avi

Betacam or Betacam SP Processing via Intensity Pro

Equipment Sony Betacam SP  PVW2800 record, edit and play deck

Digitize

  • Currently, I set up the deck connected to the component and left and right audio channels to the Intensity Pro card in Flag.
  • Opened Sony Vegas and used the "HDV and SDI" capture option.
  • Set the preferences (icon in the right-hand corner of the window) in the capture window to:
    • Device: "Blackmagic Design Decklink"
    • Capture format: NTSC Standard (720x486, 29.97 fps)
  • Select the "encoding":
    • MPEG IMX MXF
    • 8-bit YUV AVI
  • select the folder that you want record the footage to.

Encodings

  1. MPEG IMX MXF
    1. Specs: Video 720x486x32, 29.97 fps interlaced, 50 Mbps Audio: 16 bit, 48KHz, 8 channel, Linear PCM
    2. 0.5 GB per minute
  2. 8-bit YUV AVI
    1. Specs: Video 720x486x24, 29.97 fps interlaced, uncompressed Audio: 16 bit, 48KHz, Stereo
    2. 1.25 GB per minute

Film Scanned Output Files - What NLE's Support

Overview Many times people ask whether or not their NLE can support the film output AVI files.  Here's info on this topic.

Output File Format

With the latest version of CineCap Velocity HD ver 1.4 (Mar 2011) we have a couple of output options.

1)  We can output files using the Blackmagic Motion JPEG codec in an AVI wrapper.  The Motion JPEG codec is a very common codec used by many camera manufacturers.  This codec is compatible with both MAC and PC based systems.

2)  For a codec independent file format we can now generate sequenced image files.  One image is created for each frame of film and therefore this makes the "file" independent of any codec.

MAC Users

iMovie - according to wiki's comments regarding iMove 8 (released August 2007), ".....Motion JPEG encoded AVI files do appear to be recognized, this is the most common format used by digital cameras (click here to check the full article).  At this point of time I believe the latest version is iMovie 11.

I tested iMovie 3.03 on the Power MAC and the avi file does load with no problems.  One problem is that iMovie 3 and I believe 4 only support 4:3 aspect ratio.  Pretty sure that ver 6 supports widescreen 16:9.

Final Cut Pro - According to a customer (Brian Lye) back in mid 2011 using the film avi files in Final Cut Pro ..."the process is very easy.  So if you have customers with a similar inquiry the steps are: "

  • Bring the .avi footage into Compressor (program comes with Final Cut Pro package).
  • Put the settings for Apple ProRes 422 onto the file.
  • Hit Submit.
  • Voila!
  • It is easy to now edit within Final Cut.