U-Matic and BetaCam tapes going bad....is VV3 the solution?

ilya wrote on 9/11/2002, 7:17 AM

Hi,

This is my first post here.
I have a problem is that my old stock shots on U-matic and betacam tapes are going bad, in all I have over a thousand tapes!. Some shots where taken a decade ago and I would like to make backups of them while still have broadcast quality.
The most simple solution is to back them up on betacam tapes but I would be faced with similar problems again in the near future.
I am interested in converting them to Dv then Mpeg2(using VV3's mainconcept encoder)so I could burn them on DVD.
But the question is I have doubts that after converting and encoding, I will not be able to use them for broadcast again because of the loss of quality.

Has anyone tried doing the same? Where you able to keep minimum acceptable broadcast quality? Is VV3 up to the task?

Thank you very much for your help.

Ilya

Comments

mathiaslink wrote on 9/11/2002, 8:22 AM

You're not going to have as significant loss of quality as you would when the oxide falls off the tape. Just encode at the highest rate you can and that will be entirely adequate. That Umatic stuff is going to be rough anyway since it is low bandwidth and composite and I doubt you could degrade it (with attention to detail). As for Betacam, just make sure you get a good encoding system and use the component output. We at Nebraska Educational Telecommunications in Nebraska are going through just this kind of dilema.

BillyBoy wrote on 9/11/2002, 9:10 AM

A related question... how long is DV tape rated to last before it breaks down?

ilya wrote on 9/11/2002, 9:25 AM

[We at Nebraska Educational Telecommunications in Nebraska are going through just this kind of dilema.]
So what solution are going to go for? Copy them to mini Dv tapes? or into DVD MPEG2? what bitrate would you think will be enough to retain the "broadcast quality"?

Thanks

John_Cline wrote on 9/11/2002, 9:28 AM

You could always render the MPEG2 files as I-frame only and burn the DVD's as data disks. This would make it easier to edit the video sometime in the future, since with I-frame only encoding, like DV, each frame is compressed as a "stand-alone" frame, instead of the intra-frame difference encoding of DVD-compatible MPEG2 files.

As for the question about how long DV tapes will last, it depends on the quality of the tape and the conditions under which they are stored. Assuming they are still physically playable, as long as the errors on the tape do not exceed the error-correction capabilities of the DV format, they should be usable for quite a while. Under ideal circumstances, maybe 15-20 years. However, I guess that all depends on whether DV format hardware is still available. By that time, we'll probably be recording holographic 3D video on cubes of silicon.

John

ilya wrote on 9/11/2002, 11:06 AM

[You could always render the MPEG2 files as I-frame only and burn the DVD's as data disks. This would make it easier to edit the video sometime in the future, since with I-frame only encoding, like DV, each frame is compressed as a "stand-alone" frame, instead of the intra-frame difference encoding of DVD-compatible MPEG2 files.]

Yes I think it would be a good idea to encode them into I frames MPEG2 files if i want to edit the footage later...thanks for reminding me :)

riredale wrote on 9/11/2002, 11:19 AM

I almost wonder if it would make more sense to compress the video to the DV format rather than MPEG2. That way, you could either put the data files on DV tape, or burn them to DVD-R. The recording capacity of tape would depend on which format was chosen (miniDV SP/LP, DVCam) and of course you'd still be with tape, which would eventually get old. On DVD-R, you'd get about 20 minutes of space, and many experts say the medium will last a very long time.

MPEG2 is a great delivery vehicle, but it uses a lot of compression and I get the feeling that DV avi is much more transparent through the encode/decode cycle. But then from what I understand I-frame-only MPEG2 is very similar to DV anyway.

Cheesehole wrote on 9/11/2002, 5:23 PM

I heard you can get DVD decks that work like tape machines with the same type of transport controls. for a stock footage company, that might be a nice solution.