XDCAM vs DVCPROHD

stabwound said:
Ofcourse, Sony may have improved laser/disc technology, but the odds of burn failure is sill there, and I wouldn't bet doing a paid gig with it.
That's a pretty bold statement considering the facts. Inside Edition has been shooting with PDW530 XDCAMs for over a year now without a single "burn failure" in the field.
 
jrv3034 said:
XDCAM HD PDW-F330: $16,800 (MSRP? Street price?)
Since this price was printed in a press release, you can bet it's an MSRP. That's $13,440 if you discount the MSRP by 20%. Since the price is lower than expected, this must be the price for the body alone. Can''t make a real pricing decision until Sony announces a "pak" price, or "kit" price which usually includes a low-end, but compatible lens with the body for less than you could buy the two items seperately. My guess . . . $21,499 with a lens--street price. Hopefully, it'll be lower than that come March.
 
Thankfully, Sony made this price/delivery announcement BEFORE I laid down the $15K for the DSR450 package I was eyeing. If I can accept the deeper depth-of-field of a 1/2" chip (vs. the 2/3" CCD of the DSR450), the F330 certainly sounds like a very promising new indie movie-making machine contender.
 
cici said:
the blue laser will not handle 100 Mbps the next...... 10 (?) years
Not quite so. There are already prototypes of 2xPD and 2xBRD, so those have datarate of 72Mbps. I think that 3x speed is available next year and then its over 100Mbps.
 
cici said:
the blue laser will not handle 100 Mbps the next...... 10 (?) years
Optical recording media is limited in its recording bandwidth due to the physics of the recording technology. Sony engineers told me at NAB2005 that they will address this limitation by using multiple record lasers to approach datarates in excess of 35Mbps (actual datarate TBD) for the high-end 2/3" XDCAM HD products due out in 2007.
 
NBCshooter said:
Thankfully, Sony made this price/delivery announcement BEFORE I laid down the $15K for the DSR450 package I was eyeing. If I can accept the deeper depth-of-field of a 1/2" chip (vs. the 2/3" CCD of the DSR450), the F330 certainly sounds like a very promising new indie movie-making machine contender.

Yeah... The first thing I thought when I saw this thread was "I hope NBCshooter hasn't bought the 450!"

I want to see footage, especially from the f350 with variable frame rates in 1080HD. If the footage is good, it might be better to rent the F350 than to buy a 1/3" HD camera if what you're doing is indie filmmalking. But it all depends on the footage.
 
Sorry but P2 is not void of issues... corruption, etc. Very rare I am sure, just as the XDCAM discs have rare problems. Remember, they are housed, not exposed like DVD-R.

The other issue that comes up... what are you guys using 4GB P2 cards doing for back-up and archiving? With tapes and affordable media, the tape/disc becomes your backup along with an EDL and batch capture list. With P2, you have to dump it to HDD and then have a couple redundant backups because if you lose you HDD your footage is gone FOREVER! I had a HUGE project on an internal striped drive, all backed up weekly to an external RAID (not RAID5). BOTH RAIDS DIED WITHIN A WEEK! I lost everything, if I had a tapeless workflow it would have been gone forever.

The only professional HDD back-up solution is an external RAID5 which aint cheap!



ash =o)
 
DVD-R discs work just fine for archiving; they're dirt cheap and great for 1:1 backups of 4GB P2 cards. Most people have 16x burners by now... it takes a couple of minutes to drag the MXF data over and pop out a disc - and that's still far less time than it would take to capture the data from tape.
 
Haakon, I was just mulling that alternative over with a friend.
Seems like a DVD-R and 4 Gig cards might be a good match.
How long do you think it takes to burn 4 GIG's?
Including verifying.

Of course DVD's are not nec that reliable either so you might want 2.
 
Lenilenapi said:
Haakon, I was just mulling that alternative over with a friend.
Seems like a DVD-R and 4 Gig cards might be a good match.
How long do you think it takes to burn 4 GIG's?
I guess it depends on the burner you have, the software you use, and the quality of media you throw in there. But it's never taken me more than a few minutes max with 16x DVD-Rs, and I'd much rather have my stuff backed up on disc than hard drive anyway. I really think P2 is a far superior solution to the other alternatives, but I guess that's just me.
 
Makes sense to me.
Easier and cheaper than lugging hard drives around, and handing them to your clients at the end of the day.
6 DVD's/ hour @ 720/24P is as cheap as DV tape and even making back-ups would not be bad.
It actually makes a 4Gig PC card advantageous.

How sturdy are DVD-R's? Affected by environment? Life Span?
I would think more reliable than a hard drive though both have short life spans compared to tape.

How come this hasn't been talked about much.
Are we missing some problem here?
 
AshG said:
Sorry but P2 is not void of issues... corruption, etc. Very rare I am sure, just as the XDCAM discs have rare problems. Remember, they are housed, not exposed like DVD-R.

The other issue that comes up... what are you guys using 4GB P2 cards doing for back-up and archiving? With tapes and affordable media, the tape/disc becomes your backup along with an EDL and batch capture list. With P2, you have to dump it to HDD and then have a couple redundant backups because if you lose you HDD your footage is gone FOREVER! I had a HUGE project on an internal striped drive, all backed up weekly to an external RAID (not RAID5). BOTH RAIDS DIED WITHIN A WEEK! I lost everything, if I had a tapeless workflow it would have been gone forever.

The only professional HDD back-up solution is an external RAID5 which aint cheap!

I keep having a hard time understanding people problem with P2 backup, mainly because I live into a IT world, it my job, it what I do. Multi Terrabytes Raid system it no big deal. But people get screwed with bad raid solution. I wont speak about mac raid because all I will do it start a flame war. Software Raid = NO GO. There is some card that you can trust, and hard disk you can also trust. Maxtor = STAY AWAY. I heard someone complaining about Western Digital over here, but I must say it the HD that failed me the less. But they do failed, and it why RAID exist.

Now when speaking of RAID, RAID by itself doesn't make it safe. RAID 0 for example allow you to take 2x250gig HD to show as 1 500gig disk. But if you lose 1 disk, your whole data is gone. The simplest setup is Raid 1 (Mirror), so everything written to 1 disk is written at the same time to the other. Raid 5 is my easy favorite, it popular and some good card exist at low price. It allow you to take 5x250gig HD to create 1TB drive, so you lose 1 drive the 'parity'. And there is Raid 6, it the same as raid 5, but you add 1 more drive as parity, so you can lose up to 2 drive and still have a functional system.

With those option, PLEASE add a SPARE, it a disk that wont have any data on it, but if 1 drive failed, it will replace that failed drive and have all the data copied to it. So you have a few hours that if 2 disk failed in Raid 1 or 5 setup, your are screwed. But in raid 6 it alittle safer.

In the IT world, Raid 5 did the job and still does today, Raid 6 is getting more popular, since ratter than having the Spare doing nothing, they make a raid 6 instead with no spare (but with Pager alarm when a disk failed).

Now you still have to have BACKUP of that storage. Tape backup solution are an option, having a second Server with data replicated to it is another, backing up to Hard disk is another (My favorite in Video).

I buy SATA disk with HD enclosure. It cost 100$ for the 250gig disk + 8$ for the enclosure. So 250gig = 250 minutes of recording for 108$. I send them to a external archival solution in case my house burn.

So 40 hours of recording backup = 1080$

Now the problem you might have with your system with raid 5 are human deletion error (can be protected in different ways). Virus, now this is a personal choises, if you connect your Editing/server to the internet, when your running for trouble. You will never get virus if you stick to a secure/sterile environment.

I wonder why I keep writing, most wont read and will continue arguing P2 suck and there is no backup and they it doom.... !!!

If asked, I will try to write a Barry style article on good/cheap setups for the HVX200 I have in mind. If people have question, I would be please to answer them.
 
Antoine_Fabi said:
what is the total cost of a XDCAM HD system?

camera
lens
batteries
deck
Compatible NLE
Well, we won't know until Sony actually starts shipping the camera and releases their "pak" pricing. Sony "paks" are their OEM-configured "kits" and often include a lens and the body for a price lower than what you could buy both separately for. I'm guessing a Sony pak will come out at well under $25K including the body, lens, two medium-capacity, V-mount bricks, and the low-cost, portable, two-position Sony V-mount charger. Since I already own an Anton Bauer charger, I'll be buying two or three Anton Bauer ProPak14s which are only $374 each from B+H. These are 65 Watt-hour batteries--a lot of power for the money.

As for the NLE, I don't know who's planning to support Sony's "file access mode" transfer for XDCAM data, but at least for the physical connectivity, I'm sure that a separate deck won't be necessary, since the PDW-series cameras all have Firewire (i-Link) out anyway (I don't mind using my camera as a feeder deck).
 
NBCshooter said:
Yeah, but, HDDs are NOT an archival "media."
In my experience, it is one now. Where I used to work, we do full backup every day on tape. And 30% of backup are not good, software says if complete correctly, but on restore, they failed. We have people hired that all they do day long is restore the backup of the day before and make sure the backup is valid, and mark it as such before sending out to archival.

We also have to recall every year the monthly backup of the last 5 year to create new one and test them to see if they are fine. Because they degenerate. They are not suposed to, every tape cost more than a Hard disk for the same size. And require Super expensive tape drive, but it a common between all the fortune 500 buisness, we all have the same problem. And it why these days active SAN and having 'snapshot' of the data for particular date, and having off-site live data recovery is the way to go. And alot of buisness started archiving HD ratter than Tape. It cheaper, faster, and more reliable.

HD wasn't a archiving solution for me 3 year ago... but neither PCMCIA memory would have been my camera recording system either.
 
mochouinard said:
In my experience, it is one now.
Yeah, I guess have to agree. I'd just be nervous to have all my archival footage on magnetic HDDs from various OS vintages. Plus every HDD I've ever owned (albeit, they were in use everyday, unlike an archive HDD would be) had a catastrophic mechanical failure within 3-5 years.
 
NBCshooter said:
Yeah, I have to agree. I'd just be nervous to have all my archival footage on magnetic HDDs from various OS vintages. Plus every HDD I've ever owned (albeit, they were in use everyday, unlike an archive HDD would be) had a catastrophic mechanical within 3-5 years.

Hey I not saying it perfect, but It the best low cost solution I know off.

Having a actual Negatif will always be 'better', because even if time touch it, there still an images to it. Digital, you can't lose 1 bit of information.

But a static HD stored for multiple year shouldnt be a problem. I recently powered on a 250gig HD I had over 10 year ago in my first computer and still work (dont worry, I trow it to garbage right after that.

When you said 3-5 year, well in buisness world, 3-5 year are the term where you have to change the server/data storage. So it not a problem there.

The camera is just a small fraction of the cost of the whole digital system, depending how serious you are, and how paranoid you can be ;)

You could order FiberOptic Connection, and a 500mbits Satelite link to every location you are going to shoot something, and have your data been backuped else where nearly realtime in case a nuke explode near you, or Godzilla is releases in a town near you... But it where you have to be resonable.

Also HD restoration are very advanced these days. Even a failed HD can be restored at special facility at extra cost. (We spend 180 000$ once to restore a 10 year old tape backup that wouldnt work. They restored 80% of it content and good thing it was the content that was needed. and 180 000$ is nothing if it help you win a 600 million legal case). Restoring HardDisk doesn't necesary cost 180k$, it depend how badly the data is degenerated.

Urm, while Im thinking about it... P2 card are probably not lightning resistant... I guess I'll have to make a permanent ground wire connected to all my P2 card in case it catch lightning ! this is what I called paranoid ;)

There is probably documentation about how big of a safety net you need for broadcast/movies/insurances ? I guess we should look at their specs.
 
Haakon said:
DVD-R discs work just fine for archiving; they're dirt cheap and great for 1:1 backups of 4GB P2 cards. Most people have 16x burners by now... it takes a couple of minutes to drag the MXF data over and pop out a disc - and that's still far less time than it would take to capture the data from tape.

You burned much at 16X? Not very realiable right now. I dont think consumer DVD-R is viable long term... plus... you are looking at it taking 10-15 minutes to back up 10 minutes of footage? There goes the time you saved by going tapeless.



ash =o)
 
NBCshooter said:
Yeah, but, HDDs are NOT an archival "media."

All media has issues, but I've already solved the archiving problem (I'm working with DV and uncompressed 1080p HD right now). I used to work full-time in corporate IT and have used most every tape backup format, but here's how I'm doing it now:

First, I my main editing system is all RAID 0 for speed.

Second, it's connected via a $50 Gigabit switch to a homebuilt server running Windows Server 2003 software raid (unlike most software RAID, it's very reliable). I used a bunch of old 200 - 250 GB disk and have 1.2 TB of RAID 5 storage on it.

Every day (or more if busy with critical work) I mirror my RAID 0 drive on the editing system to the RAID 5 storage using a file comparison util. Fast and now I always have two copies of all my work including raw captures.

Then, I bought a VXA2 tape drive with 1 TB of tapes off eBay. VXA tape is way better than DLT, DAT, LTO etc. for archiving because it's very robust. See this:

http://www.exabyte.com/technology/tested/index.cfm

Nightly, I back up the data files and master renders and rotate off-site from time to time.

VXA3 is here:

http://www.exabyte.com/company/press/display.cfm?id=3442

The huge news is current VXA2 tapes will be double capacity in this new drive - quite the news. So my 1 TB of tapes will become 2 TB by upgrading the drive. Sweet.
 
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