What's the best way to go from HDV to BetaSP? Hard drive to BetaSP deck?

Also, what are some considerations if shooting with and HD100 if BetaSP NTSC might be the final delivery medium. Obviously I'd frame for 4/3 but what else? Frame rate?

There are some options:
You need an analog output device:
- PCI/PCIe output card like a Decklink or AJA with analog outputs
- Firewire to Analog (for example products from Canopus).
- On a Mac you can also use the devices like from Matrox MXO to output from the DVI to high quality analog.

You need to export to DV-NTSC for the right format.

Brian, is it just for playout to Beta SP or do you want the Beta SP look (which is very distinctive especially in colors) ?

If it's just for playout, I'd advise that you do your edit in whatever fomat you've acquired and the you play out to Beta SP.

If you place no special demands on color or allround quality, use a UVW1600 deck with s-video in; if quality matters, use any BVW series deck with YUV in, best is BVW-75. Btw, there's a verson of the BVW 75 which has SDI in as well. It's called BVW-D75PS here in Europe, you can surely rent one for little money.
Bear in mind that YC or YUV separate luminance and chrominance so I'd advise you to test a few black settings on the HD100.

Maybe some experts will contradict this, but I've lways liked Beta SP for its rich colors. If your final tape needs more neutral colors, maybe try settings like ultrawide on the cam.

If you're not in a big hurry, I can try shoot a color chart with a few different settings then capture YUV into my Pinnacle Silver and then YUV out to my BVW-75 deck and see what it gives.

This interests me personally also , as I miss the old BetaSP look and would love to use it in some of my docus as a means of differentiation.

You need to export to DV-NTSC for the right format.

I hear this a lot, but I say be cautious, since DV always strips
away and makes a good picture not so nice looking, though
I can't deny its highly compatible and low overhead.


I like digital betacam much more than betacam sp. It lacks the analogue aspect and thus blacks are perfectly clean. I won't knock betacam SP though, its still a great format and 95% of the output I do is to BetaSP. The UVW-1800 are the work horses of the industry here in the states. You can pickup a used one these days for around 1,000 - 5,000 depending on drum hours.

Brian, is it just for playout to Beta SP or do you want the Beta SP look (which is very distinctive especially in colors) ?




Well a guy contacted me that he wanted a show for broadcast delivered in Betacam SP because that's all they accept.

Regarding the "look" of SP, actually I always thought the sp look was more a function of the 2/3" ccd's rather than the format. But I don't know about it.

What about frame rate when dubbing to sp, would 24p work? Sp is strictly 60i right?

Well a guy contacted me that he wanted a show for broadcast delivered in Betacam SP because that's all they accept.

Regarding the "look" of SP, actually I always thought the sp look was more a function of the 2/3" ccd's rather than the format. But I don't know about it.

What about frame rate when dubbing to sp, would 24p work? Sp is strictly 60i right?

yes in NTSC its 60i only.

24p would only work if you have a decklink or blackmagic interface to add live pulldown to the signal before going out to the deck. 30P of course would be fine.

I hear this a lot, but I say be cautious, since DV always strips
away and makes a good picture not so nice looking, though
I can't deny its highly compatible and low overhead.



Hi Mark, yes you're right. I was dragged away when I mentioned the Firewire device. That needs a DV file.
When you stream through a PCI card, one can also use uncompressed, or the codec needed for the interface card to analog component with burst signal would be the best.

Mark Silva is right - it's UVW-1800 of course.

Like Marc said, the Decklink or AJA options will yield best results. The frame rate you shoot at shouldn't matter as long as your editing software and analog card can convert it to 29.97 NTSC. For instance, I can shoot 24p, edit it in Final Cut Pro, and have an AJA Kona card add the 3:2 pulldown to convert it into 29.97 fps. That way my footage has the 24p film look. In any case, you'll either need a card that can downconvert your HDV footage to SD to output to the Beta SP, or you'll need to have your editing software handle the downconvert. The latter solution might not yield the best results.

Todd Norris

Unless you have other use for the footage, I would shoot with SD 4:3 settings, interlaced (I guess that's 60i over there) then transfer to the edit system and play out SD-SDI ,SD-YUV or SD-YC according to hardware available.

I've supplied documentaries in Beta SP played out via YC to a UVW1800 to Swiss TV for years - noone complained. Now Swiss TV have chosen 720p50 as HD standard - great news for our workflow.

well you can export 16:9 native to SP, letterboxed, or centercut depending on what they want on the other end. no hard requirement for 4:3. I've done all 3.

as for the "betaSP" look... well its about 3:1:1 colorspace. any betaSP look has far more to do with the camera then the tape format. ah, and the drop outs, good old dropouts. the differences between a 1800 and bvw-75 in _recording_ are marginal if at all. its in playback that the 75 as 2-3db better S/N ratio. slightly cleaner, but not huge. there are also other factors like head wear too, condition of the caps, and at this point even some of the connectors.