View Full Version : How does it feel to go Tapeless? tell me about your experience
Silas Barker February 10th, 2010, 04:31 PM Wondering about the future with Sonys Tapeless Cameras.
Personally I like having a solid tape back up for weddings and events since loosing footage would be a horrible thing to happen!
What was your experience from tape to tapeless and what cameras did you upgrade for the switch?
How do you save your footage? How do you insure hard drive security?
Ever have any issues? Anything erased accidently?
Thanks in advance!
Chris Barcellos February 10th, 2010, 05:07 PM I have had the FX1, and HV20, still do. I bought the 5D. Nice not to have to capture. But now issue is how to safe guard. I offload to a hard drive, but should I have two, probably. Its a bit spooky. Tape was alway complained about, but it is a relatively safe storage vehicle.
Andy Wilkinson February 10th, 2010, 05:08 PM It's very easy. Just make multiple backups of all your raw clips on various external hard drives as well as optical media (DVD+R and DVD-DL). Typically I have 3-4 identical "clones" of EVERYTHING in various places - but I like to sleep at night.
Then, with all those (easy and fast to create) backups done, sit back enjoy all the extra time you now have and ESPECIALLY enjoy not having to transfer tapes in real time.
If you want to sleep even better than me, store some of those back-ups in a different location (nothing I film is that important - if my house burns down I'll be searching for my wife and kids first, the video archive can burn - I do corporate, not weddings BTW).
It's a revolution - I went to the "solid state party" earlier than most but I'm always amazed how many people still have not even thought about accepting the invitation. Just do it (with Sony or JVC or Panny or soon Canon et al - the list seems to grow every month now) and don't look back!
Louis Maddalena February 10th, 2010, 06:17 PM How did I feel? I was scared out of my mind and super paranoid! I still am. I back up my cards ever 30 minutes. I have a laptop that I bring there and copy cards while i'm shooting with other ones.
Chris Harding February 10th, 2010, 07:45 PM Hi Silas
I moved from tape to card last year and yes it took a lot of thought and many hours of pondering !! I too had visions of the computer giving me a message saying "Card is Corrupt" and I lose a whole wedding!!
Actually in real life even if the camera write operation fails, it's only for the current clip so at the worst you would lose just part of a shot ... all the big name cams will have error checking and also write each stop/start action as a new file. If a card DID fail then you could pop in a new one a lot faster than having to change a tape (especially if the tape contents are around the drive train!!)
I have shot probably 20 or more weddings this season on card without any issues!!
When you get home, save the card files onto an external drive or two and you are pretty much safe.
Yes I was paranoid at first but there really is no need to be!!!
Chris
Don Bloom February 10th, 2010, 07:58 PM OK I'll be the 1st to admit I'm still old school, I shoot tape but I'm looking at going tapeless soon, maybe. Depends on my decision to retire or not. Anyway here's the thing I've noticed since tapeless started becoming a thing, especially for weddings. Archiving! So let me ask, how long do you guys keep your tapes from your weddings? Good lord, if I kept all the tapes from all the weddings I've done over the last 26 almost 27 years, I'd have to rent a warehouse. I'm down to keeping only the last years tapes. I really have no need to keep them after 1 year for any reason. The footage is on my drives, if I need something specific it's there on the drive, if the couple decides they want the original tapes I have them (that never happens) so the point is, if you have the footage on say 2 HDDs what more do you need? Corporate stuff is different. Just talking weddings here.
Kelly Langerak February 10th, 2010, 08:29 PM Two things: Back up your footage to two or more drives. The second or third drive should be a drive that you can lock up or store if you go on vacation.
Also, after you have copied your clips to one drive, look to make sure they all have a thumbnail. If one doesn't then it could be corrupt. Keep your footage on your cards until you are certain that all clips are good to go.
I have a 2TB drive that I keep my clips on for safe keeping and I tell all my clients once you give me the OK that the DVD is good, then I delete anything I don't need. I do keep an extra DVD copy of their wedding for demo purpose and if they call in a year and want another copy!
Will Tucker February 10th, 2010, 09:07 PM I film weddings with the Z5 with the CF attachment, so I do tape and tapeless. One 'baby-step' for me was when I started using I-Rivers, and Zooms a few years ago. I save all that audio on two different hardrives and a CD. After a while I got used to it, and I felt more and more confident about trusting it.
Now I have tape, back it up on two hardrives, a Blu-Ray disk of all the raw footage, a Blu Ray disk of the final edited video, and a DVD of the edited video. The hardives get cleared as I need the room-but that is usually several months or even a year after the clients have their videos. I also give them about 2 weeks to inform me of any changes if they are needed. I keep the DVDs, tapes, and Blu Ray stuff forever.
I imagine they will someday come out with a 'single-write' only memory card of some kind that will be really cheap like tape is now. That will add another layer to the old archive and we'll feel even better about the whole tapeless process.
Ken Diewert February 10th, 2010, 09:26 PM Silas,
It is a little scary. I generally try not to reformat my CF cards until as long as possible after a wedding. No matter what you're shooting when shooting to cards, it's a good idea to transfer it, and back it up ASAP. Just in case.
I did accidentally erase some footage that I had thought I had transferred, only to find out later I hadn't. It wasn't a huge deal but still it taught me a lesson.
Perrone Ford February 10th, 2010, 09:38 PM I went tapeless in 2004. Bought a Firestore for my DVX100. Never looked back. For one time events, I rolled tape and tapless for a while. Then just stopped using the tapes. Bought a hardened external drive and backed up to that. For archival purposes, I wrote my source material and finished material out to pro-class full size DV. Also wrote my finished material out to DVD
In 2008 bought an EX1 and a BluRay recorder. If I absolutely need a backup I shoot HDV to the EX1 and Firestore. I'll buy a Nanoflash this year if I can. Archive is to BluRay. About mid 2009, prices for 25GB BluRay fell below my costs for miniDV tape and it holds over twice as much since I am in control of the codec. My masters are stored in a media grade fire safe, in a sprinker based building.
Am I worried about my data? MUCH less than I was with tape. No dirty heads to worry about. No magnetic issues. No roller system to crunch my tapes. No need to worry about dust or humidity. No worry that checking my tapes randomly every year will degrade the media. No worrying about whether my tape format will be readable by the next guy, or even by me in 10 years... VHS, SVHC, 8mm, hi8, Digital8, VHSc, SVHSc, DVCam, miniDV, HDV1, HDV2, DVCPro, DVCProHD, Betacam, BetaSP, DigiBeta... BLAH! With tapeless you download free software, transcode, and DONE.
Consumer tape? I don't trust it AT ALL. Seen too many failures. And generally because people tend to believe the fallacy that "tape is it's own archive" they get bit hard since they have no other backup. I do backups for a part of my living. We have over 100TB getting backed up nightly. We used to do it all on tape. Three years ago we began the migration away. Now none of it is tape based and I don't miss it at ALL. Restoring files now takes seconds instead of hours.
I'll never buy another tape unless I am forced to.
Chris Harding February 10th, 2010, 09:43 PM I use the same scenario after I transfered the backup files to HDD and had a wedding the next day so I formatted the cards ready for the morning only to discover that I hadn't copied the stills folder to my drive!! (I usually shoot around 6 - 10 still shots to use on the DVD cover! before I do the photoshoot) Ok, it wasn't a big deal as I managed to get a couple of stills off the video but they were not as good as the stills which were posed shots.
What I do now is use 6 SDHC cards on a rotational basis (normally just 2 per wedding..one in each camera) so that gives me usually 2 weeks before I get around to the first set again and the edit is normally finished by then. Cards have dropped in price drastically so it's not a lot of money to run a 6 card set (here about $50 per card) If one bases the cost on that I used to use 2 or 3 tapes minimum per wedding and my Panasonic PQ tapes were $8 each, just doing 4 weddings a month would be the same as buying 2 SDHC cards!! so you get to a break even point pretty quickly!!
Don, my cupboard is still full of tapes!!! What I started doing was giving them away with the packages as 'backup footage' which saved space but I still had the captured footage on External HDD's I have no more tape cameras now so I guess it's time to toss out the remaining tapes????
Chris
Roger Shealy February 10th, 2010, 09:51 PM Tape is a beautiful thing. I'm sitting here with 12 tapes next to me as I edit a shoot with 3 A1's last weekend. Seems a little nostalgic after shooting tapeless for a while. I don't miss the capture, but love having the physical tapes.
Bill Vincent February 10th, 2010, 10:02 PM I have not gone totally tapeless yet, although two out of the three cams I have are tapeless. My Canon A1s is still my main "end of the isle" cam that shoots the master shot of the ceremony. I still like having that tape - call it my security blanket, if you will.
I am currently looking into a RAID storage solution that will provide lots of storage plus redundancy. I do not plan on having hard drives sitting unused with data on them, so eventually the projects will be cleared off or archived onto a data tape drive.
Data tape is still the cheapest (and most reliable) backup solution for long term storage of large amounts of data.
Perrone Ford February 10th, 2010, 10:34 PM Data tape is still the cheapest (and most reliable) backup solution for long term storage of large amounts of data.
Bingo. And the only real solution once you get above 1080p. LTO is a perfectly reliable, fast backup solution. Sadly, many people seem to think that ALL tape is like that. It's not.
Silas Barker February 11th, 2010, 12:01 AM Thanks everyone for your input!
So it sounds like going tapeless is not a huge scare once you get going.
The main thing for me, is that I might end up shoot 3 weddings on a weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and I need to store 20 hours of footage somewhere fast and reliable.
For non wedding/event work I am not really worried about it.
The hard drive thing is fine, except I ve had hard drives go bad on me. Does anyone know much the cards are for the Sony Z5 Camera? That's the camera I plan to use to go to tapeless.
Perrone Ford February 11th, 2010, 12:16 AM The Z5u shoots to tape. Not cards.
[edit]
I see you can add a module to record to compact flash...
That will get you about 72 minutes on a 16GB card. I see prices around $40 per card.
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-133x-CompactFlash-Memory-TS16GCF133/dp/B000W0BC7I/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1265869028&sr=8-15
You'd need 17 cards to hold 20 hours. So you'll probably be dumping in the field. A 500Gb hard drive will hold over 20 hours of HDV. They are around $60-$80. So you buy two for around $150, dump in the field, and call it a day. Tough way to go tapeless. But 20 hours is a LOT of data.
Adam Gold February 11th, 2010, 12:23 AM I'm pretty sure he intends to snap the MRC1k onto the back and use that.
B&H and NewEgg and Amazon all have a large selection of cards to choose from. Don't just buy the cheapest ones. I've had five out of seven Kingstons go total failure on me.
Right now I'm using the Sandisk 32GB Extreme IIIs and they've performed flawlessly. They were running a huge rebate a few weeks ago which brought the price down to about $85 per card.
Philip Howells February 11th, 2010, 05:31 AM We use Pretec 16gb 233x cards at about UKL55 each. They're metal cased. We're a three camera (Z1) wedding operation and have 12 cards which is more than enough for a complete wedding.
BTW we were tempted to buy a Nextdi disk backup. It's very fast but the Sony software can't read the data because the path is too deep. You can move the data of course but that rather defeats the object.
We also use a Sandisk High Speed reader via Firewire 800 which means another card in the computer, but instead of a day to get the tapes into the computer it's now about 2 hours.
Randy Panado February 12th, 2010, 01:59 AM I shoot 99.9% all tapeless (have hv40 as a wide safe cam at times). I could not go back to tape. The ease of editing is so awesome. I used to shoot with the XH-A1 so I know what it was like to have tape. I don't worry about data loss as I don't guarantee long term storage of data after delivery.
Silas Barker February 12th, 2010, 02:21 AM Yes I intend to use the extra add on device for the Z5....
Thinking about getting a second Z5, which reminds me I did a test with the Z1 and Z5 and the Z5's lighting fully zoomed in with 9db Gain compared to the Z1's fully zoomed in 9db gain....the Z5 wins with better low lighting....I used the same tape and swapped it in the cameras and played it back and Z5 wins.....
Anyways, Other options include the Sony Ex1, probably about the same weight as the Z5 with the memory recorder unit....only thing I want to run with this baby on the glidecam (no vest- think weddings)
We'll see....
Also I like having SD and HD formats which is easy with tape...any ideas people?
Perrone Ford February 12th, 2010, 02:44 AM Well...
The EX1r will get you SD and HD. It will get you tapeless. It will get you low light performance beyond the other cams you mentioned. I can show you footage from my EX1 that looks like daylight until you see the headlamps on, and the automatic night lights on at the restaurant.
The problems with the EX1 are that it's pretty heavy. Putting it on a glidecam with no vest is going to be BRUTAL. There is also the "CMOS Problem" that some people are apparently afraid of. Personally, I think it's overblown, but whatever.
I'd shoot it and be happy with it, but to each their own. In my opinion, there's just nothing touching the EX1r under $10k right now when you look at all it brings to the table. Even after over 2 years this thing still sells like hotcakes. The fact that Sony has now endorsed SDHC recording giving you $40/hr media options only makes the decision easier.
Silas Barker February 12th, 2010, 02:56 AM The Cmos thing is no big deal, been shooting with the FX7 for years.
But the weight of the EX on the Glide scares me a little. About half my work is weddings and weddings need glidecam shots to sell nice.
So...the question is whats the best Glidecam/tapeless Sony cam?
The Z5 is great (and barely ok on the glidecam for enough time to get shots I want) but with the memory recorder its an extra 4oz...not horrible more but maybe a enough to notice!!??
EX is probably going to be too heavy, the picture quality sounds nice...maybe for none glidecam shots. Which is a pity.
Andy Wilkinson February 12th, 2010, 03:55 AM I don't do weddings but if I were you I'd buy an EX1r and but a Canon 550D/Ti2 Rebel (or 7D if you want the build quality) with a 28mm (equivalent) wide angle and use the Canon on a Merlin Steadicam or Glidecam or whatever system you use/favour. Then you'll have the best of both worlds, a light setup for glidecam shots (as well as a decent B cam) and stunning image quality and good ergonomics (well much better than DSLR anyway) for shooting those weddings. No one camera is perfect for all scenarios!
Dimitris Mantalias February 14th, 2010, 05:33 AM Regarding safety issues in storing your data from your tapeless camcorders and DSLRs, you don't need to be afraid of a drive going bad. The simple and 100% safe solution is to build for example a RAID mirror setup with two discs 1.5 TB each. For those who don't know what RAID mirroring is, it's a hardware offering of most modern motherboards that allows two similar hard drives mirror one each other. When you are in your OS, you only see one disc, yet what you do is also change the "mirrored" drive without having you to worry about. So, if one of the drives breaks, the other one continues working and you receive the message that one drive is corrupt. So, you change the bad drive and the system copies automatically the data to the new drive, without your intervention. RAID mirroring is THE solution for tapeless footage. I haven't ever heard of two mirrored drives gone bad at the same time, so I think it's the best solution out there.
Perrone Ford February 14th, 2010, 11:46 AM I haven't ever heard of two mirrored drives gone bad at the same time, so I think it's the best solution out there.
Then you haven't been around enough. There is a reason people who work with crucial data are willing to use RAID 5, or RAID 10...
Dimitris Mantalias February 14th, 2010, 12:44 PM Well Perrone... no. Maybe I am not being around in the videography business for too long, but I was certainly many-many years in the IT department. RAID-5 is NOT in any way safer than RAID-1 and certainly whoever made a system based on that, was definitely misinformed. In both RAID-5 and RAID-1 (mirrored), ONLY one drive is allowed to go bad. In any other case, this is the end of your data. So, no salvation with RAID-5. Regarding RAID-10 well, things seem safer, but actually they're not. RAID-10 contains a Mirrored RAID before a Stripped one. If one Mirrored and one Stripped goes bad, then the system keeps on, even with half the drives. But if two mirrored drives go bad, then it's bye-bye baby. Data lost forever.
So, this is why I am talking about safety solutions only. RAID-1 is slower in r/w than a single physical drive. If you want to combine high speed r/w with safety (so you can also work fast with those drives besides storing your data), ok, go with RAID-5 or 10 (preferably 10). But safety wise, the Nested RAIDs are not that safer because they happen to have more drives.
But because we have to be extra careful, add one external drive to the collection so you can also backup your RAID data. Now, if you have all 3 drives die at the same time, then you must be a really-really unlucky person.
Perrone Ford February 14th, 2010, 12:54 PM Dimitris,
I have been in IT for almost 25 years now. I've seen all kinds of systems, and all kinds of data storage schemes. I currently protect nearly 100TB or sensitive government data daily. I've seen mirrored RAID go down hard. I've seen RAID controllers fail (HP DL380 fail at 3 years +- 3 months and I've got nearly 75 of them), and I've seen numerous hardware failures of DLT machines that were "last resort" backup solutions.
One thing I've learned is that you build a system EXPECTING it to fail. Period. And the only real question, is what will you have in your hands when it does. With my video data, it's double redundant (two separate machines and the drives aren't shared), and a third backup to optical. For work data, it's triple redundant, geo-dispersed, with constant write and point in time restoration. My video system costs $10k. My data system... well into 7 figures.
You have to figure out what you need, and go from there. But building one of these systems with the idea that it won't fail is a recipe for disaster.
-P
Well Perrone... no. Maybe I am not being around in the videography business for too long, but I was certainly many-many years in the IT department. RAID-5 is NOT in any way safer than RAID-1 and certainly whoever made a system based on that, was definitely misinformed. In both RAID-5 and RAID-1 (mirrored), ONLY one drive is allowed to go bad. In any other case, this is the end of your data. So, no salvation with RAID-5. Regarding RAID-10 well, things seem safer, but actually they're not. RAID-10 contains a Mirrored RAID before a Stripped one. If one Mirrored and one Stripped goes bad, then the system keeps on, even with half the drives. But if two mirrored drives go bad, then it's bye-bye baby. Data lost forever.
So, this is why I am talking about safety solutions only. RAID-1 is slower in r/w than a single physical drive. If you want to combine high speed r/w with safety (so you can also work fast with those drives besides storing your data), ok, go with RAID-5 or 10 (preferably 10). But safety wise, the Nested RAIDs are not that safer because they happen to have more drives.
But because we have to be extra careful, add one external drive to the collection so you can also backup your RAID data. Now, if you have all 3 drives die at the same time, then you must be a really-really unlucky person.
Paul Hudson February 14th, 2010, 01:26 PM As a very old schooler I have to admit it was more than a little scary at first. I always backup to a cheaper 2TB drive because of the fear of not having tape to go back to.
Now 4 years later I have to say I do not miss sending all that money to Sony. :-)
Paul Hudson
Lizardlandvideo.com
Video Production Phoenix, Arizona
Dimitris Mantalias February 14th, 2010, 01:30 PM Well, I fully agree with your backup solutions Perrone (25 years of your IT experience are awesome credentials, that's for sure :) ). My video backups are probably pretty safe, with backup in different machines (RAID machines) plus externals. I'd say I am scared of losing data, so we're spending money on storage solutions. But I believe that the chances of having both a RAID system AND its external backup drop dead at the same time are pretty low, although statistically possible. If such a thing happens, it will be a disaster beyond my thinking. Should anyone spend money to have a solution with triple-backups, available at any time? They should but they won't and I don't know if they are right, because I believe it's more possible to have a memory card failure during your shooting (even with the most reliable cards, I've seen it happening to photographers and it's not pleasant) than having all your drives destroyed by the anger of God.
Actually the reason I haven't gone tapeless yet (only a 7D in my tapeless arsenal and soon some CF card recorders for our HDV Sonys) is this one. Having seen cards going down during shooting, I don't feel that safe. On the other hand my DV tapes have yet to give me a fault, and I have used an unbelievable number of them.
But it is as you said it. You will have to figure out your needs and go for a solution that provides safety and doesn't ruin your bank account. What I wrote above is clearly my opinion about a balanced solution and some will go for more and some for less (I know of people that save all the tapeless data to one external drive).
Gregory Barringer February 16th, 2010, 06:37 PM Do any of these video cameras have dual card slots that can record to both cards at the same time? My Nikon D3s has dual CF card slots. It can record to both cards, creating an immediate backup for stills only.
Perrone Ford February 16th, 2010, 10:39 PM Do any of these video cameras have dual card slots that can record to both cards at the same time? My Nikon D3s has dual CF card slots. It can record to both cards, creating an immediate backup for stills only.
No, but the nanoflash does... which is one major reason so many pros are gravitating toward it. Many of us were hoping for a firmware update from Sony that allows this. That would allow me to stop dragging out my Firestore, and shooting HDV every time I have to record a live event.
Vince Baker February 17th, 2010, 11:48 AM Been reading with interest, ready to move but it is the price that is keeping me from doing it...
I love technology, love the latest thing but as everyone here feel a sense of fear at going tapeless.
Saw some comments on RAID, I have a RAID 5 array that I use to store current files/projects/anything business related and I run it on a server.
It is suprising how many PCs now offer RAID built in but be aware, these PCs only offer RAID 0 or 1 (or 0+1 as often known)
RAID 0 is useless in terms of security, it only stripes the drives to make the PC perform faster. RAID 1 is full tolerance, it mirrors the drive, so this means you have to get for example 2 x 500GB identical drives and you will only have 500GB of storage.
RAID 5 allows the drives to split the contents across multiple drives, typically if you had 4 200GB drives, you would have 550GB rather than 800GB of space as each drive contains a portion of the others.
Now to do this you need to have a RAID card, and not just buy a PC that has RAID on the motherboard.
Might be telling you something you already know, but I was a happy bunny when this was explained to me, hope it helps someone make a decision....
Perrone Ford February 17th, 2010, 01:25 PM I don't understand what going tapeless has to do with RAID. Or maybe I am just missing something.
Louis Maddalena February 17th, 2010, 09:08 PM If you are shooting tapeless having RAID's is the best way to do it for security and speed.
Perrone Ford February 17th, 2010, 09:23 PM If you are shooting tapeless having RAID's is the best way to do it for security and speed.
So, if I am shooting on tape, RAID is not the best way to go for security and speed? Honestly, I don't call having my only copy of my files physically in the same machine secure at all. It can be faster. I'll grant that.
Gregory Barringer February 18th, 2010, 04:29 PM No, but the nanoflash does... which is one major reason so many pros are gravitating toward it. Many of us were hoping for a firmware update from Sony that allows this. That would allow me to stop dragging out my Firestore, and shooting HDV every time I have to record a live event.
I read the User Guide for the new Sony NXCAM-N5U. On page 24 it looks like it can record HD to the flash card and the optional 128GB flash drive at the same time. Can anyone confirm this?
Art Varga February 19th, 2010, 07:57 AM We took a major power hit during the last east coast snow storm. Multiple components in my PC got fried -even though I had a surge protector. I had my current project files backed up to 2 seperate drives but both were connected and and running at the time of the power surge. Needless to say I was very nervous that both drives may have been taken out. Fortunately that was not the case but going forward, one of my backups will be to a portable drive that I will disconnect when not in use.
Kyle Root February 19th, 2010, 11:50 AM I think that's a pretty good idea right there Art.
I'm still on tape, but I think when I do go tapeless, the best (and increasingly affordable as hard drives get larger and cheaper) way is to have a combination of:
(1) Copy footage off cards to your editing computer which has say Raid 1 and 4TB physical storage, yielding 2TB working space.
(2) Copy footage off cards to a removeable 500GB USB 3.0 drive which is put in storage until the project is complete.
Now, I have no idea how big HDV/AVCHD etc files are because I still am on the 13GB/hr miniDV standard. haha. But, I'm just guessing 500GB would be enough to store all the raw files for a typical HD wedding project. If you can go smaller, then great.
Perrone Ford February 19th, 2010, 01:44 PM Now, I have no idea how big HDV/AVCHD etc files are because I still am on the 13GB/hr miniDV standard. haha. But, I'm just guessing 500GB would be enough to store all the raw files for a typical HD wedding project. If you can go smaller, then great.
HDV is roughly the same as DV. That's why you can use the same tapes. AVCHD will be slightly less.
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