My Sony rep recommended XDCAM. But how expensive is the post pasth?
 

Hi there

I'm about to shoot a short film. The camera's which we are looking at now are the Panasonic AJ-SX900, the Soby DSR-570WS, and the XDCAM from Sony.

Our Sony rep seems interested in getting us to use the XDCAM if we do a film transfer, as the adoptation of this technology has been slow and the camera is fine (can go into 4:2:2 color space).

However, I am worried for this very reason, if the adoptation is slow, it'll be harder to find decks to get it off the disc cartidge and the editing....it could be as expensive as digibeta....

Do you know of any cheap(er) video post houses near you that work with/in XDCAM?

thanks

Ronald,

if i may suggest - you should try IMX format camera msw-900 by sony.
i'm working with this camera for almost two years now and this camera is really brilliant.
the true is - if someone works with this camera - he will NEVER go back again to work with any other beta camera. (can give you a LIST of my friends DOPs who fall in love with this camera, and fogrot about SP or digibeta)

it has progressive scan and beautiful, beautiful reproducition of colors, contrast, blacks etc.
and it's absolutelly the same camera as XDCAM but uses tapes. which are very cheap.
i did some tests with transfer to 35mm and that was amazing.

i know that my answer is not "tapeless" solution, but in my opinion - for now - this is the cheapest one.

you can flawlessly work in your editing room with i.e. J-3 player which is cappable to read IMX tapes. no problems with avid or FCP.

filip

p.s.

it's somehow difficult to work with this camera when bluescreen/greenscreen is needed. you must find the guy who knows how to work with those things.

Hi Filip

Actually, when this camera came out, I was interested. Wasn't there a film that was shot on this camera and transferred to film, that showed at a Sundance and it blew everyone away?

I'm just worried about the mpeg 2 compression about how easy or hard or expensive it will be to edit and do effects/color time.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Ng : Wasn't there a film that was shot on this camera and transferred to film, that showed at a Sundance and it blew everyone away? -->>>


i do not know really, i wasn't on sundance festival, but from my neiborhood i can clearly see that this camera is really something interesting when it comes to transfer it to film. i saw 3 different productions here in poland and there are really interesting. you cannot say in any given moment that this is electronics.

<<<---I'm just worried about the mpeg 2 compression about how easy or hard or expensive it will be to edit and do effects/color time. -->>>

you edit normally on any pc or mac in standard resolution. then i beleive the best solution is to make on line on FCP with 10bits depth and using SDI input. (with decklink SDI card or similar)
in this case you have everything what is on the tape - no compromise. after that - you can go directly with your hard disks to the facility where someone can transfer it on 35mm. concidering color effects and grading - i beleive that 10bit depth is a must. you cannot normally see big difference when something is grabbed in 8 or 10 bits, but when you start to manipulate the color etc. it shows. so in my opinion if you have the possibility - go with 10 bit depht and do whatever you need with color etc. still looks nice. of course, we are talking about pal/ntsc resolution not hd. camera works in pal/ntsc and that's it's maximum, but when transfered on 35mm - you just siimply cannot beleive that this is normal pal/ntsc signal.

it's a pitty that you are not living closer to poland, in this case it will be easier to you to test it and judge for yourself.

many main polish productions are now transfered from digital to 35mm because it's probably the cheapest way to do it in whole world. and the quality is really, really good. and the europeans are starting to think about polish facilities also.
i mean here in poland quality level of such transfer is really exellent. many polish DOPs are working with top hollywood producers and directors and here is really strong tradition of extremelly high level of vizual works and transfer from video to 35mm is treated with same standards as normal 35mm negative-positive process - it must sustain really high level of quality to pass all exams with such demanding DOPs.
Two years ago polish candidate for oscars was transfered from digital to 35mm (dv and HD was used as origin), last year - the same situation - the candidate was also tranfered from digital to 35mm (from HD), so probably guys know how to do this... and the same is with IMX format. they just know, and work their best. last year on polish national film festival two films were shooted on IMX camera, three on HD - all transfered to 35mm. this "season" (after national festival until today) already 3 feature movies are in production shooted/shooting on IMX, two others are prepared to be shooted on IMX.

sorry if this is maybe to long, but i think that this gives you better view about IMX and transfer to 35mm.

filip

<<<-- I'm just worried about the mpeg 2 compression about how easy or hard or expensive it will be to edit and do effects/color time. -->>>

Ronald, as your Sony rep would've told you, the XDCAM is available in two flavours - one only records DVCAM quality (DV25) and the other model does both DV and IMX, which is MPEG based @ 30, 40 or 50Mbps.

As for the "cheapness" of tape, one $30 disc can be reused around 1000 times. Tape can be reused, but who risks it?

The camera itself is the best you can get in SD, surpassing even digital betacam, in fact the 50Mb IMX setting is as good as digibeta.

I don't know what you edit on but more and more NLEs support XDCAM, from Avid to FCP. You can also edit the proxy MPEG4 data to save cost /HDD space to produce an EDL

Mark

MPEGIMX
 

Hey Filip!

I'm a Polish native born in Malbork.

My parents came to the U.S. when I was little and I grew up in Dallas, Texas...

I still speak Polish and I visit my relatives back there there once in a while.

It's nice to talk to some Polish cameramen. I'm a freelancer myself, and I shoot on DVCAM, but i'm seriously considering migrating to MPEGIMX sometime in the future. It seems to me that just like BetaSP has survived for so long, so will MPEGIMX. I'd like to see just how good it looks on an HDTV or HD monitor.

in the meantime, check out my website, and send me an e-mail, if you'd like.

best,

Jacques Star (aka Jacob Szucko)

http://www.jacquesstarvideo.com

> just like BetaSP has survived for so long, so will MPEGIMX

I imagine the "pro" version of HDV might be the next step of IMX. It would make sense to have 1920x1080 proscan MPEG @24~30fps with a low GOP and a 50 Mbps bandwidth or more on optical media. If this happens, the decks will probably be backwards-compatible with today's IMX.

maybe, maybe not
 

Personally, I doubt that HDV will replace MPEGIMX and Beta. IMX is still superior to HDV. Granted, it doesn't have as many lines of resolution as HDV does, but it has a lot more color information in the image. I've seen some of the Sony HDV footage, and I was dissatisfied with it's color reproduction. Besides, most IMX vtr's will be able to play back all Beta format tapes, from BetaSP to Digibeta, so it will be the least expensive and most logical step into the world of digital television. The same thing happened with DVCAM, and why it became so popular. DVCAM cameras and VTR's will read Mini-DV and DV format tapes, and most will even take Mini-DV tapes without an adaptor, so it became accepted very quickly due to it's compatability. It was relatively easy to migrate from DV to DVCAM, without losing lots of money by still being able to use archival DV format footage for storage, editing and playback. I also think that for many years still, we will be in a digital television world with SD and HD mixed together even after every station and television set in the country goes completely digital. There's just too many things being shot in SD, that will continue to be shot in SD, and HD is a bit slow to come about. I see a co-existence of IMX and other SD formats side-by-side with HD before it all goes hi-def. No one is going to throw away their DVCAMs or Digibetas, or whatever digital format they're shooting on (including myself), after investing thousands of dollars, and throwing away their SD gear and investing thousands more just to go HD.

Sorry. I said IMX in my post but actually I was thinking XDCAM, disc-based. We are approaching the time when disc-based storage will be as cost effective as tape media. So I think the logical evolution for a pro format will go in that direction. In a way, HDV is poor man's IMX. There is this huge problem with GOP structures that makes tape a risky choice for storage, because if you lose a frame it shows up as a very noticable problem in the video, not like with DV where if you lost a frame it was barely noticable. Stupidly, Sony's 'pro' HDV offering, the Z1, does not even have the capability of using DVCAM track pitch and tape speed for a lower error rate in HDV mode. So I speculate that the next step for Sony will probbaly be disk-based, it just makes sense that way.

Re: MPEGIMX
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Jacques Star : I still speak Polish and I visit my relatives back there there once in a while.
-->>>

thank you jack - will send you mail to your mentioned address.

filip

p.s.

following words are in polish - typical sentence, like :"see you soon".

do zobaczenia!

Re: MPEGIMX
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Jacques Star : ...but i'm seriously considering migrating to MPEGIMX sometime in the future... -->>>


i beleive that this is right direction, despite which "type" of imx you will use - tape or blulaser one, the main idea is the same. superior picture.
i may say that together with my friend Maciek Ostoja we made kind of small revolution with IMX here in poland, i am still in love with this camera, it's ease of use, endless menu options and BEAUTIFUL picture.
two years ago when we started with imx in poland NO ONE ever heard about this camera. today you can see LOT of productions shooted on this very camera. with astonishing pictures, as you may espect from polish DOPs. :)

but i must say that this camera works so nice, that is VERY easy to transfer the materials shooted on imx to 35mm. i saw beautiful results, and encourage you to at least TEST the same. you will be shocked, how GOOD this camera looks on the HUGE 35mm screens!
doesn't matter if this is tape or tapeless version.

filip

editing problems
 

I talked to a colleague of mine, who is an HD director of photography. He told me that MPEGIMX will have editing problems due to the MPEG encoding, especially for video edited for broadcast, which usually hava a lot of graphics intensive material added to them. What editing platform do you use? Have you guys ever had any editing problems with the MPEG compression? I use Final Cut Pro HD. Are there software drivers for this format? I heard that it's not a software problem but a codec problem as well.

> He told me that MPEGIMX will have editing problems
> due to the MPEG encoding, especially for video edited for
> broadcast, which usually hava a lot of graphics intensive
> material added to them.

Yes. That makes sense. But you see this incarnation of MPEG is meant to be used as an aquisition format only, you don't use this kind of MPEG as an intermediate codec for postproduction. In Final Cut you would tend to use Pixlet or uncompressed. When you are done, you master to whatever will be your end result format. If it is film, you will try to send the uncompressed online to the scanning company on a hard disk. If DVD, you will master in MPEG, if upscaling to HD, you can compress to the DVCPROHD codec or to HDV (someday).

Of course this is not 25Mbps DV. To handle this, especially if you try uncompressed, will mean a dual G5 and some kind of RAID, preferrably on the local SATA buses.

Often people install 2 same size SATA drives, configure them as a RAID and boot from a third drive, which can be an external Firewire.

Re: editing problems
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Jacques Star : I talked to a colleague of mine, who is an HD director of photography. He told me that MPEGIMX will have editing problems due to the MPEG encoding, especially for video edited for broadcast -->>>

Jacques,

PLEASE - ask your HD director to explail you (or to us) EXactly!!!! what kind of problems you will have!!!

I personally DO NOT BELEIVE in that what he is talking about and i am ready to proof exactly the opposite!

i work with imx for more than two years, we use and rent IMX to many, many people, but i did not receive SINGLE complain about editing problems. i am editor mysef as well. (i'm teaching editing in polish film academy btw.)
we did THOUSENS of edited programs which are broadcasted here in poland. my company has sister companies in denmark, sweden, finlad, germany, holland and norway - and there also NONE complains about editing!!!
i am using either j-3 SDI player (pal and ntsc) for feeding the computer, or J-30, or msw 2000 player/recorder and again - single problem!
i am working both with FCP and AVID systems and again - no problems. this format is frame accurate and for normal user - there is no difference between beta sp, digital beta or IMX editing.

So, REALLY - i beleive i am in the right person in right place to talk about this system and cannot say any bad thing about IMX.
sorry - ask your frend about his discoveries and system he uses, i just don't beleive this!!!

filip

p.s.

sorry if my message is bit more ENERGETIC than usual, but i am talking about FACTS! not gossips!

also - you can check this link - already mentioned somewhere on another thread:

http://pro.sony.com.hk/xdcam_faq3.html


filip

Filip,

Please re-read Ignacio's post : your editing systems will use whatever codec they normally use for compression (or ideally uncompressed) not the MPEG stream.

It doesn't matter what format the recording is in - it could SP betacam, SX, XDCAM, it doesn't matter - the editor converts it to it's own format for editing.

Ignacio explains it perfectly.

Mark

I have been reading about XDCAM. It is a very promising technology, allowing for double head and multi layer operation. The media is not expensive and neither is the laser/lens assembly. It's somewhat related to blu-ray but uses non-magnetic phase-change technology so it is in general terms incompatible, though it would be possible to make a deck that reads and writes both types of media with some kind of caddy for blu-ray. Beats anything else I have seen (except hard disks and solid state, of course) in terms of maximmum bandwidth and shelf life. Soon Sony will be able to write HDCAM to it, and it will be mountable as a volume through Firewire. Right now it could already perfecty handle an enhanced version of HDV at 50 Mbps, as this would be very similar to the way it already works for IMX files. It's not made to be cheap but it is not prohibitive either, and it flies circles around tape-based formats in every possible aspect I can think of.

okay
 

Actually, I was thinking about buying Sony's MSW900, which is an MPEGIMX camera only. It records on IMX videotapes. Would this be a bad route to go? I guess it would probably be better to buy an XDCAM that can record both DVCAM and IMX on a disc, but i'm just afraid of expensive disk and deck costs. It seams like a cheaper alternative to just buy a tape-based IMX camera and a tape based IMX deck. IMX tapes are comparitively cheaper than XDCAM disks. Any opinions?

Sure tape is cheaper the first time. But then you have to buy more and more tape, becasue reusing tape is a no no. With optical discs, you can reuse each cartdridge hundeds of times. Up to a thousand according to Sony.

If you had a large library of SP or other beta format material then yes, it would be economical to get the tape based model because you could use your new IMX deck to play your legacy recordings but Jaccques you've listed a DVCAM as your format so I'd be going for the XDCAM.

Either way you are up for the cost of a dedicated deck.

The ability to jump straight to each clip rather than spooling, even when connected to a SP deck for machine to machine editing, is so cool. Many other cool features too. I wish I could justify one myself, but at least I get to work with them from time to time in TV news.

You won't want anything to do with tape once you've worked with this.

right
 

Thanks for the tip. I'm not saying that i'm going to go and buy an XDCAM tommorrow. I still think that i'm going to be shooting primarily on my DVCAM for at least one or two more years. But, once I expand my freelance business, and decide to buy another camera, an XDCAM will probably be the way that i'll go, as I can keep my DVCAM with XDCAM recording DVCAM for 2 camera shoots, and also being able to record MPEGIMX for those higher-end shoots. As the occasional news shooter, I haven't had the chance to play with XDCAM yet.

Re: right
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Jacques Star : Thanks for the tip. I'm not saying that i'm going to go and buy an XDCAM tommorrow. -->>>

today - tape based MPEG IMX - for now it's simpler and cheaper solution. especially with j-3 or j-30 players. and cassettes are similar price range as professional dvcam cassettes.

tommorow XDCAM - or if you have enough monrey also today:)

filip

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Whittle : Filip,

Please re-read Ignacio's post : your editing systems will use whatever codec they normally use for compression (or ideally uncompressed) not the MPEG stream.
-->>>

mark,

maybe this is because english is not my native thongue, but as i understand jacques' question - he didn't asked about STREAM itself - he asked about EDITING.

did i explain something wrong? who uses stream to edit? i'm not an expert - just user of IMX, so please if you can - or someone else explain me this.

editing with MPEG IMX tapes or XDCAM discs is as easy as with other tape or tapeless solutions. i do not see any problems with it. and, as i said - no problems in editing with this.

but maybe i do not understand the question...

> Either way you are up for the cost of a dedicated deck.

Well perhaps not. Sony has promised file access mode support through Firewire on al XDCAM products. This means it should be possible to pull the files directly from a disk in the camera to an NLE. Ethernet is also possible but I'm not sure if that's a standard feature of the camera. Anyway, this means that --even if it can be somewhat slower-- you can use the Camera as a deck and need not invest in a XCDAM deck. Since the laser head is rated for 7000 hours, I don't see a problem with this.

Hi to all,

Sony XDCAM is indeed the format of the future.
And this because of the following reasons:

FORMATS: 2 choises DVCAM and MPEG IMX in one camera
MPEG IMX (disk or tape based) is a great format, as it has amazing picture quality, color reproduction, and quality is as good (if not better) than digibeta.
Both Avid and Final Cut Pro have codecs to edit IMX wich uses about half the space of Avids 2:1 compression.

DISKS: Tape costs are no issue anymore. About 20 XDCAM disks per camera and you're set (depending on how much you record on one day)
No more capturing, just importing your files.

And it even has more advantages than recording to harddisc. With harddisc you have to wait untill the whole edit is finished, before you can reuse it.
With XDCAM, load your files, format your disk, and you're good to go the next day.
And if you would work with harddiscs, wat are you gonna use to dump your edit on? Harddisc? Are you gonna archive harddiscs on your schelf?
Yes: Dumping back to tape.
XDCAM discs can be used as ruches for the camera, and as media to archive your finiched programs, films, shows, etc...

Xdcam
 

Technically, XDCam is NOT better than Digital Betacam.

Digibeta is still a more data-rich format. MPEGIMX is 4:2:2 at 50 mb/sec, while Digital Betacam is 4:2:2 at 90 mb/sec. Far more information.

I have heard that when viewed on a monitor, it actually sits very close to Digibeta. But, I haven't seen this myself.

IMX quality wise sits somewhere between 25mb/sec Betacam SX and 90mb/sec Digibeta.

Sony developed MPEG IMX to directly compete with Panasonic's DVCPro 50

I do think that it's quite possible that IMX and XDCam could be the next big thing in TV news and network television production by replacing the current king format of these shows, which is BetacamSP

XDCam
 

Not to mention how easy it would be to cut news packages in the field, just plug in the camera to your laptop computer, transfer to hard drive, edit, and dump back into the camera. Then, you could go to the satellite truck, playback out of the camera through the patchbay, and feed your package that way.

I still have to have my reporter log footage and feed raw tape from a machine in the Sat truck. (I recently bought a DSR70 (w/firewire board), which i'm going to get a powebook/Final Cut system for.)

Hmm. With the MPEG compression I don't think the datarates are directly comparable. The main difference between Digibeta and IMX is that IMX uses 8-bit colour while Digibeta is 10-bit.

The FAM transfer on the cameras is great. Even Vegas 6 now accepts both DV25 and IMX MXF files from XDCAM. This makes the camera a good serious alternative to the 570 for non broadcast application.

XDCam
 

Exactly,

I worked on a reality show not too long ago using XDCam.

I also see some DVCam used for broadcast as well. Some in news and some as a b-camera for reality TV shows.

A lot of 20/20 type interviews use a Betacam as an A cam and a DVCam as a reverse angle or, more often as a wide shot.

Yes, I know it is used in lots of broadcast shows.

But what I am saying is that the fact that a lower level editor such as Vegas now allows XDCAM compatibility means that people who make low level corporate, training videos, industrial etc can now use XDCAM properly without having to buy a $2k+ editing system such as Avid.

In other words the XDCAM workflow is now more open to people who may want to upgrade from the likes of the DSR500.

Of course I understand that what I just said may sound slightly silly, ie someone who can buy a 2/3" camera should be able to afford $2k for a NLE.

However I own the 510 and edit on Vegas. I like Vegas. It is cheap, highly capable, and I didn't want to fork out for an Avid system if I could help it. The camera and all its accessories cost enough as it is!

Okay. I read it again and now see that you literally meant projects that were not meant for broadcast.

I think as long as the NLE that is used gets the job done, it shouldn't matter what it is or how much it costs and that idea is being proven every day with these much lower cost systems.

mpeg2..mpeg4..hdv boadcastblues..
 

a couple of months ago in the ct computer magazine published in germany..wrote about the slow start of digital tv..and the first digital tv station to start will send two formats mpeg2 1080 and mpeg4 to around 2008 and then after that only one format.. mpeg4.. i don't know the future but the idea blowing up anything to 35mm film, has no future. it's already here filmkunst 66 on the bleibteustrasse in berlin which is about 40km from the polish border.. a small neighbourhood cinema..invested already in a hd and beamer..and shows films... shooting half the resolution or thinking cinema culture is everywhere...is wishfull thinking..the beamer is the weakest link and it needs all the resolution it can get...

XDCam
 

Personally, I don't think HD will be a mainstream acquisition and broadcasting format, for many, many years, if EVER. It might never become the standard, who knows?

Now digital TV, on the other hand, yes, that will become a standard. BetaSP is the only widely used analog format out there anymore...and look at all the new or relatively new and very good digital formats: Digibeta, DVCPro50, MPEGIMX, etc...

Why is BetaSP still alive and kicking? All the stations have so much invested in BetaSP/SX machines and editing equipment, it would be ridiculously expensive to dump all the equipment and switch to HD, which costs at least twice as much as current SD gear...The same goes with the newer digital formats, if a station invested in MPEGIMX just a couple of years ago, they would want that equipment to last a long, long time...