FORMATS AND STANDARDS

There are many different standards and formats used in Television Production and this can be very confusing. First lets explain what we mean by "Formats" and "Standards"

"Formats" describes the type of tape or disk system used to record or store the video images, for example VHS or DVD. There are many commonly used formats including Betacam, DVCAM, M2 etc., more about some of these later.

"Standards" describes the TV system used to display the TV picture. Different countries use different standards which are not compatible with each other without some sort of conversion process. The three principal standards are PAL (UK, Europe, Asia), NTSC (America, Japan), and SECAM (France, Russia). A PAL tape will not (with a few exceptions) play on an NTSC machine, so it is important to ensure that you distribute your programme in the appropriate standard. We have multi-standard machines and standards converters so we can produce tapes for any country.

 

FORMATS:

These days there are many formats to choose from. The choice of format will depend on the end use of your video. Please call us to discuss your exact needs. Here are some of the principle formats we use.

XDCAM HD This is a state of the art disk based broadcast system that was developed by Sony. The cameras can shoot in both High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition at a wide range of frame rates, so one camera can do both PAL and NTSC as well as HD. The cameras record on to a reusable disk, much like a DVD disk. A single disk can store upto 90 minutes of HD material. Disk based systems bring big time savings during editing as instead of having to spool through hours of tape to find the clips you want you can simply drag and drop the shots you want straight from the disk into the edited project.

Next down the scale is DVCAM. This is another digital broadcast format, often used for TV news and Documentaries. DVCAM pictures are sharp and vivid, almost as good as Digibeta, however DVCAM is not so good if you want to add a lot of special effects or layers of pictures. We have produced several Broadcast Documentaries using DVCAM without any problems and there are cost savings to be made compared to Digibeta. DVCAM is fast becoming a replacement for the older analogue format called BetacamSP (not to be confused with Digital Betacam). DVCAM is becoming the standard format for television news.

At the bottom end of the spectrum is MiniDV. This is the Digital tape format that you can buy in any good high street electrical retailer. It is a good format, almost identical to DVCAM, however the small "palmcorder" type cameras that use this format are fiddly and difficult to use, often lacking in manual control. We can produce programmes using these cameras if your budget is very tight, but the results can be unpredictable and varied, sometimes surprisingly good at other times dire.

Digital Betacam (Digibeta) was developed by Sony as a top end broadcast television production format. It has been the de-facto standard for quality TV production ever since it's launch. It has even been used to produce a few films and most notably some of the re-released scenes in the original Star Wars films were re-shot using Digibeta. The cameras have proved to be robust and reliable and give the cameraman an incredible amount of control over the final image. The compression system used is very mild at only 2:1, this helps maintain the original image quality over many generations or layers of special effects. A Digibeta camera can record for up to 42 mins on a single tape, larger tapes up to 124 min's are available for studio machines.

DVCAM is based on the consumer miniDV format. It was introduced by Sony as a low cost but high quality format for use in the corporate and industrial sector, however over the last couple of years it has become accepted for TV news and documentaries. There are a wide range of cameras small and large. The larger full size professional cameras produce excellent pictures, take industry standard lenses and have the full range of manual controls needed for TV production. Full size cameras can record on tapes that last up to 3 hours! The smaller DVCAM camcorders are similar to domestic models, they are good for un-obtrusive filming and generally produce good results, however the lack of interchangeable lenses and proper manual controls limits their performance and the end results can be a little unpredictable.