Is Sony's EX the death nell for tape...
 

You only have to look at digital photography to see the future of video tape. I remember 5 years ago being told that digital (Still cams) are good but it will never replace 35mm film...The same will happen to tape and I for one will not miss tape.
Tape plus points... Affordable, storable, hard copy of your work (Archive ?)

Tape minus points... damaged easily, causes head clogging, temperature & weather dependent, far to many formats.

Try changing tape in a dusty environment...not recomended, some one comes to me with Betacam or M2 (Older formats) even Hi8mm and you are scupperd, unless you have retained one of the playback machines for the aforementioned tape format. Tape both professional and domestic has been riddled with formats to such an extent that 10 years down the line some poor video operator will presented with tape he or she cannot play.

Tape = format = dedicated playback machine.

We have all the video manufacturers to thank for this mess, it may be affordable and good for having a hard copy of your work but archiving it most certainly is not, I have 2 boxes in my attic with Hi band Umatic tapes, Hi8mm tapes and Betamax tapes and I do not have a working playback machine to see any of this material, so it may as well not exist and 10 years from now DV will be in a similar boat. My advice is archive all your tape today because you won't be able to access it tomorrow.
Just before you attack me with the all the cons for solid state...at least you don't need to buy a £600 upwards player to view/transfer solid state.

No, the EX will not be the death of tape.

Clearly you are not yet familiar with our very strict policy against personal attacks.

P2 was not the death of tape. Neither will EX be the death of tape.

True,
but I have the feeling the sales are going to be dramactically reduced over the next 5 years, if not sooner. At least in the prosumer/consumer market.

oh geeeez

Tape is not going anywhere for many more years to come. If it were that easy I think there are many of us here who would have killed of 3/4" decades ago.

Heck, I can still get 2" tapes played back. The bigger question is why does even knowing about 2" tape make me feel ancient when I come into the forum, lol.

K

I would think tape based formats will have almost died in the professional market within the next 10 years apart for being in the archives. Even the consumer market will be either using discs or flash cards of some sort mainly by then. 10 years ago the VHS market was vibrant. Nobody I know (including the oldies) ever buys or records onto VHS these days.

Granted, it's somewhat apples and oranges, but it was not that long ago I remember many saying the same thing about DVD....
Well, we know the rest of that story.

Again, I agree - maybe not in the near future for pro stuff, but prosumer/consumer is a different story.

Last year (and I bet nothing has changed) the production house I worked at got a ton of jobs where we finished out to VHS, or were we dubbed 100's of VHS tapes at a time.

Tape is on it's way out in some respects, sure. But lets not forget about all those prod/post houses that have invested heavily in HDcam and DVCPro decks over the last few years. They will kick and scream to keep tape around due to their large investments in it.

Nope, not a death knell for tape. It is another step away from tape in terms of acquisition, but for post and long term storage things are much less clear.


-A

If you love Fawlty Towers then you will recognise this famous phrase from the guy "from Barcelona".....

E V E N N N T U A A A L L L Y Y Y Y Y Y

When was the last time any of you bought a Kodak 35mm film
 

Personally I have not bought a 35mm film in over 7 years... professionally I have not produced any VHS copies for the last 2.5 years and have de-rigged my VHS dupe bank 15 months ago. I use P2, DV mini tape and 2 FS4 recorders so in my small operation my use of DV tape is less than 50% and that's only for back up. If after playing with a Sony EX camera in October I decide to finalize my order I will no longer produce any video work with tape.
P2 was never going to be the death nell for tape but it has had a higher demand than even Panasonic were expecting. Hence Sony who have had a good uptake of XDCAM partly due to the many broadcasters and those of you who can't see past the name Sony, don't get me wrong Sony kit is 1st class but personally I prefer to keep my options opened. You can bet if Sony get a good feedback from the EX we will see the SxS card being adopted throughout the rest of their Pro range with cameras that take 4-6 cards etc. Don't think JVC and Canon are not hot on Sonys heels with their own version of tapeless cameras and if they want a tip from me they should adopt the express card and standardize the video industry for once in it's life.
You only have to see the Pro 35mm Digital uptake to see the future of tape and those of you who poo poo this have rose coloured spectacles.

I bought 35mm film last week.

On the consumer end tape will find its way off into the sunset on a more rapid path.

On the pro end, especially on the post side, tape is going to be around for a much longer time. There is a lot of long form production which is still going to take place on tape not to mention huge tape libraries that are not about to get transferred over to hard drive,.

K

Tape will be with us for a very, very long time, just not the kind of tape most are thinking of. Tape still has a bright future in a purely digital world except here I'm talking about data tape not video tape.
Acquisition to video tape is what will fade away fairly quickly.
One of the problems with tape in the consummer world is since the demise of VHS camcorders there's no tape format that the consummer can play back in their domestic device.
In the pro / broadcast world tape is just too slow to work with and the transports a source of reliability issues, so even here I think we'll see tape fade away as soon as possible for acquisition. It'll still hang around for a long time outside of acquisition and archiving however out national broadcaster is now archiving their audio and video assets to data tape. That's the advantage of the data workflow, one tape format for everything for nearline / offline storage and disks arrays for online storage.

As long as people have tens of thousands of dollars invested in cameras that record to tape and remain of broadcast quality, tape will keep kicking around. What will be interesting to see in the coming years is the archival formats we move to after we stop recording to tape.

Recording video on solid state memory cards won't take over until it's as cheap and convenient as shooting on tape, and we're probably about five years away from seeing that happen. Consider that a miniDV tape holds slightly less data than a 16GB memory card and costs around $5 (give or take a little), while a 16GB card currently costs about $200. If the price of such cards falls by a factor of two every year it'll be $6.25 in the year 2012, so mark your calendar...

I used to repair VTRs including 2" machines for a local TV station. Worry not and don't let this be the memory that defines your age! ;)

I think technologies like CD and hard drive will be where the consumer market goes for sure. If you look at how many new camcorders are coming out sans tape it will be sooner than later.

The cost per unit of storage on a hard drive is about the cheapest around and pretty much matches tape. Its long term storage where tape certainly has the edge.

Tape as an acquisition medium will certainly disappear first. It will take longer for tape to loose its grip on the archiving market. That day will eventually come but will be much longer in getting here.

Just like wax and phenolic in the audio world was replaced by compact disks and now DVD-A, eventually everything becomes obsolete... Us included! ;)

Chris

The future is bright...the future is card
 

Quote Kevin Shaw "Consider that a miniDV tape holds slightly less data than a 16GB memory card and costs around $5 (give or take a little), while a 16GB card currently costs about $200."

From other posts 16GB = $900 (£450) and mini HDV = $12 (£6)...You are forgetting two important points, how many times do you dare to re-use mini HDV tape...none if you keep it for reference, after 75 HDV tapes you have spent $900 and counting, money tied up in tape that in most cases will never be re-used. 90% of the broadcast news network store their footage straight to hard disc and use it as a general archival pool, it's all backed up at least twice but thats the future...terabytes of storage, if you are into digital photography your only option is CD, DVD or hard drive, you just need to get into the mindset of backing things up to 2 separate independent drives. In a professional environment tape is becoming dear to store taking up valuable shelf space and if you are ordering boxes of 100 tapes at a time getting used and abused for news work it soon adds up. The second point you are forgetting is once you have bought a 16GB card, apart from archiving there is no more expense. Having worked in a news environment the people who think they count are the bean counters (Accountants) they are always looking for ways to save money so the initial expense of 16GB cards will outweigh the savings in not only space (shelf) but major savings on ongoing tape costs. Lets not kid ourselves within a year or less that $900 will drop to $350 or less once the 32Gig card appears, then the 64 etc. etc. Unlike P2 we will at least see these bigger express cards as it has been adopted by others and not just Sony.

The National Archives of Britain, which hold 900 years of written material, contains more than 580 terabytes of data

So once you buy into a tapeless system you don't have to spend any more money on it until you have to spend more money on it? ;)

Right now archiving in a tapeless workflow is a sticky wicket. Will viable solutions and work flows appear in the future? Of course, but right now it takes more time and money to properly back up and archive tapeless than it does just to put that camera master on a shelf. That's one reason I'm interested in the EX/XDCAM HD line up. It offers, IMO, the best of both worlds w/o a price tag that breaks the bank.


-A

Andrew is right. The last redeeming quality tape has over memory acquisition formats is it's instant archive feature.

If the EX SxS format can be archived to XDCAM optical disc easily with no loss in compression and be affordable Sony has a winner. No matter how fast prices drop HDD storage it's a pain in the arse to keep adding terabytes just to archive footage.

Steve...
 

How else can it be done other than to add more HD space. 1 TB of HD is about £340 and 2TB is about £560 storage is dropping weekly, don't tell me you could not stick a 1TB HD onto your system for backup. Look at professional digital photography not only has digital killed of film but all your major pros, weddings included store their pics on 2 separate HDs, I could not have predicted this 7 years ago, both Kodak and Fuji are winding down not only film production but photographic paper as well, they both now know the future is digital and have geared up for it. We live in an instant world where digital serves the hunger for the here and now, no one wants or is prepared to wait for a 35mm film to be developed and printed those days are gone. Tape is expensive, attracts dust, damages easily and is not a good future proof way of archiving, unless you are going to store tape in a clean room grade 7 environment it will deteriorate over time.

No if about it. That's what Sony is recommending for archival media. There will be no quality loss because you are merely copying files, not transcoding. I can drag and drop files from the XDCAM disc right onto my hard drive if I choose to work that way. That one of the methods I have used for handing over material to the producer. Attach external FW drive, then copy the disc directories right onto the hard drive. Producer then uses XDCAM Transfer to pick out the sub clips for re-wrapping into QT for FCP.

-gb-

Replying to George via Gregs post
 

George, this is more of an answer. There's no doubt HHD prices continue to drop. Believe me I remember paying thousands for scsi drives in the 90s, but it isn't what I call convenient to have a machine room. All of these external drives have to go somewhere. I currently have 3TBs and need to add about another 3-5TBs for an upcoming project.

The optical disc are no bigger then a CD, draw no power, and will sit nicely on shelf storage system. HDDs are great for ongoing projects but aren't ideal for finished projects.

Question for Greg,
One you finish a project can you export a finished product then put that on a XDAM disc?

HDDs aren't designed to be long term, store-them-on-a-shelf devices though. If they aren't spun up periodically they fail. There goes 1TB worth of media in one fail swoop. There is a reason data tape back ups have been around for decades and don't look to be going anywhere any time soon. Lots of things are changing though and this is just industry growing pains (personally, I think it's a very exciting time to be in this industry).


Greg, I haven't seen an official word from Sony yet, but the EX shoots full raster at 35mbps while XDCAM only does 1440 at 35mbps so there is a question of whether or not the EX footage will stay full raster or get down sampled when it's burned onto an XDCAM HD disc. Hopefully Sony will let people keep full quality EX footage on the XDCAM media.

Steve,
Yes, as I understand it you can export a finished project back to an XDCAM disc. There is also 500megs of "general file" space where you can store any type of computer file such as your NLE's project file, gfx, scripts, music, etc.,. The single-layer discs hold 60min of HQ XDCAM HD footage so if you were working on a half hour show you could store a completed cut of the show as well as all the individual elements of the project so if you needed to re-vist the project all of your raw elements are sitting on a single disc (assuming it all fits on a single disc of course).

-A

As a suggestion - for tapeless or tape-based acquisition we always make sure we add enough into the budget to have a HD backup...

I have an external Firewire hot-swappable SATA drive caddy, so we purchase bare drives which are cheaper and you can get them back up and running without spending ages trying to find the right power-supply!

But it doesn't take long for those HDs to stack up and start taking over your workspace. And you need some sort of a library system or you'll spend ages looking over old drives searching for some footage for a repeat client!

I'm talking about base prices for any kind of memory card versus standard miniDV tape: Amazon.com has 16GB CompactFlash for a little over $200 and you can easily find good miniDV tapes for ~$5 or so. It's true that long-term costs could favor solid state video recording before memory card prices drop to tape levels, but the time required to transfer and backup large amounts of video makes solid state less practical for video than it is for digital photography. What I'm saying is that when memory cards are cheap enough to use as permanent video storage and video camera makers start using generic cards instead of expensive specialized formats, then it's a no-brainer for solid state recording to take over. That should happen in about 5 years assuming a two-fold drop in memory card prices per year between now and then.

By the way, in eight years of shooting video professionally plus my own personal use, my total cost for blank miniDV tapes wouldn't pay for two 16GB SxS or P2 cards. That's a big cost advantage in favor of tape, plus the convenience and security of being able to store the original recorded data without having to transfer it to something else. Solid state recording has some advantages today, but cost and convenience aren't on that list.

Below are based only on estimates from what I've heard but:

Transferring from card to computer via Express slot is 3x realtime.
Backing up to XDCAM disc is 2x realtime.
So even with the extra backup step you're still faster than realtime . . . faster than tape.

The real cost issue is not card vs tape but XDCAM disc vs DV tape IMHO. Around $30US(disc) vs $5US(tape).

Now if you're comparing XDCAM disc to DVCProHD tape or HDCAM tape, XDCAM disc is very competitively priced.

The issue some of us face is that we're coming from a world where our clients are DV or HDV and, in addition, in some cases the client wants to leave with the tape after the shoot too. So archival of XDCAM is significantly more expensive and finding a way to hand "something" to the client, problematic.
________________________
BTW when the Sony rep gave their presentation at DV Expo East in July they said quite explicitly that the EX would be able to use the non ExpressPro cards and that the cards were about $200 at the time. They also said the disadvantage would be very slow transfer speeds.

IF that's still the case, and I am seeing that being refuted now, those low priced cards would be the one you hand to the client (and tack on the cost) after the shoot.

_______________________
Death does depend on how you define it. When Prosumer cameras in the $1000-$5000 price range are solid state, tape sales will start to drop. I expect we'll start to see the EX1 and HVX200 solid state feature "migrate down" into that price range by next NAB and it will spread in the next 2 years. At the same DV Expo East both Canon and JVC also said they were moving to non tape storage although they had different approaches. The conference session was specifically about "solid state" (actually non tape) acquisition and ALL the major camera manufacturers are moving in that direction.

IMHO the market change will result in faster than real time transfers to something you can hand the client after the shoot. The question is what will the client need to play it. Even here Express card is promising (even more so than HDV or maybe DV) in that the client, without any video gear at all, will be able to play the card with any laptop with an Express card slot.

Sony dominated the pro market for over 20 years with 3/4 and Beta SP. Ikegami was part of that era but mostly at camera head portion.

In the 90s Sony falls asleep at the wheel and allows Panasonic to aggressively sell DVCPro at super cheap prices. Sony tries to play catch up with SX which fails and even JVC tries their hand at a digital format with Digital S.

Since that time Sony has maintained Beta (Digi,SP) in the broadcast market but Panasonic has clearly eaten a huge chunk of the market with DVCPro.

The HD transition is still underway and both Sony and Panasonic are both trying to make "their" solid state media the format of choice.

For me it's a tough time because unlike in years past where Beta SP was the clearly defined delivery format. Now, there is no clearly defined delivery medium and having all of Baskin Robbins 32 flavors of formats is not cost effective or efficient.

Tape will continue on for some time until the format war settles down. Not to mention that the consumer level is just as bad with VOD,Blu-Ray,HD-DVD and so on.

OK, so lets summarize the costs for a complete outfit (basing on European prices known so far). The Euro 6,500 will give you the EX with small battery and (apparently) 2x8GB SxS cards. Now, I wouldn't feel safe with just 2 8GB cards in the field, or at a wedding, far from the office; with my V1E and DR60, I can take 4-5 tapes with me and be confident I'll get 4.5 hours of HDV material already archived on tapes, with the DR60 ready for fast off-loading back in the office for editing. And all this without even replacing or recharging battery, as the L-series 970 lasts forever on the V1, and the smallest 570 - for more than long enough on the DR60. This is why I'm hoping for the DR60 being usable with the EX1 as well, with its i.LINK outputting HDV! This would mean that should my limited quantity of SxS card not be sufficient to cover all the action out there, after filling them with HQ material I could continue recording SP at 25Mbps to the drive.

But I'm digressing, so back to the topic. To have with EX1 what I have with the V1/DR60 now, I'd need at least 2x32GB cards (DR60 is 60 GB), and in HQ it'd still be less material than I'm having now with HDV (OK - with much better quality). If a 16GB SxS is currently Euro 700, by the time the 32GB version is available the prices will hopefully drop, but still a 32GB SxS Pro card will be at least Euro 1,000 I guess.

So, we have already Euro 6,500 plus 2x1,000 = 8,500. Now to the archiving stuff. The best of course would be the PDW-U1 drive - add Euro 2,500; we have Euro 11,000 plus the price the BP-U60 battery, and a couple of 50 GB Pro disks, for 4.5 hours of SP (25Mbps) field recording and fast archiving, which I have now with the V1/DR 60 and a couple of (almost free by comparison) DV tapes. And these are net prices! Add to it a 22% VAT we have in Poland, and the real upgrade cost is Euro 13,430.

So, the death nell for tape? Well, probably for freaks like you and me, but certainly not for most people out there! I'm going to upgrade, if only for the beauty of the imagers and lens the EX1 offers..

Steve, I've lived through the SX disaster head on. I was chief engineer at a facility that went in that direction before I started working there. I would have advised them to use DVCPro50.

I don't think you can compare the tape format wars with XDCAM or P2. These days, most facilities aren't investing in scores of tape decks. File transfer from XDCAM disc, P2, SxS, is far less expensive. Although facilities pick one or the other, most can handle both without having to buy multiple decks. Now you're dealing with files and archival and those are much more "fluid." I think both formats will exist for a while. A couple of adaptors and anyone can handle either P2 or SxS. A couple of plugins and anyone can handle ingest of any of the data formats.

Distribution of HD is still a nightmare though with HDDVD vs Blu-ray.

Pitor, all these costs will drop immensely in the next two years. Workflow is NOT that difficult though. You can shoot a wedding with an EX1, 2 16GB cards, an assitant with a MacBook or Sony Vaio laptop. Will that cost more than an HDV workflow? Upfront yes. It all depends on what you charge your client though. If the faster ingest saves you a half day on every edit (and time is money for me) than the costs over a year aren't as great as you think.

Craig, I was on the DVCpro side of thing during the tape migration to digital. I'm super excited about tapeless media. The issue for me is if you have a client your delivering a final cut to there facility may be DVCProHD, HDCAM,HDCAM SR, or even Beta SP. So, if I shoot on a tapeless format and have the final cut as a file there still the issue of what flavor of tape the client needs.

That's why I continue to want XDCAM to earn more market share. If the XDCAM disc would become a more accept end delivery format it would help eliminate the need for tape delivery. This currently is an issue for me because I have a project coming up that needs to end up on HDCAM and that process alone is adding really unneeded cost to the budget.

Steve, well, I guess I should extend the last comment about distribution to all delivery. Delivery is still an issue. At least you might be able to get away with a deck rental rather than a purchase for output.

I guess we're also "colored" by what we're delivering. I now FTP TV spots using DGFastchannel. I don't need to got to BetaSP or DigiBeta for broadcast spots (actually low budget cable spots). VNRs (Video News Releases) can go by FTP too.

For client screening I deliver h.264 or wmv online. Presentation is an issue since that's still DVD (SD) and I'd like to be able to use Blu-ray. Many clients don't mind getting an HD quality h.264 or WMVHD file they can play from a laptop to a projector or their in office HDTV system.

So it's really HDCAM for broadcast that's hanging things for some so you're stuck with a deck rental and tape QC. For such longform I don't think most stations take DVCProHD tapes for long form (shows) and P2 doesn't seem to have a specific archival method tied it so it may not be perceived as a "complete" system like XDCAM can be.

On the other hand XDCAM is moving to 50GB discs. Alas, even XDCAM HD isn't HDCAM so I'm not sure that'll solve that problem for some time.

I'm wondering if Sony's XDCAM HD 50mbps 4:2:2 is really their attempt to see what they can do to replace HDCAM tape. We may be a couple of years away from knowing where that's headed.

Not necessarily: for a little over $1000 you can get all the hardware and software you need to support both formats now, using red-laser discs for the HD-DVD delivery. The big question is what encoding format to use, with MPEG2-HD currently being most convenient but AVCHD looking good once fast encoders are available.

For me capture from tape isn't a big deal: I just do that in bulk while I'm working on other things and there's almost no impact on my time. If you need to get started editing right away that's another matter, but I don't see solid-state offering a time savings until the cards are cheap enough to use as permanent storage.

The big blow to tape-based recording will be the widespread introduction of HD cameras using standard memory cards like CompactFlash, rather than expensive specialty cards. That could be done today and the only believable reason why it's not (other than a few low-end cameras) is because the camera manufacturers want to make more money selling the memory cards. Once they've soaked the folks with deep pockets then maybe we'll see more cameras based on standard memory, and at that point tape-based formats will start to fade away.

It's also important to remember that P2 and the XDCAM cards and discs are merely storage devices. They could begin storing newer types of codecs at any time. So, while the actual HD format that ends up on the media is still in the shakeout stage, the media itself should be a good investment going forward.

Part of the reason for Sony releasing a stand alone XDCAM disc drive was to lower the cost to post facilities for acceptance of discs. The only gripe is that we asked for firewire interface and got USB 2.

I know that Sony is committed to making the newer stuff backward compatible so my measly 23.5 GB discs will play on anything they bring out down the road.

-gb-

XDCAM Disc Delivery
 

Has any one delivered a finished product on an XDCAM disc? I'm curious what the response from a local station or cable provider would be.

Theoretically, if they have a digital head end(playback facility) you could even bring your XDCAM disc drive with you to transfer the files to their HDD storage. They would only need the codec.

P2 cards are likely to disappear over the next few years and I wouldn't bet on SxS becoming widely used in video cameras either. Digital photography works because it uses inexpensive standardized memory which anyone can buy anywhere for a few bucks, and that's what it's going to take to eliminate tape in future video cameras. But miniDV tapes will be with us for years to come regardless...when I went to Disneyland recently they still had VHS-C tapes for sale in the gift shop.

I am merely pointing out that these media are not limited to the current flavor of HD encoding. That's it. I feel like solid state and optical will be the ones given new life as time goes on, unlike tape based formats. Could they allow HDCAM style tape cassettes to start storing XDCAM HD material? Probably so. But I don't think that's going to happen.

To answer the original question posed on this thread, the EX is not the death knell for tape. It's just another part of the transition puzzle.

The good news is that Sony is not the sole manufacturer of these expensive specialty cards and more manufacturers will jump in. That will create competitive pricing.

-gb-