Media Conversions

Digi Beta

Digital Betacam (commonly abbreviated to Digibeta or d-beta or dbc) was launched in 1993. It supersedes both Betacam and Betacam SP, while costing significantly less than the D1 format and providing high quality and reliability. S tapes are available with up to 40 minutes running time, and L tapes with up to 124 minutes.

Beta SP

The original Betacam format launched in 1982. It is an analog component format, storing the luminance (Y) in one track and the chrominance (R-Y, B-Y) on another, performing Chroma Time Division Multiplex, or CTDM. This splitting of channels provides a crisp, true broadcast quality product with 300 lines of horizontal resolution.

DVCAM

Sony's DVCAM is a semiprofessional variant of the DV standard that uses the same cassettes as DV and MiniDV, but transports the tape 50% faster. This leads to a higher track width of 15 micrometres. This variant uses the same codec as regular DV. However, the greater track width lowers the chances of dropout errors. The LP mode of consumer DV is not supported. All DVCAM recorders and cameras can play back DV material, but DVCPRO support was only recently added to some models. DVCAM tapes (or DV tapes recorded in DVCAM mode) have their recording time reduced by one third.

MiniDV/DV

The "L" cassette is about 120×90×12 mm and can record up to 4.6 hours of video (6.9 hours in EP/LP). The better known MiniDV "S" cassettes are 65 x 48 x 12 mm and hold either 60 or 90 minutes of video (11 GB) depending on whether the video is recorded at Standard Play (SP) or Extended Play (sometimes called Long Play) (EP/LP). 80 minute tapes are also available and can record 120 minutes of video in EP/LP mode. The tapes sell for as little as USD 3.00 each in quantity as of 2006. DV on SP has a helical scan track width of 10 micrometres, while EP uses a track width of only 6.7 micrometres. (EP mode is not recommended by video professionals, since the tolerances are so tight that the recorded tape may not play back properly or at all on any but the original recording deck.)

SVHS/VHS/VHSC

Like VHS, the S-VHS format uses a "color under" modulation scheme. S-VHS improves VHS's luminance resolution by boosting the frequency deviation of the luminance carrier. This produces a 60% improvement in (luminance) picture detail, or a horizontal resolution of 400 lines per picture height (versus VHS's 240 lines). The often quoted horizontal resolution of 400 means S-VHS captures greater picture detail than even analog (NTSC) cable broadcast TV, which is limited to about 330 lines. In practice, when timeshifting TV programs on S-VHS equipment, the improvement over VHS is indeed quite noticeable. Yet, the trained eye can easily spot the difference between live broadcast TV and a S-VHS recording of it. This is explained by S-VHS's failure to improve other key aspects of the video signal, especially the chroma signal. In VHS, the chroma carrier is both severely bandlimited and rather noisy, a limitation that S-VHS does not address. To be fair, poor color resolution was a deficiency shared by S-VHS's contemporaries (Hi8, Laserdisc, ED-Beta).

8mm/Hi8/Digital8

The 8 mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats for the NTSC and PAL/SECAM television systems. These are the original Video8 format and its improved successor Hi8 (both analog), The Digital8 format is the combination of the venerable Hi8 tape transport with the DV codec. Digital8 equipment uses the same videocassettes as analog Hi8 equipment, but differs in that the audio/video signal is encoded digitally (using the industry-standard DV codec.) Since Digital8 uses the DV codec, it has identical audio and video specifications.

8mm/SUPER8mm cine

Super 8 mm film, also called Super 8 is a motion picture film format that was developed in the 1960s and released on the market in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement of the older 8mm home movie format. The film is 8 mm wide, exactly the same as the older standard 8 mm film and also has perforations on only one side, but the dimensions of the perforations are reduced, allowing the exposed area to be increased in size. The Super-8 standard also specifically allocates the rebate opposite the perforations for an oxide stripe upon which sound can be magnetically recorded. There are several different varieties of the film system used for shooting, but the final film in each case has the same dimensions. By far the most popular system was the Kodak system.
Slides/Negative/Photographs

We can convert slides, negatives both black and white as well as colour and photographs to digital format using the latest digital capture techniques.