Beware the Tapeless Camcorder

[Mikele]

More or less, I have the same opinion.
I don't like interframe codecs and DV is the last "affordable" intraframe system.
I'm wating for a "REAL" DV substitute. Something like Panasonic's P2 but without expensive pcmcia cards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/technology/circuits/20pogue.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=technology&adxnnlx=1190311102-7cKzJCZ303KEaf9CN7dmQg&oref=slogin

[Brian Ellis]

And that is exactly the reason I'm keeping my two mini-DV cams.

[Mikele]

What about this?

http://www.sonybiz.net/biz/view/ShowProduct.action?product=PMW-EX1&site=biz_en_EU&pageType=Overview&imageType=Main&category=XDCAMCamcorders

And a review!!!!????

http://www.ingenioustv.com/xdcamex.asp

[Brian Ellis]

What about it? Firstly, it's Sony, which means that it is probably incompatible with any other make of hardware or software. Secondly, my maths or theirs is up the pole. They say 2 x 16 Gb memory and 35 Mb/s best quality. For me, 32768 divided by 35 gives 936.2286 seconds or 15 min 36 sec of best quality shooting time. Hardly adequate, is it? To get the advertised 140 minutes, one would have to shoot at a bitrate of 3.9 Mb/s, which is a mediocre SD MPEG-2 bitrate. I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot bargepole. With my Panasonic DV cameras, I can get 1 hour of better quality (than the 140 minute quality) on a tape, and I can use it with a wide variety of hardware and software. Good enough for me!

[Gurm]

What about it? Firstly, it's Sony, which means that it is probably incompatible with any other make of hardware or software. Secondly, my maths or theirs is up the pole. They say 2 x 16 Gb memory and 35 Mb/s best quality. For me, 32768 divided by 35 gives 936.2286 seconds or 15 min 36 sec of best quality shooting time. Hardly adequate, is it? To get the advertised 140 minutes, one would have to shoot at a bitrate of 3.9 Mb/s, which is a mediocre SD MPEG-2 bitrate. I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot bargepole. With my Panasonic DV cameras, I can get 1 hour of better quality (than the 140 minute quality) on a tape, and I can use it with a wide variety of hardware and software. Good enough for me!

Erm, the record rate is 35mbit/sec. and the storage is 32gigaBYTE. Which means 120+ minutes at best quality. Still not quite what you want, but in the same ballpark!

[Brian Ellis]

OK, my mistake, sorry. However, I have a damned good excuse for making that mistake: Sony used the incorrect abbreviations and it didn't click. The unit is a Binary unIT which is abbreviated to 'bit'. ISO 35-0 states quite categorically that an abbreviated unit should never be further abbreviated. As byte is correctly abbreviated to b, I'm supposed to guess that 35 Mb/s is intended not to be in megabyte/s but incorrectly in megabit/s. Blast Sony and all others who incorrectly misuse units.

Incidentally 'B' for byte also breaks ISO rules for units; capitalised units should be used only for those derived from the names of persons and places. If anyone is interested, I can quote chapter and verse, with the proper numerotation, for what I have said here.

[Hulk]

I think we also have to beware of writers with bias for or against a format for what may be personal reaons.

I quote "It looks positively crude next to MiniDV, with blown-out whites, muddy blacks and grain everywhere between. Not many editing programs recognize MPEG-2, either."

This is just one of the many ridiculous and misguided statments made by the author in this piece.

As we all know there are many great examples of MPEG-2. Just have a look at your DVD collection. In addition, there are quite a few cameras that use MPEG-2 and produce excellent results. Some of the Sony cams come to mind as well as a few Cannon's.

So to say that Hard Disk, Optical Disk, or Solid State camcorders have inferior image quality due to the method of bit storage is quite simply ridiculous. There are good and bad examples of compressions codecs in many hardware devices on the market today. It is true that MiniDV camcorders are a significantly more mature product than hard disk camcorders that use newer compression technology but it is hardly fair to blame the hard disk drive.

When MiniDV camcorders first appeared on the market there were many examples that looked much worse than many of the Hi-8 camcorders. As the product matured it became the format/camera of choice for much of the market.

Now I as they say "have no dog in the fight." When a new technology starts to take over a market and the old technology fades there will always be those who fill fight tooth and nail for the old or new technology. That usually depends on what they believe is best for them. For good or bad market forces (economics) will drive the market. Just as the CD rolled over vinyl and mp3 compression rolled over PCM. Like I said, for good or bad it happens.

I will be the first to admit that from what I have seen hard disk camcorder performance thus far has been pretty dismal. But I have a feeling the next/current generation offerings will be much improved.

My point is that if the author is trying to warn potential hard disk camcorder buyers that the codecs used in these camera is still in rapid development and that for the money you can often do better with older MiniDV technology, or that there is a definite convenience to having unlimited recording time (with enoough tape) and the ability to easily archive the old video in the form of the tapes then he should say that while being honest with the arguement.

The disk drive is only the storage medium it has nothing to do with the video quality.

I personally like having a hard disk drive camcorder. I generally shoot less than 20 minutes of video. Do a quick download, edit, and crank out a DVD. If the project is small enough I can save the raw files on the actual DVD in a data folder. Otherwise I'll archive the original video to a DVD recordable.

I think it should also be mentioned that if one really wants to get down to it you can purchase a 500GB hard drive for less than $110. Let's see at 13GB per MiniDV tape that's roughly 38 tapes. Multiply that by $5 and you get $192. Significantly MORE than the cost of the tape! Jeez, you can just archive your projects to a secondary hard drive and pull it and put it on the shelf when it's full. Not only do you have the original project archived but the entire project.

Now I'm not saying one method or the other is better. That depends on the personal preferences and workflow for the individual. What I am saying is that misguided authors like this need to be challenged for the sake of the uninformed reader out there.

This kind of reminds me of the insane things I read about people saying we need electic battery cars vs. hydrogen fuel cell cars when the truth is that both the battery and the hydrogen are simply methods of energy storage. There is still the problem of generating the electricty, either to charge the battery or to strip the oxygen from the hydrogen.

[Brian Ellis]

I agree but, for me, 20 minutes is far from enough. OK, I do far less travelling than when I was working for the UN and I no longer do any pro work, so things have changed. I remember, on one occasion in China, I filled a 1 h tape on a single factory visit then added another few minutes on a second tape (the time it took for a complete batch process cycle). Also, I filled 6 h of tape on a tour from Seattle-San Diego via the inland route, including Idaho, Utah, Arizona etc. For me, downloading to a laptop would not be an option because I don't want to lug a computer around as well as a set of camera equipment and there is a far greater risk of losing a laptop than a tape.

However, the great thing is a tape is reliable. Since I started on mini-DV, nearly 12 years ago, I have lost extremely little footage for any reason. I can't say the same about data on hard disks.

And I do disagree with your assertion about early mini-DV being of poorer quality. I have two mini-DV cams. The first one was the first Panasonic model, serial # 108, 3-CCD and dates from early 1996 (it was the first non-Sony mini-DV imported into Singapore, where I was staying at the time). The second one is also a Pana 3-CCD c. 2001 model that had seen a head shrinker compared with the older model. The first one gives the better picture but, because the CCDs are only ~300 kpixels each 1/3" (2 Mpixel, 1/6", in the newer one) with interpolation, things like non-optical zoom and electronic stabilisation are poorer, but the light sensitivity is MUCH better with the coarser CCDs. I still prefer the older cam for much work, as it has superb pic quality, old codec or not.

[Hulk]

Brian,

I would assert that you are not the norm when it comes to buying AV equipment. I'm sure you checked out quite a few miniDV cams before making a purchase. And I didn't say there weren't early good examples available, only that there were quite a few poor examples of the then relatively new technology. I have edited quite a few friends tapes that has the all too common symptons of blown out whites, oversaturated colors, over-contrasty, many of the same things we're seeing in the 1st and 2nd generation of HD/SS/Optical Disk camcorders.

It's always tempting to write about personal anecdotal evidence. You've had good experiences with miniDV and it suits your workflow. Nobody can intelligently argue that point with you! I was trying to just provide the other side of this article as I see it. Right now I don't blame the MPEG-2 format or the AVCHD format but rather it's implimentation. And that could include anything from the glass, to the sensor, to the routines used to create the image, to the actual compression to storage.

As I said I'm looking forward to really good Hard Drive camcorder or better yet SS devices especially since SS storage prices continue to fall as process technology shrinks.

And what I really, really want is 720p or 1080p. No more interlaced formats please! We don't use interlaced playback devices so we don't need interlaced formats that remap pixels. i.e. anamorphic 1080i

I'd much rather have a nice 720p camcorder that will do 4:1:1 or 4:2:2 at a higher bandwidth recording rate. With a 80GB+ hard drive there really is room to tailor the project to the recording time you need. If my calculations are correct with an 80GB drive you could shoot over 3 hours at a data rate double that of MiniDV. And of course there are laptop drives available much larger than 80GB.

And there is nothing saying these hard drive camcorders can't use a non-temporal miniDV-like compression scheme. There IS enough storage on a large hard drive. In fact since they can store data at non-linear rates, unlike tape based storage, it is possible to have a non-temporal variable data rate mode. As Doc has stated before a MJPEG compression would be great. Yes it would take up a lot of storage space but if you have the room for the project you are shooting then why not? MJPEG can show great quality, is easy to edit, and goes to a final format (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc...) with good result.

Alternately if you have a long project and need to sacrifice a bit of quality and editing snappiness you could select an MPEG-2 or AVCHD recording format on the camera.