For Michael Bryant, who shot and produced the motocross reality program The 5th Dragon, Sony’s new XDCAM format was more than an interesting technology – it was a logistical necessity. The 5th Dragon follows a motocross team during the AMA Chevy Trucks Outdoor Motocross National Championships through 12 races over 16 weeks. Actual races were shot as multi-camera productions, but the bulk of the show depicted the five individual riders on one team in between races. "Each rider and dedicated team had its own camera and crew, so for each rider, essentially, we created a separate ongoing documentary that we could fold into the show with each race," Bryant explains. Essentially, Bryant’s task was to combine a reality show with a live sports event.

Shooting motocross means dealing with a race-track environment, which means a constant onslaught of airborne muck that becomes a technological nightmare. "Motocross racing is just a nasty production environment," explains Bryant. "Dust and dirt are always getting into the tape transports, which can slow production or even ruin crucial shots. With the disc-based XDCAM system, we were finally free of this problem."

The tapeless XDCAM also brings nonlinearity to the mix, which Bryant found invaluable. "Unlike a lot of reality shows, we can’t stop things and do them over. We don’t have that option," he notes. "I had read about XDCAM and was excited about how we could use the buffer and nonlinear capabilities during production."

The buffer on Sony’s PDW-530 XDCAM system is an eight-second audio and video memory cache, which continually stores camera data. The moment you hit record, you capture what is going on at the moment – and the footage already stored in the eight-second buffer. That meant Bryant was able to capture moments and sound bites normally lost by traditional tape-based cameras. "You’d never know when one of the riders would start talking," he notes. "I’ve literally heard something while the camera was on pause, hit record, and saved the sound bite later on."

The XDCAM also has the advantage of nonlinear recording. Each time you press record, the XDCAM system writes a separate clip to the DVD. So instead of having to go back to the end of a tape after previewing footage, Bryant and his crews were able to simply start shooting immediately, without fear of wiping out any previously recorded material. "If something goes on, I can just hit record and [the XDCAM] will automatically switch modes and make a new clip," says Bryant. "Obviously this kind of time savings was invaluable while we were in this pressurized environment."

Any new technology has its glitches, but Bryant says the most serious had nothing to do with the camera, but rather with availability of the media. "When we first started production, it was extremely hard to find XDCAM discs," says Bryant. "Initially, the new format just baffled some vendors. I’d call four places in Burbank for XDCAM media. Three of them said‘What is that?’ while one said ‘Yeah, but we have only five.’" Availability of media is no longer a problem, Bryant says. A disc holds about 45 minutes of 60i video at the XDCAM’s highest data rate, 50 Mbps, on each disc.

Camera operation was smooth, with a slight ergonomic problem: a latch on the camera was regularly broken. "There is a little latch on the side door that definitely needs to be redesigned," says Bryant with a chuckle. "We must have broken that thing off at least three times."

Finally, Bryant wasn’t thrilled about the lack of control on audio channels three and four. Unlike channels one and two, which provide manual control, levels for channels three and four are controlled in the menu settings. However, Bryant points out that the built-in wireless microphone receiver helps make up for this shortcoming.

Bryant says XDCAM has changed the way that he does production, even speeding up his post-production cycle. Instead of spending weeks logging tapes and then digitizing footage, Bryant was able to provide his editor with full video logs and digital source material almost immediately. "Thanks to the video proxy feature on the XDCAM [which records low-res footage to disc alongside the high-res version], I did a lot of logging in airplanes and hotel rooms using my laptop," said Bryant.

Is Bryant sold on XDCAM? "Absolutely. It delivered what [Sony] claimed," says Bryant. "During the 16 weeks we were shooting, we put them through some incredibly rough conditions. Yet in 160 hours we’ve shot, we’ve yet to see a drop-out or glitch. The format is rock-solid and the images are spectacular."