Head Spinning over HD choices

I.M. Sinclair · April 28, 2004

Hello All (long time listener, first time caller);

Where do I begin?

Okay first off, as much as I have been learning from all of you on these posts it always leads to more questions, of course right?

Second, a little background for you so you know I'm legitimate and I'm not out to sell or discredit any of you or your information that you all so willingly and graciously supply;

I work for a small production company in none other than Fargo, ND (no, I'm not from ND and thus I have no "accent" made famous by the movie of the same name, sorry). I'm a transplant, orignally from the West and arrived in Fargo via Boston and NYC. I can hear the jokes coming! HA!

Alright, on to the question...

I have yet to shoot with HD so natually I'm excited and nervous all the same. There is a commercial shoot scheduled and our client wishes to shoot with HD However I suspect they'll change their minds once they see the pice tag on the rental. Regardless, it could still happen. I'm leaning toward the Varicam (due to reasons I'll get to later) and I'm curious to know what issues to look out for durring checkout and on the shoot. And is it possible to pull this gig off without an AC (Not that I would want to, but "productions" are run much differently out here, using a gaffer? unheard of.)?

My next question is, and I'm sure you've all answered this one more than once (and if so please let me know where I could find your answers), what HD camera should a small town production company get themselves into? I come from a gaffing and film shooting background so I need some help understanding this ever growing forrest of HD products (I have been reading up on plenty of this but a lot of it seems biased). Say you had 100 grand to spend updateding your camera department, which way would you lean (post equipment excluded)? We shoot everything from commercials to corparate communications. I've also done a lot of reseach on the SDX900, which seems like a positive choice however HD is breathing down our necks more and more each day.

As it pertains to bit rate (25Mbps verses 50Mbps, right?) the Varicam, as one posting read, said by the time you get to 24p on the Varicam, your at 40Mbps (down from 100Mbps). So would this mean that the SDX900 at 50Mbps looks better? What am I missing in this equation, the color sampling or compression or something else? Also, at risk of sounding completly naive what does Mbps stand for? Mega bits per second? Or...?

I would really appreciate your answers as I would love to continue learning this medium to stay employable.

Thanks!

Phil Rhodes · April 28, 2004

Hi,

> As it pertains to bit rate (25Mbps verses 50Mbps, right?)

SD formats including miniDV, DVCAM (which is essentially the same thing) and DVCPRO (which is almost essentially the same thing) record at 25mbps. DVCPRO-50 records at 50 and is comparable to Digital Betacam or Digital S(VHS style cassettes, properly called D9). The principal difference is that 25 megabit formats generally subsample the image to 4:1:1 (All NTSC formats) or 4:2:0 (PAL miniDV/DVCAM) whereas DVCPRO-50 records at 4:2:2.

> the Varicam, as one posting read, said by the time you get to 24p on the

> Varicam, your at 40Mbps (down from 100Mbps)

So it has been widely theorised.

> So would this mean that the SDX900 at 50Mbps looks better?

Probably not. I've seen quite a lot of this stuff, including reasonably direct comparisons, and the higher initial resolution seems to make for a quieter, sharper image regardless.

> Mega bits per second? Or...?

Yes. Do not confuse with megabytes per second, which are eight times larger.

Phil

Mitch Gross · April 28, 2004

I can vouch for the validity of Mr. Sinclair, having worked with him in NYC before the move to the far more cosmopolitan vistas of Fargo. :P

My simple reccomendation to anyone ever considering equipment purchase is to buy as much as you can afford to spend on gear that you can expect to work for you for at most four years. After that the technology is getting long in the tooth and it's probably getting time to upgrade again (I know, you've had that Betacam far longer but this is a different era). I consider a camera such as the SDX900 to be the last of the professional SD era. Soon enough we'll all be switching to HD in one form or another.

There's a number of fronts for HD and ways to spend your money. Do you have $100k to spend on camera or could that money be well spent on some lighting/grip as well? What about the post realm? One very nice aspect of the Panasonic cameras is that Apple and Panasonic have worked together to make them completely Final Cut Pro compatible. The SDX900 integrated directly last year and the Varicam integration was announced this year at NAB. So an old post suite can be replaced fairly inexpensively with great power an integration, but you may still need to invest a big chunk in a deck.

So you need to consider your total expenses. One place to spend the cash is a lens. Even if you buy an SD camera, invest in an HD zoom. You'll see the difference and you'll be protected for the future.

Sorry to not directly answer the question. Have I confused the issue more?

I.M. Sinclair · April 29, 2004

Thank you Phil and Mitch for the replies. I look forward to more!

So if the Varicam looks better by the time it ends up at 40Mbps then the SDX900 at 50Mbps, what is the Varicam sampling at (4:2:2 for SDX, ??? for Varicam)?

And thankyou for clearing up the Megabit verses Megabyte.

There have been many discussion here at the studio I work for about the post end of things as it pertains to going HD or not. However the answer is inevitable, and it's great that Panasoinc and Apple have developed this "no brainer" approach to moving forward together with HD on both the camera and post fronts, but our editors have a voice in all of this desicion making as well. And they like their Avids.

Back to the camera... Albiet the CineAlta may have higher resolution than the Varicam our company does not make feature films so I'm less concerned about an image being projected on 50' screen. I'm more concerned about user friendliness and something that isn't going to cost us every employee's arms and legs. I would still like some cash left over for some well needed grip and lighting gear (wink to Mr. Gross).

"...but you may still need to invest a big chunk in a deck."

I see that Panasonic has released a smaller (half rack?) HD deck with a price tag around 20K. So that make the jump to HD so much more appealing to the accountants.

If you have a preference for any or one of the current HD cameras out on the market today which would it be?

Thanks!

PS - And a special thanks for Mr. Gross for his voucher! :D

Mitch Gross · April 29, 2004

If the resolution difference is not that big an issue for you (and I agree, it shouldn't be), then the Varicam is an excellent camera system. It has much better color that the Sony in my opinion, and the user interface for the operator is MUCH nicer on the Panasonic. The Sony runs hot and is a battery pig. It is also very loud, as the transport and heads spin with a horrid high-frequency whine that cannot be easily removed in post (I know, I've been there). The Panasonic also has some nice features such as user-addressable switches that allow an IRE spotmeter, among other options. I'd consider a package such as this:

-Varicam ($60k)

-new HD zoom ($18k)

-Panasonic's 8.4" HD lcd onboard with built in waveform (fantastic product) ($6k)

If purchased through a dealer such as Abel Cine Tech you can probably get them bundled in a package price for much less that will allow you to purchase that deck and still have some cash for L&G. Another option is not to purchase a deck, at least not right now. You could use the HD-SDI port on the camera to feed directly out of the camera. In the studio you could do this live right to a computer or memory cashe that would give you a 10-bit signal instead of the tape's 8-bit. For field work you could use the camera to play back the 8-bit recording. The only thing you won't have is the Frame Rate Conversion (FRC), but you can do that these days as a software solution.

Your editors better look long and hard at their Avids. One, they are a bit of a dying breed. And two, it may take a very hefty sum to upgrade their systems to properly handle the HD material. You could likely buy several FCP-HD systems for the price of a single Avid-HD system. And it won't be scalable/upgradable in two years when you'll invariably want more power, so you'll have to buy all new gear. Ug.

Best of luck.

Tenolian Bell · April 29, 2004

Your editors better look long and hard at their Avids. One, they are a bit of a dying breed. And two, it may take a very hefty sum to upgrade their systems to properly handle the HD material.

I just had a long conversation with some top end commercial editors about FCP and Avid. I wouldn't quite call them a dying breed, actually for a couple of valid reasons.

Their oppinion of FCP was basically versions 1, 2, and 3 were plagued with flaws and vastly inferior to Avid, but version 4 really closes the gap a lot more. 4 still has quite a few software flaws, still doesn't do as much real time software stuff as Apple claims, or at least doesn't do it as well as Avid can. But they do see improvements in FCP by leaps and bounds.

Even though FCP is scalable Avid still has a big lead in its media managment and storage. Avid has had a lot more time to work out how software and hardware deal with each other, its media managment and storage solutions are plug and play. Something you have to pull together from different vendors and then work the bugs out a lot more with a FCP system. Which they said can be a real pain in the arse.

You are right that Avids come at heafty prices and are not scalabe, and you have to basically buy a new system as your upgrade. But the editors I've spoken to said you are getting a premium system for that premium cost, and their can be a lot of headache in trying to scale and FCP system up to do the same thing and Avid can do.

But of course of Sinclair's purposes FCP works with DVCPRO-HD natively through firewire, all he would ultimately need is enough memory.

Phil Rhodes · April 30, 2004

Hi,

I'm not going to go on about this too much because it's offtopic, but I have a pretty low opinion of Avid. The advantages are all in interopability and management - in terms of edit feature set, particularly in audio, most Avids are blown out of the water many times over by the likes of FCP and Premiere Pro. Of course you can take a basic FCP system and make it look pretty pallid up against an Avid DS, but that's not really a fair comparison.

I've known many companies restrict themselves to Avids because their staff liked them. Oh, to be in a position where I could dictate what was used on the basis it would keep me in a job! People can retrain, and if I was paying their wages I would not look kindly upon backward-looking griping about how they're so attached to a certain system. It's your company, you tell them what to use. If they get upset there's a hell of a lot of very experienced FCP editors out there.

Phil

Tenolian Bell · April 30, 2004

... in terms of edit feature set, particularly in audio, most Avids are blown out of the water many times over by the likes of FCP and Premiere Pro.

Yeah I'm sure you're right. Avid doesn't want to put too advanced an audio feature into its video editing, they own Digidesign and are trying to sell expensive audio work stations.

That's pretty much how it works with the commercial editors I know. They don't really do anything to the audio themselves outside of laying down temp voice tracks, temp sound effects, and temp music tracks. All of the actual audio mixing, ADR, etc, is done at a totally seperate audio post house that ownes expensive Pro Tools work stations.

And then they finish at another post house that on lines the commercial spot in HD on Symphony and lays down the final graphics or VFX on Inferno.

I guess their basic point is this work flow has already been put together and is established in Avid, but currently their is no real fluid infrastructure in the same way to to accomplish this same work flow in FCP.

Phil Rhodes · April 30, 2004

Hi,

I think the point is that in FCP or similar there isn't really any complex "work flow" to bother about. Once you've got the material in (any method you like, and there are many, for HD, SD or files) you can online and offline and do more or less what you like.

I refuse to believe there's any better margin in this constant moving from place to place than there is in just waiting for a bit of rendering.

> Pro Tools

Oh, don't even get me started. Anyone seen Sony Picture's Vegas software?

Phil

Sam Wells · April 30, 2004

That's pretty much how it works with the commercial editors I know. They don't really do anything to the audio themselves outside of laying down temp voice tracks, temp sound effects, and temp music tracks. All of the actual audio mixing, ADR, etc, is done at a totally seperate audio post house that ownes expensive Pro Tools work stations.

There's nothing wrong with working that way. I've done it with "Steenbeck" :)

"Indies" don't neccesarily need to spend a fortune on ProTools either, you can have the same mobility.

-Sam Wells

Tenolian Bell · April 30, 2004

Yeah actually I asked them about that. Isn't it better to just work with one system that scales up instead of moving from system to system? The answer was not really.

These guys said for at least right now its better to work on a system that was built for and is dedicated to the job it does. Avid's accelerators are optimized for what they do, that it is faster and easier to work with SD on a system made for SD. Then finish HD on a system optimized for HD.

That Avid has made it easy to move media files from system to system, or you can painlessly move hard drives from system to system.

They claim that trying to do too many things on one system causes too many problems and slows the whole process down. That Ad agency people cause them enough stress without having to deal with a lot of computer technical problems.

The other advantage is that spreading systems out among different companies spreads the expense of owning and maintaining those systems.

They said that possibly one day off line, on line, and finishing can be done quickly and efficiently on one system, but that's not today.

Sounds like its just a matter of preference (well and money). I hear a lot of Indie?s down play Avid, of course they are happy to have a powerful NLE without having to pay tens of thousands. Then I hear people who use Avid say it does what we need it to do better than the other NLE's.

But I digress I?m not an editor and don?t really use any of this stuff. I'm not advocating one over the other, I just ask questions and am regurgitating what I?ve heard

I.M. Sinclair · April 30, 2004

Hello again,

Thank you for all of your comments and I look forward to passing the information along to my peers and fellow staff members at the studio. However If I may please direct the question back to HD camera preference and not necessarily post concerns (albeit very important as well).

There were some comments made by Mr. Gross about his preference to the Varicam over the CineAlta and wonder if anybody else shares his experience, concerns, etc. (I highly respect the opinions of Mr.Gross having worked with him first hand, but I will of course honor all additional comments on your experiences of working with HD camera systems). The material that is produced out of the studio I work with only ends up on the small screen (TV and corparate board rooms) and cost is as always a top concern for the accounts. So with those conditions in place what would you look to as your HD camera preference?

Cheers,

IMS

May 17, 2004

There is a rumor that Panasonic and Sony devided the HD offerings with Sony staying away from 720p and Panasonic from 1080p. it is extremely easy to add 720p to 1080p camera. Sony does not do that. So each of the firms have a monopoly on one of the HD options, sharing the 1080i.

The prices are so high and there are no product offerings at the lower price spectrum. That created a market vacuum that Kinetta and others are filling.

Check the CamcorderInfo movimaking forum for an interesting new HD camera offering, 3-chip, 1080p, uncompressed.