what are these beta tapes used for?

Some ones getting banned!

 

lol for what? Yeah the actual dev hardware and such might be worth that but as for videos and beta software from them I just dont think so. I know its based on the individual but I just have never liked Acclaim or their software.

 

Fixed. :lol:

 

US$3.000 is indeed way too much for this footage since it's only video as said. Additionally it's not from unreleased or pretty rare games and the footage was most likely processed for cover DVDs or internet.

As said, brand new Beta SP tapes are about 50 - 90 EUR, so this should be the realistic price.

 

You saying that I got a raw deal



lol

 

You can find used Beta SP play only decks for a few grand at places that sell used broadcast gear. Digibeta is quite a bit more, but you can always do a weekly rental and transfer them yourself. It would probably run $400-$500 for a deck and cables.

 

There probably aren't too many people working in broadcast on this forum - I'm one, but I'm in the UK and I'm moving to holland in 4 weeks so although I could have encoded them to divx or whatever you liked, it's probably not going to happen due to my re-location sorry!

If you post a "does anybody work in broadcast?" message on the front page you may get someone in your neck of the woods that can help.

You could risk registering on an AV forum, but you'd be trusting strangers whcih is always risky. At least here you pretty much know who's genuine.

Loading them into a betacam tape player and pressing play isn't difficult, the process of encoding them to something useful for you is the hard part, but even then, if you've got the right set-up it's a peice of cake.

Finally, there are loads of tape duplication and transfer places, and you could always try marketing and advertising companies if you have anyone in your circle of friends with contacts that could get it done cheap.

 

If you have any recommendations of people to do this work I'd also be glad to hear as I have a rare Halo betacam tape that needs archiving.

 

Damn, how did I miss this thread? Shoot me a PM if you want me to transfer these... I'll make DVDs out of them. That's what I do for a living, we have BetaCam and DigiBeta decks all over the place. :110: No charge, just ship me the tapes, and I'll ship them back with DVDs.

Same thing for you OE, if you want to ship the tape to the US, I'm more than happy to transfer it for you. (Hell, I'd love to SEE it! Big Halo fan here... :nod: )

If anyone else needs the service, just let me know.

 

Hey, I'm working in broadcast as well and I wanted to go to an internship to the Netherlands as well. May I ask where you're going exactly, city and company?

 

Cool!!! I'll P.M yer

 

Yeah, as stated, they are Betacam cassettes, possibly SP. There are two sizes of Betacam cassette, about 5 different technological variants, not to mention the players will usually only play the format of the country, i.e. NTSC or PAL.

As to what they are for, well Acclaim had their own production studio. The video part of this would have been used for creating FMV, adverts etc. So they could contain that. It would also have been used to create trailers, so again that's a possibility. The likelihood of it being something used in-game is slim, although as I said it could be FMV footage.

I have Betacam equipment, although it is in storage and has been for some time. I'll have have to dig it out and give it a service sometime. I also can't remember whether I only have PAL equipment - I had some NTSC, but what I have left and what formats, I can't remember.

That said, if anyone needs something converted, I could probably get it done, even if I can't do it myself.

 

So these are from the auction? What was on the 42 VHS cassettes that came with them? ;-)

 

Who am I kidding? I won't ever do anything with these. Its just too much work for something I don't have much interest in.

I started a thread in marketplace if someone is interested in them.

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19052

 

Nothing related with the tape conversion talk, but I remember seeing some animation/MoCap tests footage from Acclaim a long time ago on a feature in the Cybernet TV show.

It was Aliens and Turok related, from what I remember.

Don't know if this can be any of help on discovering the contents of the tapes though. Could be a factoid only. ;D