Many of today’s professional HD camcorders record their video data onto solid-state memory cards. A trip to any video store will quickly show even more consumer camcorders are doing the same.
There are, of course, clear benefits to this trend: a lack of moving parts (unlike tape, hard disk drive, or disc-based systems); random access to recorded HD or SD content; a faster, IT-compatible file-based workflow; and the ability to operate in harsh environments with resistance to temperature extremes, shock and vibration.
Yet there is a costly drawback to these systems, especially for professional users and consumers on a tight budget. Where do you store the video? Well, of course, you store it on hard drives. But how many of these drives do you need? How much do they cost? And what about backup?
David Pogue, technology reviewer for The New York Times, wrote recently that he has accumulated 200 MiniDV tapes over time in his library. He said he would need a total of nine 300 GB hard drives to store that much material in files. And that’s without backup.
Nine 300GB drives, even at discount, would cost more than a $1200. A single professional-quality HDV tape—one that holds an hour of HD content—costs as little as six dollars. No hard drive has ever approached the low cost of videotape.
The alternative to an all file-based system is to use videotape for recording and then play the video real-time to a computer for making the file. Then, one has a back-up of the video on the tape and the ability to do a full IT-based workflow. The tradeoff is the time it takes to digitize the tape.
Of course, better-funded videographers can use tape and record uncompressed video to a hard drive simultaneously. That’s an ideal, but still costly, solution.
Before we allow manufacturers to fully eliminate tape cassettes from the video recording process, users should do a cost-versus-time comparison. For heavy, well-funded users, a tapeless environment may be just fine. However, for those on a lower budget, a tape-based hybrid with an IT-based workflow might be the most cost-effective method.
Comments (25) for "Solid-State Storage Trend Masks Hidden Costs"
1.
Exactly. The question I deal with almost daily -- especially after digitalizing a six-hour-tape day. (XL-H1 which I love for exactly these hybrid values. Convergent Designs product looks promising. Any thoughts or proven solutions out there?
Posted by Edmond Stevens on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 04:01 PM
2.
What we need is an archive system as innovative as our capture technology. Perhaps our reliance on tape is a romantic delusion comparable to our addiction to petroleum, primarily fueled by a desire to further milk a bankrupt paradigm. I'll wager the technology exists; it's just not being exploited fully because there's more money to be made selling off obsolete assets before spending investment dollars tooling up the next standard.
Posted by M A Krupnick on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 04:13 PM
3.
Exactly.
The computer industry in general has been dealing with this for some time as tape has all but disappeared from the consumer computing environment but is still vitally important in the commercial world for backups of large databases.
Solid state is PERFECT for acquisition - no more dropouts in the middle of a scene, ever - and ingestion becomes a nit if your hardware can natively read the device.
But no one short of Hollywood studios could afford to maintain a "library" of content on their original P2 cards.
However, in the consumer marketplace, the shift to solid state camera acquisition is reflective of another change - from recording to presentation on long-form, relatively high quality media like videotape and DVD to "good enough" quality that's quickly edited into a five minute snippet uploaded to YouTube, after which the original footage is deleted.
The broader question is also one seen in the move to digital still photography; one used to have negatives and printed photos to fall back on to see old photos; in thirty years how are today's children going to flip through Grandma's "photo album"?
Posted by Bill on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 04:19 PM
4.
in my newegg email flier this a.m., there were hard disk drives for sale(free shipping) for $.125 per gig, or $338 for the same 27,000 gigs that pogue claimed that he would have to spend $1200 for.
when the heads on my xl1s camcorder died, i lost 2 hours of critical footage that i was shooting, because there is no way of knowing when the heads quit while you are rolling tape... canon charged me $400 to replace those heads.
tape is dead... what's on hdd can be backed up to blu-ray discs, which will be very cost effective by this time next year.
dan
Posted by CodecTest.com on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 04:27 PM
5.
Tape is still our method for archiving, and will be for the foreseeable future. Digitizing time is simply part of each project.
Current, special, and commonly accessed footage is on disk but all archive is stored on tape. Otherwise we get into the questions of file corruption... backing up the backup $$$, quality loss due to compression, and possibly software legacy support problems for archived files.
Posted by Richard on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 04:51 PM
6.
You and David Pogue have neglected a rather serious expense in your comments - the tape deck. HDCAM-SR decks start at $72,000. Consumers working in HDV using camcorders as decks is one thing, but for pros the IT vs tape debate must include deck costs.
Posted by Blair on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:00 PM
7.
Not sure about the author's math. I just purchased an EX1 and a Western Digital 2 TB hard drive. The hard drive is set up for mirroring (for added safety) so my total capacity is less than 1 TB. Doing the math, I estimate roughly 50 hours of capacity on this drive shooting 1080p24 HQ mode. The hard drive unit cost me $460. That's about $10 an hour, which is roughly the cost of the PRO QUALITY Panasonic mini DV tape we previously shot with our DVX100s. As far as mirrors go, I use the Sony Clip Browser software to split the volumes into capacities that can be burned to ordinary DVD-R media. I ship DVD-ROM copies to the client and a copies to their marketing firm in New York. There's the backup plan. So I have around $12-14 per hour in media costs with three mirrors and I didn't have to wait 2 hours to dub them. And at a quality level that DV or HDV can't touch. How is that not better?
Posted by Jimmy Spender on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:01 PM
8.
Solution: Optical storage. Blue-ray discs are 25-50 GB's right now. Cheap... getting cheaper and stable. For archiving, redundant and offsite storage when a DVD's data capacity of 4.7 to 15.9 GB's is not enough. (For most consumers a DVD at .25 each is excellent storage and a bargain at .06/GB.) Note that recent developments put Blue-ray compatible discs to 400 GB's and 1 TB capacity soon. The 25 and 50's are available now for less than $.40/GB. It does require transfer time in post, but is not expensive and is a better, more stable solution than magnetic hard drive storage or tape for that matter... not as fast, but easy to ship. Burners start around $300. I don't see what the problem is. I love solid state storage! Now if we can get Panasonic to drop the ridiculous price on their P2 cards and use HC SD or something affordable, we would really be able to go with a tapeless workflow!
Posted by Glenn Allen on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:06 PM
9.
I don't think videotape should ever go away. It remains a most economical and durable media form. It's a great alternative for saving a production budget especially when archiving is necessary.
Posted by Donald Kornfeind on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:13 PM
10.
If you're willing to capture your HDV source at 20Mb/sec (and only capture the shots you really want) you can get a lot more hard drive bang for your buck (without a lot of resolution loss). Check out my article on HDV workflow:
Posted by GreenScreenCinema on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:26 PM
11.
I disagree with the comment about the cost of hard drives. I recently bought an external .5 terrabyte (500 GB)drive for $130 at Frye's. I use a Canon PowerShot and 4 GB memory cards extensively. Before you think the quality is lousy, take a look at this:
Posted by James Wilson on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:28 PM
12.
You can get reasonably fast 1GB hard drives (3 1/3 times as much capacity as 300GB drives) for under $200 today. David Pogue's 200 DV tapes could be stored in 3 of these drives, for $600, plus the cost of a chassis. So, hard drive prices are hardly out of reach.
Flash memory is still much too expensive for near-line or archival storage, so why not use flash for acquisition, hard drives for online and near-line storage, and tape for archival storage? Instead of tape being the acquisition medium, it would become the archival medium.
File-based capture has already become the standard for consumer camcorders, and is rapidly becoming the standard for professional applications as well. Tape has a place--just not out in the field.
Posted by Len Feldman on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 05:55 PM
13.
Hum!
- 2TO disk are $470.
- 2TO = 153 60 min. tapes.
- 153 x $6 = $936
So, you can get twice the capacity for the same price (say, 1 for security backup in another home)...plus all the HD flexibility.
Tapes are dead my friend!
Posted by bastien on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 06:29 PM
14.
Since when are hard drives a long term back-up medium?? Look at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences study on long term storage on hard drives - http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117963533.html?categoryid=1019&cs=1
It will scare you (and should) from ever thinking about saving your precious source material or edited master on a hard drive. The P2 and SxS card cameras, though they seemingly have advantages over tape based cameras (no head wear, lighter weight, low battery consumption, etc.) are terrible workflow capture devices. At least something like the Sony XDCam have a long term storage solution built into their workflow (being the XDCam or Blu-Ray disk). But even these are not bullet proof long term storage solutions. Hey, bring back film baby - long live film!!
Posted by Stephen on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 @ 10:32 PM
15.
I must say, I get nervous when I think about archiving only on a hard disk. Don't files get corrupted when they sit on a shelf for a long time? Whether the media is a hard drive or even something like a blu-ray disc. I recall trying to re-consitute a project years ago off of DLT and half the time it I never got all my footage back. Personally, I'd always like to have the tape option. It is a proven, rock-solid archiving method. Hey HD Studio, could you do a poll on this issue to really quantify where we as a production community stand?
Posted by Justin C. on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 @ 01:35 AM
16.
Give a drive a break! My heads are dead!
Solid State is the way to go. After 24 years of tape and dirty heads, paying for $$$ repairs, Thank goodness we can move on! Tape can be used as back-up. Hard drive for storage!
Faster, better work flow, I am happy!
Posted by jonathan on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 @ 02:25 AM
17.
I'm not convinced of the long-term stability of DVD or Blu-Ray media for archival, and have experienced way too many hard disk "mechanical" failures to place my trust in that permanent archival option. I do however, have much more confidence in tape - kept in a controlled environment, it will last a lot longer that I will! Just my $.02 worth...
Posted by Glen Rice on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 @ 09:05 AM
18.
Excuse me, but,
Pulling out cards -
then copying them to a laptop - or pc - then varifing the content
then reformatting
then color-coding (so ya dont mix um up)
then putting them back in
is it just me or did we just take a job one cameraman can handle and add more people - more noise shuffling around - and more touching the camera - which can only mess up the shot. Give me a break! This is Idiocy! And when am I gonna get a HDMI 10-bit input for my notebook - its been a year and a half! Finish one technology before you start another!
Posted by Brian K on Thursday, August 28, 2008 @ 07:33 PM
19.
Can't agree with you more Justin C (the terrors of actually recalling the data) except when you come to the "Tape is Rock Solid" part??? No way! Not unless you make several backup tape copies and follow manufacturer guidelines (e.g., requiring you to recopy the data every 2 years or so). Any system (disk, tape etc) that has a single point of failure or single point of data loss (MGM saw a lot of tape go up in one of the most expensive fireworks displays in history, and now they wish they'd digitised it all, kept digital copies in different locations). Keep data digital. Keep data in different locations. Use software to maintain data integrity (we use matrixstore). It might have more upfront cost than a simplistic solution but we save on management time of data and we sleep well!
Posted by G G on Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 12:26 PM
20.
Hi Michael,
Our experience is that consumers, small post houses and large broadcasters are, as you say, moving away from capturing content on tape based cameras which causes a problem for them in terms of protecting the master once the data has been ingested.
Traditionally the master was the minidv or the digibeta tape, once the content had been ingested that master tape went to live its life on a shelf somewhere gathering dust until someone needed it again.
Now the content is ingested and the camera goes back out with the P2 card to be re-used, there is nothing to put on the shelf. The idea of then putting that digitised content back onto tape in an IT based workflow does not fit well within the 'I want it now' culture we live in.
The paradigm has shifted to disk not only due to the advent of solid state or HDD based cameras but more because people need fast instant access to their content from ingest through to archive. Having valuable content sat on a shelf in digibeta or LTO format simply renders that content unusable in an on-demand world.
Sure the costs of disk over the tape media may be an initial pain point but the reality is that the cost of maintaining a tape library over time and the fact that the data is rendered next to useless on that media means the total cost comparison over a 5 year period can sway towards a disk based system. We have a piece on our blog (http://www.matrixstore.net/2008/03/03/problems-with-total-cost-of-ownership/) that may be of interest.
The cost of disk will continue to fall as they capacities become denser, your friend David Pogue now only needs 3 1TB drives to protect his content ($150 per drive). Even with another 3 for 'backup' its a sub $1000 investment. To back up his minidv tapes in a similar fashion requires another 200 tapes to label, store and protect.
I know that creative professionals love tape, the whole touchy feely 'film reel' technology is more romantic than a bunch of hard disks but it is that same group of people who want their data protected and available 24/7 ... something has to give.
Posted by Nick Pearce on Saturday, August 30, 2008 @ 03:56 AM
21.
Remember when tape drives (data cartridges) were used to back up IT systems? Guess what, they're still around and are an excellent solution to the problem.
Posted by Richard A on Monday, September 1, 2008 @ 01:29 PM
22.
I recently went to the Hammer theater in Westwood to view an old film that is in the UCLA Film school archives. I learned that archiving in the new digital formats tape, disc, hard drive, blu-ray are all problematical for long term storage. I was told that, yes film, is still the best archival medium if the film is kept in a proper environment.
Posted by Tony on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 @ 05:03 PM
23.
Spot on Tony. Even the movies that are completely finished digitally in DI still have YCM seperation prints done for archival purposes. However digital data has to be migrated every 7 to 8 years (plus every 2 to 3 for degrading mediums, magentic tape etc)to keep up with new technologies. 'Old world' film technology is bullet proof.
Posted by majik on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 @ 02:52 PM
24.
Archiving is the reason I'm eyeballing the Sony XDCAM EX system. Sony makes a USB drive that records to XDCAM disc media for the same cost as a DV deck. I can shoot on cards, edit online, then archive to XDCAM discs that Sony says will last at least 20 years. The others have nothing like this.
Posted by Clint F on Friday, September 5, 2008 @ 10:23 AM
25.
Film archival... hmm. I guess I don't live in that world. :)
Posted by Jimmy Spender on Monday, September 8, 2008 @ 02:05 PM
Post your comments below
