Cant decide should i go tapeless.

Roger Shealy · February 17th, 2009, 11:48 PM

I'm looking forward to going tapeless, but tape isn't such a big deal and it still has its advantages. I use the Sony tapes @ $2.50 each, so its cheap archiving. I've never had a single dropout or failure on any of these tapes.

I'd like tapeless to speed up capture and allow for deleting files on the go to reduce editing time. I do fear losing the archive of tape, I just recaptured some tapes from 1989 (digital 8) that worked perfectly. HDD's aren't as reliable and I certainly don't trust any self-burn opticals for over 5 years.

As HDD's and solid state get cheaper, keeping redundant archives will become cost effective, then tapeless will be clearly superior in every way to tape. I imagine this will take place by 2011. But then we'll be talking about camera mounted WiFi links to centrallized storage and processing, and on-board solid state will seem quaint.

It'll never end guys!!!! Use what you as long as it serves its purpose and then upgrade to the best you can afford.

Bryan Daugherty · February 17th, 2009, 11:48 PM

Excellent reply Perrone. I was taking the oversimplified road in my argument for tapeless workflows. I think in most cases the tape cost alone would drive someone to go tapeless. Yes tape is cheap, but so is a gallon of gas. Your camera uses a lot more than 1 tape, just like your car uses a lot more than one gallon of gas. When you add up tape cost alone it warrants a tapeless workflow for most people. That was the primer for my argument but in reply to your points I will elaborate.

1. I always shoot events in multicam with staggered tape change so if I shoot more than 80 hours of footage a year than i have already equaled the cost of 2 Sony cf recorders, just in tape charges. In may case I use the SONY HDV master grade tapes at a cost of ~$17 per tape so I actually recoup my losses at 57 tapes or 28 hrs of 2 cam shoots.

2. I already have adopted digital archiving and never go back out to tape. For dvds, I archive one physical copy of every DVD I make and archive a digital global disc image file. For web projects I archive a copy of the web delivered file. I store digitals on local drive and 1 copy on HDD that is sent to offsite facility with other backup drives.

3. I have no in field backups at this time. (One of the many reasons the EX3 is so attractive to me for my next upgrade.)

100% agree with you on the final assessment you make which is why tape is on it's way out the door for us. I can't wait to add XDCAM to our line-up. Still working out some of the other kinks with the transition but as soon as our capital budget allows, it is sayanora to the thin black line for us!!!

Michael Pulcinella · February 18th, 2009, 09:45 AM

Not sure if I ever want to go tapeless. It's a storage issue. I find that a well protected box of DV tapes is a far cheaper and much less vulnerable method of archiving footage than keeping files on external drives indefinitely.

Please correct me if I am missing something.

Perrone Ford · February 18th, 2009, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Pulcinella

Not sure if I ever want to go tapeless. It's a storage issue. I find that a well protected box of DV tapes is a far cheaper and much less vulnerable method of archiving footage than keeping files on external drives indefinitely.

Please correct me if I am missing something.

Yes, you're missing something. There are more archival methods than external drives. Do yourself a favor and examine your options.

Tapes are vulnerable to heat, humidity, magnetic fields, water damage, and other issues. Optical storage is better is SO many ways.

Buba Kastorski · February 19th, 2009, 09:35 AM

My advice go tapeless, you'll be glad you did,
since I got EX1 I don't want to use any tape recording cameras, in fact I sold my HV30 and HC9, which I used as a B or back up, just because of that, now I'm waiting for HF S10
take a look at this video
Vortex Media: VIDEO & PHOTO Tools and Training
very well put together, might help you to make up your mind about that,
cheers

Steve Phillipps · February 19th, 2009, 09:42 AM

I agree, go tapeless, it's so much better.
What you don't get neccessarily in an increase in quality that you were asking about - there's no reason why a firestore will give better image than the tape in terms of resolution etc. It's just so much more friendly to use. You do have to get your head around storage though, it is a bit scary hitting the delete button to wipe your shots from the card!
Steve

Stelios Christofides · February 21st, 2009, 07:50 AM

Ofcourse you can go half way. I mean get the Sony Z5 or Z7 that you can have tape and flash card taping. So you have both worlds.

Stelios

Stelios Christofides · February 21st, 2009, 07:53 AM

Ofcourse you can go half way. I mean get the Sony Z5 or Z7 that you can have tape and flash card taping. So you have both worlds.

Stelios

Vincent Oliver · February 21st, 2009, 10:13 AM

The one thing that I read all the time is that tape is a good cheap backup. Maybe.

I have had at least three tapes snarl up on me, making part if not all of the content unusable. Tape will eventually fail, due to the way it is made. Roughly speaking it is just Sellotape dunked in rust, and this will eventually lose its sticking power, which means your tapes will fail - just as my collection of Compact Cassetes did.

Go the tapeless workflow, back up your work on whatever the flavour of the day is. Tape only has a limited lifespan left, you will be tapeless within the next two years.

Liza Witz · February 22nd, 2009, 06:34 PM

I think getting rid of the "selotape dunked in rust" is just the start. What is a hard drive other than a piece of glass with rust sprayed on it? I opened up some hard drives that had failed in years past recently, on one of them the heads had stripped both platters clean in the center-- all 4 sides, such that I could hold them up to the light and see thru them clearly.

I still use Hard Drives because video files are just too big. But I've replaced my internal drive with an SSD and I'm looking forward to the day when I can do the same with my video drive.

I think SDHC cards are coming down in price fast enough to effectively be a good archive format. But the card, fill it, label it, dump the video to your drive, switch the lock on the card and put it in a safe place. They are tiny so you could fit hundreds of hours of shooting in the space of a single miniDV tape. They're down to about $1.56/GB

Of course this doesn't compare to hard drives at $0.09/GB.

Dean Harrington · February 22nd, 2009, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liza Witz

I think getting rid of the "selotape dunked in rust" is just the start. What is a hard drive other than a piece of glass with rust sprayed on it? I opened up some hard drives that had failed in years past recently, on one of them the heads had stripped both platters clean in the center-- all 4 sides, such that I could hold them up to the light and see thru them clearly.

I still use Hard Drives because video files are just too big. But I've replaced my internal drive with an SSD and I'm looking forward to the day when I can do the same with my video drive.

I think SDHC cards are coming down in price fast enough to effectively be a good archive format. But the card, fill it, label it, dump the video to your drive, switch the lock on the card and put it in a safe place. They are tiny so you could fit hundreds of hours of shooting in the space of a single miniDV tape. They're down to about $1.56/GB

Of course this doesn't compare to hard drives at $0.09/GB.

what price and what maker do you have?

Vincent Oliver · February 23rd, 2009, 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Liza Witz

I think getting rid of the "selotape dunked in rust" is just the start. What is a hard drive other than a piece of glass with rust sprayed on it?

The main difference is that it has random memory access and its not so delicate as tape, but I take your point. I don't know who spread the rumour that tape is an ideal archival storage media, it is far from it, but maybe it's beacuse it is cheap. I am not sure about the long term archival quality of Memory cards, do they lose their charge after a period, perhaps someone with more technical knowledge on this subject can suppy us with the answer.

Roger Shealy · February 23rd, 2009, 05:00 PM

I'm hoping to go tapeless in the next few years, but there are plenty of really smart people who still feel tape is the best permanent storage.

The large hadron computer - physicsworld.com 10/31/2008 excerpt below:

"Data that are being used for computations are stored on disk, of course, but in the long term only data stored on tapes is considered “safe”. No other technology has been proven to store huge amounts of data reliably for long periods of time and still have a reasonable price tag. These tapes are housed in libraries that can hold up to 10,000 tapes and up to 192 tape drives per library."

Vincent Oliver · February 23rd, 2009, 11:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Shealy

I'm hoping to go tapeless in the next few years, but there are plenty of really smart people who still feel tape is the best permanent storage.

The large hadron computer - physicsworld.com 10/31/2008 excerpt below:

"Data that are being used for computations are stored on disk, of course, but in the long term only data stored on tapes is considered “safe”. No other technology has been proven to store huge amounts of data reliably for long periods of time and still have a reasonable price tag. These tapes are housed in libraries that can hold up to 10,000 tapes and up to 192 tape drives per library."

An interesting history lesson Roger thanks for posting the link.

Regarding the paragraph in quotes, we could apply this to almost any technology from the horse and carriage "never before has man been able to travel in such comfort", to the latest saloon car "never before has man been able to travel in such luxury comfort". What about the audio Compact Cassette, we can now fit two Beethoven Symphonies on one small tape and with Dolby stereo, surely this must be the best we can get. Enter the CD. Enter Audio DVD, Blu-Ray etc.

Of course at any one point in time they each have to be the best thing available, until something better comes along.

Tape is cheap, but it is also fragile and it will like so many other things fail, probably faster than most people think. Several years ago I backed up all my work onto Optical Drives, these were the best thing since sliced bread, but now I can't buy a new drive to recover the data (I also have it backed up on CDs). I also had a collection of 8 track audio cassettes which I can't play, and soon my VHS tapes will be redundant (most of those are also showing signs of wear)

I do not have a long term solution, but I am sure that there will be something better very soon.

Roger Shealy · February 24th, 2009, 06:11 AM

Vincent,

We are right on the tipping point of technologies. In addition to my HDD's and their edited footage, I have been compressing my most precious pieces to 8Mbps HD .wmv's (maybe H264 or .avc in near future) and placing them on 16GB SD cards I purchased for $22 for storage at work. I can fit about 4 hours of content to a card in what I feel is very good quality. As cards come down, I may repeat without compression, but 8Mbps is acceptable quality for personal work and is a practical $/min as an emergency backup for even important pieces in any case.

The fellow in the office next to me lost his house in a fire along with all his photo's and family video's. We need to be protecting against more than just age and technical failure.

February 17th, 2009, 11:48 PM	#17
Bryan Daugherty Major Player Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Lexington, Ky - USA Posts: 552	Excellent reply Perrone. I was taking the oversimplified road in my argument for tapeless workflows. I think in most cases the tape cost alone would drive someone to go tapeless. Yes tape is cheap, but so is a gallon of gas. Your camera uses a lot more than 1 tape, just like your car uses a lot more than one gallon of gas. When you add up tape cost alone it warrants a tapeless workflow for most people. That was the primer for my argument but in reply to your points I will elaborate. 1. I always shoot events in multicam with staggered tape change so if I shoot more than 80 hours of footage a year than i have already equaled the cost of 2 Sony cf recorders, just in tape charges. In may case I use the SONY HDV master grade tapes at a cost of ~$17 per tape so I actually recoup my losses at 57 tapes or 28 hrs of 2 cam shoots. 2. I already have adopted digital archiving and never go back out to tape. For dvds, I archive one physical copy of every DVD I make and archive a digital global disc image file. For web projects I archive a copy of the web delivered file. I store digitals on local drive and 1 copy on HDD that is sent to offsite facility with other backup drives. 3. I have no in field backups at this time. (One of the many reasons the EX3 is so attractive to me for my next upgrade.) 100% agree with you on the final assessment you make which is why tape is on it's way out the door for us. I can't wait to add XDCAM to our line-up. Still working out some of the other kinks with the transition but as soon as our capital budget allows, it is sayanora to the thin black line for us!!! __________________ 3x-HD1000u - Ikan 8000HD- custom i7 PC - Vegas Pro 13 and 11 64 bit - Premiere Pro CS4 - and a whole mess of other equipment...

February 18th, 2009, 09:45 AM	#18
Michael Pulcinella Major Player Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Ridley Park, PA, USA Posts: 269	Not sure if I ever want to go tapeless. It's a storage issue. I find that a well protected box of DV tapes is a far cheaper and much less vulnerable method of archiving footage than keeping files on external drives indefinitely. Please correct me if I am missing something. __________________ http://mikepulcinella.com/portfolio.htm Check out my work!

February 21st, 2009, 07:50 AM	#22
Stelios Christofides Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Nicosia, CYPRUS Posts: 1,080	Ofcourse you can go half way. I mean get the Sony Z5 or Z7 that you can have tape and flash card taping. So you have both worlds. Stelios __________________ My Blog: http://steliosc.blogspot.com "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free" Nikos Kazantzakis

February 21st, 2009, 07:53 AM	#23
Stelios Christofides Trustee Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Nicosia, CYPRUS Posts: 1,080	Ofcourse you can go half way. I mean get the Sony Z5 or Z7 that you can have tape and flash card taping. So you have both worlds. Stelios __________________ My Blog: http://steliosc.blogspot.com "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free" Nikos Kazantzakis

February 21st, 2009, 10:13 AM	#24
Vincent Oliver Trustee Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chislehurst, London Posts: 1,724	The one thing that I read all the time is that tape is a good cheap backup. Maybe. I have had at least three tapes snarl up on me, making part if not all of the content unusable. Tape will eventually fail, due to the way it is made. Roughly speaking it is just Sellotape dunked in rust, and this will eventually lose its sticking power, which means your tapes will fail - just as my collection of Compact Cassetes did. Go the tapeless workflow, back up your work on whatever the flavour of the day is. Tape only has a limited lifespan left, you will be tapeless within the next two years. __________________ Eyes are a deaf man’s ears. Ears are a blind man’s eyes

February 17th, 2009, 11:48 PM	#16
Roger Shealy Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Fayetteville, GA Posts: 772	I'm looking forward to going tapeless, but tape isn't such a big deal and it still has its advantages. I use the Sony tapes @ $2.50 each, so its cheap archiving. I've never had a single dropout or failure on any of these tapes. I'd like tapeless to speed up capture and allow for deleting files on the go to reduce editing time. I do fear losing the archive of tape, I just recaptured some tapes from 1989 (digital 8) that worked perfectly. HDD's aren't as reliable and I certainly don't trust any self-burn opticals for over 5 years. As HDD's and solid state get cheaper, keeping redundant archives will become cost effective, then tapeless will be clearly superior in every way to tape. I imagine this will take place by 2011. But then we'll be talking about camera mounted WiFi links to centrallized storage and processing, and on-board solid state will seem quaint. It'll never end guys!!!! Use what you as long as it serves its purpose and then upgrade to the best you can afford.

February 19th, 2009, 09:35 AM	#20
Buba Kastorski Trustee Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Toronto Posts: 1,414	My advice go tapeless, you'll be glad you did, since I got EX1 I don't want to use any tape recording cameras, in fact I sold my HV30 and HC9, which I used as a B or back up, just because of that, now I'm waiting for HF S10 take a look at this video Vortex Media: VIDEO & PHOTO Tools and Training very well put together, might help you to make up your mind about that, cheers

February 19th, 2009, 09:42 AM	#21
Steve Phillipps Inner Circle Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Wales Posts: 2,130	I agree, go tapeless, it's so much better. What you don't get neccessarily in an increase in quality that you were asking about - there's no reason why a firestore will give better image than the tape in terms of resolution etc. It's just so much more friendly to use. You do have to get your head around storage though, it is a bit scary hitting the delete button to wipe your shots from the card! Steve

February 22nd, 2009, 06:34 PM	#25
Liza Witz Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 46	I think getting rid of the "selotape dunked in rust" is just the start. What is a hard drive other than a piece of glass with rust sprayed on it? I opened up some hard drives that had failed in years past recently, on one of them the heads had stripped both platters clean in the center-- all 4 sides, such that I could hold them up to the light and see thru them clearly. I still use Hard Drives because video files are just too big. But I've replaced my internal drive with an SSD and I'm looking forward to the day when I can do the same with my video drive. I think SDHC cards are coming down in price fast enough to effectively be a good archive format. But the card, fill it, label it, dump the video to your drive, switch the lock on the card and put it in a safe place. They are tiny so you could fit hundreds of hours of shooting in the space of a single miniDV tape. They're down to about $1.56/GB Of course this doesn't compare to hard drives at $0.09/GB.

February 23rd, 2009, 05:00 PM	#28
Roger Shealy Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Fayetteville, GA Posts: 772	New Hadron (Euro) Particle Accelerator uses tape I'm hoping to go tapeless in the next few years, but there are plenty of really smart people who still feel tape is the best permanent storage. The large hadron computer - physicsworld.com 10/31/2008 excerpt below: "Data that are being used for computations are stored on disk, of course, but in the long term only data stored on tapes is considered “safe”. No other technology has been proven to store huge amounts of data reliably for long periods of time and still have a reasonable price tag. These tapes are housed in libraries that can hold up to 10,000 tapes and up to 192 tape drives per library." Last edited by Roger Shealy; February 23rd, 2009 at 08:17 PM.

February 24th, 2009, 06:11 AM	#30
Roger Shealy Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Fayetteville, GA Posts: 772	Vincent, We are right on the tipping point of technologies. In addition to my HDD's and their edited footage, I have been compressing my most precious pieces to 8Mbps HD .wmv's (maybe H264 or .avc in near future) and placing them on 16GB SD cards I purchased for $22 for storage at work. I can fit about 4 hours of content to a card in what I feel is very good quality. As cards come down, I may repeat without compression, but 8Mbps is acceptable quality for personal work and is a practical $/min as an emergency backup for even important pieces in any case. The fellow in the office next to me lost his house in a fire along with all his photo's and family video's. We need to be protecting against more than just age and technical failure.