Why HDV rather then solid state?

[Bob Grant]

The biggest single roadblock to getting good mpeg-2 compression is noise. Doesn't matter if it's for DVD or HDV, noise is a killer. If you start with a clean signal HDV compression will work very well, feed it video with lots of noise and things will go downhill very quickly. Also bear in mind that HD broadcasts are delivered via mpeg-2 compression at lower bandwidth than HDV. Worse still more of that 19.5 Mb/sec bandwidth is used up by audio than with HDV.
Sure the encoders used for DVB are more capable / expensive than what's crammed into silicon in a HDV camera but it's pretty easy to reduce a box full of silicon into a chip these days and from what I've seen of HDTV the same issues arise despite the expensive encoders.
Certainly moving away from tape is very attractive. Sony have their XDCAM system which seems a better approach than P2, the media is cheap enough to be used for archiving, something I doubt we'll ever see with HDD or P2 solutions.
P2 was developed as a ENG solution, just why it failed in that market and XDCAM is taking off big time is an interesting question, probably related to the archiving issue.
The CineAlta XDCAM cameras are recording 'HDV', at higher bitrates.
Once video is being recorded as files you're free of the bitrate issues you have with tape, there's still write speed issues but you're not locked to a bitrate set by the tape transport.

No doubt the next big thing for affordable HD will be MJ2K.

[Daniel Epstein]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Absolutely false. You are sadly mistaken. It's not as if they don't "want" to make inexpensive HD tape decks... they can't make inexpensive HD tape decks. Don't you think, that if they could make a DVCPRO HD tape transport for $1,000, they would do it, and own the market by flooding it? It's utterly an ridiculous proposition to assume that professional HD tape transports are priced high artificially. This gear is expensive to sell because, like Sony HDCAM decks, this gear is expensive to make. What's great about P2 is that it offers the single least expensive, most affordable way to shoot in the DVCPRO HD format, and it completely bypasses the video capture process associated with tape.

Wrong again. Almost all the technical arguments against HDV come from punters who have never used it.

.

Chris ,
You are misreading my words and their intent. Probably not worth responding to but you are making as many mistakes in your analysis of my understanding of the issues as you accuse me of. You obviously haven't seen a Panasonic presentation where they compare HDV to DVCPRO 100HD.They have a very technical way of saying we (Panasonic) don't think it is good enough to use. Full size HD decks and cameras using the technology of tape at the high levels are expensive to make. I never mentioned a dollar figure for inexpensive decks but you did. However Panasonic has been consistenly more expensive in delivering DVCPRO decks with firewire than Sony has been with DVCAM decks with Firewire. Maybe some of it because of their choices.
Obviously HDV decks are not anywhere as expensive to make as DVCPRO 100 decks but Panasonic doesn't support the format. However if they "wanted to" the HVX-200 could probably have been an HDV camera as well as a DVCPRO HD Cam without very much effort. The price point might have been a little different. No one on the consumer side is telling Panasonic they can't sign on to the HDV format it is Panasonic who is decided they don't want to. There is a reason Lanc is a Sony protocol which Canon uses but Panasonic doesn't. It isn't because Panasonic couldn't design it that way.
P2 is a design which takes the load off Panasonic making an inexpensive transport work too hard and puts the load on the user to come up with a way to store the footage elsewhere. This will eventually be a good bet as P2 cards become much bigger and cheaper. They hope this is going to be more profitable for them. As for P2 being least expensive way to record DVCPRO 100 that is not true. The current least expensive is going from the HVX-200 right to the computer or even the Firestore if it works since the cost of P2 is still so high and capacity so short that most people seem to be looking for cheaper solutions.
As for who has made the best choices the market gets to decide. If Sony XDCAM HD beats out P2 it will be because $30 for recording and storage of footage is more important than solid state. If HDV cameras have harddrive recorders then being able to store your footage on tape as a back up sounds like cheap insurance. If HDSDI recorders come into range then DVCPRO HD might not thrill people as much in the future as it does today.
I still don't know what Panasonic is going to do for the consumer market unless they just want to forget about the idea of HD for consumers

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Daniel Epstein

You obviously haven't seen a Panasonic presentation where they compare HDV to DVCPRO 100HD.

Yes I have seen that presentation; I've sat through it several times. I'll stand by my words: more people have been influenced against HDV by reading punters on the web who have never had their hands on the gear, than by Panasonic's seminars.

Full size HD decks and cameras using the technology of tape at the high levels are expensive to make.

Actually the cassette size itself doesn't matter that much. But it's nice to see that you agree with me that they're expensive to make, because previously you had said "they don't want to make HD or DVCPRO50 decks at low prices." Obviously they would if they could, because that's good for business.

However Panasonic has been consistenly more expensive in delivering DVCPRO decks with firewire than Sony has been with DVCAM decks with Firewire.

Incorrect. The pricing between DVCPRO and DVCAM is actually very close, with DVCAM actually slightly more expensive. The Panasonic AJ-SD255 VTR with FireWire is $5300. The Sony DVCAM DSR-1500A with FireWire is $5600 (these are current prices from B&H). You might have been confused on this issue because there is no DVCPRO equivalent of the $1800 Sony DSR-11.

Obviously HDV decks are not anywhere as expensive to make as DVCPRO 100 decks but Panasonic doesn't support the format. However if they "wanted to" the HVX-200 could probably have been an HDV camera as well as a DVCPRO HD Cam without very much effort.

Effort isn't the question; cost is. The DVCPRO HD tape transport chassis is incredibly expensive relative to the DV or HDV mechanism. Its cost is roughly $16,000 for the works. To record DVCPRO 100 to tape would have been ridiculously expensive and would have negated the low price of the HVX200, which is one of the biggest selling points of that camera. Giving the HVX200 an HDV tape transport certainly would have required a tremendous effort, considering that Panasonic isn't a member of the HDV consortium.

The price point might have been a little different.

For DVCPRO 100? The price point would have tripled! That's not "a little different."

No one on the consumer side is telling Panasonic they can't sign on to the HDV format it is Panasonic who is decided they don't want to.

And that's their business to do so.

There is a reason Lanc is a Sony protocol which Canon uses but Panasonic doesn't.

That reason is because Sony invented it; they're not about to license it to Panasonic, their arch rival. Sony and Canon trade technologies back and forth; Canon dropped LANC from its consumer camcorders a couple of years ago but still pays the per-unit fee to have it in their three-chip camcorder line.

It isn't because Panasonic couldn't design it that way.

I'm not following you. Panasonic has designed their own auxiliary camera control protocol. If you ask me it's better than LANC; the second Cam Aux jack on the HVX200 and DVX100B allows for remote iris control, which is something you don't get with LANC.

As for P2 being least expensive way to record DVCPRO 100 that is not true. The current least expensive is going from the HVX-200 right to the computer or even the Firestore if it works since the cost of P2 is still so high and capacity so short that most people seem to be looking for cheaper solutions.

Let's keep this relative and realistic please. A couple of P2 cards together are less expensive than the FireStore FS-100 will be, and much less expensive (not to mention more practical) than a computer. As far as storage and archive solutions are concerned, DLT is less than half the price of a DVCPRO HD deck, the media is less expensive than DVCPRO HD cassettes, and DLT preserves all the P2 metadata which would have been lost when going to DVCPRO HD tape. Again, the advantage of P2 is that it offers the single least expensive, most affordable way to shoot in the DVCPRO HD format, relative to existing tape-based DVCPRO HD cameras and VTRs.

As for who has made the best choices the market gets to decide. If Sony XDCAM HD beats out P2 it will be because $30 for recording and storage of footage is more important than solid state.

Shame on you for injecting superlatives. This isn't about who beats who, or what is "best." This is about choosing a format which suits an individual's needs and desired workflow. All of these different formats have their various niches, and their specific customer bases. The primary purpose of this message board isn't to argue about which manufacturer should have done what, nor is it about market share or who beats who in numbers of units sold. Instead it's about *using* the gear. If you're looking for a pointless argument about formats, you came to the wrong place.

[Yi Fong Yu]

why not mpeg4-based codec? cause it's lossy?

[Giroud Francois]

quote :"DLT is less than half the price of a DVCPRO HD deck"
If you live in IT world yo would know that DLT is dead since a long time.
too big drives and tapes , to slow read and write, too small capacity.
inertia still makes it a good support for making DVD, that 's all.
at 40 Gig/tape it is not good either for HD video, and high price does not make it an alternative for general consumer.
LTO (or AIT if you are for SONY) is the current format (200 gig/tape) but
it is expensive and harddisk capacity are offering same range for a lot lower price (cost per gigabyte in hardisk is 0.5$ at best today), so you can buy several terabytes of hard disk storage with the price of an LTO drive and and a bunch of tapes.
Additionally, handling tape is painfully slow. HDD embbeded media and reader in the same boxe, with possibility to read anywhere at high speed, just with the help of an USB box for example, while you will have an hard time to connect an LTO or DLT drive with SCSI-3 connection elsewhere than on the machine it is usually connected.

[Chris Hurd]

My apologies, it is in fact LTO that I should have been referring to all along, not DLT. I'm beginning to wonder how much post editing I'd have to do to correct that. Despite its cost I still think it's viable, especially for those who "must have tape." Were I working with P2, I'd probably choose drives over LTO for archival. The point is that LTO is one of many available options.