Well I said I know Beta SP is better than SVHS, I was wondering if in MY case (non-high budget rap videos) would it even make a difference?

I can't even call these guys my clients, as I am a huge fan of theirs and am happy to do this for them for free. They aren't going to care if it's VHS, SVHS, Beta, whatever, but it's something I am doing and want to yield the best cost to quality ratio.

Sounds like that lady was trying to tell you they have some fairly high-quality source material if you can use it. I would go for the video quality, even if I had to find a big Sony dealer and lease what I need to get it done. You never know what kind of referrals a good job can lead to... maybe enough to buy several Beta SP decks. As for working for free... well, I better hold my thoughts on that. ;)

I don't even consider this "work". Hell, before I met up with Onyx about a year ago, I was trying on my own to make a DVD for them that I'd just keep for myself. This is a dream for me.

I don't wanna sound like a broken record, but I keep having to ask if you all think low budget rap videos are going to be noticably different on Beta SP than Super VHS

Are they going to sell this DVD?

If so, get the BetaSP material, and call around your local post production houses and see if they can compress it MPEG2 for you and give you the files. Pass the cost off to the client.

I know if *I* bought a DVD of someone I liked and found out that a better source existed than SVHS which the DVD was made from, I'd be pissed!

If this is NOT going to be a commercially packaged DVD then maybe what you have is good enough, particularly if you're not getting paid and the client doesn't want to spend a few hundred bucks on a higher quality transfer.

I want to handle the converting to MPEG2 myself, because like I said I am adding CD sound as well as messing with the saturation a bit.

I already know there is an available source better than SVHS. What I want to know is if it's possible since these are somewhat low budget music videos, if that would make a difference.

To put it in a better perspective, would the music video for Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" look any different from SVHS or Beta SP?

The only way you could see if the Beta is better then the VHS is to see them side by side on your computer. I've dubbed DVCPro to VHS and it's looked great. On the other hand, with wtuff i've captured from VHS to my coputer don't normaly look as good as the VHS.

Do you know anyone with a BetaSP player who could capture a small clip to DV and send it to you on CD? I could do that for you. If you could mail me a copy of the SHVS and Betacam SP, I could capture at work to DV then place each clip onto a CD which you could bring into Vegas and see how they look. If you're intereted e-mail me @ the_happy_friar <at> yahoo <dot> com.

I will chime in here - every post so far has said the beta sub masters would be best and yet you reply everytime with "Well i know but..."

So let me put my experience into perspective. Many many years ago I was asked to edit a compilation that would be available on VHS. The producer went and asked many bands to be on it and several of these bands did not have videos so he sent them over to me. These were esentially no budget videos so because the end result was going to be VHS, and the 'no-budget' money, 99.9% of them were shot on VHS and mastered off to S-VHS. Along the way some TV stations wanted to air some of them and MTV requested a 3/4" copy. From S-VHS copies were bumped up to 3/4". MTV did air some of it, other stations aired some of the videos as well - none complained. At one point one of the bands got a deal with a 'major', Capital, and they wanted a copy of their video and they wanted it on Beta. Capital paid for the Beta dub and they have a "Beta master".

So my perspective on this whole issue is two sided -
1> Yes going from the beta sub master will allow for better quality and if Def Jam is offering to send you beta copies for free than by all means accept their offer. If they are willing to do that perhaps they could send you Mini-DV dubs instead.
2> What was the "Source" material for these videos? Was it film? Was it video? What format? How many generations down is some of this stuff? Say you were doing your DVD about one of the bands I mention above- so you go to Captial and ask for that video and they ask you the same question - "You sure you don't want this on Beta?" Now would it make a difference? Yes because a dub off their Beta copy would be better than a S-VHS copy but neither would be as good if you got a dub off the 3/4" sub-master that their Beta copy was dubbed from, and that wouldn't be as good as getting a S-VHS copy from the S-VHS edited master that I first made.

So - back to square one. Beta is better than S-VHS but the material is only as good as the *source* material. You keep saying it was "10 years ago" and that the videos were "rough" - well to me it is all a matter of perspective. The videos I mention above were maybe 15 or more years ago and it was before labels spent lots of money to make 35mm film look like it was shot on VHS and it was before Aerosmith came out with their 'home videos shot on VHS' and aired in heavy rotation on MTV. It was the 'norm' to master onto 1" and go to 3/4" for distribution in those days as well - but would you want a 3/4" over Beta?

I think a better question is this - are the members of the band be happy with the results? If they are happy than it is a non-issue. Would they be willing to foot the bill to rent/borrow/purchase a Beta deck for you to have better quality source? If the answer is 'no' than it is a non-issue.

I can only agree with what filmy is saying.
For all you know the material may well have been shot on VHS or SVHS, possibly even edited at that level and then duped to SP.
The only way you're going to know is to look at the SP tapes. To do a realistic comparison you'll need a good monitor with the best possible feed from the SP deck to the monitor.
The other issue is how you go from either the SVHS or SP material to DV. If you can only digitise off a composite feed then you're already looking at quality loss there. Your best shot would probably be going component or SDI into a DV bridge.

Also remember that no matter whether you start from SVHS or SP you're going first through DV compression and then to mpeg-2. You'll never get Hollywood results going down that path anyway.

I'd suspect that so long as you had a S-Video feed into a decent A/D converter, at least an ADVC-300 or better, by the time your image has been through the DV to mpeg-2 conversion you'll not notice any significant difference in the final DVD. If you've managed to resync new audio that's probably more important than the image quality anyway.

SP decks should be readily available for hire just about anywhere that has television, so many of them have recently been put out to pasture that the market is flooded with them.

At few of the group (Onyx) members are in a Hollywood movie or TV show at least once a year. Fredro Star and Sticky Fingaz. Between the two they should be able to scrounge up a few bucks to help you get the Beta SP tapes to a digital format. The SVHS's are already dubs and you want to capture them into the computer....another dub. Start with the highest quality possible...you can't go wrong.

If you are converting the tapes svideo connection to dv the difference is not going to be dramatic ,but if you want the best pic possible,, get the SP tapes and have a local post house convert them for you going componet uncompressed into their system .

That may possibly be a dangerous assumption. I've seen this happen more than once (it's happened to me on a current job), unless you know the lineage of footage there's no certainty that just because something's on a higher quality media that it'll be higher quality.

My current problem is footage shot and edited DV25 and then dubbed to SP. No DV25 copies were kept. I can assure you that going DV25 to SP to DV25 is not good for quality. The same thing may well have happened in the case under discussion, shot and edited SVHS then dubbed to SP. If you had the original SVHS masters they would be better quality than the SP dubs.
To be certain, as I said you really need to compare both.
Most likely the SP copies are better, maybe not.

I appreciate everyone's help, but I THINK I am going to just end up using the Super VHS tapes, and here's why (this doesn't mean I don't appreciate everyone saying try Beta SP).

I was looking at one of their earlier videos, called "Shifftee". This video, no matter how hard I try, does NOT look good. The picture simply isn't sharp, some scenes literally have spots on the screen from the camera, and the colors aren't great. Moving on to some of their videos from 1998, the videos look fantastic.

I am willing to bet a majority of their videos weren't shot on any special film. Even if they gave me Beta SP tapes, they'd still be dubs. I am in no way going to be able to get the masters unless I work for Def Jam myself. Not gonna happen.

I am using a Super VHS deck (obviously) and inputting it into a Sony VX2000 via S Video which then firewire outs to DV on my computer. I hope this is considered a good method. Looks 100x better than my All In Wonder capture card ever did.

I also went out and bought a Tribe Called Quest DVD. This DVD came straight from Jive records. My DVD looks just as good, if not better, than this DVD. This is why I basically came to the conclusion that Beta SP may just be a waste of time (really appreciate TheHappyFriar's offer, by the way).

Here is a screen shot from the DVD I am making.

http://members.aol.com/silathis2/throw.jpg

If someone honestly thinks Beta SP will look better than this, speak up.

To get slightly off topic, I see I have the DV option of 1.0 pixel aspect ratio or .991 or something close to that. Which is the one I should be choosing for Super VHS?

Thanks again for all your help guys. If anyone here

Agreed, what ever the master is,,, that is what you want.

Obviously you should get the Beta SP. There is a big difference in quality.

What is holding you up is the Beta SP equipment acquisition cost. Here is one thing to think about:

eBay is a forum for buyers and sellers. Buy the equipment you need on eBay, and when you're finished, sell it back. The cost is not $1,500 or $2,000, but instead the difference between buying and selling costs, less eBay commissions. My guess is that the whole thing will cost $200, tops, after you sell the equipment back on eBay.

You know, you are absolutely right.

I was also wondering if it's worth all the TROUBLE. Getting these videos from Def Jam was like pulling teeth (I won't get into that) not to mention I already did all the editing and CD splicing. Do numerous recompresses alter the audio in any way?

If the source was SVHS, then it was dubbed to Beta & SVHS at the same time, the 2nd gen Beta would look better then the 2nd gen SVHS. Have you ever dubbed VHS-VHS? It sucks. :) you won't loose as much if you dub to a better format (but still a little).

The buying a BetaSP and then re-selling iton e-bay is a good idea. :) Never thought of tthat.

Numerious recompresses will alter the digital audio, but only if it is recompressed to a lower quality. just like DV! :)

The buying/selling idea came to me when I first got started in doing movie transfers. I did my first transfers on a Goko telecine unit. The results were not good enough so I sold the equipment on eBay (where I had purchased the unit in the first place) and ended up selling it for more than I paid for it. This really changed my idea of equipment ownership, especially for equipment that doesn't depreciate rapidly, which is definitely true of the Beta SP equipment. The real cost is the difference between the buying and selling price, and is usually far less than just a few days' rental of the same equipment. In extremem cases (like the one I cite above), the cost of ownership can actually be negative.

johnmeyer - your ebay, buy-use-sell strategy is interesting. I imagine it would work especially well on items that are popular with bidders but go for way under what they might sell for on some kind of used-retail shelf. Thanks for the idea.

DaddyLongLegs - The screenshot looks okay; sorta like a good quality SVCD. There's probably a whole lot more image detail waiting for you on those beta masters, but I can understand your thoughts about the time and trouble. Best of luck with it all.

Just one thing to watch with the buying / selling idea.
Beta SP gear is damn heavy so watch out for shipping costs and head hours. A lot of it seems to be coming onto the market and the wise ones will be flogging off the stuff with the most head hours first.

Your right. The UVM 1200 weighs 38 lbs. And thats just a small player.

JJK

The main reason I decided I may stay with Super VHS is because I bought a Tribe Called Quest DVD, manufactured by a huge name company, and my DVD looked just as good, if not better than theirs. Understanding SP is better, I think for not so expensive underground rap videos, it wouldn't make any difference.

All the TV stations in my area require Beta SP or Beta SX for spots I do for them; they won't consider VHS, SVHS, hi8, digital 8, or dvd; its always a problem going from computer files to tape since I have to run down someone with Beta SP or SX. There is no option; this should say something.