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Sony PDW-F800 Review

Nov 2, 2009 12:00 PM, By D.W. Leitner

The tapeless CineAlta.

I've shot with nearly all tape, magnetic disk, and flash-memory recording technologies in camcorders, but never optical disc. I live in New York City and see XDCAM HD camcorders in action on the streets all the time.

In other words, high time to lose my optical-disc virginity on a real shoot, one of a series of interviews about a rock 'n' roll subject begun earlier in XDCAM EX at 720/24p in HQ mode (35Mbps). That the versatile F800 could match these prior format choices made using it feasible.

Like all first encounters, I anticipated an initial awkwardness if not shyness, but this didn't happen. I'm not talking about the menu tree or switch layout—these are familiar from the F700 and comparable XDCAM and HDCAM camcorders—but rather the methodology of recording to optical disc.

Many if not most of us have already tried nonlinear capture with flash-memory camcorders, whether using Panasonic's P2, Sony's SxS, or AVCHD. With nonlinear, we've come to expect instant-start recording (no heads to spin or tape to thread), a visual register of thumbnails (sometimes called picons or picture-icons) for instant clip playback, and a workflow that demands careful planning, centered around the IT task of copying and recopying data so that expensive flash media can be reused.

It is also typical that these camcorders must first be rebooted—i.e., switched from camera to media functions—to access clip playback.

Working with Professional Disc media, however, to my surprise, was more like working with familiar videotape, only with the advantages of nonlinear recording intact.

To insert a Professional Disc (PD), I pressed the eject button, like tape. A slim door at the top of the F800 opposite the operator side popped open. I put a new disc in the slot and heard a zip, pause, zip, pause, zip, zip ... then FORMATTING DONE appeared in the viewfinder. Brisk and automatic.

I pressed record, and the F800 started instantly. It was dead quiet too.

When I wanted to review takes, no rebooting was required. Like any Betacam or HDCAM, I reached for the two rows of rubbery VTR controls under the handle on the operator's side—only instead of a VTR, they control the F800's optical disc drive.

I flipped open the cover that exposes the blue eject button through a hole, and the familiar F REV, PLAY/PAUSE, F FWD, PREV, STOP, and NEXT buttons appeared. Just like tape. Except that Professional Disc playback was instant. And because PD is nonlinear, PREV jumps back an entire clip while NEXT jumps forward one clip—again, instantly. (With each passing year, rewinding feels atavistic. Try explaining a rotary phone to a contemporary child—that's how rewinding and shuttling must seem to young videomakers who know only file-based recording.)

In other words, anyone comfortable with video deck control instinctively knows how to operate an F800's playback. On the other hand, anyone used to playback of nonlinear clips by scrolling through and selecting picons can instead press the dedicated Thumbnail button and navigate to their heart's content, using the rotary MENU knob at the front, the left/right arrow buttons near the Thumbnail button, or even the VTR-like controls themselves to select and play.

Like videotape, Sony's Professional Disc, based on Blu-ray technology, is contained in a protective cassette shell for convenience and durability. I didn't worry about scratching them, dropping them, getting them wet, or, for that matter, losing them. Like Betacam cassettes, they're sizable enough for old-fashioned, hand-written labels. This may seem like a little thing, but in the blast furnace of production, little conveniences have a way of adding up fast.

Best of all, while Professional Discs are rewritable and can be reused, they're meant to serve as permanent storage just like videotape. Both on the set and in the field, this makes unnecessary the time-consuming regimen of copying and recopying. (You can leave that collection of hard drives in the editing room.)

Sony says Professional Discs have been tested for an archival shelf life of at least 50 years. No hard-drive storage solution comes even close to this—nor does videotape, for that matter—while flash media are at present too expensive to consider as permanent storage. (This will change, but questions remain about the long-term stability of flash media.) Producers who feel more comfortable with a video master on the shelf instead of a hard drive full of copied files will immediately understand the appeal of PD's archivability.

I used single-layer 23GB discs, Sony PFD23A rewritable 23GB/2.4x speed, in my shoots with the F800. Street price was about a dollar a gig. Shooting 720/24p in HQ mode (35Mbps) yielded 65 minutes per disc. If I had chosen to shoot full 1080/24p in MPEG HD422, the recording time would have been about 43 minutes per disc. Sony also makes a dual-layer 50GB PD (PFD50DLA), which would have boosted 720/24p to 145 minutes and 1080/24p to more than 95 minutes.

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