A tapeless world

The following is a republished blog entry from my own company website.

A project for Ticketservice Uitburo was our first experience shooting DVCProHD for greenscreen material, with the Panasonic HVX-200 - since the budget didn't allow for HDCAM or film. What sets this camera apart is that is shoots HD on P2 memorycards, not tape. As a result we could immediately copy the data to a computer and start working. No need to have tapes transferred to files, or send film to a lab. The immediate availability of the material is one of the biggest advantages of this type of camera. In real life there were a couple of hurdles to take though.

But when we were asked to do something similar for a music video for the new boy-girl-band XYP, we decided to stick with this workflow. The postproduction schedule was very tight so we couldn't afford to lose time sending tapes out to be converted to files. Although there are definitely limitations to the HVX-200 and the DVCProHD codec (1080p isn't really 1080p and the chroma resolution is less than ideal for keying purposes), for these projects it has worked out very well - especially since the elements were mostly scaled down to SD which compensated for a lot of the compression.

But more importantly, it was a preview of times to come. With tape being on its way out, and data-centric cameras (cameras that record files to disk instead of video to tape) on the rise it looks like the whole camera acquisition landscape is about to be shaken, not stirred. There are already a couple of productions doing tape-less workflows. David Fincher has shot Zodiac direct-to-disk - using the Viper.

Apart from the top-range IT based cameras such as the Thomson Viper, the Arri D20 and the Dalsa Origin there's two new kids on the block. The Silicon Imaging SI2K, and RED One. The SI2K will shoot 2k (2048x1152 in this case) and RED One will shoot 4,5k. And both will use a more efficient and scalable compression technology than DVCProHD or HDCAM - so the images will look dramatically better than anything in their price range.

As always, there's pros and cons to an all-digital tapeless pipeline.

Pro...

• Immediate availability of the material means you could start rough cuts , or do quick and dirty composites right on the set.
• At the acquisition stage tapeless digital is lower cost than film, and HD tape, if we're not counting HDV (which I'm ruling out for high-end work) - since no lab or tape-devices are needed. Just connect the digital magazine to a workstation and copy files.

Con...

• This development is still immature. There's no standardized workflow so it means a little bit of pioneering. RED has stated over and again that smooth workflow is as important as a working camera, so at least it is being taken seriously and to be honest I am pretty confident that this will work out.
• Archival. With film your negative is your archive and if stored appropriately, will last decades, maybe centuries. And with digital video tape you have a similar camera-based archive. With digital magazines you copy to some kind of harddisk array and re-use them. Which means for backup and archival extra steps need to be taken. And all of a sudden the cost advantage may look slightly different.

And one more pro...

• To put that last 'con' into perspective: IT based archival media are rapidly increasing in capacity and decreasing in cost. Which can't be said of film.

Based on the generally positive experience with data-centric workflows and the very promising previews of the RED One camera, I have made reservations for a RED One camera (#368) - which will ship before summer 2007. And it seems I'm not alone. RED has stated that amongst their reservation holders are the likes of David Fincher, Peter Jackson and James Cameron. I'm sure I'll write more on this subject as soon as there's more to say.