HD100 info from JVC

[cstv]

ok, so we went to a JVC training day on "ProHD" last week and here are a few details people might be interested in...

firstly, i'm very pleased to hear that JVC are deliberately edging away from the term HDV and are using "ProHD" to describe their range. I assume this is partly to get away from HDV being a bit consumerish and, much more importantly for me, because it technically speaking ties them to the dv tape format. JVC seem much more keen on the idea of an mpeg2 stream stored on a hard drive. I think it's safe to assume that mpeg2 would progress to mpeg4 and onwards as technology permits.

An interesting difference between HDV1 as used by JVC and HDV2 as used by Sony is how the track on the tape is divided up:
A normal DV track has a header, an audio section, a video section and a timecode/data section.
Sony used both the audio and video sections to store their mpeg stream at 25Mbps and thus have no room for further expansion.
JVC, thanks in part to their use of 720p25 rather than 1080i50 have managed to squeeze the entire TS with audio and video into the 19.7Mbps video section of the DV tape track. The theory being that they could add more audio channels or some other data at some point in the future. I would expect this to be a feature on new models though, rather than something like a firmware upgrade. The huge advantage would presumably be that newer tapes with data in the audio section of the track would still be playable in older devices.

Some reasonably pointless trivia for you... packets for the HDV mpeg TS are 188bytes long.

The LCD screen is 4:3 rather than 16:9. It measures 72x54mm. JVC haven't done what Alan Roberts suggested Sony should do though, and locate the character overlay in the letterbox area. This seems a little silly, but i assume it has something to do with getting the character overlay on external 16:9 displays.

Both the GY-HD100 and the BR-HD50 will play back DVCAM. The deck will also playback "NTSC" DV but i forgot to ask if this was a true NTSC output or a PAL output, i think it's probably the latter. The BR-HD50 will take full-sized DV cassettes as well as MiniDV. Sony's deck will only take MiniDV cassettes. There was no suggestion of JVC's range supporting HDV2 playback - aparently something to do with paying sony for their codec. so much for HDV being a team effort... ;)

JVC are replacing their M-DV63Pro MiniDV tape with an HD version: the imaginatively titled M-DV63HD! And the price shouldn't change.

Lens options for the HD100 are as follows:
16 x 5.5 Fujinon (41 to 660mm 35mm equivilent)
13 x 3.5 Fujinon (26 to 340mm 35mm equivilent)
A 0.82x wide angle converter is available for the 16 x 5.5 which will result in 35mm equivilent of 34 to 540mm

The standard battery for the HD100 will offer 80minutes of normal usage but stick the IDX Endura battery on the back and you'll get 3.5 hours.

There are 2 versions of the JVC modded FS4; a 40GB model that gives 3 hours of recording and an 80GB model that will allow (yes, you've guessed it!) 6 hours of record time.

The will be 2 versions of the camcorder; the GY-HD100e and the GY-HD100u for European and US markets respectively. The only difference being the SD recording mode and down-converted SD output. Both versions will be able to record 720p25, 720p30 and 720p24 (using internal 3:2 pulldown).

We're expecting our demo model sometime 3rd or 4th week in July, and JVC claim to already have over 1000 European orders for the camcorder, so if you haven't got one already you may be waiting a while.

mark.

[mooblie]

Any idea: Is the viewfinder a CRT or LCD? Resolution thereof?

And the lenses have proper focus stops at infinity with distance markings etc?

( Spot the man outgrowing Sony's spinning focussing rings and lo-res viewfinders! :) )

[cstv]

well, the lens is a "proper" lens so yes it has all the right bits in all the right places. The 0.44" colour viewfinder is LCD and has 230000 pixels, but it's detachable so i assume you could swap for something more expensive it if you wanted to. The LCD panel has 250000 pixels

Something else worth mentioning is JVC's "Focus Assist" function. Activating the function switches the viewfinder to monochrome and highlights edges that are in focus in either red, green or blue (menu selectable) and from the quick demo we saw of it, it works pretty well!

The ACM-12 is a 1/2" to 1/3" bayonet mount adaptor that JVC are selling as an optional accessory to allow use of 1/2" lenses.

Oh, and in addition to what i said earlier about the hard drive, the 80GB model gives you 6 hours in DV mode but 7.5 hours in HDV mode because HDV uses 19Mbps rather than 25Mbps. The 40GB drive records half of these times.

another interesting product in the ProHD range is the CU-VH1 which is a portable HDV/DV player. Unfortunately it only plays 720/30p (HDV) 480/60i (DV) at the moment and i doubt they'll be making a 50Hz version.

mark.

[Alan Roberts]

Thanks Mark, nothing I hadn't expected but nice to read anyway.

Just bear in mind that HDV is a tape format, a portmanteau standard containing all the variants that were thought relevant 3 years ago. Life moves on, and JVC realised pretty rapidly that HDV is a consumer standard and that they could see and service a market a little above that. Full marks to them, but many more are available when they get it up to 720p/50 recorded.

[cstv]

...that they could see and service a market a little above that. Full marks to them, but many more are available when they get it up to 720p/50 recorded.

i think the next big thing has to be an affordable hardware-based mpeg4 encoder. With bitrates supposedly up to a quarter of that for mpeg2 for the same image quality, we might even see 1080p/50! :D

JVC's investment in hard drives should put them in a good position for future development and hopefully much more quickly and easily than other tape-based solutions. Of course, when solid state becomes more afforable it'll be a totally different story!

I suppose we're quite lucky that JVC don't have their own version of HDCAM or DVCProHD to protect, or the HD100 certainly wouldn't have happened.

mark.

[mooblie]

Thanks, Mark.

[Alan Roberts]

H.264's pretty well there already. And it's the market for stand-alone portable recorders that needs the attention now. FS4's only just the start. Once the manufacturers realise that they can make more money from selling separate cameras and recorders, then all the rules will change and we'll see an explosion of the new, cheap kit that'll make HD really take off.

Kinetta saw that opportunity two years ago and dived for it, but with a camera so indiosyncratic that nobody's buying it. Shame really, it was a nice idea.

My 2 pen'orth.

[cstv]

H.264's pretty well there already.

Realtime H.264 at hi-def in a chip? where do i get one!?!?!?!?

it'd be nice if someone like JVC would make a camcorder the other way around; with a hard drive built in and the tape recorder as an optional extra.

[Alan Roberts]

H.264's at the heart of the set-top boxes being made for French and German HDTV, to launch later this year. Sky's box will probably go the same way, but details haven't leaked this way yet.

I think the most logical next step in camcorder construction is to make the camera and recorder as separate components, dockable. It happened in early Beta camcorders, I see no reason why it shouldn't happen again. So you'd buy a camera and a recorder (which could be tape, probably DV, or hard drive, or optical).

[Mad_mardy]

having a tapeless system is fine when it works but Hd's fail,
solid state chips can become corupted and optical discs, i don't know much about them but if they are anything like cd's or dvd's is it worth putting our trust in these for image aquisition?
i know tapes can fail or be chewed but its normally possible 99% of the time to be able to recover material from these.

[Alan Roberts]

Times are changing. Tape will disappear from camcorders before very long. Like it or not, new methods of working will emerge and will perform better and more reliably and in more user-friendly ways than does tape now. It's a fact of life rather than a prediction.

[Mad_mardy]

yes i agree but is it for the better?
apparently from what i have heard the bbc is in turmoil over solid state recording as it seems the big wigs want to go that way but the crews don't
if this is true (i actually heard it from john simpson)
again i ask are we going this way for better or for worse?

[Unicorn]

yes i agree but is it for the better?

You don't _have_ to go solid-state. DVD is probably a better choice than tape for highly compressed video (less likely to get dropouts), and it means your granny can just burn a copy of their holiday video onto a second DVD and mail it to you without having to faff around with video editing or tape-to-tape copying.

Plus, of course, you still get rapid random access to all the video and can 'capture' it at several times real-time speed.

[Mad_mardy]

sorry unicorn but i'm talking about aquisition in camera not a delivery format

[Unicorn]

i'm talking about aquisition in camera not a delivery format

So am I.

[cstv]

i know tapes can fail or be chewed but its normally possible 99% of the time to be able to recover material from these.

as it is from hard drive, and solid state and optical... you just have to know how ;)

the only real difference is the density of the data on the media and how well protected it is from the outside world.

mark.

[Alan Roberts]

And the longevity of support for the media type; tape's been around for a very long time, so won't go down without a fight. But tape will eventually go, in the same way that vinyl went, and 8-track, and 45rpm discs, and 78s, and edison cylinders.....

[Mad_mardy]

thats quite a good comparison Alan.
although vynal is comming back ;)
and its funny that a lot of sound recording stilll does use tape.
(probably not studio recording)

err.. sorry unicorn i'm a bit confused if you were talking about an aquisition format why are you talking about tape to tape transfers and granny palying dvd's. i would from experience say that tape is better over dvd at least
i mean how many posts are on here about dud dvd's or skipping dvd's.
I can just see the editor going back to the producer saying ooh you know that really high budget drama you've just shot? well there is a scratch across the disk and its screwed. or i've dropped the hdd. :)

hmm i really think we might get bitten on the bum with this one, technology is moving ahead to fast i think we are moving to use new technology for technology sake. if moving to new technology gives us an advantage then i'm all for it but i can't help feeling the way things are going we gonna be losing
our advantage rather than gaining it.
i'd love to be proven wrong though, maybe i'm just old fashioned.

[cstv]

not quite true, Alan... it's the interface between the media and your chosen read/write device that really matters.

In the case of a hard drive, the interface is built-in to the unit so it's the longevity of support for ATA or SATA that matters. Even if support did cease, you could theoretically replace the controller card on the drive to allow it to be connected to a newer device. This is pretty much as you suggested; to have totally seperate camera and recorder connected by a cable (as the FS4 is) and then you're relying on continued support for the connector and transfer protocol - both of which are likely to outlive individual recording formats.

In the case of Compact Flash, it's the interface that's defined, not the storage media that sits behind the interface so that's a plus point. What's more is that CF was designed to be interchangable with PCMCIA, so if one goes down you'll still have the other as a backup.

Formats like tape and optical storage were designed to be disposable and therefore don't have the reading device built-in. This leaves you with something of a problem long-term if your reader/writer packs up.

This reliance on an interface is providing us with many more options that we would have had in the past. For instance; i can buy a cheap compact flash card for use with my digital camera, which only uses low datarates and another high-speed card for the mpeg players i use at work but both connect to my pc using a compact flash card reader.

don't you think that if everything electronic had a USB or IEEE1394 port then the world would be a happier place...?

mark.

[Unicorn]

sorry unicorn i'm a bit confused if you were talking about an aquisition format why are you talking about tape to tape transfers and granny palying dvd's

Because today your granny is probably buying a DVD camera so she can watch her holiday videos on her DVD player, and easily copy them to send to the grand-children. No need to faff around with all kinds of weird cables to watch a DV tape on their TV or copy it to VHS.

i mean how many posts are on here about dud dvd's or skipping dvd's.

That's a potential problem. But certainly solvable (in any case, if your camera is vibrating enough to make the DVD skip, it's vibrating enough that you probably won't see anything worth capturing on the screen).

I can just see the editor going back to the producer saying ooh you know that really high budget drama you've just shot? well there is a scratch across the disk and its screwed.

That's what backups are for. If you're shooting a 'really high budget drama', you can afford to edit from backup copies of the master footage (even most of the low-budget dramas I've edited make copies of the master tapes and keep the masters in a safe place).

Seriously, DVD recording has a lot of benefits over tape and not many disadvantages, if done right. Solid state has a few benefits and a lot of disadvantages.

[Alan Roberts]

I wasn't really refering to the longevity of the individual piece of kit, but of the technology as a whole. Yes, vinyl hasn't fully gone away and I don't expect it to, but it's hardly mainstream. Tape will follow the same way, it'll keep a niche (it's very good for archiving as long as you've got a player) but will fall by the wayside for normal acquisition and production.

At least, that's what I reckon.

[Mad_mardy]

my point was really that when out in the field in the middle of a location shoot when things can get hectic its possible for things to get dropped, bashed around and general abuse thats when i feel damage would happen.

To be honest the event videographer/weddings and the consumer probably
wouldn't have many problems.

What are the advantages of dvd disc over tape?
i really can't think of any. i mean even in data centres tape is used for back up,video archives use tape and not disc and even now programme masters are on tape and not disc even though disc is a viability. i don't know of anyone that uses disc to archive which obviously points to the fact that either they don't trust disc or its not viable for back up for whatever reason
music cd's have now started having problems and apparently they degrade after 50 years anyway so is the future of having video on disc a good one?

Tapes are very robust if you snap/chew it you can get your stuff off.
what about scratched discs dropped HDD's? is the same thing possible?
and not only possible viable as well. I know there are companies that will recover data from HDD's but this costs a fortune and in some cases is not possible. Although if the bbc had archived all the stuff it wiped onto HDD
then we could probably have got it back after they'd wiped it.

I'm not being anti solid state, well i am as i don't trust it, i've never lost anything on a tape but i have had HDD's fail, cd discs that have been stored
away and when you come to use them they won't rerad anymore. This was probably due to a faulty laser on a cd burner wearing out. what happens if this happens on location a a faulting laser, faulty disc? this is why i'm so cautious there are so many more things that can go wrong and discs seem so much more vunerable than tape, why do we put ourselves in potentialy
precarious situations? for the sake of technology.

If someone can point out an advantage of disc over tape that is an advantage in a practiacal way not just a gimmick or something to cure laziness then i might , just might shut up :)

[Unicorn]

If someone can point out an advantage of disc over tape that is an advantage in a practiacal way not just a gimmick or something to cure laziness then i might , just might shut up

When you want to capture an hour of footage to your hard drive for editing, with tape it will take you an hour, with DVD it will take you about ten minutes.

[cstv]

me thinks that Mardy may see not wanting to spend a huge chunk of your editing budget on capturing from tape as "something to cure laziness"... but that probably is the only significant advantage. the random access nature of optical discs makes working with them much faster.

I does make sense that your aquisition format should link directly into your editing system. Tape used to do that with linear editing systems but digital NLEs just don't work as well when using tape.

If you're worried about optical, then use 2 drives in the recorder. The odds of both discs being damaged at the same time in the same place on the disc must be pretty slim. Once optical discs are housed in some sort of casing they're much more robust anyway. Try taking your tape out of the cassette and see how long it lasts then...

When you talk about hard drives failing but tapes not, you're not comparing like with like. The way that a PC uses a hard drive involves a lot of small files that are constantly being read and written to the disk and then deleted. This results in hugely fragmented files, and the armature that holds the heads flying back and forth all the time. If you were recording video to HDD as part of a camcorder you'd be treating it as a linear recording format resulting very little fragmentation, and that's assuming the recorder is designed to allow fragmentation. It fragmentation that makes data recovery expensive for PC HDDs and it wouldn't be a problem here. The way that PCs treat drives is not the kindest to the drive and is more likely to induce failure than the way that your camcorder would be treating it.

mark.

[Alan Roberts]

Well said, young man, I don't need to point all that out now :)

Please observe that I've consistently said that tape is fine for archive and will probably survive there, but random-access storage for capture makes for a much faster work-flow and will take over from tape. That there's a choice of 3 ways to do that now has to be a good sign; it remains only to see which, if any, emerges as the winner. I guess that they'll coexist for some time, allowing us to choose the most appropriate technology on a case-by-case basis.

[Mad_mardy]

When you want to capture an hour of footage to your hard drive for editing, with tape it will take you an hour, with DVD it will take you about ten minutes.

ahh but the joy's of batch capture it allows time for a fag and a coffee and time to browse the net ;)

[Alan Roberts]

And that's a sure sign that someone else is paying you for the time :) When you're doing it in your own time, it all takes on a different perspective.

[StevenBagley]

the random access nature of optical discs makes working with them much faster.

I does make sense that your aquisition format should link directly into your editing system. Tape used to do that with linear editing systems but digital NLEs just don't work as well when using tape

Quite. It's interesting that at NAB Apple demonstrated the new FCP5 (with XDCam support) editting directly off the XDCam disk mounted over ethernet. I can see this as a huge advantage at live events (such as Live 8) where you may have people filming stuff on XDCam for insertion into the programme later, probably played straight out of the NLE itself.

Steven

[mooblie]

My boldening:

Quite. It's interesting that at NAB Apple demonstrated the new FCP5 (with XDCam support) editting directly off the XDCam disk mounted over ethernet.......

Steven

Interesting......... - it worked, obviously? Gigabit, I presume?

Is this the beginning of the end for FireWire? :)

[StevenBagley]

Interesting......... - it worked, obviously? Gigabit, I presume?

I believe so :)

I imagine it was Gigabit -- although at 50Mbp/s it should be possible over 100baseTX stuff just

With Gigabit, I imagine you could run five or six XDCam decks off it and edit from them -- which would be great at live events

Steven

[infocus]

Some interesting extra snippets, cstv - thanks for those. When I saw the HD100 and heard about the "focus assist", I thought what a good idea. Then I saw it, and found that I could rock focus and see that change - but no change in the "focus assist" pattern! But maybe there's a sensitivity tweak?

Regarding the old "tape v optical drive v solid state v hard drive" chestnut, I've just come back from a weeks filming and editing abroad with tape camera and Firestore. Workflow wise, I don't think that can be bettered at the moment, my preferred approach being to import to Avid from the Firestore at the end of every day, then format the Firestore for tomorrow, but obviously the tapes exist as backup indefinitely.

The advantage of getting material into the NLE like this, as opposed to capturing off tape, is not just speed (typically 4-5x faster), but I find as much, if not more, that it ends up imported as individual clips. From this point of view it has all the advantages of P2, without the disadvantages P2 will have for the next few years of having to consciously archive rushes, to say nothing of not being able to simply finish a shoot and simply hand rushes over, never expecting to see them again.

But there are problems with hard drives, and don't lets get carried away with complicated techy type matters - let's keep to fundamentals. The ones I've come across have very long "switch on to first shot" times, typically 15-20 seconds in the case of the Firestore. That wasn't a problem for me this week for the filming I was doing, but imagine a harddrive camera of the type Mark proposes (with separate tape drive), which took that length of time from switch on to rolling......... I can't imagine (especially) News crews being very impressed with that! (Compared to the halcyon days of nearly instant running of film, current cameras were seen as bad enough there!)

For my use, the biggest niggle with the Firestore was the added weight, and where to put it, though at least it was powerable from the camera battery. I had good weather, but am very concerned how it would react in rain etc.

At the moment XDCAM seems to most combine the advantages of tape (cheap consumable media) with solid state/hard drive (ease of import to NLE). Unfortunately it seems to have problems of its own at the moment - high power consumption, large media size and relatively slow data transfer. Hence at_the_moment tape must still be seen as the medium of choice most of the time. I agree with Alan in principle about the solid state future, it all depends when you define the future to be! I suspect my definition is somewhat further away than Alans! For the next few years I see tape being dominant for most use, and parallel use with Firestore giving it an extended life.

Certainly it would seem foolish to me to spend lots on tapeless SD cameras, though I would expect any next major re-equipment to be tapeless HD.

Regarding future offerings from JVC using H264, it would be nice if they could get 720p50 MPEG2 running first! (I believe H264 needs more processing power than MPEG?) Compared to Sony consumer, it is looking now as if JVC have the best strategists, Sony the better technology.

[PaulD]

...imagine a harddrive camera of the type Mark proposes (with separate tape drive), which took that length of time from switch on to rolling......... I can't imagine (especially) News crews being very impressed with that! (Compared to the halcyon days of nearly instant running of film...)
Hi
Or compared to the soon-to-come halcyon days of a P2 camera that is already recording/buffering before you switch to record, so you don't miss the moment.

The first time that someone comes back with a pre-buffered news shot that no-one else has got because their tape cameras were pre-rolling back to start is the last time that any news crew uses tape by choice, I would suggest... ;)

[Alan Roberts]

The pre-record cache is possible on tape as well. The Sony HDW750 has a 10-second memory, so you can set up a shot, walk to the front of the camera and do the clapper, walk to the back and press Record. You're on tape. I've done it. The memory involved isn't huge, it stores the compressed data that goes to tape, all that's needed is for the tape drive to be able to run at variable speed so that it can catch up after a few seconds.

My time-scale for the future tends to be rather longer than most. My whole career's been spent in getting a view of the future and making sure that it provides what broadcasting needs. Typically, 5 years is short-term, 10-15 years is normal, 25+ is long-term. For R&D, that is. Anything less than 5 years is future, it's now, because it takes that long to make new stuff happen.

[infocus]

Or compared to the soon-to-come halcyon days of a P2 camera that is already recording/buffering before you switch to record, so you don't miss the moment.

(EDIT) I see I got beaten to this one!

No - that's not the point, you're assuming the P2 is already powered up, just ready to hit the record button. Under those circumstances tape and P2 are on a pretty equal footing if the camera has a cache facility fitted, though I find it silly that manufacturers fit cache more to top end tape cameras used more for drama etc than low end pro cameras (DSR570 etc) used more for news - just the sort that would most benefit from cache.

My post dealt with the camera switched off to save power, and the time from first switching power "ON" to pictures being recorded. I've no experience with XDCAM here, but my memory of P2 here was that it's boot up time was similar to a comparable tape camera, and both poor compared to the old film days! (I've heard stories that decades ago in Northern Ireland, when there was a large bomb expected, the trick was to lock off the camera on the scene, film a few seconds, then stop and wait for the explosion. Run at that point, and rely on the first couple of frames being overposed as the film got up to speed to give the impression of the blast, then see the smake, debris etc.)

All that said, tape and P2 cameras can go from power off to recording in a few seconds, for hard drive cameras such as the Ikegami, it's more like 15-20. Not much use for news. Powered from the camera, my point is that a Firestore can be (and was earlier this week) left on for a period, with just the camera being switched on and off to save power. Leave a hard drive camera on like that and you'll have a lot of battery charging to do!

P2 is a great concept, and it or something similar will most likely be the way things will go. Here and now, the practical drawbacks mean it has more disadvantages than advantages - especially when a conventional camera can be supplemented with a hard drive.

[mooblie]

Have I missed something here? - surely FireStore and their ilk use laptop-like hard drive technology, which can nowadays run for extended periods (at least measured in hours, albeit with various "sleeping" and "hibernating" modes where necessary)? And this is all:

- low enough power to only need a reasonable sized battery
- physically fairly small and light
- large enough capacity
- relatively cheap per GB
- fast enough
- robust enough
- very widely available (a very much "still improving" technology)
- quiet enough(!) and...

- still getting better all the time??

- and so is likely to prevail, until solid state finally overtakes it after some years to come?

Solid state currently fails on the "capacity" and "cost per GB" scores - but not forever.

[infocus]

Have I missed something here?
Possibly two things.

The first doesn't apply to a self contained operation (wedding video etc), but is crucial in most of the rest of the industry. A cameraman can happily give away a tape or XDCAM disc at the end of a shoot in the way they can not with a P2 card or harddrive. The issue is workflow, not technical. I'll agree with Alan - the problem with solid state will go away over time and decreasing prices, but I'd guess we're talking 5 years plus.

Secondly, and as somebody using Firestore all the time at the moment, the picture is not as rosy or one sided as you present. I do like it for what I'm doing, and it does save a lot of time, but it's not all one way, even powering the device from the camera. I believe using it with 7.2 volt cameras, and relying on it's internal battery, makes you realise that they do consume a fair amount of power, certainly enough to make it neccessary to switch off and on - and hence experience the boot up times. With a tape/Firestore combination, you do get your cake and eat it to a large extent at the moment, what I'm not convinced about is the harddrive ONLY concept (eg Ikegami).

As for: "Solid state currently fails on the "capacity" and "cost per GB" scores - but not forever.", then yes, you're right. All I'm saying is that whilst 5+ years may not be "forever", excitement about these technologies needs to be tempered at the moment. Waiting as long as that will miss you a lot of filming. ;)

[Alan Roberts]

I've said somewhere else that my view of timescales may not be the same as that of others here. Coming from R&D, the "future" is 10 years away at least, less than 5 years is "now", next year has already happened as far as new products is concerned. That may modify your opinion of some of my statements, but it's subsantially true for this industry as far as I'm concerned.

[cstv]

am i right in thinking that solid state recorders would consume much less power than tape or optical or HDD because they don't have moving parts...?

JVC's DV5100 also has a pre-record buffer btw. as do many other cameras. wouldn't want anyone thinking it was just sony doing it... ;) and i think the reason for it being the reserve of the more expensive camcorders is as Alan said, you need the variable speed tape mech that can catch up - otherwise you have to wait for the system to catch up after you stop recording.

mark.

[infocus]

Regarding power, and comparing a DSR500 with the latest offerings in the P2/XDCAM ranges, I believe the P2 consumes slightly more power than the DSR500, and the XDCAM substantially more, of the order of 50%, I think. The latter is a significant problem in that a standard LiIon battery will no longer run a camera/headlight combination with 35watt bulb.

[cstv]

bring on IDX's LED camera light then! :D much lower power for comparable light output, and a fixed colour temp regardless of brightness setting...

[infocus]

bring on IDX's LED camera light then!
That had occured to me, but when I trialled one it had one or two drawbacks - such as a light output pattern equivalent to a standard PAG on spot (so with centre hot spot) and no means to alter it, and generally less controllable by flagging. If I was buying kit from scratch, it is probably what I'd get, but I'm don't think it's worth getting if you already have a PAG - worth waiting for the next generation.

Partly that's because the hope is for a 35watt LED light, so light output equivalent to a 100watt halogen or the PAG HMI headlight, which if dimmable really would be an excellent on-camera light. Of course, it'd be back to square one, and not usable with the XDCAM and LiIon batteries. And no way do I want to go back to NiMH......... :)

[MattDavis]

at 50Mbp/s it should be possible over 100baseTX stuff
Steven

Ethernet is a bit wasteful when it comes to true throughput vs. theoretical maximum throughput. Like ADSL, Ethernet is contested, and an average scenario cuts things down by a factor of 10-100 depending on the number of nodes. In my experience, our Gigabit Ethernet provides a reliable 10Mbps but can extend to 100 Mbps, the core 100 Base T network offers a rock solid 1 Mbps but in the evening people can watch MPEG2 realtime, the wireless 10b/T = 100kbps, and can feel like broadband should do.

IIRC, FireWire was 'son of QuickRing' and was considered a networking protocol before it was coralled into being a local disk thing to squash SCSI.

Video requires every bit to be delivered in strict order, none of the internet's 'Oh, sorry guv, can you send me that again?', none of the re-routing packets over a different path, which is why net video works better with Real Time Streaming Protocol (Real10 can do VHS at 350kbps) than it does with http (progressive download, and those sudden stops as a little packet gets lost, misses its flight, and finds it has to get EasyJet from Luton to get to your browser).

If sharing video without compressing it (therefore turning an Espresso into Nescafe), fibre is the current norm.

Tuppence ha'penny, PMJI, M.

[mooblie]

Matt: agreed: but I wasn't advocating Gigabit as a "better alternative" for video transfer, just pleased/surprised that this ubiquitous techology (which is cheap, widely available on most gear, and often already installed everywhere) is usable at all for HDV applications.