ony Abandons Failed MicroMV Format, Cuts Jobs

[Hulk]

Okay, I'm game for some computations. Also, I not trying to be a "defender" of anything, I think what you are saying makes a lot of sense. I was just trying to "think through" possibilities of the format.

$211/20 minutes for Sansdisk = $10.55/minute
$6/60 minutes for mini DV = $0.10/minute for tape

So you would have to go through about 70 tapes to hit the break even point, after that the CF option becomes cheaper. You also have to remember that CF would not likely have any dropouts. But then again, with tape you have an archived original. But then most people just keep the final DVD anyway...

It may eventually happen, but I agree with you, right now is not the time.

Mark

[Brian Ellis]

Mark

Your reasoning does not seem reasonable to me. The advantage of tape is that is that it is a reasonable medium-term (<5-10 years) storage medium. OTOH, it is also reusable up to, say, 10 x: in fact, its quality improves with use, up to a point.

So, if you use your original capture also for storage, there is no break-even point, Sansdisk is 100 times more expensive.

If you reuse your media, then you would need ~700 tapes to break even, enough to wear out the drive of any camcorder!!!

[Hulk]

Yes, Brian you are right, the economics don't make sense right now. I don't want to get caught in the position of arguing for something that I don't really want to defend! It seems that whenever someone voices an opinion online, that person automatically has to answer all comers and defend the original "thought." That's all I was doing, thinking through such a concept out loud in this forum.

IF prices of CF come down dramatically, AND IF you don't care about tape archiving and only archive to optical media, AND manufacturers begin to make serious CF cameras AT reasonable prices, etc.... YOU ARE RIGHT, there are a lot of "ifs" there.

On the other hand, there are quite a few people who simply shoot 20 minutes of video, want to put it on a DVD with little or no editing and be done with it.

I would personally like to have a good camera that uses CF memory. I would also like to see a 4GB card cost $100 and both of those things ain't reality at this point in time and may never be.

So, I guess we're stuck with tape for a while longer. Although I'll be happy to see it and its dropouts, gunk in the tape mechanism, and broken tape mechanisms go the way of the 8 track.

As you correctly stated what usually breaks on camcorders is the tape transport, a system that would be GONE on CF based camcorders, thus increasing reliability, reducing weight and increasing battery life. As I said above, there are many reasons for manufacturers to keep their eye on CF technology for camcorders.

Think about it:

No more tape transport > possible lower cost after upon mass production
No more tape dropouts
No more buying tape
No more head cleaning and other tape related maint.
Longer battery life > without tape transport

This all depends on how quickly the price of CF drops.

Also, I don't reuse tape 10 times, maybe 2 or 3 times tops, so your calculation is kind off base on that front. In fact, for paying gigs I only use new tape.

If you base calculations on 2 uses per tape, which incidentally removes half the archiving value of tape, then the factor in favor of tape is 140 tapes to equal CF at this point in time. A price drop along the order of 10 times in CF, to about $200 for a 4 GB CF would bring that number to 14 tapes to equal the CF card, which of course can be used indefinitely and has the other advantages mentioned above.

Okay, that's it! No more of this, let's let it play out in the real world.


Mark

[Frank Marshall]

Solid-state memory will sooner emerge for PCs where HDDs are by far the slowest link in the chain. Such technology could be applied to camcorders once economies of scale become favourable.

[Hulk]

Frank,

I could be wrong, but I believe solid state memory is much slower than today's 7200rpm/8MB cache hard drives. 30+MB/sec transfer rates are easily attainable by todays drives, vs not even 1/10 of that for SS memory. Not sure about access times, but I do know that I can access photos faster from my hard drive than from my Lexar CF card!

Also, now we're talking about needing capacities of 40+GB to be useful, not 4GB. I think this is actually further off then use in camcorders.


Mark

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by Frank Marshall
Solid-state memory will sooner emerge for PCs where HDDs are by far the slowest link in the chain. Such technology could be applied to camcorders once economies of scale become favourable.

Don't confuse fast volatile RAM with slow EEPROM (writable). There is a world of difference.

[VJ]

Hmm, doesn't this look like the evolution computer storage went through... (tape -> hdd -> floppy & CD -> solid state)

Still, I think in the long run, solid state will be the winner. Sure, Compact Flash cards are expensive now, but just think back... In 2000 I bought a 32 MB compactflashcard for $200; 2 years later, I bought 512 MB (which is also faster) for the same price. Now, such cards can be had for less. So, while this is currently too expensive, I think it will evolve to something like it...

Would there be any chance for a wireless storage (to make the camera smaller) ? E.g. the camera transmits to a portable harddisk attached to your belt...
The Nikon D2h (digital photo camera) has an option for wireless, which results in the camera uploading to a computer nearby. Of course, there is no bandwith requirement as with video, but still...


Jörg

[Technoid]

Originally posted by VJ

Would there be any chance for a wireless storage (to make the camera smaller) ? E.g. the camera transmits to a portable harddisk attached to your belt...
Jörg

That is a realy GOOD idea

[arciervo]

Originally posted by arciervo
With video quality up to 704x480 MPEG-2 (6Mbps CBR), the Panasonic SV-AV100 looks interesting:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1361678,00.asp

and

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11251&catalogId=11005&itemId=65016&catGroupId=12873&modelNo=SV-AV100&surfModel=SV-AV100

but the recording time is still too small and the media too darned expensive (10 minutes at highest resolution on a $350 512MB SD card ).

Yet another SD card-based video/photo camera:

http://www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertext4-eng/0310news-e/1001-e.html

With samples at

http://www.sanyo-dsc.com/dsc/sample_f.html

(click on "DMX-C1" at top left).

This uses MPEG-4 so the recording time (21 minutes on a 512MB SD card) is about twice that of the Panasonic SV-AV100. However, that's still too expensive for my tastes and the supplied 16MB SD card is a joke (35 seconds at best quality - sheesh!).

Tony