Outsmarting Sony (or, Stupid U-Matic Tricks!)
So, part of the reconfiguration of my edit suite/man cave has been to recable everything to use S-Video instead of composite video for the highest quality video I can get from my collection of professional and prosumer gear. This was pretty easy on the S-VHS front since that's where S-Video was developed to begin with, and my Betacam deck does S-
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Sounds like you too have a collection of decks. Onto my next deck. I hope you can advise so I can get this up and running ASAP. I have a Betacam SP UVW1800 and I would like to set it up so that I get the best possible transfer from the deck to my PC. My collection of gear includes the deck, a VO-9850, Canopus ADVC 300 and 100, a DPS-295 (coming soon), a number of PC's mostly running Win7, and one PC has a Intensity Pro card with breakout cable. From my reading it seems that the best transfers would be if I had a board/box that could take in BNC component and 2 channels of XLR and an RC422 connection. Now I'm not entirely sure if I need the RC422 for transfers to the PC....possibly only if transferring to the deck? Seems that a Blackmagic Studio 2 is an option...but it is also about $700 that I'd prefer not to spend.
Could anyone advise?
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Dealing with antique machines as we are, another consideration is the condition of the deck. Having the model with the best resolution doesn't help if the heads are worn out and the electronics are on their last legs. At this point it's difficult to find broadcast players in great condition for a low price. So I'm happy with a UVW that had only 8 hours on the drum and just needed a good lube to come back to life. That little bit of bandwidth won't be missed by most people in a DV conversion.
On the subject of audio . . . it is important to get the balanced/unbalanced thing right. I recommend www-dot-rane-dot-com/ note110 for a thorough discussion of the cable interface. Beyond that, make sure that your destination audio device can handle the SIGNAL LEVEL which traditionally accompanies balanced or unbalanced audio. It is, respectively, either +4 dBu or -10 dBV. A bad mismatch will result in distortion no matter how you set the gain.
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Agreed, a UVW with 8 hours on the heads will usually outperform a BVW with 8,000 hours. In general though, good luck finding someone on eBay selling a Beta SP deck for under $600 who knows what an hour meter is, let alone how to find/read it. Plus there's that little problem where the PVW series hour meter is driven by a lithium coin battery which is almost certainly dead now.
The only caveat to this is, because the UVW series is a "cost-reduced" line, they will not play back Betacam oxide tapes (non-SP aka "standard" or "regular" Betacam). Not that there's a ton of that around, but it's a nasty surprise when someone shows up with a Beta tape from 1983 and you discover it won't play in your 1800.
And for those of you drooling over cheap BVW-75s being dumped occasionally, they don't do S-Video so if you're not tooled up for component video you're stuck. But the BVWs do 4-channel audio and the others don't, which may be a consideration if you're handling a lot of studio masters.
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Sony used a system where there were small tabs which would be punched out of the bottom of the shell to indicate tape type on the smaller field tapes. This is in the middle near the tape path. No holes indicated Betamax and three holes (leaving a "T" shape) indicated Betacam SP. Oxide Betacam had one or perhaps two tabs punched out.
Some cheap people would punch out the tabs and record SP on these oxide tapes. Obviously, this usually provided subpar performance.
The Betacam PAL site says the UVW-1200 can play oxide tapes so it may be the exception. The UVW-1800 manual says it can't and I have verification of that from someone who had one.
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Thanks Captain for the note about the PVW battery....now I need to check that out on my 2800.
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