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Question about work flow from tape to P2.
First off, I DID do a search and I didn’t find an answer to my question.
We have one Varicam, and two HDX900 cameras, all tape based recorders. We are now looking to move into a 2700 P2 Varicam.
Question-
I would like to hear from other Varicam owners that have moved to P2 from tape. We tend to keep everything we shoot and it seems like a huge paradigm shift to move to a non-tape based camera.What work flow works for you? Keep in mind that we have 5 different shooters that will share the same cameras.
Thanks in advance.
Ray Palmer, Engineer
Salt River Project
Phoenix, AZ
602-236-8224 office
Violence may not be the answer but it sure cuts down on the questions. -
14 Replies
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Yeah it’s a pretty major shift- number one is having an assistant who acts as the data wrangler. Making sure P2 cards are treated carefully as original negative and carefully backed up and organized. Number 2 is having enough P2 cards to go around so that push doesn’t come to shove in terms of recycling a P2 card that hasn’t been reliably backed up yet. Number 3- long term storage. I highly recommend getting a networked LTO-4 drive for long term backups. Keeping things scattered on a bunch of hard drives is a recipe for trouble in the long run.
Noah
Check out my book: RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera!
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Watch Formosa- My indie movie shot with the SDX900 and finished with Final Cut Studio. -
I agree with everything you are saying.
I am interested in asking the Vaircam users if their life is better or worse since migrating to P2 from tape.BTW Noah, I am enjoying your RED book. Nice job.
Ray Palmer, Engineer
Salt River Project
Phoenix, AZ
602-236-8224 office
Violence may not be the answer but it sure cuts down on the questions. -
Hi Ray,
We went through that transition and had our share of challenges.(We are running 2700 and 3000’s.) Most of the details dont matter as what we experienced in our earlier days or either not relevant or have been addressed with new technology.
-We cannot imagine going back to shooting with tape.
-We archive (almost) everything. We currently back up everything to a raid 1 drive and mirror that on to VXA system.
-With cheaper larger p2 cards we have not had to offload on site..
-We never lost a frame of footage in 4 years.Hope this helps.
Emre Tufekci
http://www.productionpit.com -
Thanks Emre.
The soon to expire trade in on the 2700 is pushing us towards P2 and I know that we don’t want to buy another tape camera anyway.
I do appreciate any feedback regarding the 2700 and P2. We bought one of the very first Varicam tape based cameras many years ago and still have it.Ray Palmer, Engineer
Salt River Project
Phoenix, AZ
602-236-8224 office
Violence may not be the answer but it sure cuts down on the questions. -
I traded in my HDX900 for an HPX2700 primarily to shed the tape transport. No moving parts, five P2 cards is like carrying a case of tape in the camera, superior codec that is progressive, Native, 10-bit, full sample with no compromises for legacy tape formats.
The whole archival tape thing really doesn’t make sense to me because I have a wall full of tapes, representing nine different formats and only three working decks to play them out with. A typical program has many elements besides camera original footage, such as computer graphics and stock footage–these things, along with the edit session project files live on hard drives, not tapes, so tape doesn’t usually make up 100% of a project for archival.
Two cloned hard drives or LTO tape are fine for archival, require less shelf space than cases of tapes, are easier to search for individual scenes and cost less than tape.
P2 is a mature, fully fleshed out platform. Discs are a half step, and tape based cameras are almost extinct. P2 Varicams are a big step forward from original Varicams and HDX900’s from the front to the rear of the camera.
Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video
http://www.ssv.com -
Do you do your own post or do you usually hand off the cam originals?
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Jeremy,
If your question is to me, we normally rent our HPX2700 and HPX170 packages, do data transfer on set to client’s drives or rent them ours. We use Shotput Pro and offload to two drives simultaneously. If the client only brings one drive, we do a clone onto one of our drives and keep it until the client has done the ingest into their editor’s NLE.
Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video
http://www.ssv.com -
It can be to anyone, but I was asking Ray if he edits the material he shoots or is it production only?
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We do the whole production. We write, shoot, edit and archive.
We edit non-linear and have our six FCPs on a common server, so i feel that it is time to loose the tape decks.
I do appreciate the feedback and advice.
Ray Palmer, Engineer
Salt River Project
Phoenix, AZ
602-236-8224 office
Violence may not be the answer but it sure cuts down on the questions. -
Putting aside the advantages of file based recording onto memory cards vs. tape, the advantages of a 2700 vs. original Varicam 27H are:
10-bit, full sample, Native, progressive codec.
Film-Rec with 600% dynamic latitude for 11-stops.
DRS 1, 2, 3.
Better processing, better signal to noise ratio.
Three HD SDI outputs.
CAC for newer HD lenses.
Prerecord, loop record modes.
5 year warranty due to few moving parts.
Proxy record option.
Wireless mic. slot.
Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video
http://www.ssv.com
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