Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Best card for transfering analog video to digital

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-03-2009, 10:43 AM:

I'd like to transfer stuff from my BVW-50 Betacam recorder to my computer for editing and posting on the net. Whats the best card or piece of gear for transfering analog video(preferably at full rez)to computer for editing? Also what software would one need to edit and maintain full rez... if this is possible for under 50 grand [Eek!]

.

Thanks!
Mark

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-03-2009, 11:00 AM:

If your PC has Firewire built in (and it should since this isn't the 18th century anymore) than you can easily get a hardware box that connects to the firewire jack for $100 or less (or you can just use the video inputs on a MiniDV camcorder and shoot the video out its Firewire connection). Your composite or s-video connections hook to this box along with stereo sound and the box digitizes it to DV which is a 25mbps intra-frame codec (that's a good thing, especially for editing). You'll need a non-linear editor that can capture via Firewire. I have no idea what can do this in Windows-land. Adobe Premiere Pro can, but I don't think you can buy that on its own because Adobe is kind of lame. Maybe Sony Vegas or some crap like that would work just as well.

Avoid devices that use USB for real time video capture.

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 04-03-2009, 11:54 AM:

Yeah, Mark.

You can do full uncompressed betacam quality to pc for under 50 grand [Wink]

If you want to, I'll transfer all your stuff for $49k. [Big Grin]

Or you could just buy something like this:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/decklinkhdextreme/
[link is to blackmagi's HD extreme capture card]

for $900 [Roll Eyes]

It can even do DCI 2K real time. Yes, it sure can. And beautifully.

Adobe's premiere on a PC will work just fine with that (starting around $600).

Or you could also do a previous convertion to SDI with something like this:

http://www.aja.com/html/products_converters_D10A.html
[link is for aja's D10a analog component to 10bits digital converter]

And use a cheap SDI (PCI) input card on your pc. Again, just about any software will work, but probably Adobe Premiere is better supported for these low-end (but top quality) solutions.

Total cost well under $1K for that solution too.

The "key" is to convert it to standard SDI serial digital video (uncompressed, 10-bits, 4:2:2 is enough for Betacam). After that, it all goes smoooooothly [Smile]

After you're done, as the last step, pick your choice of output format. For Betacam, even DVD format is more than enough to preserve the quality (i.e. MPEG2) and perfectly compatible with blu-ray players. You even get good real-time hardware upconvertion for free with today's DVD and blu-ray players.

I don't really see a point on using more advance codecs (i.e. AVC) for Betacam's (relatively, obsolete) low standard-def quality. You'll have better compatibility and lower cost producing well-made DVD's than half-assed blu-ray discs, which are better for high-def material, but you are still in standard definition territory and won't gain any real advantages, only headaches and cost.

It's pretty amazing that, today, and being realistic, you can PURCHASE to own all the hardware (camera/lenses and editing only, lighting grips etc extra;)) needed to make a movie with a quality level MUCH SUPERIOR to what George Lucas had to do Star Wars new trilogy for under $30k.

Anybody can shoot a movie now in their backyard. That doesn't mean it's gonna be good, but they can. Look for movies like Dark Country 3D shot for $5m soon in your DCI video theater near you.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-03-2009, 12:27 PM:

Mark probably knows this, but the BVW-50 is a portable deck that doesn't have BNC component outputs. He'll need a 25-pin (?) to component converter box if he wants to get that deck to output component.

I, too, am interested in the answer to this question. To my eyes, Beta SP looks far better than DVD or MiniDV/DVCAM, so it's probably not a great idea to compress it with either codec. In my experience, the DVW-A500 Digi-Beta deck offers the best playback quality for analog SP tapes (better than the current-model DVW-M2000, even).

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 04-03-2009, 12:47 PM:

Well, the problem is that there is no "standard" domestic delivery method that is digital and non-compressed. If you wanted to store the full quality, you would have to do them as digital SDI files on computer media and your playback options would be somewhat limited.

Otherwise, store them in D5 (or even old D1). They are uncompressed. The next option would be to compress it with something obscenely overspeced for the application, like XDCAM, but nothing domestic or within sane price ranges.

You could wait to see how much RED-ray will cost and convert to that.
http://www.red.com/nab/redray/
[link is to RED-ray 4K disc player]

Otherwise, the best option if you don't like DVD and think the quality is inferior to the Betacam, would be to master it in blu-ray format (which can also be done on DVD-R media) and make use of advance video codec (h264).

As it stands, if you are not happy with DVD, I would suggest blu-ray then.

You may also use ASP codecs, like Divx, which are also supported by many hardware players and computers, but are not fully universally supported.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-03-2009, 01:02 PM:

Scott... I admit that Digibeta would be nice but those decks used in decent shape go for 25K!! I'd be better off with a good pair of used Beta SP editing decks like the BVW75 or there abouts. You could set up a nice clean pair of those for under 3 grand including shipping and dub cables. The BVW-50 does have a component input/output jack so component video is available. On the later SP stuff they all have component available at a multipin jack used mainly for dubbing from one machine to another.

I bought the BVW-50 for 80 bucks off E-bay and I lucked out... its like brand new and had very little use... there is at least 75% life left on the upper drum! It takes cheap batteries, can run either of my cameras from it's internal batteries, doesn't weigh a ton, etc. And it's fine for the type of stuff I'm going to be documenting. Much of it will be posted on the web anyway.

The record playback quality from the BVW-50 would even impress Julio... Sure it's SD analog but everything past the input is done digitally then converted back to analog for playback. It also has a built in TBC and video noise reduction. Play back of recorded color bars looks like you're looking at them right off the Tektronix generator.

Thanks for the posts and I'll chck into some of the above suggestions and see what I find. Somewhere I have an old version of Adobe Premiere...

Mark

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-04-2009, 10:44 AM:

So far to me the Black Magic card seems the better route to go... There are some version 1 cards on e-Bay that'll probably go cheaply so I'll watch those... the older card will only do HDSDI 4:2:2 but I doubt Id even ever use that input so shold be fine. Now I just need to dig that old Dell 12 SCSI drive array out of the garage... I'll need lots of storage space!

I also checked out some of the Canopus stuff made by Grass Valley... GV was always the top of the line when I worked in Broadcast so I might just check out THE ADVC-55 that's under 200 bucks...

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 04-06-2009, 05:36 PM:

I've used the Canopus ADVC100 to capture S-Video via Firewire into Sony Vegas Studio and I've been very happy with the results.

It looks like the ADVC110 is the successor, but it looks like the 55 does quite a bit of what most people would be looking for.

I think video editing software is a personal preference, but I've found Sony Vegas Movie Studio to be very capable. I've upgraded several times over the years, and I'm now using Platinum 8.0. An associate of mine is using the Pro version and is very happy with it. If I had need for the additional features, I wouldn't hesitate to purchase the Pro version.

Sony Vegas Comparison Chart