Long term storage w/o Blue Ray? Is this a solution?

[Leonard Levy]

How fast is the record time to DLT tape say per Gig?

[Sergio Perez]

The first Blue Ray recorders from Pioneer are already on sale at Hong-Kong at retail price of 1000 USD.

TDK blu-ray discs sell for 200HKD each (20 gb)

I'm going to check out my friends drive in a couple of days. I'll probably order one myself! I'm not sure where I'll play back the videos, tough... I really wanted to see HD footage on a HDTV, and not on a computer monitor or something connected to my PC...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by Sergio Perez

The first Blue Ray recorders from Pioneer are already on sale at Hong-Kong at retail price of 1000 USD.

Be careful with those drives... There are a few that keep showing up on eBay and in various markets in Japan too. However, currently available BluRay and HD-DVD drives/players are all using beta firmware as the official release is still March 27 for HD-DVD and May 24 for BluRay. Sony and Samsung have both hinted that these grey market players will be incompatible with official release movie titles.

I'm going to check out my friends drive in a couple of days. I'll probably order one myself! I'm not sure where I'll play back the videos, tough... I really wanted to see HD footage on a HDTV, and not on a computer monitor or something connected to my PC...

For a player, I'm going to wait until the Samsung, LG and Marantz dual-format players go on sale. That should be sometime this summer and then I don't have to play the format game with my home theatre. As for computer drives, I already have a Toshiba HD-DVD drive for my PC on order and should have it on the 27th. I will also pick up a BluRay drive in May as I plan to be able to offer content on both types of media.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by Leonard Levy

How fast is the record time to DLT tape say per Gig?

This depends on the type of tape, the drive and the host interface. Some newer tape systems like LTO-3 can deliver up to 80MB/s (640Mbps)! More common tape systems like the LTO-2, VXA-2, SDLT-3 hover between 10 and 25 MB/s. Not too bad, either way. ...That's about a minute per GB... give or take 20 seconds.

For a viable HVX workflow, you wouldn't back up the P2 directly to tape anyway. You would ingest the P2 onto your workstation that has a fault-tolerant storage system itself in the form of RAID 1, 3 or 5. Transfers to tape would be done automatically by the system during off-hours... Nightly backups is not a bad idea.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe

Now here's the kicker... Another box of $25 VXA-2 tapes will cost about $550 and will provide storage for 166.6 hours of 720pn24. To shoot that same amount of time to miniDV tape will cost about $668 using $4 tapes. So VXA-2 is about $0.70 per hour cheaper than DV tape in terms of video storage costs.

But again, this is comparing archiving costs to capture costs, so it's not really a meaningful comparison. For capture costs you have ~$70/minute for P2 cards at 720/24pn or roughly $10/minute for a P2 Firestore at the same bandwidth, compared to $4/hour for DV/HDV tape or $4/minute for a DV/HDV Firestore. If you use DTEs to capture then DV/HDV will always be cheaper than the HVX200; if you compare P2 cards to miniDV tape it's almost 18 hours of tape for each minute of P2 capacity. So just one hour's worth of P2 cards at minimum bandwidth would cost as much as 1000+ hours of miniDV tape, which is several years' worth for some of us.

For archiving costs, DV and HDV will be cheaper for any given solution using the same process proposed for footage from the HVX200, hence further off-setting the cost of miniDV tapes. Add it all up and HDV is clearly cheaper both initially and in the long run.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

But again, this is comparing archiving costs to capture costs, so it's not really a meaningful comparison. For capture costs you have ~$70/minute for P2 cards at 720/24pn or roughly $10/minute for a P2 Firestore at the same bandwidth, compared to $4/hour for DV/HDV tape or $4/minute for a DV/HDV Firestore. If you use DTEs to capture then DV/HDV will always be cheaper than the HVX200; if you compare P2 cards to miniDV tape it's almost 18 hours of tape for each minute of P2 capacity. So just one hour's worth of P2 cards at minimum bandwidth would cost as much as 1000+ hours of miniDV tape, which is several years' worth for some of us.

Well, we were discussing long-term storage / archival solutions. So I don't see how you can say my comparison was not really meaningful? Also, your statement above makes absolutely no sense in regards to P2 when properly implemented. In general, people don't re-use DV tapes. They shoot, they capture, they store the tape as their master archive, end of story. With P2 an archive solution is necessary since P2 gets re-used over, and over, and over, and over again... Several years ago, people were whining about all these same issues with film vs. digital cameras. Trying to compare the cost per minute capability of P2 is an exercise in futility. If I use my 2 8GB cards to capture 400 minutes of video over the next 10 days, my cost per minute is about $7/minute... If I do 4000 minutes with these cards, then my cost is $0.7 per minute. So I don't get what you're trying to say... The $70/minute only applies to 8GB cards figured at MSRP and only if we use them once and then use them for the master archive, or simply throw them away.

The best way to look at the HVX and P2 is to consider P2 an extension of the camera - not a media component like DV tape. Increasing your P2 capacity is like increasing the RAM in your computer whereas buying DV tape would be like buying DVD-R discs. If you need more capture time or video workspace in your camera, you increase the RAM with larger P2 cards and sell your old ones...

Consider these two camera configurations and costs:

1 > HVX200, 2x8GB P2 cards, VXA-2 FireWire Tape System - $10,400

2> Canon XLH1 HDV- $9K

100 hours of video archival ability 720pn24 HVX / 24F XLH1:

Config #1 - 12 * VXA-2 tapes @ $22 = $264

Config #2 - 100 * DV tapes (cheap crappy ones) @ $2.75 = $275.

Granted, this doesn't take certain workflow considerations into account, but many of us already have the hardware needed to rotate P2 cards on a shoot (decent notebook PC/Mac or even a desktop system in-studio or whatever). If the HVX200 will work for your projects (managing the P2 workflow is workable or even complementary), then to say it's more expensive to shoot P2 than HDV is questionable. If considering the HVX200 to be a $10K HD camera is not too your tastes or budget, then buy an HD100 and be happy. HD100s are about $4600 now and you can shoot HDV all day long on $1.79 a piece DV tapes you buy at Wal-Mart. And considering these last few numbers, you're right, HDV is a lot cheaper.

Seriously, we can all play with the number so many ways... Either the HVX200 will work for you or it won't. Right tool for the right job, ya know... If my bread and butter was shooting live events, I wouldn't buy an HVX200 as my primary camera (at least not yet).

For archiving costs, DV and HDV will be cheaper for any given solution using the same process proposed for footage from the HVX200, hence further off-setting the cost of miniDV tapes. Add it all up and HDV is clearly cheaper both initially and in the long run.

I have added it up - see above posts and this one as well. If you want a much more detailed accounting showing a few different archival solutions, I can probably put something together over the next few days when I find time. But I can show you situations where DV/HDV actually becomes more expensive. Think large volumes of video. Just as what the numbers start to show in my brief accounting of the VXA-2 tape solution a few posts back and here in this post.

The HVX200 with P2 and DVCPROHD may not work for you and I think you have made it obvious that it won't. But I think you're missing the fact that it will work for a lot of people, hence the high demand and large numbers of pre-orders. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by championing the "cost efficeincies" of HDV vs. P2. Thus far you haven't shown that you really have a true understanding of how P2 works or what it can offer over HDV. The extended features such as the metadata can be priceless if you're transfering footage over to a post-production crew and it can be used for several other purposes ranging from duplicating camera settings, DP notes, database cataloging, etc..

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by championing the "cost efficeincies" of HDV vs. P2.

The whole point of this particular thread was to discuss whether the HVX200 can be operated as cost-effectively as HDV. I've shown why that's not possible in most typical scenarios, and you haven't shown otherwise except in your unique case where you've already paid for some of the required equipment. (So you aren't fully accounting for the total cost.) I've also said repeatedly that I think the HVX200 is a fine camera for people who can make it work for them, and I have no problem with that.

Recapping on the cost issue: once footage is in your editing setup DV and HDV will inherently be cheaper to use and archive because they're lower bandwidth for a given amount of footage, using whatever process you propose to use for DVCProHD storage. So the cost of tape is only an issue at the front end, where it logically needs to get compared to the cost of recording on the HVX200. If you buy three 8 GB P2 cards at $1400 each that's $4200, or enough to buy 1000+ good-quality miniDV tapes. If you buy DTE drives for the HVX200, you can buy more DTE capacity for HDV for the same price. Any way you slice it, it's more expensive to buy and operate an HVX200 than commonly used HDV options.

Thus far you haven't shown that you really have a true understanding of how P2 works or what it can offer over HDV. The extended features such as the metadata can be priceless if you're transfering footage over to a post-production crew and it can be used for several other purposes ranging from duplicating camera settings, DP notes, database cataloging, etc..

Again, that isn't what we're discussing here. I agree that the HVX200 is a good camera with a lot of potential, but cost-wise it simply isn't competitive with HDV. The camera costs more (except compared to the XLH1), the recording memory costs more, and the archiving in your editing setup costs more.

Consider these two camera configurations and costs:

1 > HVX200, 3x8GB P2 cards, P2 Store drive or laptop with external hard drive, VXA-2 FireWire Tape System - $___

2> Sony Z1U, 1000 miniDV tapes, VXA-2 FireWire Tape System - $___

Those are realistic setups for anything involving more than a few minutes of shooting time out in the field. But then most people won't buy 1000 tapes up front, so option 2 is clearly cheaper initially -- enough so to allow for buying a second HDV camera if necessary.

[Ashley Cooper]

Not that it really matters, but my intension for starting this thread was just to engender a general discussion on this subject. Eventually, comparison to HDV have to come up as that's the big competitor. If you ever saw the the DVD Panasonic put out to promote the HVX, you'd see how much of a point they made in comparing their product to HDV options.
Kevin, I'm still a little uncertain about your numbers though. I get about $1000 for 100 hours of 720p24 (250 gig HD ~ $100 x 10 = $1000). There's always shipping, etc. There also the cost of the TrayDock at $175. The real bummer is if you backed up everything in case of hard drive failure, which would mean another $1000.
When you say "full-bandwidth DVCProHD" do you mean 720p60? Once you throw that in it gets really hard to make any comparisons as HDV can't do variable frame rates. I know you don't care for the comparison to begin with though. Now, I love slow motion, but wouldn't you think a figure that counted in around 10% slow motion would be a little more helpful here? Also, what about overcranking? Honestly, I'm asking b/c I don't know, but if I understand correctly, that would work like overcranking but in reverse so you'd actually save hard drive space. Again, not sure about this though. Anyway you count it though, I'm sure you're right and that HDV is a cheaper route.
I actually like this discussion. Some ways to look at things and options that I did not know about.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Ashley Cooper

I'm still a little uncertain about your numbers though. I get about $1000 for 100 hours of 720p24 (250 gig HD ~ $100 x 10 = $1000). There's always shipping, etc. There also the cost of the TrayDock at $175. The real bummer is if you backed up everything in case of hard drive failure, which would mean another $1000.

720p24n is 40 Mbps or 5 MB/sec or 18 GB/hour, so a 250 GB hard drive formatted to ~245 GB would give you 13.6 hours of storage. Shoot 720p30n and that drops to under 11 hours. Shoot 720p60 or 1080p30 and it drops to 5.4 hours per drive, and you would need a duplicate if you wanted to ensure the security of that data. That's as much as $40 to archive one hour of HVX200 footage with a secure backup, compared to about $10 per hour to archive DV or HDV footage using the same approach. But taking the lower case of using 720p24n it works out to about $14/hour of footage compared to $10/hour for DV/HDV, and that cost difference would pay for an hour's worth of miniDV tape.

So the best case scenario is that it costs the same to shoot 720p24n and make two archival copies as it does to shoot DV/HDV with two archival copies plus the original master tape backup. I suppose that's not bad, but it's leaping through a lot of hoops to make the HVX200 look cost-effective.

When you say "full-bandwidth DVCProHD" do you mean 720p60? Once you throw that in it gets really hard to make any comparisons as HDV can't do variable frame rates. I know you don't care for the comparison to begin with though.

Absolutely the ability of the HVX200 to do different frame rates is an impressive feature, and when you start talking about that then cost may not be the most important consideration. That's why I said earlier it doesn't really make sense for now to compare the HVX200 to HDV; better to compare it to the cost of other solutions for shooting DVCProHD. When the HVX200A is selling for under $5K and I can buy 32 GB P2 cards for, say, $250 each, then we can discuss that being a cost-effective alternative to HDV. That's at least 3-5 years away based on current trends.