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NAB 2011 - Recorders

Is tape dead? The Japan earthquake and tsunami put Sony’s sole HDCAM-SR plant out of commission, and tape stocks are “constrained”, accelerating the transition to non-tape-based recording.

Well, maybe…

...maybe not?

DVCPRO on the left, LTO on the right: (Video)Tape is dead! Long live the (LTO) Tape!

FOR.A (better known in the USA for their HD switchers / vision mixers and their transcoding timebase correctors) has two “videotape” recorders with standard video I/O connectors and VTR-style front panel controls, but they record to LTO-5 tape instead of video tape. The LTR-100HS records MPEG-2 while the LTR-120HS uses Panasonic’s AVC-Intra and DVCPRO codecs; both wrap their content in MXF.

FOR.A’s LTR line combines VTR controls and I/O with an LTO-5 transport.

And even for those who have moved entirely away from tape—including Panasonic, ironically enough—the human-friendly VTR interface retains its appeal, even if the jog/shuttle wheel has been replaced with a four-way controller:

Panasonic’s AG-HPD24 dual-card P2 player/recorder.

Another big splash was Blackmagic Design’s introduction of the Hyperdeck Shuttle and Studio recorders. These dump HDMI or SDI video to uncompressed QuickTime files on SSDs—just as 2.5” SSDs are getting fast enough to sustain the required throughput.

Blackmagic Design’s $995 HyperDeck Studio: uncompressed on dual SSDs.

The $345 HyperDeck Shuttle: where have we seen those SDI connectors before? On the RED ONE; they’re really popular there.

Seriously, at those prices, it’s hard to imagine recording on anything else… were it not for the fact that uncompressed files are really big, and they get unwieldy if you’re shooting a lot of footage. You’re going to burn through SSDs at a frightening rate, and your archiving storage will similarly skyrocket…

...at which point, you have to ask: how are you going to archive all this footage, however it’s recorded? 1 Beyond has a couple of answers; the SuprDupr is a portable duplication/offload system comprised of a Windows computer in the base and your choice of configure-to-order media “slices” stacked on top, each of which contains a reader or writer for some useful media format: removable HDDs or SSDs, LTO-5 tapes, SxS cards, CF cards, REDMAGs, etc.

1Beyond’s SuprDupr: a battery-powered, configure-to-order offload station.

1 Beyond’s Wrangler software automatically checksums, dupes, backs up, and verifies attached media, making the SuprDupr as hands-off and goof-proof as possible. Oh, and it runs off of batteries, too, for field use.

The FlexVTR Archive Recorder is a rackmounted PC-based VTR replacement, capturing video in Cineform, uncompressed, and other formats to LTO-5 tape. Cleverly, it uses disk arrays as a buffer mechanism; if you’re recording something a bit too hefty for LTO-5 tape to ingest in real time, FlexVTR will buffer on disk and stream off to LTO as fast as LTO allows.

FTC Disclosure

I attended NAB 2011 on a press pass, which saved me the registration fee and the bother of using one of the many free registration codes offered by vendors. I paid for my own transport, meals, and hotel.

No material connection exists between myself and the National Association of Broadcasters; aside from the press pass, NAB has not influenced me with any compensation to encourage favorable coverage.

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