Posted by William Davis on 09/15/06 04:18

In article <4509DEDF.D2686F09@thelogconnection.com>,
Gary Hasler <garyhasler@thelogconnection.com> wrote:

> We have a bunch of raw footage on D-9 / Digital-S (not Digtal-8)
> videotapes. I need to have them as avi files in as high quality as
> practical. Would someone need to capture them using an analog capture
> card, or is there a better way..ripping digital to digital? How common
> is this videotape format?..a web search doesn't give many hits.

IIRC D-9 was a 50Mbps 4:2:2 digital format that JVC was pushing some
years back (1999?)

Not at ALL common these days. Producers split into 25Mbit DV, (DVCAM,
DVCPRO) and Digibeta/DVCPro 50 camps later and Digital-S kinda went away.

The best chance you have is to try and find someone (or some station)
that has a D-9 deck then you'll need to figure out what the output
format is. I don't THINK these decks had firewire or similar low bitrate
digital outputs, more likely an early implementation of serial digital
(SDI) or perhaps analog component.

If the content is valuable, there are products at Markertek
(www.markertek.com) that can patch and transcode this to DVCPro 50 and
most of the modern DVCPro50 decks have SDI outputs that you use to feed
a high-end capture card like the Kona line.

If the content isn't intrinsically valueable, it's probably not worth
the expense of buying the gear and you'll need to find a dubbing house
and have them put it on a format you can use.

Even transcoding down to a 25Mbps format like DVCAM or DV should look
fine since you're starting with good quality to begin with.

Getting them TO a drive is the easy part.

The next step is tougher.

Figuring out what KIND of AVI file (codec/variant) that you need for
output. That will depend on what you realistically need to do with them.

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