Digibeta: HD-Masterable or not??

[XanderAE]

I hope this is the right thread, I'm still just getting the hang of this forum-ing.

I just need a bit of information please, if there's someone out there with a bit of filmography knowledge, who knows a thing or two about film, camera's and the like.

Smallville Season 1, I've read, is filmed on Digibeta, and I am just wondering whether shows or other media filmed on this can be mastered in high definition or not? When i tried reseaching myself, I [think] it said that digibeta is a standard definition media, but i can't quite clarify if its true or not.

If someone can just tell me a bit about Digibeta, and whether stuff filmed using it can someday be mastered in HD, i'd greatly appreciate it.

I also want to know, cus im wondering if the DVDs are the best Smallville s1 will ever look.

Cheers

[Deciazulado]

specs NTSC DigiBeta 486 x 720 and PAL DigiBeta 576 x 720

Now about Smallville you read that it was "filmed", or mastered/edited in digibeta?

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Now about Smallville you read that it was "filmed", or mastered/edited in digibeta?

You've gone and confused him, Deci. I've seen clips of Smallville. No way it was "filmed" in DigiBeta.


fuad

[Loki]

Smalleville is most likely shot on Film.. or some variant of HDCAM / Varicam.

Highly doubtful it is shot on Digibeta.. not with the budgets they are working with.

[WickyWoo]

They shot on film, they then transfer 35mm to DigiBeta, and later HDCam, and now they're shooting exclusively HDCam.

In order for them to make it HD, they would have to go back, find all the film stems that were used, and completely reassemble the show from scratch. This can be done, it was done for Babylon 5. However it is very expensive, and without some cable network co-financing it unlikely to happen

SFC co-financed new transfers of B5 and ST:TOS (which was signifigantly cheaper as it was finished on 35mm film, so all they had to do was rescan just like a movie and scrub)

Any FX shots will likely remain standard def

[Deciazulado]

Well then to answer XanderAE's question we need to know which seasons of Smallville were edited in DigiBeta and which on HDCam.

About B5, the live action will be good but the SFX have to be redone (re-scaled from the 4:3 masters)

[XanderAE]

Thanks a bunch people!

You've helped clear things up a lot for me, and like you, i was actually thinking that IMDB must of had it wrong, Smallville S1 doesn't feel like its confined to standard def.

I think Wickywoo is right here, but unfortunately, i don't know if Smallville is important enough to Warner to warrent (when the time comes that Blu has expanded and is adopted more widely by teh populace) re-doing all this work to 21 television episodes.

It's just a pain, cus DVD is good, but why settle for good when you can have GREAT!

ADD: I know that season 2 onwards was HDcam only, so there do exist the HD masters of seasons 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6... soon to be 7