Thursday, March 5, 2009

Going Tapeless? Prepare to be Drawn & Quartered!

Today's lesson:  We Got Trouble in Tech-City.

First:  fair warning...today's post is quite techn-o-geek-o.  In fact, I am wearing my favorite "I Void Warranties" t-shirt to write this, because I am tapping into my inner geek.  

After more than two years of tentative forays into converting to a tapeless acquisition format here, I am still sitting on my hands, shooting miles of tape.  This despite the fact that new tapeless cameras come out each day and the cost keeps coming down.

But when you have the kind of networked infrastructure we do, pulling the proverbial trigger ain't so easy.  Let's review:

We have about 30 Avid clients, running on a pair of Avid Media Net servers.  All clients are distributed throughout all three floors of the building with a good 3 miles of blue Cat-6 spaghetti in the walls (I know, we pulled it ourselves.)

Those clients are running Media Composer 3.1.  

We are currently using a blend of JVC 500 & 5000 cameras for classes, and a bevy of DVX-100A's for the TV side of things.  So in other words, we're all 25Mbps all day. 

Recently, we were able to get our hands on two new Panasonic tapeless cams that fall right within our price range:  the new 150 & 170 cameras.  Like their predecessors, the DVX 100 and the HVX 200, both cams have fixed lenses.  It's a limitation, but hey, we're talking education budgets here.  We're lucky to be looking at these cams at all.  But still, I have my checklist of what we wanted, even though we have very little money to spend.


So the first thing I noticed that I loved?  Panasonic has put a switch on the side of the camera that allows me to choose whether I want the outer ring on the lens to control focus or iris.  Score!  This marks a major leap forward over the previous system on the DVX cam where the iris control was relegated to a dinky wheel/button combo on the side of the camera.  Love it.

Both cams have XLR audio input.  Check!  Both cams use similar 3-ccd imagers.  Check!  Both cams are tapeless.  Check!  Both cams can change frame rates and codecs.  Check!

Ah, but now we get down to the real nitty gritty:  The 150 shoots AVCHD to a high capacity SD card.  The 170 shoots only to P2 cards, but uses a variety of compressions including the P2 HD codec. 

And so my dilemma begins....Avid does not support AVCHD directly imported into the system.  So the 150 is out.  Unless, of course,we want to have all students re-wrap the file as a P2 file.

Which I don't.  Let's face it, all the advantages of tapeless transfer are lost if there's a necessary intermediate step of transcoding the file first.  And although the 170 with P2 cards is a great solution, it's a bit pricey for us.  Not only because the camera costs more, but because the cost of P2 cards is still too high.  I am working with students, and lost cards are pretty likely.  And at $800 per card, I can't afford that loss.

Avid says AVCHD support is low priority because it's a consumer format.  Maybe it'll come, maybe not. 

And so, on to Apple!

The folks in Cupertino are wisely format neutral.  Final Cut brought the files right in off the SD card and I was editing almost immediately.

But of course, we have a large investment in a PC-based Avid infrastructure, complete with Media Net servers.  Going to FCP as a solution not only means re-training all of our students, it means all new clients and a new server system.  So going to HD 16x9 acquisition just meant all new hardware in the post side too.

But am I looking into it?  You betcha.  In my opinion, FCP already does a monstrously better job moving media in and out than does Avid.  And while I still love the fluidity of editing using Avid during the middle phase of the process, I have just about had it with Tewksbury's attitude about formats.  And their seeming inability to make a simple DVD from a finished project.  (One-step has never worked right for us.)

So here we are...trapped.  Anchored in place by our past alliances, and being pulled  forward by the ever chugging train o' progress.  If I can't figure out a way to either a) unhook safely from the Avid anchor or b) pull the anchor into the boxcar with us, then it looks like those opposing forces are going make a real mess of me. 

Just like being drawn & quartered.

And in the end, none of it really matters.  My students need to learn how to tell compelling stories, which they could just as readily do using VHS camcorders and linear editing.  But if we don't start teaching them HD methods, they will be starting out at a disadvantage. 

Let's all sing it together, like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite:  "Yes, I love technology...not as much as you you see, but still, I love technology.  Always and forever.  Always and forever."


Dr. Phil Hoffman is General Manager of The University of  Akron’s Z-TV.  He also uses the same keybaord to edit in FCP and Avid MCP.  This means he can often be found hitting a button, shouting an expletvie because it was from the wrong software, and then hitting another  button.  No one should have to live like this.  

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