Survey - how many of us still shooting on tape?

[Dave Barnes]

Lots of responses... like I said , still use my DVCAM camera for SD shoots.. (DSR-250) , but everything else is HDV , between my Canon XL-H1A, and XH-A1S. All tape.
I have really been thinking lately about the Firestore unit , but for every positive comment about it I see a negative... guess I will just have to try it maybe... This summer its a choice between that and possibly upgrading to an SD camera.

I am still hoarding tapes when I see them, use Panasonic AMQ, MQ , along with Sony DVCAM, and Sony Digital Master, (for the really important stuff) .... Knock on wood I have not seen a dropout in a long time... BUT as I say this I had one in the middle of a theatre show I shot last week... which is another reason why I usually tape two nights... :)

Roger - sounds like you have had really good luck with the DN-60's ?
Are they fussy about what cards you use ?
thanks all .

[Andrew Smith]

I'm looking forward to getting my PMW-300 and leaving tape behind. I'm so over HDV playback glitches.

That said, I'll still be using the Sony V1 cameras on occasion as a friend and myself have about four of these when pooled together, and this makes it easier for a multi-camera shoot when you want all camera colour to be matched to start with. Plus, the clarity of the image I get from these cams is pretty amazing.

Andrew

[Gabe Strong]

I can only tell you my experience.

I used to shoot with a PD150. I have boxes full of tapes for archive purposes. Each 1 hour tape holds
about 13 gigs of video once you dump it to harddrive.

Now I shoot with a Sony FS700 and Sony VG20. You can shoot about 1 1/2 hours of HD video
on a 16 gig card. I bought an internal Blu Ray burner for my MacPro. After shooting footage,
if it is footage I would like to save, I archive it, using Toast, to a Blu Ray Disk. Each disk holds
25 gigs of footage. I buy blank, ink jet printable Blu Ray disks off of Amazon for about $1 each.
I use Toast to make a data disk, so that the footage is not compressed from the native footage.
Then I use Disc Cover software to print on the face of the Blu Ray disk, with the description of
footage that is on that disk. Next I have a few of the 150 DVD wallets that I store my Blu Ray disks in.
When I need to use archive footage, I just flip through the wallet and look on the face of the disks.
When I find what I need, I pop the disk in the drive and copy it over to my work RAID.
It takes up about 1/4 as much space as my tapes did, for much better quality. I have been doing
this for a couple years now with no problems. Can't swear to how it will work long term, but
seems to be great so far. Some people say that the disks won't hold up over time, but I have
noticed they are much more resistant to scratches then regular DVD's. Plus I keep them in a DVD
wallet until I need to use the footage.

[Andrew Smith]

At risk of devolving in to an archiving discussion, I just want to mention that I am now archiving to two physical hard drives (master and slave). If one drive should die on the shelf, at least I have the other one.

Andrew

[Roger Van Duyn]

Originally Posted by Dave Barnes

Lots of responses... like I said , still use my DVCAM camera for SD shoots.. (DSR-250) , but everything else is HDV , between my Canon XL-H1A, and XH-A1S. All tape.

Roger - sounds like you have had really good luck with the DN-60's ?
Are they fussy about what cards you use ?
thanks all .

I've had really good results with the DN-60s, except a 400X 32GB card from Silicon Power always failed recording during tests at around the 1 hour mark. The timecode stopped increasing on the display of the unit. So I don't use that card. And I decided to stick with cards on the manufacturer's list.

The DN-60s come with a free SanDisk 30MB/s 200X 16GB card. And I bought four SanDisk Extreme 60 MB/s cards and have NEVER had a problem with any of them. While I still have a good stockpile of tapes, right now they are just sitting there in case I ever need them. I always have a tape handy to pop in the camera if the DN-60 starts acting up, plus I usually have two cameras rolling when I work.

To power the DN-60s I use the PowerEX 2700 NIMH rechargeable AA batteries. They easily give four hours of continuous use. On my typical shoots, they last all day. I also bought a charger that lets me charge 8 batteries at a time. Of course, these batteries are great in all the other gear I have that uses AA batteries, my Zoom H4N, the flash unit on my DSLR, wireless transmitters and receivers, etc.

Tomorrow, I have a free day and will take five of the batteries and try them in one of my Z96 LED lights and see how long they last. So getting the DN-60s has led to a number of direct and indirect improvements in my workflow and costs of doing business.

[Derek Heeps]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

I'm looking forward to getting my PMW-300 and leaving tape behind. I'm so over HDV playback glitches.

That said, I'll still be using the Sony V1 cameras on occasion as a friend and myself have about four of these when pooled together, and this makes it easier for a multi-camera shoot when you want all camera colour to be matched to start with. Plus, the clarity of the image I get from these cams is pretty amazing.

Andrew

I've had my V1e for a couple of months now , and shot maybe a couple of dozen tapes in it .

I have only experienced ONE dropout : that was on the very first tape that I used several times over while just playing about with the camera , and had passed that segment of tape ( almost at the beginning ) several times through .

I always use virgin Panasonic tapes , which I still have a good stock of , and have never experienced one glitch on an actual job .

[Peter Ferling]

I wore out my Canon XH-G1's. Shot a lot of Green screen via HDSDI and converted to Cineform. Archived everything to hard drives (they're cheap). I had drawers full of hard drives, including boxes full of HDV tapes.

Much your decision will depend on what you shoot and how long you need to archive it.

Properly stored, a tape will last about ten years, and a drive about half that time, (the Western Digital's are best. Had a few Seagates fail within three). Rarely have I ever needed to access anything older than 3 years, (most of my projects had a life no longer than two before the product changes and a re-shoot was required, anyway).

I also make it a habit to collect and archive re-useable clips onto a separate drive that I spin up often and replace before its warranty expires. I've also kept some clips on a server, archived via Cumulus (DAM). Finally, our Traffic Coordinator would stuff a DVD of the final edit (minus titles) into the project folder for offsite storage. Of the hundreds of projects I've shot in the last ten years, I can only remember one time having to call the archival house to retrieve media.

I've shot XDCam with another firm as a sub and liked the tape-less process, (no more lengthy capture sessions). So, I'm looking into the Canon XF's and throwing Adobe Prelude into the pipe.

Despite all this, HDV still has it's place and I'm holding onto my Sony HC1 in case someone hands me HDV media to capture. If you still have decent working HDV cameras, I see no need to switch just yet, but I do feel that the digital process has matured enough to be found reliable.

[Simon Wood]

Still use an XLH1 with a nano flash and HDV for back up. I still archive the nano flash footage to hard disk, though I have had 2 hard drives fail on me.

Interested to see this new archive option next year (1 TB bluray disks that last a minimum of 50 yrs):

Sony, Panasonic develop 300GB to 1TB 'Archival Disc' for 50 year-plus storage | PCWorld

[Andrew Smith]

Hopefully that BluRay drive hardware/format will also last that long.

Andrew

[Jim Andrada]

I have a BMCC but still use my JVC HD110 a lot. I haven't wanted to spend the money for a real video lens to fit the BMCC. Still using the original Fujinon lens on the JVC. Everything I do gets rendered at 720P so the JVC is still just fine and the Fujinon lets me do nice zooms while taping. Just can't see getting rid of the JVC setup any time soon. I think I'll order a couple of more packs of 50 tapes just in case. (I still use film for most of my still cameras too)

Having said all that, I just got an Atomos Ninja to use with the JVC. I had an old Firestore, but just never really trusted it. I plan to still record to tape as well as feed the signal to the Ninja - I like having extra copies for safety! Don't have enough experience with the Ninja yet to know if I love it or not, but it's certainly better than the Firestore.

Re archiving, I'm thinking of getting an LTO system one of these days - there's nothing else even close for real archive. I say that having been closely involved with the development and manufacturing of LTO drives since they first came out. I wouldn't trust any kind of burned optical disc as an archive copy of anything important.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Peter Ferling

Despite all this, HDV still has it's place and I'm holding onto my Sony HC1 in case someone hands me HDV media to capture. If you still have decent working HDV cameras, I see no need to switch just yet, but I do feel that the digital process has matured enough to be found reliable.

I still have a unused Sony fx1000 here, it belonged to my father who passed away last year, I have been trying to sell it but am not getting any response, guess tape camera's have had their time. It is still a very decent camera with good low light performance but I can't think of where I might use it myself. All of my current camera's are dslr's and there are occasions where I would benefit from using that fx1000, I only don't want to go back to hdv tapes and endless capturing, spending hundreds of dollars on a external recorder is also a bit overkill for this already aging camera, would rather spend that on a extra lens.

[Andrew Smith]

The HDMI output on that camera is your best asset. Record out to a Ninja, and you can always run tape as a backup.

You may well find that the quality of the output, when the HDV compression stage is bypassed, is excellent if not stunning. This has been my experience with the Sony V1.

Andrew

[Leslie Wand]

i still have 2 major clients who demand tape (they both simply archive it, but they've both been bitten by the bad hd bug at some stage so....)

i shoot with a z5, v1, and ah1, thought with the z5 i have a mkcr cf card recorder which i use for all other shoots (that said, i still run a tape as well - simplest archiving i know of ;-))

i'm just wondering what tape cameras are left in the market - i know the z5 is, but what about any thers, jvc for instance?

[Paul R Johnson]

Originally Posted by Jim Andrada

Having said all that, I just got an Atomos Ninja to use with the JVC. I had an old Firestore, but just never really trusted it. I plan to still record to tape as well as feed the signal to the Ninja - I like having extra copies for safety! Don't have enough experience with the Ninja yet to know if I love it or not, but it's certainly better than the Firestore.

Hijack coming up - I still have two 110's that I really like, but didn't realise the Ninja 2 worked on JVC - I made the mistake on the Firestore of buying a Panasonic one, and discovering it was ONLY Panasonic.

I'm still using tape, or direct into my macbook - which works well when on a tripod, but the Ninja looks very interesting!

[Pete Allen]

Still using tape here on my Z1's, would hate the thought of not being able to go back to my archived footage.

I guess the day is coming very soon when I'll have no choice but, happy with tape for now.