Beta Deck Basics

HAL is equipped with a Betacam SP deck. The Betacam SP format is an ANALOG STANDARD DEFINITION tape format.

The following is the procedure for capturing BETACAM SP footage from the BETACAM SP DECK onto HAL:

1. Turn Betacam SP deck on. Turn NTSC monitor on and switch to Input B.
2. Insert Betacam SP tape. The deck supports both the large and small tape sizes.
3. Open FCP. Set Capture Scratch and then go to File -> Log & Capture.
4. Click the Capture Settings Tab.
5. For Device Control, select "Blackmagic NTSC 29.97Hz" from the pulldown menu.
6. For Capture Input there are several options. Typically when capturing Betacam SP footage, you want to capture at either 8 Bit or 10 Bit uncompressed, preserving the highest quality and resolution from the tape. Capturing at uncompressed quality will also produce very large file sizes. You can also choose to capture at DV quality, which can then be "up-rezed" later to a higher quality, replacing the DV footage with uncompressed.
7. To capture at 8-bit or 10-bit uncompressed, choose "Blackmagic NTSC - 8 Bit" or "Blackmagic NTSC - 10 Bit". To capture at DV quality, choose "Blackmagic NTSC - DV"
8. Click the Logging Tab.
9. In the Reel box, enter a name for the tape. In the Description box, enter a filename for the footage.
10. On the deck, set the control switch to "Remote". This switch allows you to control the deck from the capture window.
11. Advance the tape to a point a few seconds before the footage you want captured. Press Play on the deck.
12. Click "Capture Now".
13. When you have reached the end of the footage, press ESC.

Matt

Black & White Printer Woes

The black & white printer has been taken offline temporarily. After installing a new toner cartridge, it's been printer gray smears over all the pages. The color printer is working fine, so please direct customers to use that printer. If customers MUST printer black & white, you can set the color printer to grayscale by doing the following:

1. Choose "NMC Color Printer" from the pulldown box.
2. Click the menu box under Presets, and choose Color Options.
3. The option "Print Color as Gray" should appear. Change the pulldown box to "On".

Also, there will be a customer coming in who wants to convert PAL DVDs to NTSC. I believe the only way to do this conversion is by ripping the DVD in HandBrake and then burning a copy again in NTSC. I'm not sure if Toast can do the conversion automatically.

Just wanted to let everyone know what's going on.

Matt

2007 Brings NMC Upgrades

Hi everyone,

Hope all of you had a great winter break. The spring semester is here and the NMC has a few new goodies:

1. A spiffy new 2 GHz Intel iMac at the Manager's station. All of the files and iCal information has been transferred from the old machine to this one. Enjoy!
2. 2 desk fans to keep that air moving in the lab. They are sleek, quiet, and they even oscillate...oooohh!
3. A new stack of blank CDs and DVDs
4. Final Cut Pro 5.1. This upgrade will allow FCP to be installed on Intel Macs and adds additional suport for certain video formats. The software has been ordered and should arrive soon. Please be aware that if someone starts a project in FCP 5, they will be able to continue working in 5.1 seemlessly. However, if a person starts or saves a project in FCP 5.1, they WILL NOT be able to open the project again in FCP 5.

Please note that all accounts that were not marked to be held over to the spring semester have been deleted. I did not, however, remove any personal NMC staff accounts, even if they were not marked to be saved. All documents on the student accounts were also deleted.

Looking forward to seeing all of you again!

Matt