HVX documentary workflow questions

S

samarkand

Member
In May we're planning to shoot a documentary in a remote part of Afghanistan. We'll be there for about 2 months. We're hoping to use the HVX200 if it makes practical sense. One of the biggest challenges will be that power is only available via generator, and even that not regularly. Also, we'll be walking a lot, sometimes for days up and down mountains to get to the villages we're shooting in. Plus, temperatures will be in the high 30s (Celcius), possibly in the low 40s .

I'd appreciate comments on whether the proposed workflow makes logical sense and that it does not miss any key issues:

The HVX200 will be recording directly to a 100G+ CinePorter (assuming availability), which should give us about 4 hours recording time at 720/24p, according to the guide on the DVXUser FAQ. That should give us enough for at least one day's shoot, except in special circumstances, allowing us to download the material and erase the drive for use the next day.

We would burn the shot material onto dual-sided DVDs using a MacBook Pro laptop. Each full 100G download would require about 12 DVDs. We would make 2 copies for safety.

We would also need to make MPEG2 DVDs each day or so to have the material translated into English across the river in Tajikistan, so would use DVDSP for that bit. We'd have to make sure the DVDs can play on local DVD players (power on that side is regular).

For power we would carry a portable solar charger and rent or purchase a fuel-powered generator when we get to the village.

Because of the very remote location, we would have to take two HVXs and two laptops in case something breaks down. We also need to consider some manner of camera support so that we aren't handholding the cameras for long periods of time. And I'm concerned that if the CinePorter is NOT available by April, the HVX may not be the right HD solution as P2 cards would be very limiting in the field. Thoughts?

Najeeb
 
Would you be better off with a 15" G4 Powerbook because it can accept a P2 card and the new Macbook Pro cannot?
 
Unless you have some kind of external powered enclosure, you won't be burning dual-layer DVD's on the Macbook Pro, since it only ships with a single-layer burner. If power is that much of a concern, you may need to figure out some other backup method. Perhaps, if it is in your budget, a 1200A dvcprohd deck would another option for backup to tape. You could time your backup sessions when there was power. I don't think you're going to have enough battery power to burn 12 (or 24) DVD's without being plugged in. I think in your case, tape may be a better answer. Maybe the DSR 450 or the XLH1.
 
The fastest Superdrive in a Powerbook is still only 8x speed for DVD burning -- wouldn't it be better to buy an External Burner that is 16x speed?
 
All good points. Thanks. A Powerbook makes better sense than the MacBook Pro - in addition to DL-DVD and CardBus it also has FW800 which the CinePorter requires. It would have been nice to have the MacBook speed increase, though...

If CinePorter isn't available you are right, dregenthal, there are other options. However, backing the material up is still a problem. I searched for faster external burners but it seems the 16x ones max out at 8x for DL-DVD burning. Apple says their Superdrive burns at 6x for DLDVD+R (they weren't sure about DLDVD-R). In any case we'd have to have a steady power source to do this - we'd have to rely on a generator.

Backing up to tape is an interesting idea - is there a smaller and cheaper option than the 1200A?

Najeeb
 
powerbook

powerbook

samarkand said:
If CinePorter isn't available you are right, dregenthal, there are other options. However, backing the material up is still a problem. I searched for faster external burners but it seems the 16x ones max out at 8x for DL-DVD burning. Apple says their Superdrive burns at 6x for DLDVD+R (they weren't sure about DLDVD-R). In any case we'd have to have a steady power source to do this - we'd have to rely on a generator.
Najeeb
Click to expand...

you have to weigh your power requirements, time and budget. you might be able to fit more on dual layers but single layers burn much faster, the media is more readily available and cost is much less per disc. if someone is going to be around to switch out old for new discs, they might as well do 24 instead of 12. it will probably take less time too.
 
Well, one problem I see with the Powerbook is that if you're making DVD's for transcription, you better have a great deal of time on your hands. I have a 1.5Ghz PB, and 15mins of video takes a couple hours to compress to dvd.
 
I too think that single layed DVD-Rs would be a good fit.. but as you may find, you have to pick and chose what will fit on each disk.. depending upon your record lenghts. I am doing the DVD backup because I'll be shooting to the convenience 4 gig P2's mostly.. which works nicely with the 4.3 gig DVDs. I have experienced this backup process and it can be highly frustrating though...

Another option with the cineporter is that they might make them with hotswappable drives. Might be a great solution to buy 5 or 6 bare drives to fit in the cineporter if this is an option...

I would also think that a few firewire drives might help with the whole offloading and power consumpion issues.

Finally as far as hand holding... I would highly recommend a good study manfroto monopod. I use one almost everytime I shoot. They are a great way to keep the weight of the camera off your body as well as providing a convenient spot to mount wireless and such. They even make monopods now that have a stand/arm that converts to a freestanding tripod.


Sounds like you'll have a lot to deal with....
 
You know Samarkand, I'm actually doing very similar production work to what you describe. I think the feasibility of doing documentary work with the HVX may come down to how much you trust hard drives. I think that if you're really planning on 4 hours of footage a day, the DVD scenario is going to really slow you down. It takes about 20 minutes to burn a full DVD on my powerbook (4x superdrive) but the problem is that an 8x burner is not really twice as fast. So if you do the math, then it will take you (assuing you can split up the MXF files into convenient 4.3 GB files, ready for burning), about 10 hours to back up 4 hours of video to DVD, not including backups. If you want 2 copies of the DVD's, then you're talking 20 hours. That's alot of wear and tear on you and your equipment, and would require constant power. I think that perhaps another possibility would be to shoot on the cineporter and DV tape simultaneously, hand off the DV tape to the transcribers (I'm not sure how the timecode will work here) and back up your Cineporter to 2 redundant raid enclosures, thus giving you 2 copies of your precious video redundant on 2 arrays. The other option I could see would be to find a data tape backup system. It ain't going to be easy.

I just did a little searching, it looks like you could pick up an AJHD150 deck for about 10k used, if you had an uninterruptible power supply, you could back up you Cineporter to that. I know it ain't cheap but I'm not sure what else you could do with that volume of filming.
 
"We're hoping to use the HVX200 if it makes practical sense"


It doesn't. The HVX200 has yet to prove that it can work in the field as a doc camera. Some days I have shot 5 hours of tape or more.

Your planning on taking a camera that is barely out yet, with laptops DVD's and harddrives as your recording media to Afganistan? All very fragile devices. Have you shot in that environment before? With maybe a generator for power?

Save yourself some heartache and pickup a couple of Panasonic 100a's or Sony PD-150's and lots of batteries. That way you have backup with a second camera and extra batteries.

It's going to be hard enough to travel and shoot without all the other technical hurdles to jump through each day.
 
I would say, if we're talking about the afghanistan I've heard about, you may want to stick with DVCAM or better for tape. I do not enjoy miniDV dropouts. DSR 450.
 
Well I kind of agree with greenheron, but his reference to using a PD150 which is MiniDV.

The HVX200 also has MiniDV, so the HVX200 would make the better option with and HD solution too.

Sure memory is more expensive at this time, but I have a feeling this is all going to change over the next year or two. I agree, it will never be an equivalent for price/memory over tape. But, I'm not believer of using the same tape over and over again. P2 is designed for just that.

Most important, I can't see tape drive technology being the final video capture medium.
 
Sony PD150 shoots DVCam with accurate Timecode. I've shot hundreds of hours of DVCAM with Sony PDVM-40 tapes with no problems or dropouts. I've shot 5 or 6 documentaries with this camera (as well as the PD-170) and now the Z1.

If your just looking for an excuse to try out the HVX200, that's fine, but you better back yourself up with something that can record tape until this P2 workflow has been tested in the field. Plus the PD-150 will shoot all day on a single NP-F960.
Just keep popping in tapes and your done.
 
I hadn't thought through how long the DVD backup would take - it seems rather impractical now. Perhaps burning DVDs as backups won't be feasible until Blu-Ray is available and proven, whenever that will be.

Some have suggested downloading CinePorter (or similar) to FW drives, such as the Rugged series put out by Lacie, or even their Big Extreme 1 Terabyte drives. A set of five of the latter will give 5 TB, or almost 200 hours of 720/24p, which should be plenty for both cameras. A second set of five would serve as backup; both would be kept in well-padded Pelincan cases that hopefully will give them the protection they need during transport. I'm told hard drives are commonly transported that way, though I personally have had no experience with that.

doccutter, you make an interesting suggestion to record to DV and to the Cineporter simultaneously. I didn't know the HVX could do that, but I'll look into it.

I appreciate that the miniDV solution is always available - that's what I shot on last time in the region - so that would indeed be the fallback if the HD option is unworkable. In the meantime, if there might be a creative but feasible way to do this... Thanks for all your suggestions.
 
greenheron said:
"We're hoping to use the HVX200 if it makes practical sense"


It doesn't. The HVX200 has yet to prove that it can work in the field as a doc camera. Some days I have shot 5 hours of tape or more.

Your planning on taking a camera that is barely out yet, with laptops DVD's and harddrives as your recording media to Afganistan? All very fragile devices. Have you shot in that environment before? With maybe a generator for power?

Save yourself some heartache and pickup a couple of Panasonic 100a's or Sony PD-150's and lots of batteries. That way you have backup with a second camera and extra batteries.

It's going to be hard enough to travel and shoot without all the other technical hurdles to jump through each day.
Click to expand...
Well said. What are the odds I put on the laptop not braking? I'm guessing somewhere near 0%. You better have some seriously padded hard cases you are willing to lug around, have you read about those roads? And hiking and hauling around all that gear? And that's not even considering the workflow, you're going to end up screwing around burning DVD's or dealing with whatever issues when you could be burning MORE TAPES & FOOTAGE of the stuff you cam eto get in the first place. I say get the priorities straight -- a good story is WAY MORE important than high quality footage IMHO. Not to mention, laptops and more high-end gear is just begging for getting it ripped off and making you way more obvious and high profile wherever you go -- things that could potentially even get you killed. I think you'd be nuts when you can bring a couple of DVX's or PD170's and a boatload of tapes. The fact is these cameras have produced numerous high-quality documentaries, some of which have even made film-outs. Why bother with the HVX on something like this right now? I wouldn't take that approach in a million years, but then again, I probably don't know anything about any of this, so I will shut up now...
 
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