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Solid-State DV Camcorder
melorama writes "The NAB convention passed 2 weeks ago, and I'm surprised nobody has pointed out the really neat Solid State Video Camcorder that was unveiled by Panasonic. It seems a bit kludgy right now (it records onto a series of PCMCIA cards), but it definitely beats the klunky Avid/Ikegami Camcutter (aka Editcam) from several years back, which records onto a self-contained harddisk. This is certainly a blow to Sony, which is working on a camera acquisition system that uses a blue-laser optical disc (read: moving parts) technology."
And you're going to get ~30GB of storage how, exactly?
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
The computer hardware and audio-video accronyms are crossing over, jeebus save us all.
Banaaaana!
that not only does the Sony camcorder use moving parts but that also any device in the past that involved burning discs sucked the juice fast and furiously
:)
get ready for 30 minute family outings, tops(hey....that doesn't sound that bad
..as cheap as the article presents it to be; why arent we using it in PC's? screw 32-meg usb-keydrives, i want a 4gb solid-state drive!
Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com
What exactly would be wrong with a gigantiforous hard drive? This thing has 5 cards x 4 gigs each (max) for a max of 72 minutes.
Why not 60 gigs of HDD for 216 minutes? Or 120 for 432 minutes? For a consumer level camera, this seems more useful.
Imagine going on vacation and needing a bag of ($$$expensive$$$) PCMCIA cards to film with, or having to stop in the middle of a shoot to transfer 20 gigs of footage to a laptop.
A big enough HDD could just store all your footage, and you just point and shoot and dont think twice about it 'till you're back home.
I can see this being cool for professional cameras, as no doubt you can build a solid-state rig with better shockproofing, etc, etc..
But I doubt it can really become ubiquitous for home use - at least not until the spinning magnetic disc is replaced with solid state components.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
This doesn't seem developed enough for anyone to buy it yet, but I imagine when it's fully developed, cinamatographers will buy them by the truckload.
Find the first toddler you can get your hands on and vomit on it, right quick!
Yes, A blow to Sony indeed.
:|
You hit the nail on the head with that one.
I don't know how they'll ever survive this newfangled "SOLID STATE" shit you talk about.
ZERO
I don't know how much a "blow" this will be to Sony, considering that the main reason for including moving parts (read: disks) is because of cost per unit of storage space, and not the cost of integration. I'm sure Sony could throw a solid state disk into their camera without much effort.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
With any type of real market, these prices should come down very nicely.
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Help my mini cause: My journal
It would seem to me that a camcorder following the iPod model with a Firewire800 port would be fantastic. For one you could probably download your videos much more efficiently than present DV methods. (I hate fastforwarding in iMovie)
Perhaps the Avid solution was kludgy (although I saw no discussion of why in the link to it). But that likely was due to it using hardware from 5-6 years ago. Existing hard drives and communication ports seem to aliviate a lot of problems.
If there was an iPod equivalent to a camcorder I think that would be great. The "solid state" idea is a great one over tape. But it seems likely to be overly expensive and kludgy relative to a full hard drive.
From the article:
I couldn't see in the article, but does anyone know what actual codec they use? Is it the same DV codec that my Sony Digital 8 Camcorder uses?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
This idiot uses the term "wow product" like two dozen times in this cheezy PR piece.
... That along makes this a wow product."
"...saw my second wow product of the day"
"... the Tough-book (retailing at $4000) also has a touch panel screen
"...the Encore DVD software. It is a wow product"
"...that about wraps up my Super Wow day at NAB"
WOW!
NEATO WALLY!
That wraps up my super WOW post at slashdot.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I was just looking at an Olympus camera the other day, for $500. This particular camera could save to Xd or SmartMedia cards, either in still shots or video. Granted, the videos were rather short, but it's been out for quite a while.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Does anybody know if NetBSD has been ported to this yet?
I work at Panasonic's Inca Labs (the lab responsible for this product product).
Working as a tester on a a prior version of SS HDD, there were many reports of instantaneous memory losses. After much experimenting, these were ultimately diagnosed as a result of intertia change factor > 2.23G. The result was the HDD was trahed because it was highly suseptible to "memory loss" from daily usage.
I have since transferred to another team, and I don't know frankly, how much the product could have improved in a little over 10 months. I hope it is good enough to released in public, but, I seriously doubt the management had the patience to wait for a finished engineering product.
This is great industrial and government applications where there are requirements for withstsanding ... well a lot of rigorous tests.
I know right now, it's a pain to have to get a solid-state disk of decent size for the main storage(meaning, not having to copy over just runtime libraries/apps every single time you build something) and NFS style loading isn't always possible.
Ramdisks are the key right now for low-end systems...but if we could skip having a solid-state node and a regular single-board embedded computer having to talk to each other with extensive real-time/etc stuff, and just have an on-board solid-state camera system that's simple and cheap....this is great news. I hope a lot of other solutions take this route of solid design potential
... probably not as much as Kazaa, however.
sulli
RTFJ.
When I was young, we had to get up at 2:00 am, have a hot cup of gravel, crawl to work on broken glass and when we got there, we had to record our video on granite CDs in which we carved the individual pits with our teeth.
Use solid state storage
Many mega-pixels of resolution
A still camera and a video cam in one
Optionally, it should be fitted with a wide angle zoom _AND_ a tele angle zoom. With the proper synchronization, this will allow for taking of two different angled pictures or video streams at the same time. (One with great details, one record the surroundings.)
While dreaming, I am holding on my Nikon SLR. It is still good enough for me. Knowing it takes time just to organize and enjor looking at pictures, I don't make a lot of them any more. And getting digital copies are cheaper than you might think. Just drop you roll at a store and Kodak or whatever will do a acceptable job scanning it.
I've figured the reason you don't see a HDD in a DV camcorder now is that they want to sell tapes. A 60GB laptop drive would take less space than the mechanism to drive, read and eject a DV tape, while holding the equivilant of 5 tapes worth of video. With a firewire connection to suck into your computer for editing or writing to your media of choise. Heck, a removable HDD would even work, though in theory you could download from the camcorder directly to a larger desktop drive.
Sony tries with their variations on optical, but I'm convinced that's just to sell media. That's the whole reason they invented the memory stick.
Solid State is just too expensive and/or slow to replace the HDD. If not, laptops would use it now in lieu of the spinning platter.
If the camcorder used a standard laptop drive, in theory it could be upgraded for mor capacity in the future, or even updated with a solid state version if/when they're feasible.
I think the idea of the Panasonic camera is good, but much like the editcam, I don't think it will do anything but fill the needs of hobbyists. The Sony camera that records to discs scares me too. Recording to a disc, what happens when I shake the thing? Does it skip?
Most professionals want durability and reliability. Most of these types of cameras, and some of the lower-end DV cameras, are good for hobbyists but I know I demand more (and I am a professional). Cameras like DV5000 from JVC are inexpensive and are solid pieces of equipment, but may not be for the geek. Automatic focus is something you will not find on most professional cameras.
I know that there have been some successes in the profesional world with this type of camera, but that is the exception rather than the rule. Almost all movies are still shot on film and most television stations and production companies demand something more durable than a disc based camera... and something more standard than a PCMCIA rig. Most places are still using BetaSp, even though Sony quit development a couple of years ago (please don't think I mean BetaMax). I believe this PCMCIA based camera will come and go much like the EditCam. Hopefully venders will realize that people like standards and that they get upset when "left out in the cold" with a product that no one else will support (see Digital 8mm). I think this not only holds true for professionals but hobbyists as well.
God bless this rant... and my karma.
Moving parts are part of just about every photographic system ever, so that won't be the deciding factor.
Blue-laser DVDs will hold tens of gigabytes of data, and are feasible now. Memory chips in the same form factor won't even come close to that for a decade at least.
And pcmcia cards aren't all that durable.
Anyone serious about it is getting their tape in large boxes, not from Wal-Mart. miniDV tapes run about five bucks each.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
i'm just wondering why anyone would need a solid state camera?
for video, (which no one is going to watch faster than realtime anyway) tapes seem to be the best method yet since they are easily storeable, have less moving parts than hard disks, and have far more storage space (ratio wise) than solid state media.
Ok, this is nice and all. but 4GB sux. Also the video is stored compressed.
.. I could see it's uses.
if the storage capacity was in the 100 GB range so you record losslessly
Also, I dont see the problem with tape/moving parts based cameras. I never had probs.
These are the same bastard that came up with the famous frog levitation video. COOOOL ;-)
Sometimes I think Sony doesn't even want to sell the media, just licenses to make and use the media. Just say no to memory sticks.
Two words that apparently passed unhindered through your cranium: S-O-L-I-D S-T-A-T-E
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Notebooks have PCMCIA slots... You don't need to have any moving parts in a notebook at all, if you don't want to.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Check out the Aiptek website, they have a solid state DV with a nice little lcd for cheap; it can take a 512MB CF card, iirc.
If you go to their store, they have them refurbished for about a hundred bucks. I've had really good luck with their Pencam 1.3SD; its not the highest quality gadget ever made, but their stuff is soooo cheap.
Point was that extend capacity storage to tens or hundereds of gigabytes are available on the laptop's hard disk. All you need is a batter which lasts long enough to write all of the data.
All I see new in this solid state camera is that there just a flash drive made up of multiple flash cards.
I assume someone has a generic flash card adapter which allows 2 or more flash cards to be plugged into a single flash card slot.
You're right. I prefer the "Mead" brand of notebooks. Quite a fine package, and absoutely no moving parts. It doesn't require lengthly battery charging either. And best of all you can use any type of pen on it you want!
Hard drives vibrate. That might interfere with the picture quality.
becasue all you need is a pack of those disks and you can record for hours and have it ready to go on your DVD player. what happenes when you run out of room on your PCMCIA card or you have no more becasue they are 70 bucks per card? pull out the laptop and fling it on there...well then what happens when the cool stuff you were waiting for happens while you upload...yeah thought so.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I was a Sony fan for a long time. Their video/VCR gear was always solid, functional and of exceptional quality.
In the past few years however they've really dropped the ball.
Their consumer-level camcorders are suffering the same rampant "featuritus" that their VCRs do and they've sacrificed good, solid reliable functionality for an incredible array of bells and whistles that really fill out a sales brochure but which your average user finds as useful as tits on a bull.
A couple of months ago I wanted a new top-end consumer camcorder (3CCD) and did a fairly comprehensive analysis of what was on the market.
Sony's offering was the DCRTRV950 which would have done the job, but thanks to the fact that they've loaded it up with "fluff" like Bluetooth and a myriad of other gee-whiz "features", it is very pricey for the basic functionality it delivers.
By comparison, Panasonic's MX500 is a brilliant camera. It has 3CCDs and all the really important high-end consumer functionality such as manual focus, zebra stripes, 3megapixel stills, etc. Just about the only feature I won't be using is the direct to MPEG recording that allows you to create MPEG files directly onto the memory card (but I'm sure many others will find this handy)
Here in New Zealand, the Sony DCRTRV950 is priced at around NZ$6K and even Sony's single CCD DCTRV50 has a list price of NZ$4299.
By comparison, the 3CCD Panasonic MX500 cost me under $3K, which meant I could afford some nice accessories to go with it.
Picture quality wise, the Sony and Panasonic offerings are very close -- the Sony having slightly better low-light performance -- but the difference is nowhere near worth paying double the price for.
I'm extraordinarily happy with my Panansonic's attitude of providing good, solid, basic functions at an affordable price.
So long as Sony continue down the path of placing more emphasis on sizzle than steak they won't see me buying any of their products anytime soon.
Well, for one thing... Transferring video from a tape to a NLE system requires capture time (which means 1 min of video will take 1 min of capture time). If it's all digital, only Firewire 800 will slow the transfer down!
If I can recall, he was some guy who founded some famous software company or something....
Sure, and many mini-DV camcorders will shoot still pictures as well. The problem is that the cameras usually don't shoot more than 30 seconds of video and the camcorders take pictures at 1 megapixel. There isn't a device that is at least average at both tasks.
My phone can take crummy pictures and shoot 15 seconds of video, but I wouldn't consider it as either a primary camera or a primary camcorder solution.
No consumer may "watch" video fast than realtime, although *I* do every single day...I'm a video editor. And as an editor, anything that eliminates the time wasted in digitizing video from source tapes is worth it. Digitizing lineararly in realtime is so "1990's", and its amazing that 90% of us in the video industry are still doing it. BetacamSX is an exception, but nobody but news and sattelite videogeeks use that format. Moving clips from the SSD as if it were nothing more than a file is exactly the way video editing workflows should work, in 2003.
I think we can all agree that this is not something that will revolutionize or even affect the consumer video space. But for professionals, it's a great start towards the elimination of tape as an acquisition format.
How many times have you been invited to a friend's house to watch home videos and were bored to tears?
I personally think the solution is what my Canon S45 does (and many other cameras do as well) which is to take 3 minute max segments of video.
Why? Because it makes you take what's important, no just what's happening (because most of life is pretty boring).
Granted, 3 minute limit is a little sort when filming a song at a concert, but it does make you think more wisely about what you are doing with an end result of some very targeted videos.
could one of these pcmcia card be a wireless networkcard, if wireless network is available and has enough bandwith, you'l have almost endless storage on a computer on a lan or a laptop nearby:)
the other 4 cards can be backup/buffer for temporary bandwith problems.
lets see what was dv bandwith again ? 25 Mbits/s i believe. ok, this is not gonna work anytime soon
I've been saying all along that SIMMs are cheap (especially SDR- you probably don't need anything too fast). Just make a camera that has a number of SIMM slots (ruggedized, of course) and loops through the memory space. Then when you want to save anything, hit a button to actually save the last N minutes/megabytes/gigabytes to the PC Card, flag it as read-only for later downloading (to something like a 1394 hard drive... or video iPod :) and/or concurrently send it to the WAN-enabled server in the truck.
Yeah, if the battery dies then you've lost everything, but a small battery backup for the memory isn't that hard and with RAM- even DRAM and not SRAM- you're not drawing power as fast as you would be with HDD, flash, or optical so your main battery is going to last longer anyway. Okay, the storage mechanism probably isn't the biggest drain in the camera- the CCD and LCD are probably big power hogs.
I'd assume that for news reporters, most of the footage is shot and either edited in place or sent directly to the station for editing later. Yeah, a filesystem for saving and deleting takes would be helpful (if there isn't already one) and anything like RAM, flash, HDD, or optical are going to work well with that too. DRAM storage is optimal for the short, take-retake-send-straight-to-the-home-office usage pattern of news organizations.
The solid state is great because you can shake, rattle, or roll you camera and not worry about losing the fottage you're shooting. The HDD solution requires you to tether a special Firewire device to your camcorder to record to a HDD. "Why?" you ask? Because the something needs to understand the format of the drive and interface to the file system, so that the video can get properly recorded to the drive. Then, the drive can be disconnected from the camera and plugged into any arbitrary computer's 400 Mbps Firewire port and be identifyed as a drive.
The problem here is that these devices are EXPENSIVE, since the market is relatively small. Here's an example comparison list, including prices.
In additon, ADS Tech was supposed to have had a $500 version "Pyro DV Drive" available last year, but it's pretty much vaporware. Shame, as it would have been the cheapest one available.
Most home users with their digital handycams are happy with using their DV tape, and don't think about needing a drive recored that costs twice what their camera costs.
However, those of us in the professional or semi-professional arena really need it! I just finished a 2-day, 11-hour shoot in Vegas, and it would be nice to have such a device, rather than the 11 Mini-DV tapes that I will have to play back at normal playback speed through my camera in order to download them into my editing station. (For those of you who might suggest a mini-DV VTR, check out the prices again, they're alsmost as bad as the HDD recorders!)
End Rant here: I'm really looking forward to inexpensive HDD recording, and future SS recording.
Damn, I don't see that option for my moderator points either, heh.
//FIXME: Bad
Geez, you didn't even have to read the whole artical, just look at the pictures and captions! (that's all I did and I knew the answer)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You can already record an hour or so of VHS/VCD quality video onto a memory stick with sound with the newer Sony digital cameras. This thing isn't being targeted to people wanting to film their kids, but rather professional cinematographers/TV people.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The main reason technically speaking to keep tape is because it can withstand far far far greater G's than a hard drive. You can smash your camcorder on the sidewalk, and as long as the circuitry and gears didn't break, you can keep taping. With a hard drive, the fucker crashes on first glimpse of fall.
A camcorder with a hard drive in it is going to be more delecate, no matter how you look at it. Even if you used external FW hard drive in a backpack, you still can't be jumping up and down while using the camera.
Tape is the best media that is going to be available for camcorders in the near future. Until solid state flash chips become like CD-R in price, they aren't going to take off. Optical drives are going to kill battery life with the powerfull lazer, and the high speed motor.
What they really need to do is come up with some kind of smaller form factor tape spindles with higher density data storage. So you could fit the motors, reader/writer, and tape and everything in the size of a current 8mm cartrige.
The idea is this: which is cheaper, tape recorders/readers, optical recorders/readers, or magnetic disk recorders/readers? Tape is the answer. And its more durable under high Gs
I think the main drawback is its heat sensitivity being less than that of optical or hard drives or flash. But that is only a problem in certain climates.
I would suggest to not dismiss tape because its the 'old' kind of storage we used in the 80s and 90s. Tape is just a physical medium. We have been using disks even LONGER than tape (records)! New tape is good. It's digital. It's data redundant. It's low powered. It's high density. It's CHEAP. Don't let the misconceptions of tape being inferior because they are "old" technology slant your choice.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
I'm not in the industry, but it seems to me that dumping video from a DV camera onto a computer involves no "digitizing". Aren't you just copying an MPEG stream off the tape into a file? You're limited only by the speed of the computer's tape drive. It's still linear, but it should be way faster than realtime.
I just read about panasonic or fujitsu, one of those companies comming out with a 4 megapixel camera that could also do video, onto either mini-DV tapes or memory sticks.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's semantics. Video editors call the transfer of video "digitizing"--whether its from an analog tape, or just copying bits from a digital tape.
No commercial DV deck or DV camera streams data off the DV tape faster than realtime that I'm aware of. I believe some of the newer DVCPRO systems has support for faster-than-realtime transfers, however.
So, while Panasonic may be trying to create a niche for themselves in the high-end video camera market, solid state video recording has already been happening quietly.
Kinda like the MPAA wants to sell licenses for CSS to DVD player manufacturers.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"This is certainly a blow to Sony, which is working on a camera acquisition system that uses a blue-laser optical disc (read: moving parts) technology."
Yeah. But the Sony will probably play back in your DVD player.
I can buy 30 tapes for the cost of that one drive you speak of.
Sorry, but tape is here to stay until disk drives or Solid state catch up to tape for storage.
Yes, TAPE has tons more storage capacity.
Besides, we all are talking about high end pro cameras... something that none of you will ever get to touch let alone own in your lifetime.
I have a Canon XL1 a camera that even the richest in america dont own/buy. because they cant see spending $4000.00 on a camcorder (as they dont use it for anything but screwing around) let alone usually dont have the cognitave skills to operate such a camera.
Are you sure about that? How come I can pull the video off my Sony Digital 8 camcorder and edit it without installing any special codec from Sony? Every video editing program I've used just uses the normal DV codec. Just because it's stored on a 8mm tape rather than a DV tape doesn't mean the actual data has to be different.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
It's really ignorant to equate 3 min clip on a digital camera to the superiority of true DV. That's like comparing a drive to Florida for 12 hours to a 2 hour plane ride. Sure, they both get you there, but it's a vastly different experience.
Even with a cheap-o MiniDV cam, it's lightyears ahead of any $2k digital camera can do, as far as moving pictures/sound quality goes.
I will admit that for some people, a digital camera is "good enough" for them, but don't bother to say it's good enough for everybody. This camcorder, for the professionals, is really a huge step forward. For the rest of us, hopefully this tech will trickle down in 5 years.
From the Caption of the first picture.
This is the revolutionary technology that will change who video is recorded.
As others have pointed out, solid state video recorders have been out for some time. It's called a digital camera with a SmartMedia card (or similar removable media).
Perhaps these predecessors only record 1 to 3 mins at a time. But the point remains: solid-state and video together is nothing new. And, as you would expect, technology is improving such that longer movies can be stored on the removable media.
I think the author of the original website article was a little overawed and caught up in the excitement of the whole convention atmosphere. I don't see anything revolutionary here... just the same old digital video camera, but now with more memory.
Did you even read his post? He was working on a PRIOR version that used a hard drive and WASN'T solid state. Hence the HDD moniker on the device.
that (like almost anything new shown at NAB), it isn't being released to the public yet -- not for at least another 10 months or so.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Does anyone know of a standalone DV recorder? Something with a composite/svideo input, maybe sound, a compression codec and a DV tape.
No CCD, no LCD, just a really small recorder.
I know the addition of the A/D is different than
most cameras, but I want to use it with an external lipstick camera. Then I can put the recorder in a pack for mountain-bike use, or in a dry-box for kayak use.
Do any miniDV full cameras allow an external camera??
Good for you, you condescending piece of shit.
Who (even in the media field) wants to juggle five pcmcia cards? Obviously there's nothing too standard about them if they're made by panasonic for this and only this. Sure, the laptop reading capability is nice, but you could accomplish that with a larger solid state memory module that acted like a USB2/Firewire hard disk and probably accomplish faster datarates than pcmcia anyways without sacrificing the convenience of connectivity. Breaking up the video over cards sounds like a recipe for disaster since presumably they will have to be organized in order in and out of the camera.
I like the idea of a solid state data module, but five PCMCIA cards sounds like a horrible horrible mistake. Make it bigger and do the USB2/ieee1394 thing and have happier customers.
Brian
I think the more importaint question is: Will it support the evil bit?
Cool camera too. Looking forward to seeing what it can do.
Panasonic is pushing SD memory cameras for professional broadcast use.
When you buy a $20,000-$50,000 camera, that is only the beginning. Each year you pay thousands of dollars to clean and align tape heads and other maintenance.
By going totally solid-state for the media, you reduce maintenance downtime and costs. Plus the tape drive is a power hog, so you increase battery life as well.
The Panasonic SD-based cameras are a move to the "tapeless" environment, which promises more efficient workflows through broadcast entities. Instead of going to tape and then digitizing, you just download the file from the camera (perhaps using high-speed wireless) right into the editing system.
Sony on the other hand is standardizing around "blue ray" high-capacity writable DVDs for pro video cameras.
there is already a very cheap solid state mpeg4 camcorder released by Panasonic a few months ago. Apparently it kind of sucks, but considering how cheap it is I think it's a great start. I have seen it as cheap as $250. http://www.prodcat.panasonic.com/shop/NewDesign/Mo delTemplate.asp?ModelId=17752&show_all=false&produ ct_exists=True&active=1&ModelNo=SV-AV20A&CategoryI d=2854
That makes sense. I guess it doesn't make much difference to me then. :-)
Forget the whales - save the babies.