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Tape is dead ???
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[Jeremy Garchow] “There’s always Avid and Legend for tape transport.”
Yes, I know. I guess that was my point, the fact that an EOL’d software is one of my 2 best choices, while it’s successor, even after a year of release, can’t handle it. Sometimes the future is in the future.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Michael Hadley] “But I think it can be safely said that if tape is not dead, it is being politely shown the door. No one will be using tape in 10 years.”
On that point no one can argue. But 10 years is a long time away, and software that works on the premise that tape is dead as of now is somewhat limited.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Bottom line Herb is that regardless of what Apple speak says about tape being dead, it simply isn’t. Dying? Sure?
Apple may want us to think tape is dead and lack of support for tape shows their opinion clearly. So the lie often told still isn’t the truth.
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[Joseph W. Bourke] “I don’t know whether anyone even uses bars and tone any more – it doesn’t look that way.
“Most of the modern digital delivery “broadcast” specs I see specify no bars, no tone. :30 (not 29.9!) frames wall to wall as a digital file.
It’s going to get dumped to a play-out server by some 18 year old “technician” overnight and the computer just triggers the file – whatever it is.
I even have a few deliverables that specify the very specific file naming format and I’m pretty sure that these aren’t even seen let alone touched by humans. They go from the FTP server directly to air without any human intervention.
FFWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s not pretty but it’s highly accurate.”
Accurate in a system trying to keep track of the number of grains of sand on a beach, perhaps.
I see the strings of nulls and simple binary directors – but still, sheesh – something like 65 potential alpha numeric places? 36 choices per slot, factorial? Great if you need to separate one file out of a few hundred quintillion or so.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just do a time stamp down to the nanosecond and add a 15 character string to that and call it a day?
Then again, I’m not a programmer or a math geek, so my opinion is, once again, worth what’s being paid for it.
Anyway, the big issue in my thinking isn’t the medium of archiving, it’s more convincing all of us that so little of what we’re all working so hard to create really even needs to be archived…
Not to make too fine a point of it, but I was once again looking at NetFlix on my iPad (holiday schedule after all.) And of the 100 choices I scanned there was probably 5 about which I’d care if they disappeared from the great content cabinet in the sky forever. I know everybody else’s 5 bill be different – but there shurly IS a painful lot of absolute dreck out there a short click away.
And that’s just in the category of “big money was spent to produce these” files.
What does that mean to me as I sit here convincing myself that I’ve got to protect my latest Corporate opus for the next millennium via multiple, secured, backups.
In reality – in 3-5 years, maybe half of 1% of whatever I do today has a rats chance in hell of being still valuable as anything other than a personal curiosity.
Welcome to the era of “content churn” folks. If it ain’t monitized in the first 90 days after birth – it probably never will be since the modern digital content tsunami has become as relentless as the tides.
Sigh.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis]”In reality – in 3-5 years, maybe half of 1% of whatever I do today has a rats chance in hell of being still valuable as anything other than a personal curiosity.”
I am just finishing up a six part series based almost entirely on three natural history docos that I worked on 15 years ago, plus two other docos, one from 1995 and another from 2009. Augmenting that is library footage. Whilst there is a churn & burn attitude out there, quality program and outstanding footage has a long shelf life.
I appreciate our work experiences may widely differ but ignoring the importance of archiving and valuing the longevity of material that may appear trivial to you will simply deny the next generation the experience of such archive. TV and the internet is full of snippets of old shows that constantly get revived. The biggest problem in the future will be the myriad formats. All these docos were shot on super 16mm and they look fantastic with modern telecine to HD.
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[Bill Davis] “Accurate in a system trying to keep track of the number of grains of sand on a beach, perhaps.
I see the strings of nulls and simple binary directors – but still, sheesh – something like 65 potential alpha numeric places? 36 choices per slot, factorial? Great if you need to separate one file out of a few hundred quintillion or so. “
Well, Bill. Let’s talk about this. The screen grab I gave is from a P2 file. I really really enjoy the P2 format as I see it as a true tape replacement. It is not exactly an easy format, in fact it’s rather complicated to deal with sometimes if you don’t have the proper tools, but it does the job very well. AVC-Intra (and now Ultra) has made huge waves in broadcast and stands to be around for a long time. If 4k broadcast becomes a reality, who is more poised to have an interchangeable format that broadcasters are already familiar with? Panasonic. I would imagine that the AVCUltra format will be the same P2 MXF structure, and most modern NLEs deal with P2 very well. The only difference will be an upgraded codec, and bigger frame sizes. Instead of reinventing yet another format, Panasonic will simply update the existing infrastructure.
So, let’s pretend for a moment that you’re Panasonic, and you are going to sell a gagillion cameras at a pretty good price to big box broadcasters, and independents who work for big box broadcasters. When working in news or sports with P2, you have a massive database of footage. If you’re Panasonic, and you want to deliver a format that is going to be able to stand in a giant database for a very long time, what does a reel number become? Do you develop a format that’s going to cause problems, or do you try and build a format that might mitigate these problems? “This_Card_Number” is meaningless. Instead you need a very unique ID number to identify and describe that file, and in the case of P2, that ID will also help to identify the separate 2,4 (or more) channels of audio that go with it.
Our little shop, which used to shoot a lot more P2 than we do now, has had dupe P2 file names. How does FCP keep them straight? Unique ID.
I know you like to espouse the power of a database, P2 is quite literally built for just that.
And Apple, Apple themselves have a Unique ID system in FCP7, and have stepped that game up in FCPX.
For example, this is unique ID of one QT movie that is embedded in an FCPXML export of an Event: uid=”F8CB1B667598971B458CEDF85109BD63″
So yes, it is tracking grains of sand, and it is this kind of detail that computers are really good at keeping track of as long as the humans that write the software know what’s up.
I know what you’re thinking, “this is all disposable”. Well, for some of us, it isn’t. The more detail the better, even if there’s no use for it for your particular needs, it is good practice and will only help in the long run. Yesterday I unarchived a video that we shot 4 years ago, they are updating it. Last week I unarchived a video we shot 10 years ago. They are updating it. We have shot so much footage, that we rely on some of it to go in to other videos, our own stock library if you will. We need to keep track of all of this. We are certainly not going to lay this off to video tape and assign a tape number.
Tape is not dead yet, but it will be. I don’t know if this is right or wrong, worse or better, but it’s a reality. So, media management has to be though of with a digital storage and future in mind. NLEs manufacturers have to adopt this line of thinking as well. Having a system that relies on the metaphor of having media on a shelf space is in my opinion, becoming less and less of a reality.
So, now that we have to build a new system and metaphor, do you do it half assedly, or do you build a really robust system?
Perhaps I am being dramatic? Maybe.
We have a small shop, but we have at least a 50TB archive (double that for the backup copies) and 21TB of footage that is “active” and online. I can’t imagine what a bigger and busier shop has to manage, or a TV network, or a movie studio. With all of those files, grains of sand sounds about right.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I know what you’re thinking, “this is all disposable”. Well, for some of us, it isn’t.”
Jeremy.
I’m fine with this. So long as everyone also understands that while “for some of us” is a worthy condition – “for few of us” is an equally valid one.
I’m NOT actually seeing the people who truly need archiving rushing towards doing too little archiving. Are you?
But I AM seeing people who truly don’t need much archiving in a real sense – the casual editor – rushing toward saving every little iteration along their creation path.
And wondering how much effort is being expended tracking and storing stuff that has little or no real value.
Very much as with generating X keywords – the hard part is telling in advance what you’re going to want to find later.
And I truly think there are two competing forces at play here. The desire to “save everything just in case” and the desire to “simplify and reduce complexity as much as possible.”
Unfortunately, we want BOTH.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bill Davis] “And wondering how much effort is being expended tracking and storing stuff that has little or no real value.”
It’s like we are talking to bizarro Bill today.
The thing is, if you’ve ever had a client call back, and then if you’ve ever had four clients call back, then the cost of the archive is worth it as it can actually turn in to work and therefore money. There’s no way to predict what projects will come back, what footage you will need, what might be of value in the future. In that case, it’s probably best to be all or nothing. Either you have the footage or you don’t.
[Bill Davis] “And I truly think there are two competing forces at play here. The desire to “save everything just in case” and the desire to “simplify and reduce complexity as much as possible.”
Unfortunately, we want BOTH. “
I don’t see this as a huge dichotomy. Storage is cheap. There’s no penalty for having too much archive, but there is a chance of losing out with too little archive. It’s a personal decision.
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All I know is that my sprinkler system was acting up this weekend, and I don’t know what I would have done without Christies Plumbing Tape.
And kids, don’t forget: unless you’re actually taping a duct, there’s almost always a better tape to use than duct tape. In particular, never use duct tape when the job calls for gaffers tape.
Tape dead? I don’t THINK so.
Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyouThe typos here are most likely because I’m, a) typing this on my phone; and b) an idiot.
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