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Format War Over: Toshiba gives up HD-DVD
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Yes Walter, “You don’t need to own any decks if you have rental facilities in your area or dub houses”
That is the best part of living in a Hugh Metropolis like Atlanta. The nearest rental shop to me would be 2 hours away if they have it or 5 hours the other way.. one way… And a 3 day rental on a HDcam will surely blow the budget of any small market HD spot client….
And to go to the bigger production facilities in this market for a dub, is a notorious no-no… You might as well carry in your Client list and client phone numbers too.. They have already stolen and trashed too many of my past clients.
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[Nate Stephens] “That is the best part of living in a Hugh Metropolis like Atlanta. The nearest rental shop to me would be 2 hours away if they have it or 5 hours the other way.. one way… And a 3 day rental on a HDcam will surely blow the budget of any small market HD spot client….”
Then you have to make the decision of how you want to proceed. If HDCAM deck rentals are going to blow the budgets for your local clients, then you’ll need to look at producing in DVCPro HD or even HDV. Then you’ll need to find a way to get it to HDCAM or DVCPro HD for delivery.
In our case, I waited until I had one client who moved to DVCPro HD for a series and that’s when I made the purchase of our 1200A Panny DVCPro HD deck. That was over $30,000 and the largest single purchase I’ve ever made. It was money I didn’t have. But that one purchase can be traced to my company growing over the past three years.
We now have two 1400’s because we’ve become known as a top facility in town to work with DVCPro HD, even though we’re a very small company. I took a gamble that DVCPro HD would become a dominant force in Atlanta and it was the right choice.
I also met a great bunch of guys at CineFilm here in Atlanta who are not concerned at all about stealing post clients because that’s not what they do. They are a great dub house and they do work with post houses from all over the country.
In the future you might be able to deliver via FTP and maybe BluRay disc, but right now, it’s still tape and if you want to play in that HD world, you have to make the decision for your own company what you want to do. HD ain’t cheap, it requires an educated gamble and a some money on your part.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
[Chris Poisson] “I’ll tell you what blows, is that 2 months ago I dropped 400 bucks on a Toshiba A30, that’s what blows!”
I bet there’s a lot of people who have their HD-DVD players sitting right next to their laser disc players thinking the same exact thing.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
Buy a PS3. It’s BluRay, you can play games on it, upgrade the hard drive if you want/need, and you can use it as a media server (sort of). Plus they’re only $399 now.
Michael.
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At KVIE we are waiting for some sort of database solution for P2 (Final Cut Server or HD log maybe) but for now we just put everything on LTO 3 and are moving to LTO 4 in the next year or so.
I just put 5 pallets of Beta tapes (half the tape library) in the landfill because nobody wanted used Ampex tape. For $50 to a $100 you can store all the files for most shows on 1 or 2 LTO tapes but at $3,000 or more for a deck it’s a little pricey.
We just bought an HDCam 1800 deck to handle our deliverables to PBS. PBS has been promising a file based delivery system for a few years now and we have sent DVCPro100 tapes out to a dub house to make HDCam masters but with the shipping things back and forth messing with deadlines we decided to buy one to keep it in house.
AVC-Intra is looking promising as it is full sized 1920 by 1080 all I-frame MPEG so it’s easier to edit than Long GOP MPEG but Final Cut imports it as Pro-Res, so I don’t know how universal it would be for sharing with other edit systems and servers.Jim Calahan
KVIE, Sacramento -
Well, I can’t stop myself from weighing in…
First thought, Sony’s revenge for losing out to VHS… It will only encourage them to introduce still more new proprietary formats for god know what (like those stupid Memory Sticks!).
Second, now that people know which format to buy, then can start buying videos again, lifting the moribund home video market, making Hollywood profitable again & opening up production money for all of us… Buy a bridge in Brooklyn, anyone?
Third, maybe Apple will take this as a cue to rewrite, or at least upgrade, DVDSP to include a good feature set for Blu-Ray.
Fourth, I can start to think about buying a Blu-Ray player for my home…
And, finally, I can’t wait for the classics! Altman, Capra, Chaplin, Coppola, De Mille, Eisenstein, Fellini, Griffith, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitch, Scorsese, Wells… all in HD on Blu-Ray…
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
Wally,
Yes HD ain’t cheap, Neither was Betacam SP in the ’80’s. Or 3/4″ inch in the ’70’s… And like my BVW35 or my 9600 -9650 Umatic SP 3/4, I am trying not to buy anymore boat anchors.
We have already produced our first HD spot, using our new HVX200 and chromakey stage and we posted everything using that soon to be boat anchor Cinewave. By the end of this year we will have also purchased the HPX500 and a new MacPro. If you do the math of proper configuared HD location and edit upgrades, I am scheduling over 50k in upgrades this year. No bank loans or credit cards allowed, all out of projected income. So for this mid market location spending 25K on a 1400 that already is selling used for 20k is not on my dance card unless it is totally neccessary..
Hence my attempt at polling the Cow for what is being accepted in various markets for HD TV Spot delivery.
We all know that broadcast video is all about expensive toys.. And those with their eyes open understand that one year from this month it will be all HD..
Anybody want to buy a really good low use 10 VHS dup center, How about a AB roll editor.. :-0 anchors away…….
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[Nate Stephens] “Hence my attempt at polling the Cow for what is being accepted in various markets for HD TV Spot delivery.”
A poll like that honestly doesn’t matter in your situation. Let’s say the majority of the folks on the Cow are delivering HDCAM, but DVCPro HD is prevalent in your market and the station you’re going to deliver to takes DVCPro HD. So are you going to get HDCAM because the majority of the Cow says you should?
You need to decide what you’re going to do in HD and what is your local market doing? Here in Atlanta it’s predominately DVCPro HD and HDV for production. HDCAM for mastering. So my decision was to spend the money that supports Production not mastering since you spend much more time ingesting footage than you ever do Mastering. So we have two HDV decks and two DVCPro HD decks, no HDCAM at all. We either rent HDCAM or ship the tapes to CineFilm for mastering.
And as it turns out, DVCPro HD is very very good for mastering too and some stations and networks are starting to pick up the VTR’s since they are much more inexpensive than DVCPro HD.
But HD purchasing is definitely something you have to do locally and what’s best for your situation. What are the production companies in your area using for HD? What networks / stations do you hope to deliver to in HD, what are they accepting?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR
The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow! -
“A poll like that honestly doesn’t matter in your situation. Let’s say the majority of the folks on the Cow”
What the?
That is why a poll would be interesting. Ask the Cow. Don’t guess. It was reading the threads on the Cow that has backed me off of buying that HD-DVD boat anchor. Thank You Cow.. Our market went heavy for D2, composite digital, remember that boat anchor.. But I did my national research and stayed away from that anchor also.
We have Tv spots on satellite, cable and broadcast all over this region. I pay attention to what the local outlets have. But do I follow them down every trendy over priced path. That is for fools with too much money or the whiz bang new station manager.
I am a big boy, 30 years making film and video for sell. I like my research. I like the details. I track the results. That is why I like the Cow. What is that old phrase.. Think Global, act local …
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[Arnie Schlissel] “I bet there’s a lot of people who have their HD-DVD players sitting right next to their laser disc players thinking the same exact thing.”
Well, probably right beside their Beta players, which are on top of their laser disc players. Now where did I leave that John Denver 8-track, oh yeah, it’s in my Volkswagen 412.
Oh yeah, don’t forget your Atari or Commodore64, and then came the Apple IIc!
Now that takes me back!
Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.”
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