Tape worflow

[Eugene Lehnert]

I don't really blame companies for not wanting to get on the file based band wagon at the moment. If you are a company who has invested a lot in HDCAMSR decks and an Alchemist I would want to use tape too. And an HDCAMSR tape will play in almost any HDCAMSR deck in the world. I was under the impression that older LTO tapes need special commands to access the data and only now with the LTFS file-system are LTOs easier to use.

[Eugene Lehnert]

What he said.

I find this thread irritating, cuz it points to the vague elitism that can course the through the red community sometimes. Don't get me wrong, YES...clients SHOULD work tapeless and in 4K. HOWEVER, as someone who works with AETN all the time, a huge ginormous corporation that WORKS IN AVID and in HD-CAM, they couldn't give a flyfing f*ck about tapeless and 4K. They want all their materials backed up on HDCAM, and SO THEY SHOULD. Drives get lost, they have to be managed, they break. The internal library can't handle all the volumes of drives that arrive as it is. Quite frankly, its EASIER TO FIND A TAPE sometimes than it is to find a drive. And...you can access footage of a tape with timecode instantly. Wading through a drive and two thousand quicktimes can be tedious.

So please stop pontificating about "teaching our clients" when we are perfectly aware of what our clients need/want. Not everyone works in ADVERTISING and FEATURES, where you can have the luxury of bathing in 4K and Sushi. In TV, in broadcast, its still more of a dog eat dog world, margins are smaller, volumes are large, and everything gets backed up to tape.

Remember: they broadcast at 720p.

So 4K for them is just way too much.

I'm done ranting, but these boards could well use some humility and understanding and an awareness that a lot of the media business and infrastrucure is still tape based, especially in cable TV.

I love these boards. I love RED. I just wish there would be some understanding for us poor saps in Cable.

Peace out.

[Eugene Lehnert]

I'm actually getting a lot more Alexa footage because my clients don't want to bother with .R3D files. They love the ease of ProRes and the image the camera makes.

[Greg M]

I find this thread irritating, cuz it points to the vague elitism that can course the through the red community sometimes. Don't get me wrong, YES...clients SHOULD work tapeless and in 4K. HOWEVER, as someone who works with AETN all the time, a huge ginormous corporation that WORKS IN AVID and in HD-CAM, they couldn't give a flyfing f*ck about tapeless and 4K. They want all their materials backed up on HDCAM, and SO THEY SHOULD. Drives get lost, they have to be managed, they break. The internal library can't handle all the volumes of drives that arrive as it is. Quite frankly, its EASIER TO FIND A TAPE sometimes than it is to find a drive. And...you can access footage of a tape with timecode instantly. Wading through a drive and two thousand quicktimes can be tedious.

So please stop pontificating about "teaching our clients" when we are perfectly aware of what our clients need/want. Not everyone works in ADVERTISING and FEATURES, where you can have the luxury of bathing in 4K and Sushi. In TV, in broadcast, its still more of a dog eat dog world, margins are smaller, volumes are large, and everything gets backed up to tape.

Remember: they broadcast at 720p.

So 4K for them is just way too much.

I'm done ranting, but these boards could well use some humility and understanding and an awareness that a lot of the media business and infrastrucure is still tape based, especially in cable TV.

I love these boards. I love RED. I just wish there would be some understanding for us poor saps in Cable.

Peace out.

Nick,
An LTO 5 Tape is a tape. Its 1/3 the size of an HDCAM SR and cost less than 1/4th the price. An LTO "deck" is 1/40th the price of an HDCAM SR deck. I dont see your point. Education is key to success.
How does pointing this out and suggesting educating clients to new and better ways imply we are elitists? We live in a time where technology evolves way to fast, sticking with a 10 year old workflow because you dont want to at least attempt to educate doesn't make sense.

I hear what your saying, but didn't realize the OP was working for cable...Cable is the root of all things evil (center cut) in this industry :)

Its time for Cable systems to get with the program, they are responsible for this center-cut bullshit :)

kidding aside, sure there are those that will are stuck on tape, that doesnt mean we should give up and not try to show them better ways. But truthfully if thats the world you live in, why wouldnt you shoot with a more appropriate camera. It seems to me if you only want 720P and your raw footage is on tape. Why not shoot on tape?
Its like buying a new Red Lamborghini and only driving back and forth to work on back roads with 25mph speed limits.

[Peter Stelzhammer]

just makes me wonder - how often did you guys witness data-loss/corruption somewhere down the pipeline?
do you keep a safety copy or long-term backup of the data after the product went out to the client? Just curious…

of course it adds additional cost to play out (video) tapes…
but if you see it as an additional backup -> if the client wants it and pays for it I'd totally do it…
with additional education on file-based/RAW vs. tape-workflow you can still educate them and sell it just as "backup".

I've seen LTO's with data corruption, I've seen many dead disk drives (including RAIDs)…
Ok - all of that can also happen to video tapes but having an additional copy on tape is never a bad idea.
I still don't trust digital data without total redundancy (means - stored on different locations [not only different spots inside one building]).

Having a copy on tape is like having a actual printed/developed photograph…
Of course it's not full res/RAW anymore, the look is baked in and the quality alters over time (the more you use/show it).
But if you somehow loose (access to) your digital data you'll be very happy to have the "bad" photograph at least.

I know the whole story has it flaws if you get into detail…
But that's how I see it right now - if they ask for it they should get it anyways.

[Greg M]

IMO its more about the sheer amount of work involved to get it on tape (with TC). The OP asked how to get all the raw footage on tape with matching TC. This is a shit load of work and the results would be a compressed piece of tape that lost all the benefits of shooting with Red in the first place. LTO is so much faster and far superior. I get it, some insist on tape...

IMO- If you want tape shoot tape. Thats simply my opinion, everyone is entitled to one.

[Nick Morrison]

Nick,
An LTO 5 Tape is a tape. Its 1/3 the size of an HDCAM SR and cost less than 1/4th the price. An LTO "deck" is 1/40th the price of an HDCAM SR deck. I dont see your point. Education is key to success.
How does pointing this out and suggesting educating clients to new and better ways imply we are elitists? We live in a time where technology evolves way to fast, sticking with a 10 year old workflow .

I hear what your saying, but didn't realize the OP was working for cable...Cable is the root of all things evil (center cut) in this industry :)

Its time for Cable systems to get with the program, they are responsible for this center-cut bullshit :)

kidding aside, sure there are those that will are stuck on tape, that doesnt mean we should give up and not try to show them better ways. But truthfully, if thats the world you live in, why wouldnt you shoot with a more appropriate camera. It seems to me if you only want 720P and your raw footage is on tape. Why not shoot on tape?

Greg, just cuz I work in cable, doesn't mean I want to live in Cable. I shoot on RED because I aspire todo the work you guys do. Advertising/Narrative/Film.

And just because AETN is cable, doesn't mean ALL THEIR PROMOS AREN'T SHOT ON RED. They are. You see History's Supr Bowl Ad this year? Yeah shot on EPIC by the one and only Steve Moyer.

So suggesting that Cable's 720p output should somehow mean that they should all shoot on tape is a little unfair.

My point is, infrastructure. AETN has 20 edit rooms. They run day and night. That's 40 EDITS for PROMO ALONE, every day. These edit rooms are all fed by HDCAM and HD-CAM SR tapes. Why? Because all shows deliver on tape. Try and imagine. AETN = History, H2, History en Espanol, A&E, Bio, Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Network, etc, etc. Try and imagine how many shows and tapes arrive EVERY DAY. Literally, crates and crates of HDCAMS arrive EVERY DAY. We ingest and spit out tape like MACHINES. Ravenous. THey have invested MILLIONS in this infrastructure. They are not suddenly going to throw this all out for LTO. HDCAM is the lifeline of TV. HBO runs off HDCAM-SR. All HBO materials arrive on HD-CAM SR. Are they doing things wrong too??

Look, I love what these boards offer. I really do. I learn here every day. I don't want to shoot on tape. Tape sucks. But its a reality, and it works. Most reality shows are shot on 50 HD Camcorders. Jersey Shore doesn't even get broadcast in HD! (at least not in NYC). 4K and high-end promo work is just a sliver of the TV marketplace. Most programming and deliverables are tape based and will be for the forseable future.

Right now, DP's shooting on RED deliver AVID DNX HD proxies or MXF Media, and AETN goes about laying it to tape themselves through a vender.

Hope this helps.

Greg, I'm not saying your wrong. YOU ARE RIGHT. Clients should go 4K and tapeless. But its going to take a long, long time. And just because their standards suck, doesn't mean mine should too! Haha.

Be well all. Don't mean to cuz a tussle. These boards are the best. But I live in an HDCAM world, and so do most of my clients in NYC. BBC, Sundance, AETN. It's just the reality of broadcast and programming.

Be well.

[Greg M]

HDCAM is the lifeline of TV. HBO runs off HDCAM-SR. All HBO materials arrive on HD-CAM SR. Are they doing things wrong too??

I dont think we are on the same page. Delivering masters to HBO on SR tape and transferring all raw footage to tape with match TC to R3d are two totally different topics. We deliver 99% of our finished content on SR tape.

The OP asked about archiving raw footage to video, my comments were addressing this topic alone.

[Greg M]

I have a client who wants to shoot RED 4k but they want HD and SD tape deliverables. They would like there to be a connection between the tape and the RED files. As of now I was thinking of creating an AVID project that will have debayered RED material in it using the DNx codec and layoff the tapes from there and providing them with a bin of the project. They merely want to have this option for future proofing their content.

Is there a way to shoot with REGEN TC on the RED and we use tape names to keep track of the content? This way if they lose the AVID project they could create an EDL that a Smoke system could online using tape and timecode?

Thanks

The best way to do this is to import all the footage into a NLE and then output to tape. Seems like a lot of work.

[Jörgen Persson]

I think Scratch Lab would be a good way of doing this. You output the R3Ds in realtime to tape and then you export an ALE that reference both the tape and the original R3Ds.