Tape or Tapeless

On a recent trip there was a guy with a Panny HVX 200, you know one of those tapeless video cameras.

I know that it's the way video camera's are going but my thoughts are that it's 1 step forward and 3 backwards.....why....

Well I had my FX1 there and once a tape was filled I just put in another one.

The battery would go all day no problems.

Once home I had all the footage already archive onto a tape but had to suck it into the computer which took abit of time....so what....

The poor guy with the Panny.....well he had to bring a laptop, and two external terra hardrives to dump the footage to. Once drive was solely to back up the first one as mechanical hardrives can stop working for many reasons. Also the camera was going through the batteries and he had to keep changing them throughout the day.

On the last day the laptop crashed so there he was with the last two cards on the Panny and no way to shoot anymore.

Once he got back home carrying all that gear he fired it up with fingers crossed hoping that the data was still on the drives. From that the footage is edited ....cool......but hang on it has to go onto something for archiving....what shall we put it on and how long does that take

I know I will be going that way one day but the more I think of it the more I think it was invented by the companies so they will have new products to sell us.

One step forward but 3 backwards.

I also must add that I don't think I would every own this camera...what a pig of a thing to shoot with.

My friend has been shooting with Panasonic for a long time. he reckons it's the way to go and I’ve gotta say I love the quality he's managed to get out of it too! In particular I love the filmic look when shooting 24p with it, it's got such a smooth fluid motion that works for me!

Anyway, on his last trip August last year he had the Panasonic with the cards. I thought it was a real pain in the arse as I was assisting him on the shoot and had to load the cards onto his huge drives. It's the way forward but yeah, it ain't so easy and those cards and huge drives you’re gotta take with you mean more money going out!

Graham the format the camera shoots is very good but the LCD, viewfinder and how much you had to turn the *&^%$ focus wheel are not very good.

The guy operating it was a pro...he mainly shoots on film and he was not very impressed with it as well.

Actually have a look at his showreels...pretty cool...

http://www.oggy.com.au/showreels.htm

I think I will get a XDCAM EX3 for my next rig, it will have a external hardrive you can dump to mounted on the camera as an option. Not sure how much data it will hold. It's silly having to drag a laptop and delicate drives around with you. Maybe they will make a small portable 35 mbps tape drive you can dump the footage to on location for safety.

Wags,

Now that's some slick website and super cool footage! Does this guy do his editing on those showreels too?

I cound't find any udnerwater showreels do you have any links t them?

No he is not an underwater guy.....that was my job.

He is just the camera operator...others do the editing.

He had done some cool gigs around the world though.

He is another pic of the cam...you can see the focus knob on it but you had to turn it two full turns so impossible to do a focus track shot.

My mate loves the Panny's (as you call them). He'll be here in Indo again, this time shooting for Seacology. So I'll see what he's shooting then. He's usually got he latest kit as he too works in film production. I'm hoping to get him to the edit on a project I'm working on funding for right now.

Wags,

It's horses for courses.

The HVX200 does not have a 6.6k mah battery like the sony. And the P2 card system can also be backed up using the P2 card drive from Panny. The thing is the media based cameras are a notch up, which means corresponding rise in budget.

In exchange, you get a higher quality and versatile camera. Over/under crank at 720P and 4:2:2 codec.

Even the Sony EX1 burns through batteries.

With the Sony HVR-MRC1, it has problems with various CF cards and audio sync issues. There is also the problem of using FAT32 which limits files to 4GB.

Tape isn't always reliable either and dropouts/lower quality are the tradeoffs for the simplicity. Tape drive mechanisms need more cleaning and maintenance.

Each have pros and cons. For one person shoots, tape makes more sense. But for those who want better quality and have the budget (and more personnel), media is definitely worth it.

Well Mark left this morning and all I can say, is that after a week learning how to use the Red, I was very surprised at just how easy it all was. The download from hard drive to Final Cut was a simple log and transfer tho FCP automatically drops the 4k down to 2k. I will be practicing with the Red One for the next several weeks and look forward to not having to log and capture tapes, the one part of the editing process I dislike. Wagsy, you are so right, go tapeless is the future with generous steps almost monthly from most of the major cam manufacturers. Not sure what size P2 cards he had, or why he couldn't use both externals as storage until he got home. I've never had an external crash in a great many years and chances of that happening were not great.

Steve B)

I'm shooting tape this weekend for the first time in several years. I had forgotten how to "capture" footage. Seems quite strange.

With my current Firestore workflow, and my upcoming Firestore/SxS card workflow, you'd have to pay me a bunch of money to shoot tapes again. My 90 minutes of firestore footage from last week took about 12 minutes to drop into my editor.

Yes I know it's great to get it into the computer quickly but how are you going to archive that raw 90mins?

And how much $$$ and time is it going to take you to do that

You are mad if you are just going to leave it sitting on a hard drive. Hardrives are fine tolerance mechanical devices that will stop working for many reasons.

Steve the MAC laptop stopped importing the cards for some reason so he was stuck with full cards out in the field. I just laughed at all the gear he had to drag over for it just to store the footage.

Well speaking from hours of experience in both fields I would say Tape(less) is the best way to go....or is it ??? I'll get back to you...

Dive safe

DeanB

Hey Dean what are you archiving your footage to?

Hello bud..

At the mo i'm just putting everything onto a Lacie ext HDD... Haven't decided where to go from there...

Hope you and Kelly are well...

Dive safe

DeanB

...I'd just point out that this is an exact replay of what we said in the newsroom when digital still cameras showed up......

All the best, James

Yes James but you can archive a 500 - 2 GIG card of images to a CD or DVD fast, easy and cheaply, abit different when you have a 8 - 32 GIG card.

Dean so you are playing Russian Roulette with your footage then.

We are fine, and our TERRA drive has a whole season of Whale Sharking footage including the DVD files. Luckily we don't have to spend days archiving the raw footage as it's already done on tapes.

Depends on the project. But right now, we have several things we do.

1. Archive to miniDV for projects shorter than 1hr.

2. Archive to full size DV for projects between 1 and 4 hours

3. Archive Cineform AVI files to DVD/DL-DVD

Now that we are moving to HD production we'll be archiving to Blu-Ray with Cineform encoded AVI files.

I prefer to stay tapeless from end to end. It's more convenient and a lot faster. I just had to recapture a full miniDV tape because my tape heads on the miniDV deck were dirty... I haven't used the thing in a year. BUT I was recording this weekend in a dusty environment, so I can surmise that some of that gunk was on the tape I used Friday night and transferred to the heads leaving me with dropouts. I should have just run the Firestore. Soon enough I suspect we'll be archiving on solid state. SDHC/CompactFlash is getting there.

As for costs, the miniDV tape is $5, the Full size is $25, and the BR-DVD is $48. HECK of a lot cheaper than DigiBeta or HDCam!

-P

Yes I know it's great to get it into the computer quickly but how are you going to archive that raw 90mins?

And how much $$$ and time is it going to take you to do that

 

You are mad if you are just going to leave it sitting on a hard drive. Hardrives are fine tolerance mechanical devices that will stop working for many reasons.

 

Steve the MAC laptop stopped importing the cards for some reason so he was stuck with full cards out in the field. I just laughed at all the gear he had to drag over for it just to store the footage.

Dean so you are playing Russian Roulette with your footage then.

We are fine, and our TERRA drive has a whole season of Whale Sharking footage including the DVD files. Luckily we don't have to spend days archiving the raw footage as it's already done on tapes.

I can catergorically state I have never and will never hold a gun to my Lacie HDD in the intention of playing some mindless thrill seeking game that will only end in the death or maming of one of us... Its just soooo pointless...

Although if that little silver memory machine decides to ruin any of my footage it better get to he gun cabinet first... Cause its history bro...

Dive safe

DeanB

I think the main reason people use the P2 format - myself included - is the fact that it's DVCPro 100. Sure, HDV to a tape is nice, but in the end it's still compressed MPG2. I just posted in another thread about having to lug a laptop, and having workflow issues. I can tell you in the 2 years that I've had my camera, I've never had a problem with it at all. Whether it's shooting straight to the P2 cards, or using an FS100. And I recently got bus powered, 7200RPM FireWire 800 drives that work like a champ, and they're tiny little things. If I did underwater stuff professionally, I would have gotten a housing for my HVX - no question.

I agree HDV is too commpressed and DVCPro 100 is much much better.

I just got off the phone to the guys that I was shooting for on that GIG.

One drive was logged by the Director and a copy of it's contents given to the editor.

Second backup drive was kept by the cameraman and he rang up to see if it was safe to delete the drive contents as he needed to use the drive again...which he did.

Director goes back a few days later to look at footage again on first drive and the data is all GONE!

No reason can be found as to why the data is gone.

Only backup was what the editor still has.

No archive tapes to retrieve images from.

I don't like it.

Based on what you told us a little earlier, you don't make ANY backups of your tapes. Ever see what water does to them? Or Fire? Or laying one on a TV? Or placing one too close to the motor of a deck that's not shielded?

There are always risks in storing data. I manage that risk for a living (not with video, with corporate email). Similar issues, with the risk of legal prosecution if I fail. We moved away from tape over a year ago. Too slow, too inefficient. Multiple hard drive copies are where we are at, along with backups to optical disk.