Professional Disc Media: the New Generation Media Without Compromise
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™ ® Why Sony Adopted Professional Disc™ Technology: An explanation of the advantages of new media choices for broadcast 02|03 Professional Disc media: the new generation media without compromise What broadcasters and professional users value above all else is the content they produce, rather than the technology that creates it. They have to get the right content, at the right time and the right price, without compromise. Sony has made a rigorous analysis of all the new and emerging technologies available for professional production and the Professional Disc technology stands out above all others for offering the economic and production benefits video professionals are asking for. This document sets out the facts on why the Professional Disc media is the ideal new professional media. Like tape, it is low cost, robust and has a high recording capacity, but it is also nonlinear, exceptionally flexible and offers significant new workflow benefits. One media: one cost The Professional Disc media is designed to work throughout the production chain from acquisition to editing, playout and storage. Solid state or hard disk devices In the editing environment, have capacity and cost issues that Professional Disc media comes currently make it hard to regard into its own. Transfer rates are them as practical media for extremely high and there is professional video production: they virtually no risk of data loss. And are, at best, buffering units. After a proxy AV files and the MXF format few minutes recording with a solid allows editing to begin instantly, Nonlinear media state device, the picture material even before the content has In creating the Professional Disc media, Sony considered has to be transferred to a second finished being transferred. a number of potential nonlinear options, but only the device to free up space to continue Professional Disc media meets the primary demands of There are numerous network professional users for a high capacity, robust, low cost recording. The second unit has to media that is easily portable and works across the entire be either a computer hard disk, for benefits with using Professional production chain. example on a laptop editing Disc media, including advanced system, or a videotape machine – metadata capabilities and the use DVD was rejected as being too Professional Disc media extends therefore all the benefits of non- of open standard industry files. limited for professional use. It has the benefits of nonlinear across linear are lost. The very high cost of These benefits extend to broadcast a top capacity of only 5GB, the production chain to a solid state card makes it difficult playout, where Professional Disc transfer speeds at just 11Mbps acquisition, transforming the to have more than a few at any one media combines the flexibility of and isn’t rigorous enough to cope entire workflow. AV proxy content time. The alternative is to buffer to tape with nonlinear accessibility, with professional demands. and metadata can halve transfer Professional Disc media. But why content protection and file-based and editing times, while the duplicate hardware costs with transfers. Beyond a few specialist ability to operate in at least two different devices for acquisition and applications, hard disk has issues formats (MPEG IMX® and archiving? For storage, Professional Disc with its size and weight, and the DVCAM™ ) doubles the production media is the only practical limitations it poses throughout flexibility: for example, shoot Professional Disc media is ideal for tapeless archiving media, offering the production chain. It needs an drama today, news tomorrow. acquisition. Because of its high an extremely long shelf life with additional device for archiving capacity, a camera person can low unit cost, space savings and and can be very expensive for The magic of the Professional record for up to 85 minutes at network capability for easy access. large-scale implementations. Disc media is that it finally brings DVCAM format quality on a single to life the dream of nonlinear disc. And the small size and the Solid state has a very high unit recording with the flexibility of a low unit cost means a large cost, low capacity, limitations of low cost, robust, high capacity number of individual discs can be duration for recording HD signals media and without the high cost taken on a job, with potentially and workflow restrictions – there and very low capacity problems many hours of capacity instantly is no flexibility for shooting or of other nonlinear devices such available. After all, this is one of the archiving. It is also projected to as hard disk drives or solid state reasons tape has been so be many years before it has the devices. capacity to handle meaningful successful – and Professional Disc amounts of picture information, media maintains this benefit. let alone at a practical unit cost. 04|05 Media flexibility Professional media has to be flexible for operators in the field. Consumers are more willing to compromise on quality if they need more capacity – or if they run out of capaci- ty, they can simply stop shooting: professionals cannot compromise. For example, a professional If a news camera person has And what if an operator is on videographer shooting a wedding already recorded some vital assignment overseas? How much is paid to capture all the best footage for a news item, what media should be taken? With moments of a unique day. That happens if, when travelling back solid state, cost could be a includes the father of the bride’s to the edit room, an unexpected restriction. With Professional Disc speech in its entirety. The shooter event occurs that has to be media, the low unit cost allows needs enough capacity to shoot recorded as well? Or if asked to the operator to be generous with everything he needs and without shoot some additional shots, is the allocation. And what if a disc compromising on quality. the original footage recorded over is lost, stolen or confiscated? due to the limited recording With a solid state card, this could This means he needs enough capacity of a solid state device? be catastrophic and very media to last the day. Three discs Or does the shooter simply insert expensive to replace. With will give him over four hours of a disc from their pocket? Professional Disc media, the low DVCAM material. Each disc unit cost makes it easier to bear records 85 minutes continuously, If a documentary maker has to the cost of replacement and also so the videographer is not shoot an interview, how much to have replacements at hand. changing media in the middle of media capacity should be taken? the speech. And the discs are Buffering units such as hard disk All professional users value their reusable a minimum of 1,000 drives or solid state are restricted content above all else. The read/write/erase cycles under by the high cost and low technology is merely the tool they specified conditions. In capacity. Even if a back-up use to capture and protect the comparison, three solid state device was available, does the content. Professional Disc media cards of 4 GB each would give interview stop just as it is getting is the ideal nonlinear recording much less recording time, while interesting so as to download the media that gives professionals costing thousands of dollars. recording from the solid state the flexibility they need and have Also, does the shooter know camcorder? With Professional always expected from linear precisely how many cards will be Disc media, the shooter has media. They should not have to needed for the day? much more recording time on a compromise if the unexpected single disc than solid state. And occurs. they can afford to bring a number of discs and swap them over almost instantly without breaking the flow of the interview. Price / Performance Migration to HD Price/performance is the most critical element for any mainstream professional tool. As the world leader in HD production technology, Sony has a clear migration path for taking Professional Disc to HD. The first generation Professional Disc media already has 23.3GB Shoot 16:9 SD today with the confidence that Sony is planning to offer capacity, giving 85 minutes running time at DVCAM quality or 45 an easy, efficient upconversion path to HD. minutes at the Digital Betacam format equivalent MPEG IMX quality. Hard drive and solid state devices are only applicable for very limited applications because the content always has to be transferred to a central server after a few minutes of shooting and the capacity remains extremely limited. Currently hard drive and solid state storage cost hundreds of times the price of Professional Disc media per GB of capacity. Even as the price of all these technologies falls, the cost differential is not going to get significantly smaller for many years. Professional Disc media with 23.3 GB capacity costs approximately $30. Robust design Sony has designed the XDCAM product range to the same rigorous standards it has always applied to its professional tape based products, from DVCAM to the industry leading standard, Digital Betacam format. XDCAM products have been tested in the most extreme conditions, from the freezing cold of a New Zealand mountain winter to the choking heat, dust and jarring terrain of the Australian desert outback. XDCAM products are designed to Key to the rugged design is a new technology – rejected for function normally in temperature generation of professional blue professional use because of its extremes and have been tested laser optical recording technology, lower transfer speed and limited with success in lows of –22˚F to which eliminates wear to the disc's robustness.