HD camera workflow questions
 

I'm a standard def shooter who's getting more questions about HD. I've used other peoples HDV and solid state HD format cameras before but am trying to figure out which format to begin investing in.

I own a Canon XL2 and shoot a lot. What I like about DV is that i can hand off tapes to any one who's not technically inclined, or any editor and don't have to worry. Media is cheep, available EVERYWHERE, (in instances when I need a tape for a last minute taping) and its pretty reliable.

I'm confused about the workflow changes that solid state imposes:

How do I get footage to editors easily?

The media is very expensive for P2 cards as well as sony's XDCAM SXS cards. I can't afford to buy the cards and hand them off to people. I do a lot of freelance work for hire work where I hand the tapes off to the client after taping. I can't hand them my precious solid state cards!

I like the fact that i don't have to wait real time to import footage to work on it. Solid state is awesome if I'm the one editing my own footage. But lately i've been getting a lot of shooting work where I don't edit it afterward.

What are the solutions for this?

XDCAM HD. Inexpensive media, straightforward workflow, easy archiving, hands off to client, shoots multiple HD & SD standards and frame rates. My F330 has been making me money for the last year and is just about paid for.

You might also adjust your pricing to include two firewire hard disks for each project: one as the delivery medium and the other for backup.

but my point is: I can't always afford a wireless hard drive to purchase for the gig to download the footage too.

It just seems that the solid state formats aren't very client friendly when it comes to freelance shooting. I'm trying to figure out how i'd deliver video to clients in an ENG type solution after i've shot it.

Any ideas on this?

Your first sentence says it all. Solid state is great when one person has end to end control of the process (and hence the media). In your situation, consumable media has obvious advantages, and XDCAM HD becomes the obvious choice until solid state has come down in price enough to be considered "consumable" in it's own right.

But a lot depends on what philosophies your clients adopt themselves. No point handing over an XDCAM disc if they don't have a player! Maybe they could own P2 or SxS cards, issue a stock to you to shoot, and reclaim them at the end of the day, with or without recorded material?

Maybe i'm in over my head..lol. I shoot a lot of run and gun ENG style stuff. I get hired for a daily rate and shoot then a lot of times hand over the tapes the producer right then and there.

But, if I have solid state, it might give the the excuse to hold to the footage i shot and achive it for my own reel first. But then that still gives the messy problem of how I get the footage to them?

And whats all this about people archiving to DVD? Did i miss something? DVD's cannot hold full HD 1080P footage correct? Or are they using a compression codec to squeeze it on there?

My understanding is that Bluray and HDDVD are the only formats that can contain HD?

There's nothing to stop anyone from burning the raw files onto a DVD data disc - data is data, files are files.

But just as a CD-ROM won't be any use in a CD audio player, these discs wouldn't be able to be played in any set top player. You'd have to reimport the data back in to suitable software.

They would also only hold a limited amount of footage, about 15 minutes of XDCAM-HD and only about 4 1/2 minutes of 100Mbs DVCProHD.

I don't have an XDCAM... so I really don't know, but I have always wondered if you can just load your footage into an editor, then export that footage to tape through an inexpensive HD camera such as an HV30. Is that doable?

It is doable. If you have an editor with certain hardware playback devices, you could play the HD stream and record it onto an HDV camera or deck.

Not really. Or if you did do it, the resulting recording would no longer be XDCAM at 35Mbs, it would have to compress it down to the 25Mbs of HDV.