

 

And also, will it be more complicated to edit with an 8 bit blackmagic file? (I'm using adobe 6.5)

 

Thanks-

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With that version of Premiere, you may have to get a MiniDV. I don't know that you can get a Blackmagic card to work with 6.5 (which you would need for the Blackmagic files.)

 

It depends on the way they transfer it. If they are just transfering using a firewire or DV capture utility, then there will be no difference between MiniDV and BM 8bit. However, if the transfer is originally captured as an 8bit BM file, then leave it as-is on a hard drive. You will lose quality by compressing it onto a MiniDV tape.

 

The company that transferred mine used a BM card to do the capture and the files looked great. I think they used the 10bit version though.

 

You do not need a BM card to view BM files. You only need to go to the BM website and download the FREE BM Codec. Once installed, you will be able to open the BM .avi file in Premiere. The company that I used actually supplied the codec on my hard drive, but I know you can just download it from the BM site.

Edited by shoodogg
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I am about to transfer six 50ft rolls of super 8 through Frame Discreet. However, i'm not sure if i should transfer them to miniDV, or have them exported as 8 bit blackmagic AVI files to a hard drive.

 

Is there a noticeable increase in quality in the 8 bit blackmagic file over a miniDV image?

 

And also, will it be more complicated to edit with an 8 bit blackmagic file? (I'm using adobe 6.5)

 

Thanks-

 

Just a note on this for any final cut pro users:

 

Final Cut Pro, even the latest Studio 2 version chokes up sometimes with Blackmagic .AVI files.

It isn't unlikely that FCP will unexpectedly quit when scrubbing through imported blackmagic

AVIS. At least that has been my recent experience.

 

With super 8, as with any other film medium it is nice to have uncompressed 422,

because you can convert it to Digibeta for television, but the blackmagic codecs don't always work flawlessly with FCP, even when you use the Media Manager to reconvert them to FCP friendly files.

 

That said FCP is still the most amazing programme ever!

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Bear in mind also that there's nothing stopping you cutting uncompressed, but still rendering previews to your DV device so you can look at it on whatever decent monitoring you've got. In fact, if you can equip yourself with Premiere Pro, it'll do that more or less in realtime on a decent enough station.

 

Phil

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Just a note on this for any final cut pro users:

 

Final Cut Pro, even the latest Studio 2 version chokes up sometimes with Blackmagic .AVI files.

It isn't unlikely that FCP will unexpectedly quit when scrubbing through imported blackmagic

AVIS. At least that has been my recent experience.

 

With super 8, as with any other film medium it is nice to have uncompressed 422,

because you can convert it to Digibeta for television, but the blackmagic codecs don't always work flawlessly with FCP, even when you use the Media Manager to reconvert them to FCP friendly files.

 

That said FCP is still the most amazing programme ever!

 

The workflow that I like for non HD is transferring the super-8 film to betcam sp, then transfer from the betacam sp to Final Cut pro via the component output of the betacam sp, converting the betacam sp component to the DVC-Pro 50 codec. The DVC-Pro 50 Codec should be equal to digital betacam, should not bog down FCP, and the original uncompressed betacam sp then becomes your archive film transfer tape.

 

If you want to go to mini-dv instead of betacam sp I would still recommend outputting via component (only the higher end DV decks starting at 1,500 and above offer this option) and using the DVC-Pro 50 codec when importing into FCP.

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some blackmagic configs are fully compatible with apple's own uncompressed codec, i know 10-bit yuv is, probably 8-bit too, but maybe only in quicktime containers, and blackmagic has a bunch of configs that are not compatible. since it's uncompressed you can convert to whatever without loss though. the blackmagic codec isn't gamma corrected for the mac, so conversions to and from rgb as well as gamma corrected codecs like apple uncompressed, dv and mpeg-2 will cause color and density shifts.

 

/matt

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the best is to have minidv mov files and avi 8bit (10 be better) so you can work offline an then online in the same pc or mac.

 

bye! Treegan

 

I am about to transfer six 50ft rolls of super 8 through Frame Discreet. However, i'm not sure if i should transfer them to miniDV, or have them exported as 8 bit blackmagic AVI files to a hard drive.

 

Is there a noticeable increase in quality in the 8 bit blackmagic file over a miniDV image?

 

And also, will it be more complicated to edit with an 8 bit blackmagic file? (I'm using adobe 6.5)

 

Thanks-

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Is there a noticeable increase in quality in the 8 bit blackmagic file over a miniDV image?

 

I normaly use 10bit blackmagic in FCP whitout problems. For black and white I couldn't notice a big difference to DV, in color some artefacts get visible, specialy when you have very saturated stuff.

 

As soon as you start tweaking around and colorcorrecting, the 10bit codec will be better to handle and look better than DV.

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