How much longer can tape-based HDV hang on?

[Ollie6431]

In the recent review on Canon HV30 at camcorderinfo.com, the reviewer wrote some interesting comments on the decline of tape-based HDV cams for the consumers:


in "Intro"
...Canon also realize that tape-based (HDV) high definition camcorders are on their last legs. HDD and solid state memory are taking precedence, and it wouldn’t be surprising if this is the last time their consumer HDV line receives any significant upgrades...

in "Conclusion"
...The real question on our minds is this: how much longer can tape-based HDV hang on? In most other aspects – convenience, portability, capacity, and ease of transfer to computer – tape has already lost to HDD and solid state media. The thin margin of victory is in HDV’s superior compression, which will keep the true video nuts in the tape-camp for a little while longer...


http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-HV30-Camcorder-Review-34401/Comparisons--Conclusion.htm


Is this really true?

[Video Head]

Solid state is the future of media...Sony and others have been working on it since the early 90's. Availability, capacity and price are the current barriers, but over the next few years that will change just as DVD recordable has done and every technology before it...now I need to go to Radio Shack and get a new stylus for my 78RPM phonograph player machine.

[jagabo]

As the price of flash memory comes down the conversion to solid state memory is inevitable. Eliminating the mechanical tape mechanism has great benefits.

[Ollie6431]

As the price of flash memory comes down the conversion to solid state memory is inevitable...

Things have changed rather quicky. Just 3-4 months ago when I checked on camcorder forums before buying a high-def camcorder, most experts/users recommended sticking to miniDV camcorders.

[JohnnyMalaria]

$10 or so for 13GB or 1hr of DV/HDV. How much for solid state?

The only serious camcorders using solid state are very expensive - $500+ for 4GB. These solid state cards are not your everyday flash drive.

Tape is cheap and reliable. Archiving is cheap and simple.

Trends in the consumer market don't mean much in the prosumer market.

[aedipuss]

i can see 13gb micro-flash cards used instead of tape soon. cost for the manufacturers would go down with no tape transport to build into the cam. less moving parts means fewer warranty returns also.

[jagabo]

$10 or so for 13GB or 1hr of DV/HDV. How much for solid state?

Currently $80 to $90 for 16GB SD cards. Next year they'll be half that price. The year after, half again. The year after that flash memory will be cheaper than a $10 DV tape (the ones I buy are more like $3 though). The year after that "tiny" 16 GB cards will be hard to find!

The only serious camcorders using solid state are very expensive - $500+ for 4GB. These solid state cards are not your everyday flash drive.

Because it's currently a niche market. Once it goes mainstream with a standard flash format like SD it will become much cheaper. Standard USB 2.0 thumb drives and SD flash cards already have sufficient bandwidth for DV/HDV.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I agree with the cost benefits of doing away with tape mechanisms etc. I was really focusing on the costs of the recording media. It really depends on the type of user. Some people will record onto the card, dump it to the computer and use the card for something else. Others, like me, *never* reuse the media. I keep everything even if 90% of it is awful. If the cost of 1hr of video can drop to the $5 to $15 range, no problem.

For DV/HDV, class 6 SD cards are the likely requirement - $140 or so for 16GB.

One serious problem with the SD format (to me at least) is that they can only be formatted as FAT16 or FAT32 (for 2.0). No NTFS.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to pop a flash card into camcorder but it had better be able to record everything in one contiguous block and not regress to the 4GB limit nonsense of yesteryear.

[jagabo]

For DV/HDV, class 6 SD cards are the likely requirement - $140 or so for 16GB.

Class 4 (5 MB/s write speed) cards should be fast enough for DV (3.6 MB/s). In any case, class 6 or faster will be common in a few years.

One serious problem with the SD format (to me at least) is that they can only be formatted as FAT16 or FAT32 (for 2.0). No NTFS.

That's not an inherent limitation of flash memory technology though. Just a matter of current implementations.

[edDV]

Video format, media and workflow are three separate issues.

Any digital format can be recorded to any media. You just might not like number of minutes recorded for flash or DVD media. Hard drives are viable for DV/HDV/XDCAM now as is BluRay DVD.

What entry consumers miss is there is a cost to using Mini-DVD, HDD or flash storage in current models. To fit a reasonable number of minutes, highly compressed MPeg2 or AVCHD are used. These formats are not intended for editing and suffer loss when decompressed.

Sony made the declaration that the average consumer never edits their video. They say since less than 5% of camcorder buyers actually edit video on computers, these new storage formats (e.g. Mini-DVD, HDD, AVCHD) are a solution for those that want to transfer video directly to DVD without decompression. Decompression for quality editing requires a less compressed camera format.

Separately Sony, Canon, etc. offer DV and HDV formats to "prosumers" who intend to edit and/or filter before authoring to DVD. Currently they only offer these higher bitrate formats on tape even though HDD recording is economically viable.

Next level up are DVCPro-HD (P2 Flash) and XDCAM-HD (BluRay DVD) pro formats. These camcorders are solving the pro newscam need now but also represent the future of prosumer. Both behave as network drives over USB2 or IEEE-1394. The only problem is camcorder cost ($6k to $25K) and media cost ($hundreds for P2 flash or $18 per BluRay erasable blank). Again removable HDD is economically viable but not offered.

High quality acquisition requires 25-50Mb/s data rates for HDV, XDCAM, VC-1 or AVC-Intra. Those data rates require 13-25 GB flash or BluRay media for one hour of recording.

When the price of base camcorders drop below $2000 and media costs become reasonable, tape will no longer be needed. In the meantime, tape or removable hard drives and HDV video format seem to be the most viable intermediate solution for prosumers.

Panasonic AG-HVX-200 with P2 Flash Media


Sony XDCAM-HD with BluRay DVD media

[JohnnyMalaria]

Perhaps moot given the likely very affordable nature in a few years but I would err on the side of caution and use Class 6. Class 4 has "a speed of 4 MB/s or higher is guaranteed at the best fragmented state where no memory unit is occupied." 4MB/s is too close to the 3.5MB/s of HDV/DV especially if the card has any fragmentation.

I certainly hope that any common format for camcorders will permit unlimited file sizes.

Of course, one down side to flash memory versus hard drives is that it will take a l-o-n-g time to transfer the video from the card to a computer.

I'd really like a camcorder that uses removable run-of-the-mill 2.5" hard drives....

[JohnnyMalaria]

Panasonic AG-HVX-200 with P2 Flash Media

Sony XDCAM-HD with BluRay DVD media

Oh boy. I've read a lot about these but haven't seen such obscenely drool-inducing pictures of them. They look like something the Terminator or Judge Dredd would be seen with.

I'm still grinning from seeing them.

Thanks!

[edDV]

The P2 Flash card can handle 100Mb/s DVCProHD format but at that rate a 50GB flash card would be needed for 1hr. External Firestore hard drive solutions are available to supplement the P2 cards.



Firestore FS4


Sony HVR-V1 with external hard drive option

[jagabo]

Class 4 has "a speed of 4 MB/s or higher is guaranteed at the best fragmented state where no memory unit is occupied." 4MB/s is too close to the 3.5MB/s of HDV/DV especially if the card has any fragmentation.

There's no reason a flash card can't be treated like a DV tape -- linear writes.

In 3 to 5 years most consumer camcorders will be solid state. Getting rid of the DV drive mechanism and the big battery to power it will allow them to shrink to the size of current digital cameras. Of course, low light performance will suffer with the small optics.

[edDV]

New from Sony.

The XDCAM-EX series camcorders based on solid state SxS ExpressCard technology.


http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/markets/10014/xdcamEX_media.shtml


http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/markets/10014/xdcamEX_overview.shtml
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/cameras/revfeat/first_look_xdcam_ex/
Price ~$8,000

[Video Head]

Yup...all I want in a camera is a BIG lense, balanced audio, 3 sensors, a place it to put it all and a FAST way to get it to the computer so I can edit into a small package = money.

[slacker]

Who is the average consumer? It MAY be true that less than 5% of camcorder buyers actually edit their video, but not for the reason inferred. I know quite a few active camcorder owners and there are two reasons why they don't edit their own video. Firstly, they don't understand what it takes from a systems perspective to actually do it, i.e. computer, software, etc. Secondly, often because of the first reason, they have someone more knowledgeble edit their video for them. In my particular case, however, everyone (and they are a diverse group?) that I know who shoots video goes on to edit their video. So where does this 5% population reside? Initially, in the minds of the manufacturers' marketing and design departments. I would suspect we have a self-fulfilling prophecy at work here.

I would embrace the newer technologies faster if I was convinced they were as reliable as some of the older technologies. I now have 400 DV and HDV tapes archived away. I know that when I pull one from the shelf 5 years from now, it will work. I can't say that about any other technology out there (which I can afford).

If the manufacturers force me to give up tape tomorrow (and tomorrow comes FAST at my age) by simply NOT supporting the technology any longer, I would still archive to tape using, for example, the HP StorageWorks DAT 160. Cheap, reliable storage.

Until I see them using those 'crystals' from the original Superman movie for digital storage, tape is my game!

Mark

[Ollie6431]

Who is the average consumer? It MAY be true that less than 5% of camcorder buyers actually edit their video, but not for the reason inferred. I know quite a few active camcorder owners and there are two reasons why they don't edit their own video. Firstly, they don't understand what it takes from a systems perspective to actually do it, i.e. computer, software, etc. Secondly, often because of the first reason, they have someone more knowledgeble edit their video for them. In my particular case, however, everyone (and they are a diverse group?) that I know who shoots video goes on to edit their video. So where does this 5% population reside? Initially, in the minds of the manufacturers' marketing and design departments. I would suspect we have a self-fulfilling prophecy at work here....

There may be also a third group of consumers who overlap the other two groups. People in this third group prefer the convenience of SDHC and HDD media and also do basic authoring. They prefer the convenient way in playing clips immediately after shooting (no rewinding/cueing) plus copy/paste the clips to their PC. They also author DVDs when the HDD & SDHC are full. With basic authoring (no true editing that would mess up the compression), highly-compressed formats (MPG2 for Std Def and AVCHD for High-def) should be fine since those would be in the delivery medium anyway. I am not sure how many would be in this group (?).

To edDV, I really enjoy/learn from your brief summary

[slacker]

Ollie6431,

I agree with you. There is definitely this 3rd market. I shoot right next to someone who fits that category perfectly.

Mark