SONY.... please, please.... PLEASE.....

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 7/30/2008, 5:00 PM
Spot,

I was ready to agree with most of your points, but then I went looking for the "MRU" unit you mentioned and turned up nothing. However, I WAS able to find the Sony HVR-MRC1 unit. Is this what you use?

Unfortunately, it appears to not only be proprietary to Sony camcorders, but according to the Sony page I just linked to, only works with the HVR-Z7U and HVR-S270U cameras.

Thus, it doesn't look like Sony or any other camcorder manufacturer is trying to make HDV tape capture go away. Worse, they seem intent on putting far more development dollars towards pursuing a format (AVCHD) that even after several iterations is still inferior in pretty much every way to HDV.

Is there any reason why Sony couldn't give us a hard drive/flash media based HDV camcorder as they have with AVCHD and the HDR-SR11 and HDR-SR12 ??

So, I think your points are all valid and I fully understand where you are coming from and agree with your point of view. The problem is that Sony (and I think the other manufacturers) do not appear to be providing a broad range of products which coincide with your vision of the future, a vision, now that I understand it, I fully share and hope for.

Actually, I don't think they provide any HDV tapeless camcorders at all, that is if you look at integrated solutions rather than bolt-ons.

If I could purchase an HDV camcorder -- either in the style of my FX1 or the HDR-HC9 -- which recorded on both a hard drive AND a flash memory, like the AVCHD camcorders I mentioned above, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, and I bet most people who have posted in this thread would as well.

Harold Brown wrote on 7/30/2008, 5:01 PM
All the new features everyone wants and still you want SCS to screwing around wasting developers time with tape capture? Are you kidding me? All SCS needs to do is make sure everything works and move on, it's a new world!!! If they did tons of great stuff with tape capture you guys would be the first to kick them in the A$.. when some feature in FCP wasn't in Vegas but hey that tape capture is great. There are tons of requests for change and enhancements and limited resources to do the work. Pretty simple to figure out priorities and if I were running the show it wouldn't be new features for tape capture on the top of my list.
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/30/2008, 6:13 PM
John,
Sony doesn't state the MRU (called "memory recording unit" on the device) works with other camcorders, but it does. I use it with Canon fairly regularly, and with the HC cams as well (not supposed to work with those, either). It's the bomb from my perspective. Editing right on the CF...I love it.
blink3times wrote on 7/30/2008, 6:23 PM
"If I could purchase an HDV camcorder -- either in the style of my FX1 or the HDR-HC9 -- which recorded on both a hard drive AND a flash memory...."

If some one came up with one of these cams... I'd say goodbye to tape in a second. Even an HD cam that recorded to HDD. (JVC was on their way down this path but the cam unfortunately did not measure up).

But until this happens, or at least until avchd becomes a quality and editable compression scheme... I will survive just fine on the tapes... and I KNOW that there are thousands out there with the same mind set.... so tapes aren't going anywhere.
rmack350 wrote on 7/30/2008, 6:34 PM
No, not new features. Just old bread and butter stuff. Bearing in mind that I don't use the HDV capture tool...

You need to be able to log (this would be new for HDV? Really?)
You need to be able to import and export logs (that would be new to vidcap)
A vegas project really ought to know which vidcap files to open.
Vidcap needs better error handling (What does it do if it can't find the timecode? Sometimes vidcap founders for a while)
You need to be able to reliably recapture (vidcap does but it sounds like this is dicey with HDV)
Everything needs to be frame accurate. (Also sounds dicey with HDV)
Other applications need to see the timecode in files captured by Vegas. If I drop DV from Vegas into PPRo the time code isn't there, and vice-versa. It's got to be a matter of not writing the start code to the same fields in the header so why not just read and write both fields?

It would be VERY nice if you could specify in vidcap whether your timecode values are DF or NDF (Yes, NTSC DV is supposed to be DF but some cameras give you a choice. I get logs handed to me in NDF and I'd love to be able to base a capture off of those logs. For the last two decades I've heard the question "do you want DF or NDF" at the beginning of shoots. Deal with it Sony.)

On the question of capturing and automatically saving/converting to another format like MPEG2, I think that's normally a hardware function. It's not incumbent on SCS to capture as anything but "what it is", IMO. That said, it'd be very good if Vidcap and it's HDV tool allowed for some way to take a left or right audio channel, or all 4. It may not be technically right but a lot of pros do boom on one channel and lav on the other and expect to be able to choose the channels to ingest later on.

There are lots of requests that would require a major rewrite to Vegas itself. That'd be very bad so if that's what it takes don't even think about it.

Rob Mack

RexA wrote on 7/30/2008, 6:38 PM
The MRU sounds interesting but as John pointed out, there seems to be no way to get one except packaged with the two specified cameras. From the page:
"HVRMRC1
Accessory supplied only with HVR-Z7U and HVR-S270U cameras
List price not available"

Also, how does it connect to the cameras? (Where does it get the video it is recording.)
Terje wrote on 7/30/2008, 7:24 PM
I don't think the failure rate of HDs which are rarely used is very high. If used 24/7 in a server, then definitely, but not sitting on a shelf.

It depends on the storage. I would expect the failure rate of a server-class HD (OK, most of that is marketing, I know) in a controlled server room running 24/7 to be higher than a HD stored in a non-airconditioned apartment in New York (or Florida or anywhere hot and humid) in August. In fact, if the apartment is airconditioned, but not 24/7, I would expect the failure rate for the stored drive to be significantly higher than for the drive running 24/7.
farss wrote on 7/30/2008, 9:04 PM
It connects via the firewire port on the camera. You can buy them without the camera. Somewhere around the $1,200. Just keep in mind that it only has a single CF slot so once the card is full you have to break the recording while you swap cards.

The other alternative is the DR60 HDD recorder at aroun $1,900. That gives you 60GB of HDV recording which is more than adequate for most events. Works well with the V1, will work with reduced functionality with any camera that outputs bog standard HDV on a firewire port.

On the other hand as I've done you can go the other way. I've used my tapeless EX1 with a M15 VCR and much to my surprise the EX1 supports record control to the VCR. Clearly Sony's camera division still think tapes has a lot of life left in it.
Also though keep in mind that going tapeless doesn't solve much of the dramas with Vegas. There's problems with the HVR-MRC1 recordings and Vegas. The DR60's prerecord files seem to bring Vegas to it's knees and even the XDCAM EX1 workflow is a bit traumatic with Vegas compared to other NLEs.

Bob.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/30/2008, 10:17 PM
The MRU sounds interesting but as John pointed out, there seems to be no way to get one except packaged with the two specified camerasI looked all around and couldn't find anyone selling them (maybe on eBay, but I didn't look). B&H sure as heck doesn't sell them, for $1,200 or for any other price. And, if it is $1,200 somewhere, that is the rip off of the century given that USB card readers are $5. Yes, I know that this doubtless does many other things, and has dials and readouts and such, but it still seems way over the top, if that really is the price.

However, from what I can tell, it is made of unobtainium.
ushere wrote on 7/31/2008, 4:19 AM
late as usual....

i take exception to spot's assessment that tape is relatively little used...

i do and edit doco's for a wide range of clients NONE of whom even want to hear about hd, card, whatever.

if you're an independent working for yourself - sure, tapeless is hunky-dorky, but not when you're shooting 20+ hours for a doco, in locations far and wide. my clients, (everyone of them pro's), still like to log and batch capture from burnt in tc on dvd - and be able to ref. old tapes accurately and quickly.

from my pov. i get their rough paper cut and can assemble a rough cut pretty damn quick. they get back another dvd with original tc, edit tc burnt in, and from that we go fine cut. i can't remember when i last saw one of my clients!

they all usually work avid / fcp for networks, their own as above.

i'm sure tape will die, but it's going to be a long drawn out death.

leslie

btw. in over 40 years working in this business, i can count on one hand tc fu's, most of them attributal to some idiot forgetting to slave the rec's tc. other wise i do suffer quite a few breaks, but the cameramen who do these shoots ALWAYS note them, and if they get by them, my clients have devised their own methods for alerting me to them....
farss wrote on 7/31/2008, 4:58 AM
"However, from what I can tell, it is made of unobtainium. "

Try calling your dealer for a price. At a rough guess 90% of what Sony can sell you is not listed as for sale. If it has a part number you can buy it. More than once and at different events Sony clearly stated the unit is for sale without buying a camera.


Bob.
farss wrote on 7/31/2008, 5:33 AM
In all fairness he didn't say it was little used. He said it was sunset technology and not worth spending more R&D on. If you doubt the truth of that Panasonic are currently building their last tape based camera. Apart from cheap palmcorders I can't see us having any tape based cameras for rent much longer. A large percentage of the cost of rentals gets eaten up in the cost of spinning heads and guides that fail. Take a look at our website. Z1 $215 / day, EX1 $230 / day. That's a heck of a lot more camera for an extra $15!

XDCAM HD is so much easier for the client and us. Forget paper EDLs and shuffling tape around, you just give the client the DVD with the proxies. They pop it into a lowly PC, select what they want and email you the file, you load that and there's your project. The disks can be copied several times faster than real time so by the end of a days shoot you can even have backups of the media, one for the client and one for you. Once Sony do a bit more work hopefully that will be available even with XDCAM EX. I've only played with XDCAM HD once, I can't imagine why any client wouldn't jumping for joy over it.

HOWEVER!

None of this what this should be about. Tape or tapeless there really is no difference. It's the same friggin data just on different media. It's still got timecode. Tape could all vanish from this universe tonight but timecode will still be with us because it is the duct tape that binds us all. Apart from TC though tapeless gives us way more, metadata. Some tape systems have it, DV can be had with memory chips to log clips as they're shot. It's a no show in Vegas as is just about every advantage that tapeless brings to the table.

This whole tape V tapeless argument is NUTS. It's only relevance is that Vegas doesn't do tape right and mostly because of that it also doesn't do tapeless any better. I'd give Vegas 5 out of 10 with tape and 2 out of 10 with tapeless i.e. Vegas scores more hits with tape than it does with tapeless so I'd hardly be using the argument that Spot is, it only serves to make Vegas look even worse and more stuck in the past.

Bob.
baysidebas wrote on 7/31/2008, 5:37 AM
If portability isn't a concern [camera is on a tripod and not moving around] hook up a laptop and record to its internal drive, or even a portable USB drive. I've just been doing that for the past year with never a need to resort to the backup tapes [recorded simultaneously]. I know, belt and suspenders, but the interviews I shoot are not repeatable [movies101.org].
Grazie wrote on 7/31/2008, 5:44 AM
" I've got about 60-70 SATA hard drives ranging in size "

. . and I don't. But I DO have about 300 tapes though!

I haven't come from an IT background, where understanding SATA and figuring out caddies and so on and so forth would have been second nature to me. I got going doing things in an analogue way. As tapes now cost £1.13 a pop, this is a neat way to store and recapture. And yes I do backup projects to HDs and DVDs.

And I know I haven't got an argument, but I tell you, just reaching for that tape was sure reassuring!

Grazie

Spot|DSE wrote on 7/31/2008, 7:34 AM
i take exception to spot's assessment that tape is relatively little used...

I didn't say anything of the kind.
tape is still BY FAR the most used mechanism in our industry. As were horses at one time. It's fading, and will continue to fade.
I don't understand Bob's position that Vegas isn't great for tapeless; using XDCAM HD, it is the bee's knees, and works MUCH better than most other NLE systems. Using tapeless every day, I simply can't understand the assertion that Vegas isn't good for it. But...we've all got our own workflows. We produce at least 1 fnished hour in Vegas a week, not to mention the roughly 40 event vids per weekEND of 6-10 mins in length. Vegas doesn't give us a hitch.

BTW, I'm not advocating tape vs tapeless for those that seem to be reading as much. Your workflow is your workflow, and if it works for you, and you have time to xfer tape to HDD...more power to you. Been there, done that, never going back to it again. If you can't see the future is tapeless...wow. But just like some of us pull Umatic off the shelf every now and again, just like some of us pull vinyl off the shelf...we'll see tape around for a long while.
ChipGallo wrote on 7/31/2008, 7:53 AM
I'm here to tell you that there is a learning curve to any new technology and people who are experienced in and trust one thing (and making their living at it) may be slow to pick up the new method.

We had a tapeless setup to record a group meeting. The engineer (not a video person by the way) forgot to click "start" and the meeting went unrecorded. The video person didn't put tape in their cameras because they were told that the captioning server would record it.

End of the event, live captions were seen in the overflow room on a video feed that went unrecorded.

Right now I use tape to capture several one-hour long events a year. I keep the tapes but use 250GB and now 500GB drives to back up all the work and intermediate files before creating DVDs. I back up the final DVD images to several hard drives (and pray). I try to use hard drives that have a good reputation, but that can change very quickly. I am a "tape guy" who is learning to trust a new method.
farss wrote on 7/31/2008, 3:43 PM
"I don't understand Bob's position that Vegas isn't great for tapeless; using XDCAM HD, it is the bee's knees, and works MUCH better than most other NLE systems. Using tapeless every day, I simply can't understand the assertion that Vegas isn't good for it."

Well, people have jumped / fallen from planes without a chute and lived to tell the tale. Not something I'd recommend anyone try unless they're feeling real lucky.

I can edit almost ANYTHING on tape with Vegas, heck now, even NTSC 1". Yesterday I had to get vision off a DVCPro tape. Just borrowed a VCR and found an ouptut on the VCR that mated up with what I had. I don't even know if what was on the tape was DVCPro 25 or 50. I had a choice of composite, component or SDI on the back of the VCR. I went with the composite simply because what was on the tape just wasn't worth any more effort.
What am I saying here is that with tape so long as you've got the hardware to play it you can get it into Vegas. Vegas doesn't handle all the other stuff that each tape format might bring to the table but as tape is indeed a sunset thing I can live with that I guess. I give Vegas 5/10. Half done but good enough.

The huge advantage of tapeless should be you don't need a VCR, the data is already in a file. Life should be easier for all of us. Just as email replaces paper in an envelope. Email is faster and cheaper. But this email thing only works because we have a number of agreed standards. It falls over fast if 20% of the world can't read your email.

You can read what I'm writing via the modern marvel of the internet. What makes that possible is having a standard, there might be a few warts in that but pretty much we all get along.

Now of all the tapeless acquision formats you listed tell us honestly how many of them can Vegas read natively. Then tell us how many of them it is fully compliant with i.e. implements the FULL feature set. Last time I checked by downloading the standard test file from IRE it cannot even read the SMPTE MXF test file. And please don't say "Oh but which MXF variant". The answer to that we should all know, 'all of them!'. At the moment it doesn't FULLY support ANY of them including Sony's own variant.

Every time someone tells me they'll send me their media on a file I feel like the guy on a plane without a chute thinking "Am I going to be lucky today?"

Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/31/2008, 4:22 PM
Well, people have jumped / fallen from planes without a chute and lived to tell the tale. Not something I'd recommend anyone try unless they're feeling real lucky.

Exactly 2 in world-recorded history...and neither intentional.
but we were having a discussion based in reality, I assume.
Tell me *exactly* how Vegas not supporting 100% of Sony's .mxf file format has affected you and your workflow? Sony would *love* to support Panasonic's own variant of .mxf, but Panasonic won't allow them to license it. .mxf is supposed to be a standard, sure. Who, including Grass Valley, Ikegami, Sony, Panasonic are supporting it 100% and full across the board? No one.

Sony/Canon/Panasonic AVCHD? No problem.
DV? No problem
HDV? No problem.
MPEG2 HDD? No problem
HDV on CF or HDD? No problem.
Sony-generated .mxf? No problem.
EX-1/3? Requires a realtime re-wrap. Doesn't affect us at all. And we use these cams almost daily. It's rare we're getting out the F350's anymore for inside use, only for the NASCAR track and a few other corporate gigs do we use them. And now...we import the HD anyway, vs the proxies, because it's easier to archive the entire disc. But I digress.
It's one thing to say "Vegas doesn't support everything" and it's quite another to actually be using the formats on a daily basis and see what Vegas is missing.
For instance, I couldn't care less about Vegas displaying GPS-location metadata in the XDCAM explorer. Tape can't do that either.
I'm not saying the capture tools couldn't use improvements for SDI, read up-thread...I wish we had better SDI support. But that said, developing *new* features, or even stepping backwards to support older features...seems like a silly waste of time and development dollars in the face of what's forward, not backwards.
I too, find myself using other tools from time to time because of a lack or clumsy implementation in Vegas.
Perhaps there are shortcomings in the PAL flows for Vegas of which I'm not familiar. PAL is a rarity for us, but we are seeing more and more of it coming in.

winrockpost wrote on 7/31/2008, 4:41 PM
I'm all for moving forward,, kind of get af feel for whats coming and be ahead of the game,, but this game is changing quickly and investing dollars in??? may not be whats coming in 2010,,so IMO how about fixing what the product is supposed to do before moving forward to ?
just an opinion
johnmeyer wrote on 7/31/2008, 4:42 PM
In fact, if the apartment is airconditioned, but not 24/7, I would expect the failure rate for the stored drive to be significantly higher than for the drive running 24/7. I'm not sure I understand why that would be. The first eight years of my career were in test and measurement, working for Hewlett-Packard and then GenRad. We sold test equipment which was used, among other things, for testing on production lines. I spent a lot of time at customer's facilities and a major part of the operation were the "burn-in" tests that were done at the end of the production line. Finished units were put in "ovens" where they were run, at elevated temperatures, in order to force units to fail before they were shipped. This was based on the fact -- which is applicable here -- that most electronic failures are caused by failures in mechanical connections, such as solder joints, bonds, etc. and these can be caused to fail via heat. However, the heat we are talking about is 150-200 degree F, obviously a lot more than an apartment on a summer day in New York.

So, based on that experience, I think you are correct that storage temperature makes a difference, and definitely, cool stable temperatures are to be preferred, but most failures usually occur sooner rather than later, so if a unit has been in service for a few weeks or months and then placed on the shelf, I think it has a very high probability of lasting a LONG time, and second if the temperature is in the range of most apartments (and how many people let their apartment get to 100 degrees in the summer), I don't think it is likely to have a problem.

The oldest drive I have is in a 1987 laptop that has run 24/7 since 1993, logging all phone calls from my PBX. It is still working just fine, but that is just one data point.

blink3times wrote on 7/31/2008, 4:46 PM
"tape is still BY FAR the most used mechanism in our industry. As were horses at one time. It's fading, and will continue to fade."

This makes no sense at all Spot.

Is tape going to die? Sure it is.... SOMEDAY. The internal combustion engine will be replaced some day but that sure doesn't stop Ford, GM....etc from making improvements to it

But hey, let's not stop there HDD cams will one day fade and be replaced by cards so let's not bother furthering HDD cams. Cards are going to die one day too... so let's not even bother getting into them

Yes... tape today is BY FAR the most used medium.... and will be for YEARS to come. My HV20 is only 2 years old.... I know bloody well I can keep it going for AT LEAST another 5 How many HV20's do you think are out there? Throw in all the HC1's HC3's, HC5's, HC7's, HV10's, etc.... well.... let's just say that's one heck of a large audience to impress and make money from

How long has DVD been around? Did you know that last year was THE FIRST YEAR that dvd sales actually over took VHS sales (not my words... an article of fact from NPD statistics)

Tell me Spot... how many Vegas versions do you think will pass us by in 4 years time?
johnmeyer wrote on 7/31/2008, 4:55 PM
Did you know that last year was THE FIRST YEAR that dvd sales actually over took VHS sales (not my words... an article of fact from NPD statistics)Quick point of clarification: last year was the first year that the installed base of DVD players, in the U.S., equalled the installed base of VHS decks. The sale of DVD players, per year, long ago surpassed the sale of VHS decks (around 2001, I think).
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/31/2008, 5:01 PM
How long has DVD been around? Did you know that last year was THE FIRST YEAR that dvd sales actually over took VHS sales (not my words... an article of fact from NPD statistics)

Patently false. Provide citation link.

I'll accept that DVD players might have finally sold more units into homes than VHS units have been in homes...but not that DVD anything has finally caught up to VHS sales of anything in a proscribed period of time.
...might as well ask Sony to develop a software TBC for all those VHS tapes you're gonna capture, right? Anyone here still using VHS cameras in their regular workflow?
Been through *all* of this before, and before DV existed. It's the same ole' song, just new players.
blink3times wrote on 7/31/2008, 6:51 PM
"Quick point of clarification: l"

Thanks for the correction John. It's been a while since I read the article in question and don't quite recall its details.