Best way to upscale DigiBeta to 1080p?
 

So I might be on my way to land my first job, around 250 Digibeta tapes from a program house. They want the digital files delivered in 1080p Prores. What would be a good looking and convenient method to accomplish this? Would for instance Virtualdub be able to do upscaling while capturing and writing the file? Our would it have to be a post-production approach in e.g. Premiere?

Do not do that.

Digital Betacam ("DigiBeta") is 720x480/576 interlaced SD video. That's what it should be archived to. An upscaled copy will reduce quality with a necessary deinterlace (59.94/50fps). Also if not done in stage (480/576>720p>1080p), you will have some nasty artifacts.

Both SD and HD can be ProRes422.

Sometimes being in business requires that you inform the client of the stupidity/insanity of the request. Education is needed. Remember, they don't know what they don't know. That's what you're for. Don't just blindly do as requested, especially when the outcome is knowingly go to look bad. Because you will be blamed for it, even if it's their own dumb fault.

Upscaling with any degree of quality will require Avsiynth. You can stretch a resolution in almost anything, such as Adobe Premiere, but the output quality will be butchered.

You cannot upscale at capture. Yes, some broadcast appliances upscale, but quality is not there.

The only valid reason for upscale is mixed-content documentaries, or broadcast. You will not be doing the latter, because each facility does that in-house to their own specs (or on contract with others). Whatever you submit is redone, always. That leaves documentary.

Some DIY documentary filmmakers do really bad jobs with sources, often letting FCP butcher it. But the documentary must have segments redone later, if quality is lacking, as per dictate of the broadcaster or film releaser. Bad quality is (usually) not allowed to just slide by anymore. I'd seen a lot of really bad documentaries in past years -- interlace as progressive, reverse interlace as progressive, bad stretched aspect ratio, non-TBC capture with timing errors/wiggles, bad deinterlace jaggies or ghosting. And that's just video, not even audio issues (usually overprocess, or overcompressed). More and more, it's being cracked down on. Many did get lax in 2020, but I see that reversing again soon.

I was having some interesting in-depth discussions on upscale with PD and VH recently.

Which version of tapes you have? There are 3 versions of digital betacam SD a.k.a digibeta, Digibeta lossless AVI 4:2:2 @90Mbps. Betacam SX, a compressed MPEG-2 version 4:2:2 @ 18Mbps. and lastly Betacam MPEG IMX uses h.262 in MPEG-2 container @ 30/40/50 Mbps. They are differentiated by using color coded tapes.

Neither one should be captured from an analog output, use SDI output for 1:1 transfer using the SDI card app. and no it is not a good idea to upscale for archiving. unless sharing is the goal you can make additional upscaled copy.

Good input. I got back to the client and asked why they wanted it stored in HD. So they went and checked their archive and "discovered" that DigiBeta is SD ... So now the upscaling is, luckily, not on the table anymore. So you're reply is right on point @lordsmurf ...

However I still would need some advice on the capture workflow to end up in DVCPRO. DigibetaPlayer ----> SDI output ----> SDI capture card and then what? Could VirtualDub capture from an SDI card and output DVCPRO50 realtime? Or would I have to go HuffYUV and then have it converted?

Also, would the cheap Blackmagic DeckLink Mini Recorder do as SDI input? Or even the UltraStudio Recorder 3G Thunderbolt on a Mac? :unsure: Suggested software?

@latreche34 I don't know the tape version at this point, could be mixed. Would that affect the workflow? SDI is SDI right, regardless of the codec the signal as been stored in?

Stay away from MAC and DVCPRO, DVCPRO is a compressed camcorder format just like DV not a capture output.

Yes the BM decklink PCIe card on a Wind 10 is what you need, Install the Desktop Video 12.0 package from BM it has the drivers and the Media Express app to store the SDI stream on hard drive, The files will be huge even at 8 bit so you need a bigger hard drive to store them, Then from there you can de-interlace with QTGMC, crop from 720x486 to 720x480 (or 704x480 for analog Betacam) and then encode to h.264 in a MPEG-4 container and discard the files if they no longer want them.

Capture in 8bit because none of the script software work with 10 bit files, At least I wasn't successful.

They might have HD Betacam tapes, so you would need a HD player.

What model of player are you planning to use? I personally have the Sony J3-SDI model, I have a sample on youtube in 480p but from now on I'll start upscaling my uploads to 1440x1080 to avoid youtube's excessive compression of SD materials.