Christopher Deangelus
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t want to be the one to spread rumors, but at NAB I talked to one of the Decklink engineers (very nice, very bright, very cool people) and they said that it’s a matter of flipping a switch in the software to get timecode via the (HD)-SDI, and to look for it in future versions of the driver. It’s a feature I was looking forward to myself.
On that note, does anyone know how to take BNC-based timecode and get it into a RS-422 interface? We have a Sony F900 here (analog deck) and we need to get the timecode from the BNC timecode out into our G5. We have converter boxes to take the HD-Component and convert it to HD-SDI, but we can’t get timecode in there.
We’re hoping for timecode to be recognized in the HD-SDI signal by Blackmagic so we can go with a Miranda box on the back of our camera. That’s why I asked them.
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Unfortunately, because of time constraints, I had to take the decklink card and put it into a Final Cut 4.5 G5 and run the 4.8 drivers for now. Before that, I did capture jpeg footage fine, so I think it’s just with the DVCProHD codec that I was having the problems.
The thing I noticed was how “reliable” the timeout on the DVCProHD capture was. From the moment I hit Capture Now, I had 5 seconds before it dropped a frame. I’d count to 5 and then it’d report the dropped frames on capture. If I cancelled out of the digitize before that, I’d have 1-4 seconds of usable DVCProHD.
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Working for a company with four employees, I don’t consider this a large corporation, and I use tape to back up. I know other small companies that use tape to back up as well. It is not just limited to large corporations.
As for P2 eliminating tape clogs: as with most technology, it is not eliminating a problem, it is replacing a problem with other problems. You use an example of head clogs, which is specific to the tape mechanism. Going to solid state may eliminate head clogs, but now you’ve added, say, static shock of the P2 card (which can kill the card and/or erase the contents) as a potential hazard, something I’m sure we in the northeast get quite a bit with our cold, dry winters. You’ve also added failure to the solid state memory inside as another problem. Where a clogged head can be repaired, try to repair a fused/shorted/physically damaged memory chip. The effect of that is the same as a clogged head: downtime.
Both systems have weaknesses. Neither is perfect. P2 is an interesting solution, but thinking it will eliminate all your problems is shortsighted. You are simply trading one set of advantages/disadvantages for another. As of right now, with the cost/size what it is, I can’t see it being an answer.
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I’m going to apologize up-front for not reading every post; if what I say here has been stated already, it’s because I stopped around the 30s, to share my insights with you.
My biggest fear with P2 is the same fear that realizes itself every few months or so in my Final Cut Pro workflow. Corrupt files and disks. There was quite a bit of talk about checksums and whatnot; what happens if the checksum comes back stating there IS a problem in the file? It’s been my experience, that, unlike tape, I can’t isolate that problem and save the rest of the media. In tape, a dropped frame at worst ruins a shot. Even a tear in the tape can be repaired. In digital format, a glitch in the file (or storage medium) usually kills all of it. That’s a high price to pay for a single error, and I’ve paid it quite a few times. The saving grace in all of it has been that I had the original tape to go back to and redigitize the material. However, with P2, I have to make a successful transfer to tape in order to have that assurance. Otherwise, I’m still working with a digital copy where simple corruption can be both irreversible and catastrophic.
Someone made the analogy to photography, and Office documents. There is a difference here as well. If, say, 3 blocks of data are corrupted amongst 12000 photos (totally random numbers here) you lose the individual photos that were corrupt, but the rest is salvagable, accepting that the rest of the storage medium is fine. With a video file, in today’s world, you lose any video that had part of it’s file in that corrupted area, even if 90% of the data (frames of footage) are not corrupt. While I won’t say you can’t get these back, have fun doing it. Basically, with digital files, your collateral damage potential jumps signifigantly.
As a final note, there is a lot of talk in this thread about backing up your data. I’d like to point out that the #1 method for backing up data in the corporate world is to back it up to tape, because of the cost + reliability of tape. For now, those two factors seem to outweigh, at least to me, the P2 benefits.