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."

Comments

don't forget

[mrpuffypants]

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 :)

Re:Solid state for recording video?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

And you're going to get ~30GB of storage how, exactly?

The article says they're at 5 cards at 4G each today. We're 2/3rds of the way there. Expect card capacity to increase.

--

If this stuff is...

[Recoil_42]

..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!

Re:If this stuff is...

[sebi]

Nowhere does the article make any claims that this solution will be cheap. He states that the camera will originally be targeted at news outfits, that will appreciate the speed and usually are not cash strapped when it comes to buying equipment.

Neat, but necessary?

[stratjakt]

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.

Re:Neat, but necessary?

[NanoGator]

"If hard drives are so fragile, how come there are a plethora of hard-disk based portable MP3 players available?"

There aren't a plethora of hd based MP3 players out there. There are a handfull.

Let's see, hd's in Mp3 players don't need to spin as fast. They don't need to be accessed as much. (I would imagine the music's cached into RAM and then played...) etc.

Laptop drives are very fragile. I ruined one by drumming my fingers on the case of my laptop once. I didn't know the drive was right under the case. Doh.

Prices cost solid state storage device 2003 2 gig

[hfastedge]

http://www.bitmicro.com/ Makes SSD's. I sent them an email, and here is what prices of SSD's look like:

http://www.bitmicro.com/products_edisk_25_ide.php [bitmicro.com]
E-Disk® 2A66(2), 17408MB, Commercial Temp, No PowerGuard, NAND
E-Disk® Part Number: D2A066B 017408 CNN
Discounted Unit Price: $18,857

-- -- -- --

http://www.bitmicro.com/products_acedisk_25_IDE.ph p [bitmicro.com]
Ace-Disk 2A16, 2048MB, Commercial Temp, No PowerGuard, AND
Ace-Disk Part Number: A2A016B 002048 CNA
Discounted Unit Price: $1,356

-- -- -- --
SSD
pricing has been coming down over the last few years as the performance
continually improves. We expect the pricing to reach the consumer
level in the next 3-5 years. Two years ago we were roughly $15/MB, last
year $5-8/MB, and this year we are ranging from $1-4/MB depending on
interface/model and capacity.

With any type of real market, these prices should come down very nicely.

A WOW REVIEW!

[stratjakt]

This idiot uses the term "wow product" like two dozen times in this cheezy PR piece.

"...saw my second wow product of the day"

"... the Tough-book (retailing at $4000) also has a touch panel screen ... That along makes this a wow product."

"...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.

Re:Solid state for recording video?

[gspira]

but put in one card that hooks up to a 50Gig 2.5" hard drive and you would be all set.

Uhm, the whole point is to have a solid state camera.. Hard drives are by no means solid state..

Internal Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I agree, HDD, not optical, not solid state...yet

[MDMurphy]

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.

Cute, but professional???

[pastpolls]

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.

Re:Cute, but professional???

[melorama]

I think you're missing the point. This is obviously a proof-of-concept camera, and I dont think anyone at Panasonic is expecting professionals to implement this right now in any serious, widescale way.

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.

Re:Solid state for recording video?

[agallagh42]

Not that big a deal when you're talking about what is probably a $20,000 camera. This ain't no handicam you know. The digital camcorders used in filming the new Matrix movie cost ~$100,000 each.

Re:what is the application of a solid state camera

[melorama]

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.

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.