Expert: Alessandro Machi - 7/13/2007

Question
A festival asks to submit master tapes on digital beta or beta SP in either PAL or NTSC formats. What exactly do they mean?

Answer
Betacam Sp and Digital Betacam are the two most utilitarian video formats ever made.  If they have a flaw, it would be that they are an older style of video tape format and use quite a bit of videotape material per cassette compared to newer digital formats, but that may also be why they are also more robust and reliable as a tape format than most digital video formats, especially those that rely on the mini-dv cassette.

You will need to transfer your master project onto betacam sp or digital betacam.  If money is an issue, betacam sp can save you plenty of money yet it is still very good quality.

If you do not have the ability to output directly from your computer to betacam sp, then make a copy to mini-dv and then have that copy "bumped" to betacam sp.

I recommend a component bump to betacam sp from the mini-dv copy, or at the very least an S-Video copy.  I DO NOT recommend copying from a dvd to betacam sp as that has already been compressed.

Here are fairly standard guidelines for the front of a betacam sp tape.  Start at hour 58:00:00:00, put thirty seconds of 7.5 IRE black, then 60 seconds of SMPTE color bars WITH PLUGE and tone, then 30 more seconds of 7.5 IRE black.  Picture should then start EXACTLY at hour 1:00:00:00

I prefer drop frame time-code but non-drop may be acceptable as well.

YOU SHOULD FORMAT YOUR MINI-DV TAPE THIS WAY so the bump to betcam sp can be done without any additional editing.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT THE COLOR BARS AND TONE ACTUALLY MATCH THE AUDIO AND VIDEO LEVELS OF YOUR FILM.  I have expertise in this area but as more and more editors only use computers they sometimes don't understand what the above means.

Hopefully your sound levels don't fluctuate too greatly and hopefully you didn't make your music soundtrack significantly louder than your dialogue track NOR should there be a huge shift in the audio levels throughout the entire film.

Also, DO NOT USE ZERO BLACK for baseline black level when the betacam sp master is made as it will cause you to lose image quality.  Zero black on the computer MUST be bumped to 7.5 IRE when you make the betacam sp master, most of the time.