Hi all,

I just finished my first actual short film, which I shot on miniDV, and then edited in FCP on my eMac. Now I am looking to enter it into film festivals, but realized I may need to think more about formats for showing the piece.

My eMac is equipped with a DVD burner, so that seems to be fine for just entering it into the festivals. However, if I'm lucky and it happens to be selected to play at a festival, I may need to be prepared with some other format, be it 1/2" VHS, or some BETA format (which I know nothing about).

Could somebody lead me in the direction of some information about formats, how to transfer it to the necessary format, and about how much it may cost in NYC. I would really appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance,
Kevin

Congrats on finishing! It must feel great.

To professionally transfer your short to VHS or a Beta format, you're going to need to take it to a video transfer house. I'm sure they're millions of them in NYC--some will have so-so quality and some will have great quality (the places directed more towards professionals and less towards tourists will be your better bet for quality).

Probably the best thing to do is dump your project back onto DV and take a tape to the transfer house. Expect to pay 20-30 bucks for BetaSP, 40+ bucks for DigiBeta, and 5-15 bucks for VHS (with discounts if you do volume). Pricy, but even the VHS dub will look much better than if you just crash dubbed it onto your home VHS recorder.

Oh, college campuses and TV stations (community access especially) will be a good place to look for getting the dubs done cheaply (but they normally don't take as good of care of their equipment and it might be a sacrifice in quality).

all the best,