Archiving EX footage ?
 

Although, SxS memory will be drastically less expensive than P2, a full 32GB load should be around $400 to $450. That is still a bit pricey for archiving purposes. For people already owning XDCAM HD gear, it would be great if Sony would add a feature in the PDZ-1 transfer software, that would allow cloning SxS memory cards to XDCAM HD discs. Especially with the upcoming U1 USB drive, that would be a very convenient and cost effective way to archive footage. I cannot think of any other low cost, reliable and practicle way to archive XDCAM EX footage except may be use blue ray DVDs.

Thierry.

Sorry, but they are going to be a lot more expensive than that. This is from the Sony website: "The 8GB SBP-8 will be priced around €400 and the 16GB SBP-16 around €700." That translates to $550 and $960 for a single card. Archiving footage on a SxS card would cost a fortune and is out of the question.

Just like P2, these cards are not meant to be used for archival purposes. These are not "write once" cards... they are meant to be wiped clean and re-used over and over again. Just like P2.

NIgel Cooper talks a little about archivign in his article here:
http://www.dvuser.co.uk/content.php?CID=171

the PDW-U1 drive comes out later this year and it can write to "Professional Disks" that have a 50-yr archival span (approx..) and are really very secure. 23Gb disks available.

The drive might be fairly expensive, but bound to be less expensive in the USA and also prices should fall a little. Looks like the best solution i'd think.

A major downside to archiving using XDCam disks is that it downsamples from 1920 to 1440 before it writes so you will lose quality.

Maybe Sony will have a different software solution once the camera is out give the fact that the sensor is 1920.

In my opinion, I think it's likely that a US streetprice for a SxS 16Gb card will be somewhere in the region of US$600.

I would use 35gb Iomega REV disks. The are fast and cheap ($25 for newies on ebay) and will perfectly fit two 16gb SiS cards.

Not a bad idea. As they don't contain any electronic parts (just platters) they are not suseptible to mechanical failure, just like XDCAM disks. But unlike XDCAM they are a pure file system that you just copy files to.

You are right about this. I was researching prices on the web but did not know that the camera uses SxS Pro memory which is apparently quite more expensive.

Thierry.

Sony most likely will be suggesting blu-ray for archival...

the dual layer Blu-ray disks are 50gb and a read write isn't too expensive now and prices are dropping...

I found some 25gb read writes the other day for $12, snagged a few of them.

How fast can you write to blu-ray?

Thierry.

Sony suggests Professional Disc for archival. Much more robust than straight blu-ray discs.

-gb-

So, would you just copy to ProDisc via HD-SDI or is there a way to do "file copy" like it is now possible when using the PDZ-1 utility connected to two XDCAM decks or cameras? The problem with a straight copy to HD-SDI is that you would loose all clip info and wil not be able to re-import them when using the clip-reimport feature in applications such as AVID or Vegas.

Thierry.

File copy would be the way to do it. HDSDI takes all file based options off the table as you know. HDSDI is mainly intended to facilitate access to the live uncompressed data coming from the camera head.

-gb-

SxS = Express Card
 

Sony are not the only company producing this card and it seems to me that like any format the more people using it the cheaper it will become. As you know the Express card has been adopted by Apple, Sony etc. So we have an army of laptop users to start the Express card ball rolling and when we get an influx of Sony XDCAM EX users buying the cards albeit Sony cards at first this will drive prices down and the best of all Panasonic have now reduced P2 cards and will be running scared of this new technology plus the sexy look of the EX camera so I can predict a P2 v EX card/equipment war. Why do you have a problem with archiving anyway hard drive space is now so low that you can keep all your footage on external drives, I have been doing this for the last 7 years and the only drives to give me problems have been Lacie drives running at FW800. I no longer use FW800. Lets be honest the XDCAM technology is relatively new and is no more robust than an well named/made external drive in fact the external drive has been proved to work far longer than Sony's optical version...50 years is someone's pipe dream...XDCAM will be like Betamax is now in 50 years time.

Sure, hard drive have became very reliable but I still wouldn't put en expensive production on the line by archiving all the raw footage on hard drive unless you use two sets of drive maybe.

I am waiting to see how XDCAM EX to XDCAM HD archiving works. An EX camera coupled with the new U1 USB XDCAM drive could be a very dood solution for archiving.

Thierry.

Back-ups
 

You have 2 options when you run with card only technology it's the same mindset as with professional digital photography you back up onto 2 separate drives, Sony's XDCAM drive is still a disk inside a shell and if you are forced to run with USB2 to transfer it will not be quick. The slowest link in my download chain is FW400 which is 2x faster than USB2. I mainly use SATA drives to park my footage onto. It takes me 16mins to transfer 2 hours of footage from my Firestore (FW400) to my MacPro.

As this time, it is less an issue of USB2 vs. FW than the write speed of the XDCAM device. The first generation of XDCAM HD decks and cameras could theoratically write at 75mbps but in reality, it is more around 60mpbs or even less. I am told the new PDW-U1 XDCAM drive is about twice as fast so archiving with it may just be a good scheme.

Thierry.

In theory USB2 is faster than FW400 (480Mbps vs 400Mbps). Most USB2 components use cheap controllers however so throughput never approach's theoretical capabilities. I think Sony may approach this XDCAM USB drive a bit different though so USB2 is unlikely to be a bottleneck for it

...and presumably the non-guaranteed-constant throughput of USB2 won't matter with EX backup/capture, as it's really just file transfers (unlike capturing moving tape, where the throughput rate has to be guaranteed, hence the need for Firewire).

USB 2.0 has a higher burst transfer speed but FW400 has a higher sustained transfer speed. I think the speed of the laser on the drive itself is going to be the limiting factor though, not the I/O between the drive and the computer.


-A

We were demoing the U1 at IBC and it was tranfering at a little over 3 times real time for 35Mb footage. This makes it a little faster than my camera which is normally around 2.5 x real time and gives a real world transfer speed of about 90Mb/sec (given than 35Mb footage is often under 35Mb/sec).

Archive on discs
 

I have a question regarding archival on hds. I would very much like to do the following: dump the SxS-Cards on RAID-1 (mirrored) HDs, then shelve one of them and – during editing – use the other one as single disc (or in JBOD-mode in the same enclosure). Is this possible? Do HDs from a RAID-1 configuration work as single discs?

Why not just put it on two separate hard drives, if that is how you intend to use them? (You still get the security from two physically separate drives. I don't think you can just separate RAIDed drives like that.)

Because then you would have to copy the files from one HD to the other. This takes time.