The Next Five Years, What Do You Think?

[Rosestar]

With the HVX, a camera that I believe will be revolutionary for film making, set to debut this year, I was just wondering, what's next? Where do you see technology heading in the next five years? Good or bad. I was just interested in the opinion of the folks on this forum.

[Barry_S]

One trend I see in video, is a lot more formats coexisting peacefully. I see a lot more software and hardware products for uprezzing, downrezzing, and converting formats. I think we'll see the rise of metadata for the rest of us and more interoperability with the rise of AAF and MXF standards. HD will see explosive growth over the next five years and SD will be fading out by 2010. P2 heralds the end of tape based recording and storage, and as solid state memory drops in price it will supplant tape for acqisition and even begin to become an option for archiving. Hard drive technology will continue to improve and will still be the dominant storage medium through 2010.

[Barry_Green]

Costs will come down, and capabilities will go up. (how's that for going out on a limb?)

I don't think anything will change as far as viewing standards -- people don't even have HDTV sets in their homes yet. Broadcasters have spent millions and millions to upgrade their facilities to support digital broadcasting and transmit ATSC signals; I don't think there'll be *any* appetite for new formats like 2160p or anything like that.

I think the HVX, with its 1080/p support and 1080/i support and 720/p support, is certainly well positioned to last five years. A couple of years from now we should have 64gb and 128gb P2 cards, which should forever banish the idea of not-long-enough recording times, etc.

The biggest threat to the HVX's "throne" would be the continued development of better big cameras, and the corresponding price drops. Already we're seeing an HDX400 at only 60% of the VariCam's price... and JVC's supposed to bring a shoulder-mount 3-CMOS 2/3" camera out at $27950 next year (but saddled with HDV). If Panasonic can put DVCPRO-HD recording in a $5995 camera, what's to stop them from making a 2/3" version? And in five years, what will they cost -- $20,000? $15,000? $10,000? That's where I think the big changes in video are going to come. I think the HVX is going to push the boundaries of what people can expect from a 1/3" chip, and for real quality innovations we're going to have to start climbing the size scale again.

Unless CMOS works wonders, or some other imaging technology comes along...

[Loki]

Replacement of 3 CCD technology with bigger single chip X3 style technology.

Foveon's X3 chip looks like it could take off in the next few years with more and revisions..

[mmm]

Replacement of 3 CCD technology with bigger single chip X3 style technology.


That's kinda how I'm thinking too.

New chips will allow new ways to increase latitude. Maybe use 2 chips to capture highlights and lowlights separately.

Solid State and optical disc will cotinue to push out linear tape. After that, I believe solid state will start moving into the storage and archive realm.

More and more BIG filmmakers will be shooting on smaller and smaller cameras. In 15 or 20 years, will a $250,000 Panavision really be necessary? I am not saying Star Wars 9 will be shot on $5,000 cameras, but maybe $50,000.

These are exciting times.

[Rosestar]

Replacement of 3 CCD technology with bigger single chip X3 style technology.

Foveon's X3 chip looks like it could take off in the next few years with more and revisions..

Interesting. What is the Foveon X3 chip? Got a link or two?


One thing that I think we will see in a couple of years is higher bite rate HDV captured to some type of IT system. I think they will try to ring every bit of their investment out of the HDV system as they can and will follow Panasonics lead with IT storage.

[gkumar]

a few rusty gears are turning---my knowledge on the ccd's, or whatever that is required to capture images in these digital wonders, is very elementary, but im wondering is there a way to take two dvx's apart and wire in multiple ccd's into one dvx and allow them to capture one image? Would this be feasible (cheaply and efficiently), what would be required, and could it be done (theoretically at least)???

any tech Einsteins out there who can help?

[Shaw]

I think we'll start to see double exposure implemented as it's currently in use with surveilance cameras. Doubles your exposure latitude!

Foveon will be interesting but I'm not sure the clock speed will rise high enough in five years.

We'll see more frame rates at 1080 I believe - good for slow motion.

I'd LOVE to see a camera that recorded to holographic media - cheap, huge amount of space. That would absolutely ROCK. Heck, with that much room you could record a complete uncompressed signal (assuming the write speed was fast enough)!

[pptphoto]

I foresee all this digital hooha and tapes being replaced by some new medium that produces images onto a thin layer of animal gelatin, that can actually be enlarged and projected with a light and a lense onto big screens in a dark place.

[gkumar]

is it be edible too!!haha

[David G. Smith]

is it be edible too!!haha


Yes, but it will be so high in trans-fat that it will lead to a mass extinction of all who use it. A class action law suit will be launched and all the plaintiffs will share in the profits of Duece Biggelow 8 (spelling???).