How will we archive the raw footage?

You only pay the $1300 once. Then you just buy inexpensive tapes. If you go the HDD route, when you fill up your $1300 worth of HDD's you have to buy more HDD which are much more expensive than tape.

johnc
 
reservoir said:
WTF? TAPE BACKUPS? Again I say....WTF? Isn't that going in the opposite direction? Linear--->Non-Linear------>Back to Linear? One more time....WTF?

400GB tape backup? Why not just get a 400GB Hitachi drive and save yourself a ton of money? They are only 300-400 bux. For that price....get 2!!
Click to expand...

Note that I'm talking about DATA tape here, not video tape. Data tape is much more dependable than video tape.

You can backup to hard drives, and some folks will, but they are neither as cheap nor as dependable nor as compact as data tapes. Every IT organization in the world that cares about backups backs up to tape.

If you shoot a lot of footage, the cost is a significant factor. Last I looked, 200GB tapes run around $50, whereas 200GB hard drives run around $200. Given a tape drive like LaCie's (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10591) that costs $1400, you'd have to archive about 30 hours of 1080 to make tape match the cost effectiveness of hard drives. Any more than 30 hours (about 1800 GB), and tape becomes MUCH cheaper.

Now, if you plan to be browsing and using your archives constantly, it probably makes sense to store on hard drives rather than tape. But if you need a repository to archive all of your footage from a project after the project is done and you only plan to go back to the archive for a re-edit, I would absolutely use data tape.
 
jrv3034 said:
Um, you need a terabyte of space? Here you go.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10462

By the time the HVX comes out, HD DVD and Blu-Ray should be about ready to come out, too. That's up to 54GB per DVD! I see no problem in archiving, between blu-ray dvd and hard disks.
Click to expand...

BOOM-Shaka-LAKA....that's what I'm talking about. 1TB. NICE!!

Actually...most companies I know of are *slowy* migrating to Hard Drive or optical storage like DVD-RAM and things like that. Tape is on it's way OUT...albeit very slowly. No matter how you cut the cheese :) Tape is still Tape. It's still just as fallable. Metal Particles break off, It's still subject to hot and cold issues, it still gets *jammed* up in the tape drive occasionally,...ect.

In fact....the company I work for only uses tape backups on their smaller / less important AS400 boxes. Everything that is *Mission Critical* is stored on Emc2 units ( http://www.emc.com/ ) (Badass SAN / RAID systems) and everything else goes to re-writeable optical drives (9.4GB DVD-RAM). Tape is history my friend!!

But in the case of Hi-Def Storage, tape will probably hang around a few more years. I'll still prefer to use Hard Drives or Optical (Blu-ray) Drives.

v20-28-storage.jpg


~reservoir~
 
Xander76,

Thanks for pointing out the economy of 200GB tape backup. Besides the slow speed, it does
appear a very likable solution. I would seriously consider it given the low cost of the tapes.

As you also pointed out, data tape and hard drives serve very different purposes and
isn't it nice to have options!?
 
We're definitely going with (LTO uncompressed) tape here in our place, currently 31 cent per Gb uncompressed and will be down around 16 cent per GB by 3rd quarter this year (archive).

There's also the fire-and-forget factor of a tape autoloader since it is indeed a bit slow but with 7 400 Gb LTOs autoloaded you can flip the switch when you leave the studio and not have to worry about constantly changing out DVDs etc. (2.8 TB sweeps)
 
If you are to use that 1TB worth of HDD with HVX200 via firewire, it is not that portable, is it? Because now you have to look for power for the HDD drive.
My concern is - if according to some, you can't record HD on the tape, how else can you record an hour of 'live' 1080 HD footage without using the expensive P2 cards? If it is true, I guess you can compromise by recording in 720p on the miniDV tape.
Also, a bit of an offtopic question - if the camera uses the miniDV tapes, how is it going to record in DVCPRO format?
Overall, I'm super-excited about this unit :). I still think it's too good to exist at that price.. The possibilities!

Added: Searched arouned and found out, that miniDV tapes can only have the data recorded at 25 mbit/s on them. That means, that anything apart from DVCPRO25 will be recorded on either P2 or a FireWire Hdd, right? I guess buying a 1km extension cord should solve the power problem with a firewire HDD.. :happy:
 
I was just wondering, if I were to shoot a 2 hour event in 1080p 24p lets say to a firewire HDD, after editing what would be the most optimal form of media to copy the finished product to, that an average consumer would be able to view, because not everyone will have a blue-ray player at first.
 
Currently there are 3 formats you could use for delivery that I know of, WMV HD and DivX for PC, and H.264 for Mac (DivX is available for Macs and Linux as well, making it the only platform independent HD codec to date).
The drawback is that your clients should have a pretty powerful CPU in order to view the video without glitches. In fact, Microsoft recommends a 3.0 Ghz P4 to comfortably enjoy a 1080i/p movie.

As to DVCPRO - on Panasonic's website it says "DVCPRO is the only recording system extensible from NTSC to High Definition within the same video format. The design provides for playback of all DVCPRO tapes, and even plays back DV and DVCAM tapes.". So.. DVCPRO electronics can in fact play miniDV tapes. If that's the case, then HVX200 may have one of these too, which means that we can record up to DVCPRO50 on tape. DVCPRO HD uses the same 1/4" tape as DVCPRO50, which makes me question if HD wouldnt be possible to record on tape as well. Am I correct?
 
Yeah, I think hard-drive back-up could be very difficult on long remote location shoots as well. Planning a 7 month shoot in many different countries next year. My insurance people want to know how often my footage is shipped back, how, etc. I can't carry around a ton of hard drives and if I buy a million p2 cards I may as well stick with 35mm. Dispite the great features of p2, I think archiving is a very important issue.

It's interesting how many people (including panasonic) is comparing the p2's current "short loads" to a comparable 400' load of 35mm film. I come from a film background and totally agree, yet when you also look at panisonic's web site http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/app_hd.asp#feature1
they mention the great advantage of the HD tape "And each HD cassette allows for over 40 minutes of run and gun shooting time. No more missed moments when having to reload film."

Tape obviously ain't dead yet, is it?

Many people will need practical, portible, reliable storage solutions in the very near future and I look forward to any solution that meets my needs.
 
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