[Dave Matthis]

Hope this “60i” talk is not too off-topic, because I have a comment in defense of 60i. 🙂

“Resolution” is not just spatial (rows and columns of pixels) — it is also temporal (how quickly the picture is updated). Think of 60i as having higher “motion resolution” — at least twice that of 30p or 24p. For subjects like sports it can be far better to see images every 1/60th of a second rather than every 1/30th of a second (or 1/24th).

1080/60p is great, but if your video is going to be used in over-the-air North American television broadcasts it cannot be transmitted as 1080/60p. For various reasons our ATSC standard for this permits high-def at 1080/60i (and also at 720p). So… as long as we have the ATSC broadcast standard there will be a place for 1080/60i.

[Dave Matthis]

Hey Mark!

Just a comment about double-system work. Something I didn’t see mentioned in this thread was the potential “gotcha” of an imprecise digital clock in one or the other devices (either the picture recorder or the audio recorder). This causes drifting A/V sync, which can become a real problem in posting a long-form recording, especially event videography. If recording lengthy camera shots, beware of that problem, and be prepared to deal with it.

Recently I shot a multi-camera musical performance, about an hour long, with audio going to an inexpensive solid-state digital recorder. Audio quality was fine, but over an hour’s time the drift was drastic. It took math, FCP and voodoo to fix it. 😉

In the old days we shot on film and used Nagra 1/4″ audio recorders made for this application. I had lots of experiences and headaches with posting that. I think it’s wise for lesser-experienced double-system shooters to go with equipment combinations that (from someone else’s experience) they *know* avoids these problems. And that advice needs to be specifically valid for the type of shooting application in question. HTH.

[Dave Matthis]

Sounds like you’re in the same boat as me. Archiving is important because of the kind of clients we have.

I’ve just finished making a big chart with a cross-comparison of six different HD camcorders that interest me. It compares apples-to-apples on many different features. One very important one is “AV storage medium estimated cost per hour.” Basically if you had to record one hour of footage, how much would the storage media cost? Here’s what I found:

Sony PMW-EX3, one 16GB SxS memory card, $875
Sony PDW-700, one 50GB Professional Disc cartridge, $62
GVG Infinity DMC, two REV 35GB disc cartridges, $106
Red One, about 100GB worth of Compact Flash cards, (I don’t know how much $ that is)
Panasonic AG-HPX500, four 16GB P2 memory cards, $3600
Canon XL-H1, one MiniDV videotape, $5.

This really underscores the fact that with solid-state camcorder memory, you can’t stick it on a shelf and buy more as we’ve always done with tape.

[Dave Matthis]

I’ve just thought of something very interesting which could influence me toward Sony’s Professional Disc format.

The PDW-700 camcorder (which records on these discs) has a variety of connections, including i.Link, ethernet and even a planned optional SDI input. Is it feasible to transfer files from other sources (including camcorders) to Sony Pro Discs on the PDW-700? I’m imagining doing this on-location, possibly even without a computer. Sony doesn’t mention any of this in their product literature. As for the optional SDI input they do not suggest how it might be used.

That workflow is intriguing to me, because my productions normally involve multi-camera shoots. Transferring files from an EX3 to a PDW-700, for example, would make the EX3’s memory card available for re-use. This could make any solid-state camcorder more practical as a second camera to a PDW-700. The 700 would facilitate a Pro Disc footage archive for any cameras involved.

An alternative for archiving solid-state cameras might be just bringing along a notebook computer with a lot of hard disk space to the shoot. Your camera fills up a memory card, you offload the files to hard disk, wipe the memory card and re-use it. In post those files could (presumably) be transferred to Pro Disc as an archive. It would work, but it’s more gear to take along on the shoot.

Comments?

[Dave Matthis]

Very interesting ideas, and they present interesting tradeoffs.

Cost of the data tape drives is about $3200 on up to about $7000. It looks like most require SCSI or serial attached SCSI (SAS), so we add the cost of the SCSI interface. They can store up to 1.6TB (compressed) or 800GB (uncompressed). The most practical workflow I’m imagining would be to store entire folders of media or perhaps an entire project. Based on my previous experiences with DLT tape I presume that retrieving a single media clip from a data tape archive would require re-loading the entire archive. Which probably means wiping out whatever is currently on your drive array (so you’d probably need to archive the CURRENT contents in order to load the old). Hmmm… sounds like a lot of work.

Cost of Sony PDW-U1 XDCAM drive is $3000. Simple USB interface. It apparently handles XDCAM media files only. Great for footage, but not for other files generated in post.

Cost of Blu-Ray drives is around $350; 25GB media is about $15 and 50GB dual-layer media is around $35. This should be easy to burn and use.

Tape is almost unquestionably going to be safer. Blu-Ray or XDCAM disc are probably going to be easier to deal with. Blu-Ray is overall the most affordable.

Any other factors to consider here?

[Dave Matthis]

For what it’s worth, in my day job for the past nine years I’ve been using an XL1 and a Sony DSR130 DVCAM side by side, with lots of remote shoots and shipping involved. For the same amount of time I’ve also personally owned and used another XL1 on my outside projects.

In nine years none of these cameras has ever broken. One of the XL1s now has an occasional failure of one of the color channels, but a power-cycle usually resets it. All in all, I think either manufacturer’s product is a safe bet.