Film to videotape to digital
By S Simmons. Filed in Editing |
Posts to the Editblog have been kind of sparse the last couple of weeks as pretty much all free time on my hands has been devoted to working on a viable RED camera workflow as they begin to pop up locally. As we continue to work on figuring out the best way to post RED projects I’ve seen an interesting dichotomy rear its head. On the one hand you’ve got the film people who don’t like to think about another new technology continuing to take a bite out of shooting on motion picture film. Then you’ve got those folks who have never shot a frame of film in their life and can’t understand the mystique and the lure of originating on motion picture film anyway. There’s also the third camp of those who shoot film and love film but can see the advantages of the RED camera and similar technologies as the whole world of image acquisition continues to change. I’d fall into this 3rd camp btw . To me the RED camera and pretty much all tapeless and film-less acquisition in general is just a new era in moving image acquisition. Film came into its own in the early 1900s and has been with us ever since. Though the concept dates back to the 1920′s, videotape began to make really make its way onto the scene in the mid-1950s and it has been with us ever since as well. I’m sure that when videotape began to show its worth as a viable acquisition, post-production and archiving medium that the film-folks resisted and didn’t think it would last. The same might be said for the relatively new tapeless workflows of today. Once again it’s the film people more than the videotape people that are resisting. To me it’s just the inevitable change that comes with the advancement of technology. It’s a whole new era in image acquisition. Film was first, videotape was second and now we have tapeless.
I think we need a better term than “tapeless” though. It seems to be a dis-service to technology like RED since it was probably never even conceptualized with videotape in mind. We could call it “disk based” but as solid state recording becomes faster, bigger and cheaper then we might soon see a time when a spinning disk drive isn’t needed either. Digital cinema is another term that’s been tossed around for this new era of image acquisition so I guess that’s a good as any. But I can’t really consider shooting on a Panasonic HVX-200 as true digital cinema. And you can’t really just say “shooting digital” as is often said today because that may mean people are shooting on mini-dv or DVCam. Even though it is technically digital it is still going to tape and that puts those formats firmly in the second era of videotape acquisition. I’m not sure what to call it so if you have any ideas let the world know.
It’s funny how within each of these “eras” there are individual formats that battle for supremacy as well. Film has all the different ‘mms’. Videotape has a whole slew from 1-inch to Digital Beta to DV25 to DVCPRO HD to HDCAM SR. If fact no other “era” will probably ever see so many dizzying choices come and go as videotape. I think back to the resistance of Beta SP owner / operators and post houses who hated mini-dv and DVCam when it began to take hold. It might have been because every Tom, Dick and Harry could buy a mini-dv camera and call themselves a videographer but it was also because they had a substantial investment in a Beta SP infrastructure and every new format inevitably means new and often very expensive equipment investments. It’s easy for a videographer to invest in one camera technology (though it might be hard to decide on which one) but much more difficult and expensive for a post house because they are expected to support them all! That’s a whole different conversation for a different day.
Maybe that’s one of best things about the tapeless/disk based/digital cinema era, post houses might not be faced with the huge decision of which tape format to buy and support. Once we get past videotape in general then the idea that a post house might just need to keep their computer technology fast and current and be able to support most any format out in the world begins to look like somewhat of a possibility. Sure those finished programs will need to end up somewhere with some kind of master and some kind of deliverable to the client or the network that airs the program. There’s always the idea of an MPEG or H.264 upload path out over the ether that can get a program to air. Then we could burn the final program as a digital file onto some type of optical media and hand that to the client as their master. Tapeless from step one. Wait, we didn’t talk about the need to keep some type of fail-safe backup for all this digital media since there is no tape or film to refer back to in the event of disaster and crashed hard drives. And do the show producers keep all of this original digital footage in some kind of secure storage for the rest of their life so it’s always available? That’s also a whole different conversation for a different day.
Oh yea, there’s also the question of which digital format for this kind of digital mastering so the program producers can be assured they can access the program years down the road when they want to make changes or a new version. All those computer-based digital non-linear editing and finishing systems can’t access every type of file format out there you know. Maybe this is the point in time where we call for some type of digital mastering format that all finished programs are mastered to which can then be read by and will be supported by all non-linear editing and finishing systems in the future. But that would mean all these companies and system vendors would need to cooperate and work together to ensure some kind of compatibility rather than relying on their own proprietary technologies that keeps one tied to a specific vendor. In other words, they would be making life easier for their customers and clients. But isn’t that what we’ve seen (or a lack of what we’ve seen) in this business all along? Some things will probably never change.
Saturday, March 8th 2008 at 3:34 pm
I believe “file based” acquisition is the term that makes the most sense to me.
Sunday, March 9th 2008 at 5:53 pm
John-David beat me, it is definitely “File based”.
As to all the different formats, you say that film had many. But in practice it boiled down to 8mm, 16mm and 35mm formats. With some different usages of the actual negative space, but still basically 3 formats. One for home use, one for lower budget, one for the big buck.
In video, there were many more, both in the Pro, semi-pro and amateur world. I wont start counting them, dont worry.
But in digital video, this really becomes a mess, just think of all the different data media, and the plathora of codecs. Oh, and a number of different PC platforms. On not yet a realiable, long-term storage solution for all this data.
That said, I would call myself a careful adopter to new technology. Red is so exciting, bringing 2k/4k within reach of independent productions.
Sunday, March 9th 2008 at 6:35 pm
Great thoughts Martin. I guess it goes to show that with each new era things within that era will be more complicated than ever! I wonder what will come next?