Bypassing HDV Compression for Feature Work

[ClearVision]

ClearVision Studios has just competed filming a new project that used the HD-SDI output on the Canon XL-H1 to capture uncompressed HD-SDI footage directly to hard drive in real-time using Premiere Pro 2.0. With chooses of lenses on the XL-H1 and HD-SDI output, the footage was amazing. One of the best parts was having the ability to feedback "instant dailies" to the set within seconds.

If you have worked on anything similar or plan too drop me a message.

[edDV]

Was that a question or a promo?

The XL-H1 like other pro cameras outputs SDI (SMPTE-259M SD or 292M HD)
http://downloads.canon.com/cpr/software/video/XLH1_InputsOutputs.pdf

SD data rate would be ~270Mb/s SD or ~1485 Mb/s HD (~670GB/hr)
An HD SDI input/output card (see AJA or BlackMagic) and a large RAID would be required.

Monitoring is usually provided from the SDI card.

[ClearVision]

Not a promo or a question. Just curious if anyone else is working with this technology. If so, I would love to chat and share notes!

We're using Black Magic cards and our capture machines use a very large RAID. 16 SATA II drives all striped together. Each machine has 8 TB of storage which in theory would give us about 12 hours of record time.

[edDV]

I don't have that luxury but you can find many others with similar rigs in the post focused Premiere Pro and Canon XL forums.

[KBeee]

16 HDD's striped? Does that mean if 1 fails you lose everything?
That'd be scary

[edDV]

16 HDD's striped? Does that mean if 1 fails you lose everything?
That'd be scary

They would usually configure as a fault tolerant RAID with hot swap drives.

Here is an example of a medium-high level solution.
http://www.avid.com/products/videoRAID/

Here are some of the more affordable RAID solutions.
http://www.videoguys.com/storage.htm

[ClearVision]

The drives are running a RAID 5 configuration. With that config, the drives still write about 400MB per second.

[edDV]

The drives are running a RAID 5 configuration. With that config, the drives still write about 400MB per second.

Each HD SDI feed is ~ 185MB/s so that covers you for realtime single channel read and write. Typical real time processing cards need 3 to 4 synch SDI feeds for A-Roll, B-Roll, overlay (or matte key) and record.

That is why these post production RAIDs get so huge.

[KBeee]

Phew!
That's a relief