This might sound crazy, but is it possible...

T

the_producer

Member
I use to build and repair mainframes for Universal Computer Systems in Bryan, Texas. When I first started working there I worked on tape drives. I know that the media that goes in a tape drive is not to different then the dv tape we use in our DVX.

I know it will never happen, but couldn't they use a mini tape drive system on a camera. Some of the media tapes used in tape drives could hold 120 Gigs. And they were almost the same size as a dv tape.

I am just wondering if that is even possible and if it is, why do they not use it?

Unless I am wrong (please feel free to correct me) a normal dv tape will hold almost 11 GB. It would see like a wonderful idea to use a tape drive system over a DV tape, especially when using DVCPRO-HD.
 
Re: This might sound crazy, but is it possible...

I don't know if it would work, but just how much does a 120gig tape cost? I wouldn't want to go out and buy one of those suckers for every shoot.
 
Re: This might sound crazy, but is it possible...

As I understand it, the kind of tapes used for data archiving are usually not super-fast, so there could be bandwidth issues.
 
Re: This might sound crazy, but is it possible...

Tape backup systems are sloooooooooooow

they are way way too slow for realtime recording. The read write speeds are much too slow to have effective video scrubbing.

Although I am sure it could be done with extra work, but then again that would just be another format to deal with..
 
Re: This might sound crazy, but is it possible...

If I recall, a back-up tape drive is the same tape as DV but to get 120 gigs you have to compress the data. Guess thats why they are slow
 
Once again: HP's LTO Ultrium 3 has datarate of 80MB/s (=640Mbit/s) and records 400GB to one tape. Both specs uncompressed.
 
don't forget there already is a tape format for DVCProHD, it's in the Varicam, and that tape assembly costs $11,000+
 
Yes, it would be possible, I just don't see it happening.

I doubt its the exact same tape (unless it stores 13 gig and says miniDV on it). DV has been around for a long time, its not to hard to believe that there are tapes the same size (or smaller) that can hold MUCH more data now. It will not change for the same reason its taken HD so long to get bigger. The technology has been around for a long time, but everyone needs new hardware to support it. All depends on the market at the time. I mean even HDV decided to just stick with the same tape. Maybe they wanted to spend the R&D money on the new format itself instead of the media and readers/writers.

It seems every technology that used to use film or tape is quickly going digital, so I don't see too many new tape technologies coming out when everyone wants their data digital and ready to use. The hosting company I work at gave up on tape backups for customers and uses disks on a NAS. That might be the reason why HDV stuck with the DV tape; they probably know tape will be dead in a few years, so why put money into it.
 
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