Beta SP is pretty antiquated, dont' know if anyone here who insists on it, almost all want DigiBetacam as it's the industry standard.
Depends which version of DVCPRO you're talking about, DVCPRO 50 is pretty good but rather rare over here, we sold off all our DVCPRO kit as it rarely got any work. Even Panasonic seem to have given up on DVCPRO25.

Bob.

Really? At the station I worked at all we had was DVCPro. We got a BetaSP because WB & Paramount had all their library shows on SP, so we needed one to dub over (you can get used ones relatively cheap). The only problem we had with the DVCPro's was my boss was cheap & NEVER cleaned them or got them serviced. So, they all started dieing. :(

But, they worked flawlessly when we used them. Plus they are as expensive as a BetaSP player brand new. :)

--Beta SP is pretty antiquated, dont' know if anyone here who insists on it, almost all want DigiBetacam as it's the industry standard. --

You'd be surprised what we get on a daily basis... although I'm in Toledo, which certainly isn't the largest market in the world! I'm not sure that there 'standard' formats anymore!
We have 6 working 1" machines which we use ALL the time for dubs and things coming into house. We had to figure out how to do a quad dub not terribly long ago. We've got shows that come in on Minidv, DVCPro, BetaSP & 3/4" for good measure. We got a request a week or two ago to see if (no lie!) we could take an MPEG-1 file to air. And, on the other side of the coin, we just started with HDCam for field shooting last week.
Everyone seems to be moving in the direction of 'keep one of each machine around,' so that it can all be cached into a server anyway!

David.

My boss has a basement full of 1" machines and a few 2" quads and we have 3 SP decks in active service. I think most of the networks can still handle SP, probably only for their own libraries though. The thing that seems to have killed off SP as an acquisition medium is the cameras will not shoot 16:9, you can pretty much pick up the cameras around here for the value of the lens, we still have one and it mostly gets hired as a prop.

DVCPRO is a good format, I think one network is fairly heavily commited to it and another is into SX (shudder) but the standard distribution medium for TVCs is DigiBeta and I cannot get our national broadcaster to accept anything else even though they have the facility to ingest almost anything.

Bob.

I just shot a TV 1-hour doc on DVCPro 50 with the Panasonic SDX900. Sometimes a camcorder can sell a format. The SDX900 is the best standard definition/16:9 camcorder I've ever used.

The ability to go 24p, 24i or 30p in a high resolution format such as DVCPro 50 and the price of this camera -- very sweet!

I can see a lot of commercial, music videos that could make great use of the SDX900s film gamma settings and 24p mode, it's like shooting film. And, apparently you can upsample to high def with it.

Anyhow, not thrilled about DVCPro but DVXPro 50 and this camera, that's another story. Apparently here in Toront, rental houses can't keep them on the shelf long enough, they''re always out!

I'm up for a network pilot/series and they actually requested this camera.


MB

are you talking about a tv/cable network? The only network I've seen DVCPro's in is (was) TechTV. You could see them whenever they would show footage of offices & production studios. the (was) is because they got bought out & moved from SanFran to LA. They could of gotten all new equipment.

DVCPRO will never "become" any kind of standard - no format will. It just deponds on economics.

I worked on a show that acquired all stuff on DVCPRO and can say the quality and reliablity of the medium was better than DVCAM in terms of consistent timecode and lack of dropouts. They were really happy but at the end of the day they usually had to make a clone from their DVCPRO master to DigiBeta at a dubbing house to satisfy their deliverable commitments.

As an animator and designer I'm luck in that I use Vegas to master to any format I like (and that is one of the big strengths of Vegas). Sure there is the render time but for me it's great - I figure the time I spend rendering is dollars I don't have locked up in hardware. All of my jobs I render to CD or DVDRAM as uncompressed AVI or Quicktimes and deliver to an edit house for their purposes. I let them sort out the format wars.

But back to DVCPRO the cameras are really nice and deliver lovely colours and quality images and sound. As an SD acquisition format it's really nice and relatively cheap.

- Rick

FWIW I submit a weekly TV magazine show and commercial spots to CBS, NBC, and PBS affiliates on mini DV and even DVD. However two years ago they all insisted on beta (and I had to drive as far as 150 miles to dub them off at their station).
Randy

Thank you guys for sharing, I guess it either buy another vx2100 or get a beta SP deck. hmmmm.

It sounds like it's true about ther enot being a standard. I work for a small TV station in Oregon owned by Fisher Communications (Which owns 11 stations in the northwest). As I understand it, Fisher struck a deal with Sony and all stations use Sony equipment and DVCam cameras.

Our commercial production department shot on DVCPro up until about three years ago when the change was made.

JayHink