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MillimeterThe P Word
Jul 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Bob Turner
Paradigm: One that serves as a pattern or model. Paradigm Shift: a change of paradigm; frequently referring to a radical change.
I am weary of the overuse of the “P” word, so I am going to discuss a “radically changing pattern or model” for our industry. I'm referring to the way we store acquired sounds and images and access them in postproduction.
 JVC and Focus Enhancements' DR-DV5000 DV disk recorder (shown here mounted on JVC's GY-DV500U camcorder) was one of many disk-based camera options offered at NAB. |
The video production industry may not have been shaken by the introduction of Sony's blue laser optical media drive or by Panasonic's solid state media announcements, but the new products certainly produced a great deal of buzz. They beg the question: Why are the two leading VCR manufacturers offering replacement technologies?
One possible answer might be that there are far greater profits to be made by selling recording media than most VCR products. In Sony's case, it will replace videotape sales (where there is presently lots of competition) with blue laser optical disc sales (where there is presently very little competition). In Panasonic's case, it is the largest solid state memory manufacturer in the world, and there is tremendous profit potential in both solid state media sales and archive sales.
Add to this the interest demonstrated by the NAB crowds in JVC and Focus Enhancements' new DR-DV5000 DV disk recorder, Laird Telemedia's CapDiv, FFV's Recon Ultra Compact DVR, and similar solutions — not to mention the previously announced Hitachi C-D1X DVD camcorder, the Ikegami Editcam camcorders, or all the new digital cinema and HDTV portable digital disk recording devices.
So with all these new storage solutions available, is videotape dead? Hardly. TrendWatch of Mill Valley, Calif., a company that analyzes the graphics, visual effects, and TV/broadcast markets, recently published the results of a study on use of analog video. Its TrendWatch TV/Broadcast Fast Fact findings of May 14 state that “73% of all stations/networks reported their primary format for receiving work from clients is analog video; 58% cited this as their primary format for sending work to clients.” The study noted that “it's also interesting that more cable stations use digital video as their primary ‘internal’ format for daily production — 63% compared to 45% for broadcast stations.”
With so much analog video content, worrying about the conversion from digital tape to an alternative storage means may seem a bit premature. On the other hand, it could also mean that the digital tape stage might possibly be skipped. And remember that technological shifts are not instantaneous. Digital NLE technology took a decade or more to be accepted, and there are still those who cut on film or in linear suites today.
Why the Push to Kill Videotape?
From the manufacturers' side, it is obvious that they would like customers to replace their VCRs with something new, which manufacturers just happen to be selling. The manufacturers profit again by selling the media. But why is replacing videotape potentially so attractive to users that it would inspire them to make new investments in this tight economic period? The answer (as is almost always the case) is economic benefit. Moreover, the economic benefit is generally not a capital expense benefit, but an operational expense benefit.
How Does the User Benefit?
In the April issue, I looked at the Sony professional optical disc format. In that column I emphasized the workflow benefits over the specific technological benefits of the optical disc. Not only can users save an archiving step by originating on a format that is archivable and space-efficient, but since it creates a simultaneous low-resolution proxy, it saves another step when proxies are used for media asset management information.
 The debut of Sony's new blue laser optical media system generated buzz at NAB as one of the more dramatic examples of a move toward non-tape options for video. |
Such video proxies can be a major time-savings when searching for archived clips. This proxy video also allows low-cost news story creation in the field by making a sequence of clips using a laptop or a PDA. Then the metadata is sent to the camcorder and the edited sequence is streamed from the camcorder (which acts as a video server) back to the station via microwave, satellite, or the Internet. This saves the time and expense of editing at the station and allows an “edited” story to air sooner.
This workflow offers several economic benefits — primarily by reducing operational steps (archiving the media and creating a library proxy), reducing the length of material transmitted to the station, and, in some cases, the elimination of the traditional editing step as well.
In Panasonic's new solid state model, you again have instant field-based editing by removing the solid state media cards and immediately installing them into the PCMCIA slot in a low-cost laptop editing system. This saves the time-consuming ingest step. You will still have the archiving and proxy steps if required — the cost is generally too great to archive the solid state media, but you will have a choice of archiving solutions.
The advantage of the solid state media is that it is reusable. Another benefit is that the mechanical transport mechanism is gone and this should eliminate significant maintenance costs. A third benefit is that this technology is both compatible with today's DVCPRO technology and capable of DVCPRO 50 and DVCPRO HD storage requirements, so the format is somewhat future-proof. Sony has said it plans to offer solid state media at some future point when the price makes it practical.
Hard Disk-Based Acquisition
Workflow benefits can also be found with the new JVC/Focus Enhancements DR-DV5000, last year's Sony DSR-DU1 DVCAM video disk unit, and the new portable production hard disk recorders. They can also eliminate the ingest process, allowing you to begin editing the moment you connect the hard disk unit to the edit system.
Next, you might have extended record times. In some situations, this eliminates the need for a second VCR to overlap the recording process. Third, these products may be able to allow the camera to create additional metadata, such as a “good takes” list that can significantly speed up the editing process. Several offer “cache recording,” the ability to have the camera constantly recording and deleting, but saving the few seconds prior to your hitting the record button. Many important images can be caught with this feature.
New Archiving Solutions
The traditional tape robotics solutions with media asset management applications driving them could be found in several locations on the NAB show floor. Last year, Asaca/Shibasoku demonstrated its DVL optical disc-based nearline solution. It uses DVD technology as a cost-effective and space-saving solution for large-scale archiving.
At this year's NAB the solution was once again available, but Asaca's focus was on its Serial ATA (SATA) drives product called FireFly. The system won one of the first NAB Awards for Innovation in Media. The low-cost SATA drives offer a significant savings over traditional hard disk archive solutions and, in the case of FireFly, the savings brings the unit's price close to that of tape-based solutions. FireFly offers up to 48TB of 400MBps non-robotic, random access library storage.
 Avid's Nearchive offers a disk archiving solution that integrates with its editing apps and Unity storage system. It features license-free, web-based search tools that are easy to use. |
Another low-cost hard disk archive solution — more appropriate for smaller-scale postproduction and broadcast facilities, and soon to be Serial ATA-based — is the new Avid Nearchive. The greatest advantages to this product are the integration with Avid editing and Avid Unity online storage solutions, and the license-free, web-based search tools that make it easy and efficient to use. While the system does not include proxy-based media, the fact that it includes both integrated media asset management and an intelligent transfer engine that incorporate easily into an Avid facility make it more attractive than many other nearline products.
Tape-based archiving products also stirred excitement. For the Mac-based postproduction boutique, Sony was offering Rough Cut, an AIT datatape format kit. The kit includes an AIT-2 drive with an i.LINK (IEEE 1394) digital interface, Mezzo ES Generation 4 backup software for Macs, 10 AIT media cartridges with a total capacity of up to 333GB, and all necessary cabling for installation. The product is compatible with Apple's Final Cut Pro, and with select video and audio editing software from Avid, Adobe, Media 100, and DigiDesign.
You can store all data related to a project (audio, video, text, graphics, timelines, scripts, notes, billing, etc.) on one standard cassette so that everything is saved and easy to locate. The AIT-2 format has a storage capacity of 36GB or 50GB native per compact 8mm tape cartridge, and a native data transfer rate of 6MBps. The Mezzo ES Generation 4 software was specifically designed for editing application archiving. The system also offers automated backup workflow.
At NAB, Sony displayed its blue laser optical media archiving solution, which can presently store 23.3GB per disc. Sony hopes for a 50GB capacity version by 2005, and a 100GB capacity version after that. Sony also showed a new SAIT-1 tape archiving format with a 500GB native capacity. It can store up to 1.3TB of compressed data, with sustained data transfer rates of up to 78MBps (30MBps native). It appears that Sony is offering a choice between tape and alternatives when it comes to archiving.
All of these archiving solutions offer the ability to store media, metadata, and other project-related files in a fast, cost-effective way. Also, the process is often automated or semi-automated so there is little or no time lost archiving.
Furthermore, these solutions allow easy reacquisition of files for repurposing or re-editing. Having this ability provides a tremendous cost savings. Formerly, it was often easier to re-shoot than find previously shot clips. It was also more practical to occasionally batch re-ingest files to the NLE from saved timeline metadata. It took too much time to archive the media after each project and then re-acquire it when needed. For older programming, this assumed that the proprietary media was still compatible with upgraded software.
With these new technologies, open standards, and trends displayed at NAB, we may be at the start of a new video workflow paradigm. It could be tapeless, but it will certainly be more cost-effective and streamlined. More importantly, it could have an as-yet-to-be-seen (or understood) impact — perhaps as profound as the switch from film to video in broadcasting or from linear to nonlinear in postproduction. The shift may take a decade, but those working today will need to know about it and adapt to it.
Bob Turner has edited video on nearly every piece of equipment ever made. He can be reached at bobturner@attbi.com.
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