Unbalanced audio? What?

[Don White]

Hi gang, can anyone help me here?

I have been offered a decent price on a Datavideo DAC-10 ($500) which seems like it ought to do the job of getting DV footage from betacamSP... except that I have also been told that the "unbalanced audio" of betacamSP requires a special $250 box to "balance" the audio. How big a deal is this? I don't really have the extra $250 to spend.

- unbalanced in Hawaii

[Mike Rehmus]

Don, you might want to go look at the Canopus converters. Very high quality and you don't need an extra $250 to handle standard unbalanced audio.

http://www.canopus.us/US/products/AD..._selection.asp

[Don White]

I love the specs of the Canopus converters, but they all seem to be built for 8mm, vhs, Hi8, svhs - that is, consumer formats - to DV. I actually find that my D8 camcorder, and firewire, do a good job of that. But my need is to go back and forth between DV and betacamSP, and betacamSP has 3-wire 'balanced' audio piped out through XLR jacks. For a lot of stuff, I'd just use a plug converter and accept a little line noise and some lessened volume; but some of the stuff I have is broadcastable production masters so I hate to screw with the sound that way.

I'm leaning towards getting a cheaper ($100) or so solution..... while getting a dedicated DAC-10 converter for the video part of the conversion.

thanks, and any comments appreciated....

DW

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

The canopus converters have the ability to work with consumer format cameras, but the models with balanced audio such as the ADVC 500 are for pro's only. The video conversion algorithm is the same, except there is a TBC, and a few analog adjustable settings. Actually better than the Laird Blue Flame, which is what we use.