Outputting DBETA from Final Cut Pro

For outputting to digital betacam you will need a Sony DVW-A500, Sony DVW-500 or the DVW-M2000, all are digital betacam recorders. The DVW-A500 has analogue Betacam SP playback and was the workhouse for d-beta. The M2000 was a green machine with less lead and had multiformat capabilities.  To get the necessary bandwidth you should send the DBETA recorder a standard definition signal via SDI or serial digital interface. From an Apple G5, Apple Macbook pro (firewire 800) or a Mac Pro you can install a aja kona card or use the AJA i/o hd. Many clients use the i/o hd for quick output jobs and for standard def it works fine and especially when using the Apple Pro Res 422 codec. The aja site (http://aja.com/html/products_Io.html) stated the following “Single FireWire 800 connection… supports Apple ProRes 422 and Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) in hardware, enabling true 10-bit editing on an Apple laptop. With this high performance hardware and codec, you can work on the road with 720 and 1080 HD, all in full-raster 10 bit 4:2:2—and in realtime!” I know of a few companies that rent the i/o box. check out http://www.kasdin.com/

Typically for smaller projects where there is no crunch time, then layoff the flattened QuickTime movie and bring it to a facility that has an editing room where you can output and master your project to Digital Betacam. You can probably negotiate a flat rate or for a smaller project bring in the drive and your Final Cut Pro project file and output to their Sony DBETA machine. On a DVWA500 rental, figure on spending around $250-400/ day and $700-$1,000 for the week, on a Sony recorder. The rental prices on a dbeta machine really is a matter of length of the video equipment rental. Add the Aja I/O box and the Sony VTR recorder and you could be spending basically $500 for your broadcast equipment rental. So you will need to factor that in to your budget when taking on a job in which the client is at your edit suite and wanting to walk out the door with the master for the Emmy’s. 

You should get the video equipment; Aja kona board or the Aja i/o box, plus the Sony VTR recorder ahead of time and integrate it to prevent any SNAFUs.