CSI: lossless portable tape solution for HD-SDI?

[Meryem Ersoz]

i have done a ton of reading on this subject but somehow missed this most excellent link. thanks, daniel.

i wouldn't be too harsh on colorspace. i believe that they will have to re-think the price, but the market will decide.

i can't help but think that canon knows they would sell a mother lode of XH G1 cameras if either they or a partner could bring the price down on uncompressed output. sooner rather than later would be nice.....

[Daniel Patton]

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

i can't help but think that canon knows they would sell a mother lode of XH G1 cameras if either they or a partner could bring the price down on uncompressed output. sooner rather than later would be nice.....

I could not agree more, it just makes sense. Same goes for any of the mid range cameras/manufactueres selling with SDI.

And I didn't see Bill's reply as being harsh towards Colorspace, in fact very much the opposite. I got the impression he finds $30K for a Wafian over priced when our SDI camera choices are considerably less now. On that we can all agree. The Wafian is priced fine if we are talking about the cost of a Vericam, but ill suited in conjunction with the more recent $10-15K SDI cameras, RED included.

I'm looking at putting together a small (likely not certified by BlackMagic) computer system just to be a little more mobile. Perhaps something from DELL with an intergrated monitor setup, at least until we have more options.

Peace!

[Adam Burtle]

Originally Posted by Bill Ravens

you gotta be kidding me, right? If anyone thinks I'll drop $30k on an SDI recorder when I have, roughly, $10k invested in a camera, has GOT to be dreaming.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but the $30k ICON is aimed at people shooting Vipers and the like. It offers recording and features equivalent to $100k setups with metric ton more mobility ;)

The version targeted at the indie crowd will come in around $10k, hopefully under that. This version will offer virtually ever feature identical to the digital cinema version, with the exception of 'completely' uncompressed recording (the final iteration will likely offer a couple formats of high bitrate visually lossless recording). I know that as much as $10k might seems excessive to many, but an indie rig with this recording setup will go head to head with an F900.. in my mind that's a significant value. When Lucas was shooting Episode 2 with the F900, if someone had said that in a few years you could buy a camera and recorder rig for around $15k that would produce similar quality as that F900 and fly on a steadicam, crane, go in a backpack, etc.. I don't think most of us would have said that to be a poor value ;)

Not to mention all the benefits of this type of direct to disk recording.. random file access, no wasted time capturing, the ability to view dailies on set, meta data, streamlined work flow, etc.

[edit-- added what you see below]
Thanks for your continued honest input. I want to make it clear I'm not trying to "sell" you guys on anything.. I'm a filmmaker, not a salesman. I wanted to clarify exactly the products we're working on (pricing, features, etc), but I'm not looking to sell you guys on it.. it either sells itself, or it doesn't. The input of the community (desired features, file formats, price point etc) helps us work to to make it a better product so hopefully it will do an even better job selling itself. There are many tools for many jobs, and I'm not crazy enough to think this will be the perfect tool for everyone and in every situation.. it will ultimately be another tool in the toolbox. I just want to make it the most appealing tool that it can be.

[Bill Ravens]

Adam...


My apologies for misunderstanding your intent. I didn't mean to stick my nose where it was inappropriate.

[Adam Burtle]

Not inappropriate at all.. we welcome public discussion. I seriously want to hear what everyone thinks.. good and bad.

[Dave Halliday]

Adam, when can we expect a similar type of product as your indie (approx $10k) offering, but with Solid State memory? May seem a bit far off considering that all but the most expensive solid state harddrives haven't even hit the market yet, but still, the technology seems ripe for use in this environment.

[Adam Burtle]

Originally Posted by Dave Halliday

Adam, when can we expect a similar type of product as your indie (approx $10k) offering, but with Solid State memory?

Who said the indie solution wouldn't be offered in solid state at that price...? :D

Seriously though, we expect to have both solid state and hard disk based options. The tradeoff is in record length vs. ruggedization. But with high bitrate recording (5:1 compression, 10:1 compression, etc) you can still get a lot of recording space for your money with solid state. I guess it depends on how much you shoot per day, but I think it's conceivable many indie users will be able to go the solid state route and still have enough media space on hand for each day's shooting. And for those going the harddisk route, we have some other tricks up our sleeve to help with ruggedization and preventing data loss etc.

[Bill Ravens]

I would certainly think a solid state, SCALABLE recorder in the $10K range, would tweak some interest. It would certainly attract my attention. Scaleable means that the entry level, at $8-10k, would store some amount that would be expandable as needed. Given the current price of SS memory, I suspect additional price drops would be needed to reach a terrabyte for a reasonable investment cost.

[Adam Burtle]

Yes, modularity/scalability is a big focus in the design of our products. The recorder actually consists of two elements.. the recorder itself, and the media pack. The media pack is swappable. Which is to say, you could buy a recorder and a small solid state pack, and later buy a larger solid state pack as whole pricing of memory comes down. Or buy a small solid state pack and a large hard disk pack. We want to let the product configure itself for as many situations as possible.

The compressed version will even be upgradeable to uncompressed recording via swapping on the uncompressed media packs.

Also, if you didn't notice on the product page, the media packs are hot swappable. So even if you're right at the edge of your budget and buy the smallest media pack possible, and later find a need to shoot takes that are longer than the record length of your media pack, you don't HAVE to go out and buy a huge media pack. You could instead buy a second small media pack, and hotswap in the middle of the take. Whether or not hot swapping is ideal for each user, various considerations come into play, but we're giving you the option. Again, scalability.. big factor.

We have a lot of tricks up our sleeve.. many of which I can't talk about until after NAB, heh.

[Paul Jefferies]

Isn't there a Panasonic DVCPRO-HD deck with HD-SDI that runs on 12V?

[Van Cleave]

Originally Posted by Adam Burtle

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks,
Adam Burtle
Colorspace, Inc.

Thanks Adam, I do have some questions.

Originally Posted by Colorspace, Inc

Colorspace will be releasing a compressed ICON solution that utilizes high bitrate compression,

If I understand correctly the F950 and the F23 use lossless MPEG4 Studio Profile compression prior to writing to tape. Somewhere between 2 or 3 to one.

Is your compressed ICON unit going to use a true lossless compression scheme? Will the compressed ICON unit handle the full dual channel HD-SDI bit rate?

Originally Posted by Colorspace, Inc

with video acquisition based around single link (4:2:2) and dual link (4:4:4) HD-SDI.,

Again; If I understand correctly, 1920 imagers, read 4:4:4 in RGB at 12 bits of precision results in an unmodified bit rate just under a gig a second. How are you doing this uncompressed with a single drive?

Thanks

[Adam Burtle]

F23 and F950 don't have embedded recording, but yes, the SRW1 is mpeg4 based, with 880Mb in 4:4:4 mode. That makes it around 3:1 compression.. which is lossy, but not terribly so. In the recent CineForm shootout against 880Mb SR, I recall SR removing/losing about 1 stop of SnR. (someone correct me if I'm remembering wrong...)

Which brings us to Colorspace products. We have two recorders, the uncompressed ICON, and the compressed version (which we will be announcing has been renamed to the "INDI" to remove confusion as to which is which). The ICON (uncompressed) is targeted squarely at the 4:4:4 digital cinema crowd.. productions shooting with $100k+ cameras (Viper, F950, etc), generally working with several hundred thousand dollar or even multi million dollar budgets. The INDI is targeted at the prosumer filmmaker, shooting on the XL-H1, HD-250, perhaps a rented Varicam, etc. The INDI will offer high bitrate (likely to be adjustable between say.. 60 and 250Mbit) compression. Right now, as it stands, I believe the INDI will only offer in 4:2:2 recording.

So, as you can see, we're not really intending the INDI to offer lossless compression. If anything, lossless compression will be implemented as a selectable option on the ICON.. but it's an option I don't expect to get used much. Our experience has been that the high end digital cinema users are demanding uncompressed acquisition, and are afraid of compression, even in mathematically lossless forms.

If it turns out there is a great deal of demand from XL-H1 (etc) users who want lossless direct-to-disk recording, then we'll probably work on a version of the INDI that can support 2:1 or 3:1. The case may be that we've underestimated the quality the indie filmmaker market desires.. in which case, we'll adapt.. that's the beauty of a modular platform.

HD imagers often readout A/D at between 12 and 14bits, yes.. however, the commonly implemented SMPTE HD standards are all 10bit* so that reduces the bitrate proportionately. Even so, doing the math in my head, RGB 1080/23.98p @ 12bitdepth = ~240MB/second. That's math in my head though, so I might be off. 10bit YUV is around 130MB/sec. 10bit RGB is around 200MB/sec.

Regardless of whether we're writing 130 or 240MB/sec, it's definitely not going to a single drive. The ICON media pack contains an array of shock mounted disks (plus other logic). Even if we could somehow write to one single disk, that wouldn't make much sense, just because of the space limitations involved. The array of disks (and the logic that controls them) is part of the cost of the media packs.. if we could use a single disk with no RAID controller, that would make the media packs immensely simpler (and cheaper).

So, to summarize.. to achieve quality from your XL-H1 approximating HDCAM, we're offering the INDI. (and we recently got done testing uncompressed out the H1, side-by-side with the F900, and everyone was quite suprised how close the images look.. I think a lot of people at NAB will be too). To get the absolute best possible quality out of cameras like the Viper, we're offering the ICON. Our development model involves responding to the demands of the market, so if it proves there are demands beyond (or between) these, then we will respond in kind.

Hope that helped, sorry for my lengthy reply.

Adam S. Burtle
Colorspace, Inc.


*Regarding 10bit SMPTE: I am not an engineer. We have actual engineers to understand all of the SMPTE specs ;) ...I do think there actually might be a 12bit SMPTE spec, but it's not widely implemented to my knowledge.

[Van Cleave]

Adam,
Thanks for the super reply.
It did help, a lot.
Not to lengthy either, just right.
Sounds like you have a winning approach.
Good luck at NAB
RVC

[Charles Hurley]

Here's a good one. For 30g's I could buy a new VW bug and install a mac pro with a bm card and 2tb of storage with a 23" Dell Monitor and still have enough left over for the XLh1 and 500ft of BNC. Excluding tax, dock, and license of course. Pimp my hard drive!

[Adam Burtle]

Originally Posted by Charles Hurley

Here's a good one. For 30g's I could buy a new VW bug and install a mac pro with a bm card and 2tb of storage with a 23" Dell Monitor and still have enough left over for the XLh1 and 500ft of BNC. Excluding tax, dock, and license of course. Pimp my hard drive!

I'm not really sure how to take your post. I take it you don't think $30k is a fair price for a <10lb 4:4:4 HDSDI recorder setup with swappable media packs? If so, then what price do you feel is fair? $100? $1,000? $10,000? Maybe we should give it away for free? I know it can be hard to determine what a fair price really would be, given that nothing like this even exists on the market yet. Of course, you could buy a much heavier tape-based *compressed* recorder for $80,000 from Sony.

As I've said before, everything is just a tool for the toolbox, and as a filmmaker I don't honestly believe our products are right for every job.. but I do believe they offer a very good value. As I've said above, we have the first portable HD-SDI 444 recorder + media packs to hit the market.. we could easily price it at $70k, and rental houses would still buy it (many people like the Venom at $50k with 10minutes of recording).. but that isn't our business model.

If you want to debate the merits of the setup that you described above, we absolutely can. A mac pro, bm card, and 2TB will work fine for many people... on a sound stage. And when you need to go into the field? Or record more than 2hrs of material in a sitting (you didn't mention if your 2TB array comes with hot-swappable disk packs, so I'll assume it doesn't)? And when the capture utility starts crashing in the middle of the day.. then what? Your recording medium is an investment.. and insurance policy. All your time, effort, money (rented lighting, cameras, permits, crew, etc), all of that boils down to your digital negatives. Renting or buying an ICON is an investment in the flexibility to record in any situation where digital filmmaking is possible, and know that your negatives are there, in the media pack, 100% of the time, no matter what.

So let's get back on topic. You don't have $30k to drop on recording. And I understand that.. not many people do. Which is why we're working on the INDI, the little brother to the ICON-- same interface, same form factor (smaller media packs, even), high bitrate compression, but a fraction of the price. Additionally, if you'd like to contribute some realistic thoughts to an actual discussion, we're listening.