Guess I have to ask a fundamental question.

Betamax has timecode? You won't be able to make any use of his list if the betamax tapes don't have TC in the first place. If I'm right then you'd first need to dub them onto something that really does have timecode. DV tape comes to mind as the minimal solution.

Rob Mack

Simplest way to do this.
Capture it all into Vegas.
Add TC FX (use the project TC) and a super with the tape number.
Print that out to VHS.

This way without any drama your TC and his TC will match. When he comes back with the EDL you've already got all the footage ingested.

BTW, I'd suggest he uses DVDs rather than VHS, way easier to shuttle back and forwards to find things.

I've done this many times without any issues. You might tie up a HDD drive given the number of tapes but they're cheap enough.

Bob.

Bob, do you think it'd make sense to dub to DV tape first?

Rob

Certainly. Given the budget I'd copy it to DVCAM (the large format tapes).
Two advantages to this. You / the client have a backup on a modern format and you've got real TC that even someone else could work from.

Bob.

Rob and Bob: Your suggestions are right on, greatly appreciated and essentially what we do now with certain kinds of clients. The Vegas TC fx works beautifully for projects that we know will be a "sure thing" -- e.g., corporate clients, citizen clients with firm deadline requirements, whose work we will edit in the immediate future.

Let me explain about the other projects, of which the Betamax is typical. A great deal of our business involves editing the work of others -- little old ladies with blue hair, families, distraught children who have found boxes of tapes and films in the homes of parents recently passed on, as well as corporate projects and work for NGOs. The source materials can involve film, all the analog tape formats including Betamax, as well as DV and DVCAM tapes.

Last year we processed a bit over 100,000 feet of 8mm and 16mm film, all of which was transferred to miniDV tape. Since the majority of home-body types have no means of watching miniDV tapes, and since they often want to see what's on the film we've transferred and make decisions about editing it before transferring it to DVD, we provide them with VHS work tapes with window-burn time code -- as opposed to embedded time code, which they can't see on their home TV sets.

About half of these people return to us to edit their film/video tapes, often adding VO, then having us burn DVDs for them. We're talking about hundreds of hours of tape and the fact that only about half the clients involved will follow through with the project. So it's totally unrealistic to store these projects on hard drives; additionally, adding the T/C fx from Vegas would involve rendering the captured material and then burning it back out to tape, a step that would tie up equipment for long periods of time without (necessarily) generating any income from time spent.

So you see, all we need is a means of generating time code for the window burn, not a means of embedding time code onto the tape. We know that such a device -- basically a "black box" which cost about $25 U.S. in 1990 -- existed in the bad old days of analog video, but haven't been able to find one now.


Jack

The only reasonably priced box that I'm aware of is the .
List is $400. Markertek & B&H have it for $374.
Do a Google search on "horita tg-50" and you'll find several listings for used ones for a lot less.

Mike

Here are two listed on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/HORITA-TG-50-SEMPTE-TIME-CODE-GENERATOR_W0QQitemZ280021649714QQihZ018QQcategoryZ21166QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Horita-TG-50-SMPTE-Time-Code-Generator-Inserter-5d_W0QQitemZ7607380504QQihZ017QQcategoryZ21166QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I think we both understand this. The problem, as i see it, is that Betamax tapes don't have TC on them in the first place so if you use a timecode generator the window burn won't have any real relation to the original tape. It will be time consuming later on to go back to the Betamax tape and find those picks by eye.

This is all assuming that I'm right about betamax not containing TC, of course. We're not talking BetaSP here, we're talking Betamax.

So, you need to do two things. You need to make dubs onto a format that does have timecode, and you also need to make VHS window dubs. Ideally, you want to pipe the betamax into a deck (at least a DV25 deck) and then simultaneously output to the VHS with the timecode window turned on. When the client returns the pick list you'll go back to the DV25 dub because it's the only way you'll be able to find the timecode. The Betamax tapes have gone back in their dusty old box by this point, never to be seen again.

I don't have the manual here for my DSR11, but I think it can output a timecode window. In fact, I know it can display timecode in it's composite output. That's the sort of thing you need. It's not a terribly expensive deck and is at the bottom end for DV25.

Rob Mack

Almost all DV decks can give analogue output with burnt in TC.

However I don't see doing it all from HDD as being expensive, HDDs are cheaper than DV tape, PCs are cheaper than DV decks and I haven't delivered VHS to anyone in over 2 years. So given that it has to go out to DVD anyway capturing it to HDD and doing a render with burnt in TC is way cheaper than working with tape, thing is tape needs supervision whereas I can leave a PC for days rendering / encoding dozens of projects without human intervention.

Bob.

Yes, the DSR-11 will do that.

Bob.

It kind of boils down to the bigger cost picture of time. Decks cost money but if you're giving someone a window dub then you need to be able to go back to the source and use that timecode. Dubbing it to DV tape will put the TC on it.

If you're doing hundreds of hours then it makes some sense to dub from betamax to a dv deck and simultaneously straight out of that deck to whatever you want to deliver the windowdub on. You could use a DVD recorder or a vhs deck.

Both of these are worth having in the bigger picture anyway so it's not like this single Betamax job has to pay for all the hardware.

If the client can make their pick list in an excel template (really, a plain text file would do it), then you could probably import it into Vegas using Veggie Toolkit and then batch capture all the picks from the DV tape. Veggie toolkit will let you add heads and tails to the list if you like.

There's no real argument here but there are a couple of ways to do it. I'm not actually testing what I'm saying so if Bob were to say it's a bad idea I'd defer to his judgement.

Rob Mack

Thanks for the input, gentlemen. You've given me lots of ideas to explore. I'm not sure how the cost/profit will work out, but I should be able to work something out that will be satisfactory.

Jack