HDV vs. DVCPRO HD vs. DVCPRo 50

[Ken Hodson]

Good stuff guys.
Kevin- That Asus board will already do a 4 drive RAID 0. Why would you need the 3Ware card?
Is dual CPU really nesessary? As with the 2Gb of RAM, remember its just straight capture? Video card as well shouldn't make a differance for capture.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Derek West

The only problem is so now you've got it captured, edited and distributed to your client. Now where do you keep all this great footage for future use????

Why, copy it to 3.5" floppies, of course! :-)

Seriously, how about capturing and editing using the Avid 10-bit DNxHD codec with a bit rate of 220 Mbit (27.5 MB) per second? That way you could fit about 4 hours of HD content onto one of the WD hard drives described above, at a current cost of $53 per hour of material. Or you could archive to less expensive hard drives at a cost around $35 per hour, which isn't bad for minimally compressed HD footage.

So $9K for a Canon XL-H1 plus $2500 or so for a decent capturing setup gets you 16 hours of HD recording capacity, while $6K for an HVX200 plus $5100 for three 8 GB P2 memory cards gets you 24 minutes of lower-quality HD capacity. Additional capacity for the HVX200 costs about $200 per minute; additional capacity for the XL-H1/Avid solution is $53 per hour. Hmmmm.

Regarding Ken's question, if you use the Avid codec you should be able to get by with a pretty basic computer setup, like a simple two-drive RAID in a Shuttle-type compact case, or maybe even attached to a laptop. Now you've got something you could sling under a tripod on a dolly with a long power cord and even get some mobility, although that isn't the way most of us would like to work. But hey, you could be doing "same day edits" using minimally compressed HD footage -- how cool is that?

[Ken Hodson]

Thomas-"You can also buy the Bitjazz Sheervideo lossless codec to cut the hard drive bandwidth in half"

That would be very nice. Could a codec like that be used for real time capture though? They are in beta of the .avi version of that codec at the moment. QT versions for Mac & PC are available now.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

That would depend on the bandwidth you need to sustain, but how about this for starters (prices per Pricewatch):

Antec tower case with 550W power supply: $189
Asus P5LD2 motherboard: $110
Intel Pentium D dual-core processor 3.0 GHz (retail): $318
2GB Corsair DDR2-533 memory: $156
Nvidia Geforce 6600 dual-head video card with 256 MB memory: $105
3Ware 9500s 4 port SATA RAID controller: $288
Four Western Digital WD4000KD hard drives (400GB each): $848
Windows XP Pro: $142
Keyboard, mouse, etc: ~$100
Blackmagic Decklink HD: $595
h
Total cost: about $2850

Add a little over $1000 if you need an 8-drive solution for a total of ~$4000. That's not bad compared to ~$5000 for 24 minutes worth of P2 memory cards...

While this is intriguing, it's more a theorectical "how cheap" that a reasonable proposal for critical image recording not fair to compare to P2.

First, 4 drive SATA RAID 0 may not be fast enough for robust uncompressed recording and playback, 8 drive would be probably be more reasonable. 8 Drive RAID 0 is not a very reliable setup though - one drive fails and all is lost and with 8 drives being pushed hard, not a completely unlikely scenario , so for serious productions RAID 1+0 or RAID 10 would be much better, but now you are talking 16 drives and external enclosure and probably high end SCSI, or FibreChannel.

P2 will be cheaper soon and I can put it all that P2 storage in my pocket and don't worry if I drop it on the ground while I'm shooting in the middle of nowhere. So my guess is far more people will shoot P2 on the HVX, whatever the price.

You could not it cheap but it would not be very robust. Barry's original number is more reasonable for most productions.

Of course, I'm an indie guy and hardware hack and might build one cheap but most people can't rely on that type of solution.

I will still shoot for a 8 drive sata in hotswap bays and some method of mirroring your data though. Bummer to capture all the stuff and the lose it.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Ken Hodson

Thomas-"You can also buy the Bitjazz Sheervideo lossless codec to cut the hard drive bandwidth in half"

That would be very nice. Could a codec like that be used for real time capture though? They are in beta of the .avi version of that codec at the moment. QT versions for Mac & PC are available now.

Yes. I got confirmation from the creator of the Sheervideo codec. On the Apple you can capture live in realtime to the codec with Decklink cards. The sheervideo codec even has presets made just for Decklink cards. Capturing is realtime.

The only problem is that editing will not be realtime. Final Cut Pro only likes realtime with it's native codecs. Sheervideo is trying to get support for their bitjazz codec in Final Cut Pro. You can still edit in Final Cut Pro but all of the realtime effects will need to be rendered.

Usually you will get a 2 : 1 compression ratio. The lossless compression changes based on the amount of changed detail in the image. For if you are shooting bluescreen stuff where almost the whole entire screen never changes you may be able to get a 3 : 1 or even 4 : 1 compression ratio

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Stephen van Vuuren

P2 will be cheaper soon and I can put it all that P2 storage in my pocket and don't worry if I drop it on the ground while I'm shooting in the middle of nowhere.

I'd be worried about dropping one and losing it, which at up to $1700 each for 8 minutes of storage would be a problem. But that's just one of those things people will learn to deal with for shooting with the HVX200.

In any case, it turns out that Cineform is co-developing a hard-drive based recorder which can capture directly from an HD-SDI input to 10-bit 4:2:2 ProspectHD at a bit rate around 130-140 Mbps, so that'll be a good recording option for the Canon XL-H1 camera. And if you happen to fill up your drive, you'd still have the option to record to miniDV tape, which is available almost anywhere now at negligible cost. Other than the fact that the Canon camera costs a little more, that sounds like a good setup to me compared to the HVX200.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

I'd be worried about dropping one and losing it, which at up to $1700 each for 8 minutes of storage would be a problem. But that's just one of those things people will learn to deal with for shooting with the HVX200.

That's what insurance is for. But my guess is P2 cards won't lose data if you drop one, even onto concrete. I've dropped plenty of flash storage in my time and yet to have that lost data. However, I just dropped 2.5 USB drive about 3 ft. Drive survived but it was writing data and the data did not - reformat was in order.

In any case, it turns out that Cineform is co-developing a hard-drive based recorder which can capture directly from an HD-SDI input to 10-bit 4:2:2 ProspectHD at a bit rate around 130-140 Mbps, so that'll be a good recording option for the Canon XL-H1 camera. And if you happen to fill up your drive, you'd still have the option to record to miniDV tape, which is available almost anywhere now at negligible cost. Other than the fact that the Canon camera costs a little more, that sounds like a good setup to me compared to the HVX200.

Most producitons do not want cameras tethered to AC power devices. Sure, a few will take advantage of it, but power, noise, size, reliability are way too big of an issue to brush off solid state storage.

Solid state storage is the future. P2 is the first of many solid state image recording tech. Moving head disks will be replaced because solid state beats them on every issue (except price and space right now).

You are welcome to buy a camera and tether it to a huge disk system to get 4:2:2 or uncompressed. Otherwise, every Hollywood film would shoot on a Viper. But that won't work for me at all - I simply could not shoot the films I need to shoot. Getting 4:2:2 at 100 Mb/s on a little card - now that's a filmmakers dream.

[Graeme Nattress]

Supposodly you can immerse a P2 in salt water for a day, or drive over it with a car and the data is ok. Even if the shell gets damaged, Panasonic can take out the chips and put them in a new shell - don't know how much this kind of service costs though, and if you get it wet, call Panasonic who will tell you what to do!

Graeme

[Ken Hodson]

I think we are confussing things a bit. P2 cards are not capturing uncompressed. If you want uncompressed from a HVX it will be the exact same situation.
With the Sheervideo codec 1/2'ing data rate, we are much closer to our goal. It is a great lossless codec noted for its speed. A 4 disk SATA Raid should be able to handle this 1/2 uncompressed data rate.
Can anyone throw out some regular uncompressed #'s of 480p60(HD10)/720p60(HD100) and 1080i(FX/Z1) so we can judge what is a feezable HDD bandwith?
Question: If the output is 60p is it possible to select just 30p for capture, or do all frames have to captured?
Also, I have read some info on dissabling the inner tracks of drives to keep a constant high data rate. Data rate slows dirastically as it is writen to the inner tracks. Effectively loosing 20% of each drives storage, but maintaining peak speeds seems like a good trade off.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Ken Hodson

I think we are confussing things a bit. P2 cards are not capturing uncompressed. If you want uncompressed from a HVX it will be the exact same situation.

I'm not confused :)

First, we were talking about uncompressed, but then the Cineform 4:2:2 compressed solution was also discussed which is comparable to P2 4:2:2.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Stephen van Vuuren

Most producitons do not want cameras tethered to AC power devices. Sure, a few will take advantage of it, but power, noise, size, reliability are way too big of an issue to brush off solid state storage.

But then hardly anyone will be able to afford to capture to P2 memory for now, so most HVX200 owners will end up recording to the proposed Firestore drive or other similar solutions for a while. If the Cineform capture drive works on battery power there's no functional difference there, and if I was shooting a movie I might rather have 140 Mbps of data from a 1440x1080 sensor than 100 Mbps of data from the lower-resolution sensor on the Panasonic camera. We'll see how all this shakes out when all of this stuff is actually shipping, but I wouldn't be surprised if Canon takes a few sales from Panasonic for indie purposes.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

But then hardly anyone will be able to afford to capture to P2 memory for now, so most HVX200 owners will end up recording to the proposed Firestore drive or other similar solutions for a while.

"Hardly anyone"? That's not what I hear from potential buyers. I would say 50% of potential buyers on the DVX boards are considering it, especially since Panny is considering a couple of different P2 bundles.

If the Cineform capture drive works on battery power there's no functional difference there, and if I was shooting a movie I might rather have 140 Mbps of data from a 1440x1080 sensor than 100 Mbps of data from the lower-resolution sensor on the Panasonic camera. We'll see how all this shakes out when all of this stuff is actually shipping, but I wouldn't be surprised if Canon takes a few sales from Panasonic for indie purposes.

The Cineform capture drive run on battery? That's unlikely to be small or portable, certainly not firestore-sized and way bigger than P2.

[Kevin Shaw]

If people are willing to pay over $200 per minute to capture video on P2 cards, or deal with the hardware and workflow requirements of off-loading that to other storage solutions, that's okay by me. Regarding the Cineform drive, I see no reason why that couldn't be similar to the Firestore, except maybe it needs a little extra size to accommodate the HD-SDI inputs. Main drawback with Cineform for some indies would be that it's primarily a PC-oriented solution, so that's another consideration. Like I said before, we'll see what happens when all this stuff is shipping.