Simon Wyndham
Well-known member
Okay, enough.
eLeventy, I have to take you up on some of these points you have made. I'm not having a go at you, but some of the points you made are ill informed.
First point, decks. You do not need a deck for XDCAM. The camera works just fine as a deck. Also Sony are bringing out inexpensive XDCAM drives that fit into the CD ROM bays of a computer very soon. No need for decks. I don't use a deck. No point. Okay, for ultimate convenience it would be nice. But I can get by without for now.
Native MXF handling. Vegas 6c handles both DVCAM and IMX MPEG MXF files natively. Avid handles MXF, Pinnacle handles MXF, Edius and FCP handle MXF (with add ons), XPRI handles MXF. In fact many others do too. And don't for one moment think P2 is any different. You have to purchase the same add on for FCP( Flip4Mac) to be able to get FCP to handle P2 MXF files as you do for XDCAM. FCP just comes with a DVCPRO50 and HD codec, but NOT native MXF handling.
I wrote an article about the various NLE's MXF compatibility here;
http://www.sonybiz.net/images/product/X/XDCAM_Showreel_05.pdf
FYI this magazine was produced independently of Sony for Newsreel Magazine despite the impression it gives.
XPRI. Not the best, particularly as it only handles IMX MXF files. Avid is the best MXF handler by far.
Now for HD XDCAM the F330 is aimed at the industrial sector. Future XDCAM HD variations will have a much higher datarate. There is also the possibilty of simultaneously recording to a solid state card and the disc. Sony are apparently working on such a device at the moment. This would give the best of both worlds. A full archive of the footage onto the disc as per normal XDCAM, and fast storage on solid state for those that want to shell out a bit more for speed. Restricting things to solid state or nothing is not a good way to approach things IMHO. For my money, despite the slower speed than P2, XD is much, much, more practical in overall use. But that's just me, don't flame me for it.
To say that XDCAM will never have the high data rates needed for higher end HD is a bit silly you have to admit, because that assumes that no advances in development will be made ever again.. Remember, Panasonic said that disc based storage wasn't reliable. But even they had to admit Sony did damn well at proving them wrong. So far I haven't heard of a single XDCAM unit dropping frames or otherwise. I can vouch for that personally, The cameras recording mech is as solid as a rock.
I use XDCAM every day. And it is true that the transfer speed can be annoying with long clips. BUT the key is the workflow and how you implement it. The fact is that footage ingest and preview is a doddle, and is a pleasurable experience unlike normal firewire transfer. With P2 I can imagine you have to transfer all the footage anyway most of the time due to having to offload it constantly. XDCAM on the other hand still keeps some of the workflow of tape, such as footage logging (if you need to), but just makes the process much more convenient.
Look upon the systems like this;
P2 is a totally new workflow and is completely non linear. Its like using a digital stills camera.
XDCAM is like a tape based system on steroids. Its video file structure is actually linear, but the footage transfer to the computer and footage browsing is non linear . XDCAM is halfway between tape and total non linearity. This I believe is because if XDCAM had a totally non linear file structure the laser would be inefficient at being able to record to a fragmented disc if odd files had been deleted here and there. In a way this is a big disadvantage for the disc based storage. But on the other hand XD has advantages in other areas that P2 does not. Apples and Oranges really. Depends on your workflow needs.
I see P2 as the two seater Ferrari (sorry another car analogy), while XDCAM is the people carrier.
I find the proxies to be very useful indeed for fast preview. And in fact a recent project I worked on involved me being stuck out in the middle of the Welsh mountains miles away from what most people would term 'civilisation'. I assemble edited the project on a really cheap low powered laptop in the evenings using PDZ-1 and saved the cliplists back to the camera. By the time I got back to base I merely had to tidy up the edit. This applies equally to P2 as it does for XDCAM. You can be out in the wilderness somewhere and create a rough edit or group the clips how you would like with the proxy files on a very low grade laptop indeed. No need for high powered hardware. I'm sure that Jan will back me up on this with Panasonics own proprietry P2 proxy manager software which is also freely downloadable. With P2 you might have to store the high res footage onto an external drive. But if you copy the proxy files too you won't need a powerhouse of a laptop in order to actually start editing.
I had to chime in with my big XD mouth as there is a lot of opinion being bandied about. I believe P2 and XDCAM are suited for different things. I happen to feel that XDCAM is more practical over all for MY needs. Not necceserily yours, but mine. The only way you will know is to try them out. Until solid state becomes really cheap, the choice between whether to buy XDCAM or P2 will be a matter of your workflow requirements and NOT whether one system is 'better' than the other based on transfer rate figures etc. Transfer rate figures do not tell the whole story.
Will I buy an F330? I hope to test one very soon. But I'm waiting on the 2/3" variation. I've spent enough this year!
eLeventy, I have to take you up on some of these points you have made. I'm not having a go at you, but some of the points you made are ill informed.
First point, decks. You do not need a deck for XDCAM. The camera works just fine as a deck. Also Sony are bringing out inexpensive XDCAM drives that fit into the CD ROM bays of a computer very soon. No need for decks. I don't use a deck. No point. Okay, for ultimate convenience it would be nice. But I can get by without for now.
Native MXF handling. Vegas 6c handles both DVCAM and IMX MPEG MXF files natively. Avid handles MXF, Pinnacle handles MXF, Edius and FCP handle MXF (with add ons), XPRI handles MXF. In fact many others do too. And don't for one moment think P2 is any different. You have to purchase the same add on for FCP( Flip4Mac) to be able to get FCP to handle P2 MXF files as you do for XDCAM. FCP just comes with a DVCPRO50 and HD codec, but NOT native MXF handling.
I wrote an article about the various NLE's MXF compatibility here;
http://www.sonybiz.net/images/product/X/XDCAM_Showreel_05.pdf
FYI this magazine was produced independently of Sony for Newsreel Magazine despite the impression it gives.
XPRI. Not the best, particularly as it only handles IMX MXF files. Avid is the best MXF handler by far.
Now for HD XDCAM the F330 is aimed at the industrial sector. Future XDCAM HD variations will have a much higher datarate. There is also the possibilty of simultaneously recording to a solid state card and the disc. Sony are apparently working on such a device at the moment. This would give the best of both worlds. A full archive of the footage onto the disc as per normal XDCAM, and fast storage on solid state for those that want to shell out a bit more for speed. Restricting things to solid state or nothing is not a good way to approach things IMHO. For my money, despite the slower speed than P2, XD is much, much, more practical in overall use. But that's just me, don't flame me for it.
To say that XDCAM will never have the high data rates needed for higher end HD is a bit silly you have to admit, because that assumes that no advances in development will be made ever again.. Remember, Panasonic said that disc based storage wasn't reliable. But even they had to admit Sony did damn well at proving them wrong. So far I haven't heard of a single XDCAM unit dropping frames or otherwise. I can vouch for that personally, The cameras recording mech is as solid as a rock.
I use XDCAM every day. And it is true that the transfer speed can be annoying with long clips. BUT the key is the workflow and how you implement it. The fact is that footage ingest and preview is a doddle, and is a pleasurable experience unlike normal firewire transfer. With P2 I can imagine you have to transfer all the footage anyway most of the time due to having to offload it constantly. XDCAM on the other hand still keeps some of the workflow of tape, such as footage logging (if you need to), but just makes the process much more convenient.
Look upon the systems like this;
P2 is a totally new workflow and is completely non linear. Its like using a digital stills camera.
XDCAM is like a tape based system on steroids. Its video file structure is actually linear, but the footage transfer to the computer and footage browsing is non linear . XDCAM is halfway between tape and total non linearity. This I believe is because if XDCAM had a totally non linear file structure the laser would be inefficient at being able to record to a fragmented disc if odd files had been deleted here and there. In a way this is a big disadvantage for the disc based storage. But on the other hand XD has advantages in other areas that P2 does not. Apples and Oranges really. Depends on your workflow needs.
I see P2 as the two seater Ferrari (sorry another car analogy), while XDCAM is the people carrier.
I find the proxies to be very useful indeed for fast preview. And in fact a recent project I worked on involved me being stuck out in the middle of the Welsh mountains miles away from what most people would term 'civilisation'. I assemble edited the project on a really cheap low powered laptop in the evenings using PDZ-1 and saved the cliplists back to the camera. By the time I got back to base I merely had to tidy up the edit. This applies equally to P2 as it does for XDCAM. You can be out in the wilderness somewhere and create a rough edit or group the clips how you would like with the proxy files on a very low grade laptop indeed. No need for high powered hardware. I'm sure that Jan will back me up on this with Panasonics own proprietry P2 proxy manager software which is also freely downloadable. With P2 you might have to store the high res footage onto an external drive. But if you copy the proxy files too you won't need a powerhouse of a laptop in order to actually start editing.
I had to chime in with my big XD mouth as there is a lot of opinion being bandied about. I believe P2 and XDCAM are suited for different things. I happen to feel that XDCAM is more practical over all for MY needs. Not necceserily yours, but mine. The only way you will know is to try them out. Until solid state becomes really cheap, the choice between whether to buy XDCAM or P2 will be a matter of your workflow requirements and NOT whether one system is 'better' than the other based on transfer rate figures etc. Transfer rate figures do not tell the whole story.
Will I buy an F330? I hope to test one very soon. But I'm waiting on the 2/3" variation. I've spent enough this year!
