ProVideo Coalition.com: Apple

Being an early adopter of tapeless cinematography, I generally notice these inquiries on the blogs, bulletin boards, listserves and forums. Tapeless being the new technology and workﬂow, there are kinks to work out, learn curves to scale. This article will address the issue of tapeless cinematographyʼs archiving image and sound assets with a reasonable yet secure system.

Film set the narrative and commercial image acquisition standard over the past century, but the process from set to edit can be prohibitive. Since the late 1960ʼs, analog tape has been used for broadcast, corporate communications, with the emergence of digital tape & disc formats, for almost every media industry. Both ﬁlm and tape provide instant archival mediums for their video, audio and metadata assets, but with the domination of non linear editing systems across all media industries, these formats require digital capture of these assets into the digital realm. Tapeless image (and audio) acquisition is emerging on set as an alternative to ﬁlm, tape and optical disc based recording. Solid stateʼs current high cost necessitates using it as a temporary archive analogous to a ﬁlm cameraʼs magazine conveying assets to a more affordable archive: computer hard disk drives.

New tapeless cinematography systems abound from traditional sources like Sony, Panasonic, JVC, traditionally ﬁlm based camera manufacturers Arri and Panavision, and new players like Red, Silicon Imaging and Phantom to name a few. Parallel to hardware developments are the video format and codec developments. These developments indicate the multiple paths being explored in camera and solid state form functions, video formats and codecs, and post workﬂow.

Fundamentally, storytelling assets take the form of image, sound and metadata recorded onto a medium. The medium can be ﬁlm, tape, optical disc based or solid state non-volatile memory. Digital assets may be further deﬁned as uncompressed or compressed, the latter requiring a codec to access the images. Metadata might be in the analog form of keycode, footage/frames and timecode for ﬁlm. Digital metadata may include user bits, timecode and other shot, production or camera data. Metadata may be also recorded visually in the form of a clapper slate relaying production, scene, take, camera reel and date information.

“Blackout” was shot in the summer of 2006 with a $400,000 budget and goal for theatrical release. The production was based on multi camera, dual system sound coverage. The script supervisor controlled scene, take, directorʼs circle takes and assigned reel numbers in sequential order. The Camera Department controlled the slate and image recordings at 720 24pn onto P2 cards, the Audio Department provided audio recording onto CF cards.

The medium dictates how we access the recorded assets. Film and tape are generally linearly accessed in real time, played down and captured as assets into your system or ﬁlm is transferred to tape then captured. Assets on optical disc and solid state devices can be accessed non linearly. Film, tape and optical disc create instant, relatively long term archives at the point of capture. Solid state devices comprised of non volatile computer memory currently at the $50/GB may not be cost effective as the archival medium*. Developing a disc based archive for your assets, one that is cost effective while setting up your project for post, mitigates the effort while providing a redundant data set that can survive device and human error as a near term archival solution.

If media type dictates capture process, then video format describes the computer and storage subsystem. Any video format contains pixel dimension, frame progression, metadata and the raw encoded video and audio ﬁles, usually lossy or losslessly compressed. With video codecs, thereʼs no such thing as a free lunch. The video compression is a tradeoff between disk space, video quality and the hardware to decompress it. An uncompressed video format requires large drive arrays to achieve the volume and speed needed, or a compressed video format requires more CPU power to decode producing a comparable image. Compression may employ lossy (or visually lossless) techniques that may reduce the quality of the image and require more CPU during playback, but make playback possible through a modest computer system. When specifying a computer system, consider the video and audio streams and donʼt overlook the required system overhead, anticipated graphics needs or the number of simultaneous video streams.

the system

Using high deﬁnition tape as the benchmark cost per unit time, until solid state storage reaches the tape comparable $1/minute price point, the following alternative is suggested for any tapeless project: choose a metadata key, copy the assets as DATA from the solid state medium to a mirrored array (safety through drive redundancy), then log and transfer into your NLE onto a striped array (speed through drive redundancy) as your MEDIA.

This system builds 2 copies of the assets as DATA on two drives to protect against device failure and a third copy of the rewrapped assets as your project MEDIA on a separate volume, generally a striped (fast) array. This is roughly the equivalent of a negative and work print or dubbing shot tapes and digitizing the medium into your NLE. If production insists on individual external drives, P2 Genie can automatically copy the card to multiple volumes.

parts list

With Support from Apple

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Tapeless Cinematography Workflow v2

the system

parts list