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Tape is dead ???
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HDCam Dbeta BSP DVCProHD all day everyday, bump 3/4 and D2 to more modern formats haven’t touched a 1″ in years since we got rid of the 1100As and the 3100
I love tape!!!
I get files that couldn’t go to tape.. they’re illegal gamut.. illegal audio levels.. mixed cadences and framerates..If folks who bring me those files brought me a tape I could put it in a machine and play it..The files need to be repaired first before they hit tape..sometimes I have to hit tape in order to provide files
I love tape!!!Doug Beal
Editor / Engineer
Rock Creative Images
Nashville TN -
[Brian Mulligan] “What is their HD delivery format?”
1080i HDCAM and letterboxed DigiBeta. I deliver DVCPRO HD 720P60 to a facility that supplies all the deliverables to APT from that, but for the preview reel uplink all they want is Beta SP and because I can master that here it helps with the tight deadlines for the preview reel.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Another interesting facet of the whole tape vs file delivery is that with tape, you know what you’re getting delivered. At my old station it was Beta SP, lower field first, 29.97fps.
With file delivery, the encoding is all over the place, even though the station posts a list of the possible digital submission specs. I see spots that are so burning hot, that the cones practically jump off my speakers, judder and frame errors that cause moving images to stutter all over the screen. It’s pretty lame – the level of commercial playback quality has dropped through the floor. I don’t know whether anyone even uses bars and tone any more – it doesn’t look that way.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
[Joseph W. Bourke] “I don’t know whether anyone even uses bars and tone any more – it doesn’t look that way.”
You said it. Given the chaos that I experience receiving edited file-based projects, I cannot imagine anything ever passing QA. For broadcasters and distributors, the “on-line” digestive process is their first, last, and only line of defence to unify the deliverable on a format that is guaranteed to play when you mount it and push the button.
With delivery deadlines and revision cycles there is no room for error. Or especially trying to fix a “baked” file that is riddled with tech errors. So from this corner of the world, you can still get HDCam/SR, DBeta, and (I’m as surprised as anybody) BetaSP and will for the foreseeable future. With anarchy the rule with codecs and a shocking lack of technical knowledge standard in the production world these days, I don’t see that ever changing, because its getting worse, not better.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Yes. Tape is dead.
I’ve been working the higher-end corporate vein for nearly 20 years. In fact, as an intern, I can recall portable 3/4″ and 1″ record decks. Beta, BetaSP, DigiBeta–great tools for many years.
Have not shot (or cut with) tape for at least two years.
In my neck of the woods (NY metro), tape is pretty much dead.
(Although a great shooter I work with does work with the BBC and they apparently still like tape).
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[Michael Hadley] “Yes. Tape is dead. I’ve been working the higher-end corporate vein for nearly 20 years.”
If you’ll peruse this thread I think you might come to the conclusion that, while tape may be dead for corporate and web based material, when dealing with broadcasters tape is very much still with us; as even you noted when talking about the camerman ( I hate the term “shooter” when not referring to cattle rustlers and bank robbers) who works with the BBC.
I made corporate videos for years and it is not surprising that they are still ahead of broadcasters in adapting new technologies, since they often have no investment in infrastructure and no library of media content to protect.
So while it may be dead to you, the way Discreet/Autodesk is dead to me, it is not dead to everyone.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “So while it may be dead to you, the way Discreet/Autodesk is dead to me, it is not dead to everyone.”
Certainly not. But, the Japanese earthquake created such a lengthy shortage of HDcamSR that the conversation about tape’s inevitable demise and a move to LTO for archiving is happening quite a bit earlier than it might have.
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ESPN London still likes them.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3421180/espn_pic.jpg
Seriously, it had been a while – I plopped this up on facebook today. I missed the sight of some indestructible storage. In this case they held really good tennis.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Chris Harlan] ” a move to LTO for archiving “
Having started the LTO process for myself, the one thing I will say is that there is very little standardization with this technology. I’m using BRU archiving software, which runs on Mac and Linux. This means if you have a PC system, or id you don’t have the right software, you can’t read my files. Until something like LTFS becomes the defacto standard, LTO5 will not replace videotape. A successful archiving standard requires that any tape can be played on any machine.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Tape, as a delivery method, is alive and well. There’s nothing that can beat it at the moment in terms of ease of shipping in a short time frame.
If we had huge bandwidth pipes, we’d be having a different conversation.
We delivered over 175 spots last year, all tapeless. Of course spots are easy as they are 40 seconds (with slate, etc) so even in HD the files sizes are fairly manageable. Episodic shows is another matter.
Tape as an acquisition format is certainly dying. I don’t see camera manufacturers rushing out to develop tape based cameras.
Ironically, we archive everything back to tape (LTO). What’s nice about it is that you can store absolutely everything, not just pictures/audio in a specified format/frame rate.
I don’t think the general “lowering of quality” has anything to do with tapeless. If tape was still around, you’d see the same mess of quality, it would be on tape instead of hard drive.
With the absolute fragmentation of HD formats and frame rates, and having NLEs that aren’t very good at handling these types of conversions in the timeline very well, and perhaps the people operating them not knowing the best way to convert multiple formats in to a common and acceptable container, or don’t want to spend the money and have it sent out to do a true standards conversion contributes to the problem as well.
It was much easier, as has been mentioned, when everything was D1 29.97 (for the US) as you didn’t have to think about it, much like 50Hz based countries don’t have to think about frame rate still today.
Coupled with the fact that people will not spend any amount of money to actually hook their NLE up to a monitor as the NLE viewer window is “good enough”. You simply just don’t see any problems when your canvas is at 38% of a 1080 frame. Getting all of this correct is much harder than it was in the NTSC only days.
I recently had to resurrect a very old project that was shot on tape, a lot of it at night, on a very expensive NTSC camera for someone’s archive. After watching that, it was a great reminder of the remarkably decent quality you can get from much cheaper cameras these days. Quality has actually gone way up.
There are certain ways that a lot of the confusion could be curtailed, but I don’t see any one “governing body” going out and forming tapeless recommendations to standardize around. Who has the time and money for that?
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