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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."
What about using one of the external PCMCIA hard drives? Sure it wouldn't be as elegant, but put in one card that hooks up to a 50Gig 2.5" hard drive and you would be all set.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Uhm, the whole point is to have a solid state camera.. Hard drives are by no means solid state..
"What about using one of the external PCMCIA hard drives? Sure it wouldn't be as elegant, but put in one card that hooks up to a 50Gig 2.5" hard drive and you would be all set. "
You're kind of defeating the "it'll take all kinds of abuse" point.
"Derp de derp."
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.
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.
The thing you're missing is that this records full resolution, 60 fields-per-second video with 48k/16 bit 2-channel audio. IOW, a REAL videocamera.
That's very simple, PCMCIA never gained much popularity years ago... And now, CompactFlash is the format of choice, not PCMCIA (adapters are cheap).
What we need are desktop computers to start shipping with PCMCIA/CompactFlash slots in place of the floppy drives. At that point, sloid state storage will skyrocket.
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As a professional, I feel that Panasonic did the exact right thing in unveling this at NAB at this early stage, because it shows that an idea like this is more than feasible, given current technology, and I'll be willing to bet my old AU-65 MII deck that once the cost comes down on the memory units, and they implement this technology into a dockable back for pro cameras, professionals will flock to this like flies on shit. I imagine that eventually, the SSD unit will accept more convinenient and swappable "cube" units that each accept an array of memory cards that can be switched out like tapes. I doubt very much that you will be swapping out individual cards that you plug right into slots on the camera back.
I might remind you that there was a time, not so long ago, when audio guys on film shoots wouldn't let you pry their Nagra's from their cold dead hands. Now Deva's are the defacto standard for disk-based location audio recording. Some ideas are so good, that it's worth the pain of quick adaptation and adoption.
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.
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 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.
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How about an external Firewire hard drive? Put it in a padded case with a shoulder strap or "fanny pack." If we're talking about news professionals, chances are they're used to the external batteries from the "old school" cameras, so what's an extra pound and a half on your belt?
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.
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