XD Cam HD is an interim format?
 

I just finished reading an article in the current Videography magazine concerning the BBC and the equipment they use now and will be using in the future.

What was interesting is one of the BBC producers/managers called XD Cam HD an interim format.

From the articles that I've read and most of the people that I've talked to XD Cam is poised to become a de facto standard similar to betamax.

This particular producer felt that Panasonic and its P2 option was the future of video production.

What do you guys and gals think?

Given the increasing rate at which technology changes in this market, all video formats these days are interim formats.

Based on discussions here and elsewhere recently and hints of coming products from manufacturers, I wouldn't place bets on either XDCAM HD or P2/DVCProHD becoming the future of video production. Although I've argued otherwise at times, it looks like variants of AVC are in a better position to sweep the industry for many purposes, depending on how things play out in the next few years.

In particular, if Panasonic delivers on their proposal to record AVC in an intraframe format to standard flash memory cards at moderate bit rates between those of HDV and DVCProHD, that could give both of those formats a run for our money. (And note that's not using P2 cards for recording.) Meanwhile, if consumers migrate toward AVC/MPEG4 as the most useful compromise between quality and bandwidth for recording and sharing video, that could make it the 'de facto standard' for consumer purposes in the internet era. And with AVC-intra reportedly scalable to very high quality at higher bit rates, that could give other high-end HD formats trouble depending on the details and pricing at that level.

I don't see any other codec trending so neatly toward omnipresence unless something changes soon, so kudos to those who were saying a year or more ago that AVC is probably the future. I think we're still at least 2-3 years from seeing that come to full fruition, but we should have a better idea by then if it's going to work.

XDCAM-HD can't take over without much cheaper camera options, and P2 won't take over because the price of the cards can't compete with mainstream flash memory. HDV can't take over because it's not good enough to satisfy high-end users, and DVCProHD is probably doomed once AVC-intra is shipping. Tape will give way to solid state recording eventually even though tape has some advantages, and sharing video over the internet is going to drive a lot of trends. Time will tell...

Most of us in here have spent over $30k on XDCAM HD. What do you suppose we're gonna tell you!?

Also, what do you think the X in XDCAM is for?

Is XDCAM HD an interim format? ... well that would depend on who you asked.

Define "interim".

Whether any format is interim probably depends, to a great extent, on rate of adoption of the format and thereafter whether the format engenders long term loyalty.

Obviously Sony do not see it as an interim format by any means, and I dare say they're hoping that others don't either!

cheers
Andy

For XDcam is the perfect format. Built in archiving i.e no need to back up from P2 cards. Proxy files - hopefully FCP will support that soon and good non-linear workflow. The cost of the discs are quite reasonable and the prices are coming down further. The format seems very robust and reliable plus it's very good value for money.

The only questions being asked are Mpeg 2 compression and no 2/3rd inch chips yet. Well the 2/3rd cameras are coming and I would imagine the codecs will also possibly be upgraded in the future via firmware.

Seems future proof to me.

P2 is a great theory but doesn't work for a lot of people in practice.

The idea of any contemporary format being an "interim" format seems like a belief system hangover to the decade long reign when Beta SP was the only viable broadcastable format (anyone remember Panasonic MII?).

But there's so much differentiation in the market now and camera manufacturers (including Sony) have produced different cameras and different formats to suit different people.

I don't think P2 or XDCAM HD are actually locked a winner takes all battle. These different formats suit different people.

You also need to keep in mind that P2 and XDCAM aren't formats. They are a type of storage media. P2 can store several codecs as can XDCAM discs.

You could very well see XDCAM discs holding newer and better codecs in 3 to 5 years. Some of those upgrades are coming sooner than later. And Panasonic is writing DVCPRO HD to P2 media at the moment, but AVC-I is coming down the pipeline and will store on the same P2 cards.

So both media types that we're talking about here have a lot of future potential. Sony has also indicated that any future XDCAM offerings will be backwards compatible, at least for playback of earlier generation discs.

By NAB we should have more official information.

-gb-

I've heard rumours that Sony is a bit out of favour at the moment in the BBC. Regardless of that, Sony seem to be investing in the optical disk as a recording medium and I wouldn't be surprised if they have a wavelet compression format available on the 2/3" CCD XDCAM HD camera that's supposed to be in the pipeline.

Talk to any engineer and they will moan and groan about AVC and it's very poor multi-generation performance, far worse than MPEG 2. It is very efficient but the currently available AVC codecs produce a multitude of very difficult to hide artifacts when decoding or converting to other standards. Yes technology is moving along rapidly and standards will get updated and changed far more quickly than they used to.
XDCAM HD will be around for the next few years in one form or another. Lets face it it can record a damn good image on a cheap medium. It has a reliable well supported, tried and tested workflow and uses well proven compression technology that most software companies know how to work with. The decks and cameras have a good feature set. What more do you want?

As far as media types are concerned, I don't see how P2 can thrive now that standard flash memory offers similar functionality and performance at a significantly lower price. And XDCAM discs won't get very far either if Sony doesn't start putting them in more affordable cameras, which they don't seem to be inclined to do. So if the price of flash memory cards (per GB) continues to plummet it makes sense for that to become the standard video recording medium of the future, as it has already done for photography.

Extrapolating the above considerations, one could say that all current video formats are interim until we have a widely accepted HD recording codec which works on mass-produced memory cards. AVCHD is the first to market which fits that description but is bit-starved for professional purposes, and is currently difficult to edit. DVCProHD could be adapted to become a mainstream format but Panasonic doesn't seem to be interested in making that happen, and same for XDCAM HD. As things stand today the convergence appears to be heading toward AVC for a codec (interframe for consumers and intraframe for professionals), with flash memory as the standard media once prices drop to acceptable levels. It may take a few more years yet for this to become a fully developed trend, but once we get there the transition could be rapid as it has been for still cameras.

P.S. On the other hand, we could see a split develop if Panasonic backs AVC for professional use while Sony adapts XDCAM HD to record on standard flash memory cards. Then you'd have a choice between HDV and AVCHD at the low end and AVC-intra or XDCAM HD for more advanced purposes. Essentially that's a choice between MPEG2 or MPEG4 based codecs for recording, with MPEG2 being more manageable for now and MPEG4 growing in popularity over time.

P2 is much, much more than a standard flash memory card which is why it's so expensive. It's 4 ZERO DEFECT SPEC memory chips in a RAID configuration with a hardware raid controller built into the P2 card.

XDCAM doesn't need to go into 'lower cost' cameras. That's not the target market for that medium. They want broadcast and indie film makers using it. I mean, look at the size of the discs. They won't fit in a handycam body style.

Both P2 and XDCAM are media types designed to be robust enough to handle the rigors and demands of middle to upper end productions. There will be plenty of life in XDCAM. CBS and all their O&O stations already have or or getting XDCAM. And those folks do not change with the latest craze because the bean counters want to milk every last dollar of ROI they can. Even as we speak, the most widely used ENG format is BetaSP, an analog format that is over 10 years old. With at least one major US network going all XDCAM, you can bet it's going to be around for awhile.

-gb-

Very true, Alister. I and at least one other member of the forum have seen the proof up close. I've seen what happens to AVC-I after 5 generations and it's not pretty.

-gb-

Factually all true. But is that complexity now NECESSARY? And with Infinity now proving that broadcast quality video can be recorded to a Compact Flash card, the answer must be no, no matter how much Panasonic would like us to believe otherwise. Or at least, I don't believe it's worth the huge difference in cost/GB for the vast majority of users.

And defects on the chip do not necessarily mean defects in the data, my understanding is that they are electronically 'isolated' - good data written and read around them. P2 was an ingenious solution to a problem when first designed, but ahead of it's time. Now it just seems like an unnecessarily complicated (and very expensive) solution, that has been superceded by improvements in standard flash memory, as Kevin says. Have you ever heard a professional stills photographer complain about Compact Flash?

At the moment, if you want solid state, it has to be P2. When Infinity comes to market, all that changes. The expectation is that Sony and JVC will eventually come up with their own solid state systems, and they are very likely to more mirror what GV are doing than Panasonic.
In use, yes, but the other factor is annual sales, which is what obviously matters to manufacturers. And here my suspicion is that it won't have high sales for as many years as formats such as BetaSP, DigiBeta or DVCAM. In which sense the tag 'interim' has validity.

Understood, and that's why P2 will remain an obscure specialty item as inexpensive standard flash memory overtakes it for video acquisition purposes. It may still be used for high-end purposes requiring maximum bandwidth and reliability, but everyone who can is going to move away from it. Even Panasonic is reportedly proposing to use standard flash memory in future AVC-intra cameras.

If so then XDCAM will also remain an obscure specialty item as inexpensive standard flash memory overtakes it for video acquisition purposes. That's the whole point here: neither P2 nor XDCAM can do what standard flash memory is poised to do, which is become the de facto standard recording medium for most videography purposes. P2 pointed the way but can't compete on cost.

And I still see VHS-C tapes for sale for those who have camcorders using that format, but the format is effectively obsolete. In any case, the notion that XDCAM HD is an interim format which will be displaced by P2/DVCProHD is almost certainly wrong, since the latter is no more viable in the long run.

The Infinity uses Rev Pro, which is based on a 2.5" hard drive, not flash memory. Like the XDCAM disks, these are reusable and you can record various formats as required.

No doubt broadcast cameras will use flash memory, however, it remains to be seen if they'll use consumer memory cards. At present the trend is towards high data rates for HD, which would point to needing larger memory storage than most consumers require, plus higher quality control.

Having just checked the Infinity does take flash memory, although Thompson seem to be pushing the Rev Pro more. Certainly, the cost advantage and capacity is currently with the Rev Pro.

My opinion is that the beauty of the Infinity (at least in concept) is that it is EITHER a Compact Flash camera OR a RevPro camera, depending on circumstance. CF has the solid state advantages of P2 (at a much lower price), whilst RevPro has the consumable media advantages of XDCAM. Use whichever is most appropiate for the job. Or maybe record to both at the same time - the CF version becomes the instantly available recording, the RevPro is the zero effort archive.

But the advantage of XDCAM is that it is available NOW. Infinity is still a couple of months away, though apparently the delay was due to a change of chip. I believe it will now ship with a 1920x1080 CMOS chip. And hence get over some of the power/weight issues which have led to some criticism.

It's also worth mentioning that the max size currently available for P2 is only 8GB, compared to 16GB for Compact Flash. Hopefully RevPro will have a max capacity of 70GB by launch, in this case well up from the max of XDCAM.

Hmm...

I don't buy the flash argument. The thing is with XDCAM is that it's a convenient medium for both shooting and long term storage, and it's random-access nature makes it a lot more appealing than DV tape, obviously.

Flash on the other hand is a superb short-term medium, but long term? I dunno. How many stills photographers keep their shots stored on flash? None. They all transfer them to optical media for long-term storage. Which begs the question; if you can record direct to the longer term medium, why bother with the middle-guy? Who wants to spend their evenings moving from one storage media to another when you can just eject the disk and pop it straight on the shelf?

Unless flash gets really cheap - like £5 or less for 20+ Gb, and we start treating it as "disposable" media, I don't see it taking over. Nor do I see XDCAM domainating in it's current format, 23Gb just isn't enough, and the format sill a little too proprietary - but what we can say with certainly is that tape is all but dead (sorry for saying that guys!); the future is going to be a random access device of some description.

Personally, I'd put my bet on optical of some kind, but I think both flash and hard disk drives will help to push the boundary.

[QUOTE=David Heath]My opinion is that the beauty of the Infinity (at least in concept) is that it is EITHER a Compact Flash camera OR a RevPro camera, depending on circumstance. CF has the solid state advantages of P2 (at a much lower price), whilst RevPro has the consumable media advantages of XDCAM. Use whichever is most appropiate for the job. Or maybe record to both at the same time - the CF version becomes the instantly available recording, the RevPro is the zero effort archive.

QUOTE]

Both have their advantages, although my problem with the compact flash cards is the size. They're too small, you can hardly write the contents on the outside, which in a large organisation with large amounts of recording media going through is vital. There are lots of circumstances in which the recording has to be handed on, rather than downloaded on location.

A credit card sized flash memory would be much handier and also easier to find on the desks covered in files and papers that are commonly found in production and newsrooms. Hmmmm... whatever happened to the paperless office?

Fair point, but the same could be said of DVCAM tapes which I and many others routinely use, and I believe the recommendation is that nothing is ever physically written on a P2 card itself anyway. (And certainly no labels stuck on!) Mini DVCAM comes in a somewhat outsized box compared to mini DV, which I find gives enough space for writing, whilst still being pocketable. Exactly the same could be applied to CF.

Hope they allow you to put a number or letter on each P2, just as on film magazines. Although, with the current prices you'd want to download rather than risk getting a P2 lost inside post production at a broadcaster.

Memory Sticks allow you to write on them, so it shouldn't be a problem if the flash memory is designed to take a label. If they plan to replace tape etc., where it gets physically handed around it's something they'll have to consider. Also, you often don't have time to download on location.

For data integrity..yes. And that photographer was me. I lost some wedding pics to a corrupted compact flash card some years ago. Besides, until recently, the larger capacity CF cards were using a microdrive and weren't really solid state. Just recently, I had a 256 mb sd card die when saving a corrected image back to the reader. And it completely died, won't format or anything. Fortunately, I had just dumped the contents of the card to the PC and didn't lose anything.

Don't get me wrong, I support XDCAM over P2 mainly because of cost. But I feel that XDCAM will be here for awhile. It will evolve over time, but to me it's the right combination of factors including price, integrity (shelf life estimate of 50 years), length of record time (another P2 hindrance IMHO), etc.

Hmm, I guess you have to define 'interim' then because I can almost assure you that once a major network implements the necessary infrastructure to support a given format, they won't be changing for awhile. Large network operations can't react to the latest and greatest like the small guys can.

In one sense, all formats are 'interim' because they will be supplanted at some point. But if XDCAM goes 7 to 10 years, that will be plenty for folks to get a good ROI, given the lower cost of newer cameras and decks. And that will make the freelancers who supply the networks very happy.

In the end, we'll all just have to wait and see. None of us really knows for sure.

I won't dispute that, but it's not really the argument. In the case of such as Beta or DVCAM, networks have adopted it at a rate of x networks per year for a period of maybe 10 years or more as they come to their natural replacement cycle. Result: 10x networks using that format.

If we assume that x networks now switch to XDCAM per year, but that the trend only lasts for 2-3 years before "Format X" comes along and everybody starts to go for that, the total number using it is then only 2x or 3x. If you only work for one client, this is largely irrelevant (you use what they want), but if you work for many it becomes very relevant.

Hence the distinction between a format in use, and a format achieving high current sales. Beta still meets the first distinction, but definately not the second.

Lots of Betacam kit out there (those cameras last a long time), especially on high end productions. Also, HDCAM is a development of Betacam and those cameras selling often as HD upgrades to Betacam kit. However, I don't think you could ever regard Betacam as a mass market product, it was always a professional format intended for use by broadcasters.

At the moment there is a state of flux regarding the formats, although so far as delivery to broadcasters is concerned Digibeta and HDCam seem to be pretty common standards.