getting Betacam video into my computer

jbigfoot

Member
I need to get the video from my PVW-2800 into my computer a little better than it looks now. I have an HP quad processor with Vista 64. My current video capture card is a Hauppauge 1600, using WIN-TV 6. It appears to be saving my clips at 640X480 when it should be 720 wide, and my guess is that the CODEC is not the best in the world (it's their MainConcept-HCW MPEG-2 Video Decoder). I'm using S-video to input and saving my clips at the highest settings but the quality still leaves something to be desired.

What would you recommend as the most cost-effective, bang-for-the-buck hardware & software to do this? (Money's really tight.) I edit using Sony Vegas Pro 8.

Thanks in advance.
 

Chugach3DGuy

Well-known member
I looked up that card http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1600.html, and it seems to be meant for turning your PC into a DVR- not ingesting video for editing purposes. That's why it's using the MPEG2 encoder- to save space by compressing the video. MPEG files are definitely not meant for editing, so you're going to need to find something that can at least ingest a file that follows the NTSC/DV format.

Check out http://videoguys.com/Search/Search.aspx?CategoryName=Video Capture I-O&Page=4&SortBy=3

You say money is really tight, but a decent Video I/O card will set you back a few hundred bucks. If you're really looking to save money, you can check out your local electronics store, but you're definitely going to need a video input card that's capable of saving as a DV AVI or MOV. By encoding to MPEG2 from BetaSP, you're losing at least 75% of your original data. Plus, editing MPEG files sucks.
 

jbigfoot

Member
Yeah, I definitely noticed a difference between what I was seeing in the camera and what was on the edit screen.

Right now, I'd have to say the top contender for a card would be the Blackmagic Intensity Pro. I don't think coming up with $200 will be too hard to do.
 

zac love

Well-known member
Though it might not be the best, if you have FireWire on your computer you could pick up a used MiniDV camera (or borrow one) that has analog pass through.

I have an old Canon ZR30 (or something) & last time I checked it was going for the range of $50 on ebay. I know at least some Sony MiniDV cameras had this feature, but Canon has been good at throwing in tons of features into their cheap consumer cameras, so I would start with them.

Though an Blackmagic Intensity Pro card will probably be the best quality you can get at a low price. They market the card as being able to take 4:2:2 HD footage live, so Beta would be a piece of cake.
 

Chugach3DGuy

Well-known member
If you end up going with that Black Magic Intensity Card, make sure your hard drives can handle the necessary throughput.
 

jbigfoot

Member
Thanks, guys. And my apologies on the late reply. For some reason, I'm not getting notifications nor are my threads showing up on my CP.

I bought the Blackmagic. the .AVI files look good although there are some interlace artifacts I need to deal with. My next problem is to overcome the rendering flaws in my editing chain; I'm using Sony Vegas 8.0. (But that's another thread.)
 

jeremycohn

Well-known member
I second 104imdirect. Get a Canopus analog to digital converter. They work very well and don't require any special software...assuming your PC has FireWire/IEEE/iLink ports.

Sony Vegas will work fine for capturing.
 
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