Film Roll and CompactFlash

[PaulClements]

I'm no expert on film, but I believe a typical roll of film offers about 20 minutes (is this correct?) and according to the estimated rates of redcode RAW we're looking at about 32GB CF cards to supply 20 minutes of footage. Which it is widely anticipated will be available when the camera ships.

I wanted to get a consensus on whether people are considering the CF route simply because 32GB cards will replicate shooting film in this respect as well as the added advantage of being lighter, no moving parts, lower battery consumption and perhaps most of all in the unfortunate event of a failure you would only lose 20 minutes worth of footage. I could foresee simply handing over the CF cards to the client as you would a roll of film rather than backing up the data to another media also. What are other peoples opinions?

[Costelloe Michael]

Paul,

It generally goes like this. On 16mm 400ft rolls, and on 35mm 1000ft rolls, give you just over 10 minutes of shooting time. We adopted the P2 workflow of 8GB Cards for training purposes for exactly the reasons you mention.

I think you are probably right in terms of handing over cards to the client, I would add having backed them up in case of failure first. They could easily be returned for re-use and charged for on a 'per day' and eventually on a 'cost' basis if lost completely.

What I would add is that it depends what sort of client you are dealing with. I have shot HD 'Discovery Channel' Programming where the directors are from a 'Video' background and shoot up to 6 x 40 minute rolls in a day. However for higher end commercials, which is where I think your observation is aimed, I think you are quite correct.

Mike Costelloe

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

Interesting. I'd much rather shoot to a higher capacity medium personally, unless I was doing something where the camera would be moving a lot and I didn't want the recording medium to have moving parts.

[Costelloe Michael]

Jonathon,

Maybe it's my distrust of data, but for a situation with ample crew and no distinct need for an extension of recording time I have found myself much happier knowing the material is being backed up and checked on a ten minutes of footage for every card basis. As Paul has pointed out this probably comes from being used to working on a film magazine basis, although I accept that the two are not strictly comparible.

As an extra the productions we have shot on P2 have an editing asistant who captures and logs the footage and has been known to put together 'on set' assemblies which I find very satisfying!

The moving parts situation makes it quieter to shoot of course and shooting 25PN on the HVX 200 gives you 20 minutes if you really need it, we haven't so far.

Mike C

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

I suppose that could make sense. I mean if you're spending a lot of money per minute of film, you really can't afford to take too many risks, but I'm not sure that'd be relevant if you had someone dumping the footage after every day either way. I mean for me I would probably try to see if we could dump half a day's footage to a backup before we shot the rest for the day, but if not I'd be satisfied that if something went wrong the worst that would happen is we'd lose a day's footage. Obviously that would be a disaster anyway. But at least if you have a lot of different cards, I suppose, you could make sure you don't ever lose too much at once.

[Costelloe Michael]

We work with 3x 8GB cards. This means one is being shot on, one is being copied and the third one is held by the assistant to put into the cycle when the two others are being carried back and forth to and from the edit station! The transfer is made through a mac laptop to two firewire hard drives. One is live and the other is backup.

I have suggested we investigate a mini-raid system, but the solution we have seems to work for now. I think the workflow depends very much on what you feel you can afford to lose.

Mike C

[PaulClements]

What I would add is that it depends what sort of client you are dealing with. I have shot HD 'Discovery Channel' Programming where the directors are from a 'Video' background and shoot up to 6 x 40 minute rolls in a day.

Hi Mike,

If shooting for a video background you might only shoot 1080p in which case the data rate would be lower and therefore the amount of time storable on the same card be extended perhaps? I know people say shoot 4K for backup but at the end of the day for many 'Video' situations it is simply overkill.

[Costelloe Michael]

Paul,

When I said 'video background' it was an inference that the director wasn't used to the confines of film shooting and therefore the costs of stock.

Whether to shoot 4k depends very much on what you want quality wise. The data rates of 4k with redcode are so low that for the cost of the media I would be tempted to shoot 4k and output to 1080p in redcine for space saving at the back end. But if you are very cost concious when buying your media that you have a limited space why not shoot 1080p?

As a note I have shot 1080i and delivered on DV Cam and the client was blown away by the footage. Because they saw it arrive on DV Cam, their suggestion of format btw for ingest to their edit system, they couldn't believe the quality. We ended up conforming back to HD Cam for the online for the master and grade after they'd seen the results on the DV Cam, which we treated as an offline.

However, for $900 you can have 3 hrs of 4k so why wory about overkill? I would see the CF solution as a lightweight alternative for something like steadycam or if space was severely restricted. Not having had or seen the camera yet this is all guesswork of course.

BTW Paul we must be quite close in location, maybe you would consider a mutually beneficial deal when it comes to red delivery in case of back up or
2nd camera becoming necessary?

[Jason Murphy]

Certainly for a more run-and-gun style of shooting, working handheld, I would want to shoot CF, both for issues of weight and moving parts. Under most other conditions, however, I'm not sure that there are all that many advantages, with the exception of being able to hand off the footage on a CF card to the client. But I'm not sure a client is going to want pre-processed RAW footage; I don't think it would be particularly useful to most clients.

[Costelloe Michael]

Jason,

I would assume that handing off CF cards would depend on the codec and redcine being widely accessible and supported, in FCP for instance. In my case most of my post happens locally and is worked out in advance. This is certainly the case when working with a Varicam as we have to book the FRC together with the gear and have it available for post transfer, usually the next day. I have had to go into post houses to ensure the workflow is achieved, when we have off speed and sync is especially a problem.

I, for one, am making sure in advance that I have my post route mapped out in advance and am looking to test with local facilities to make sure that we can handle the job from start to finish. So 'handing a CF card to the client' would be figurative in this case as it goes straight to the post house where we have a preinstalled and proven workflow. Outside of these parameters I can see a whole host of problems.

BTW, Handheld is a good example of the usefulness of CF I totally agree and possibly high speed applications, such as rollercoasters, highspeed car rigs etc?

Cheers

Mike C

[Fergus Meiklejohn]

horses for courses I reckon.. I once recorded an interview where a woman bereaved of her son went off on an unstoppable 40 minute account of what happened; my arm nearly fell off (I was holding the boom). CF was not an option then..:ninja:
I'm going with three Hard Drives because I can't be in the situation of telling the Director we are going to have to cut the amazing and unplanned evening shoot because we've run out of recordable media. Also, in my experience it takes quite some time to transfer 300Gb of media from one drive to another :whistling:

[Costelloe Michael]

Unless of course you've got a couple of handy CF cards lying around to tide you over whilst you wait.

I used to load for the odd documentary shot on film, 35Up was the last one I did directed by Michael Apted, the interviews were a feat in themselves having to load, silently, near enough to the camera to have mags on tap, those things could go on for two hours, that's 12 rolls!

I suppose what I'm saying is it's just a matter of having the right people and the right sytem.

Mike C

[Jim Exton]

Can anyone direct me to where the 32gb are going to be out by the time the camera ships?

I know we have 8gb right now, but I can't even find mention of when the 16gb are coming out. I am sure Paul is right, but I would like to see confirmation from the manufacturer.

I am looking forward to shooting on CF. I fell in love with P2 and would like to use the same workflow.

[PaulClements]

I believe Samsung announced something a little while ago Jim, some improvements in NAND technology. No specific date but it has been banded about that they'll likely surface over the coming months.

[David Wyatt]

No word yet on whether the write speeds will be fast enough (at the very least it will need to be more than 27.5 MB/sec for Red Code RAW if I'm not mistaken?) The Sandisk Extreme IV has a write speed "up to" 40 MB/sec but their biggest is only 8GB right now (priced at around £110). I read somewhere a guestimate for a 32GB CF card at $1500!!! in which case SSD seems a lot cheaper at $350 for the Sandisk 32GB SSD!!!):
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/03/13/sandisk_25_32gb_ssd/

[J. Bernard Vallon]

anyone find a good place to buy 1.8" SSDs?

I think i'd rather go with 3 SSDs than 2 reddrives. More future proof too.

I can't find a price other than the "high volume $350" number. Anyone have a quote for like...3?