Marketing Eric

“Tethering” your computer to your AG-HVX200 camera is a feature that I have made plenty of use of over the past couple years.Tethering is when you connect a digital camcorder, like the HVX200, to a laptop or other recording device using a firewire or USB cable. The advantage of tethering a camera rather than recording to a tape or storage card is because it is usually more economical and allows you to use a laptop as a display while recording. The cost of a pair of two 16GB P2 cards is enough to purchase a Macbook Pro (after a $200 student discount) so it never made sense to me to purchase P2 cards when I can get more storage and use from a laptop.This post will outline the three method I have had hands on experience with and outline that advantages and disadvantages of each.

Current Storage Option Costs:

The following prices were located between May and June 2008 using bhphotovideo.com and Apple.com.

1. $900 = 16GB P2 Card
2. $1,550 = 32GB P2 Card
3. $1,999 = 200GB Macbook Pro ($1,799 after student discount)
4. $1,099 = 120GB Macbook ($999 after student discount)
5. $1,529 = 60GB P2 Store
6. $1,999 = 160GB Firestore

Using the firewire tether mode with a Macbook and your HVX is rather simple once you get the right configuration set up in FCP (Final Cut Pro). Start by booting up Final Cut Pro and then go to Final Cut Pro > User Preferences. Then uncheck the “Abort capture on dropped frames” option. Unfortunately using the firewire method will occasionally result in a drop frame and this option will allow the computer to continue recording even if it comes across a dropped frame, but it will still notify you of any dropped frames as they occur. To reduce these drop frames you should make sure that your laptop is on a flat, solid surface. You should also try to keep as much as much drive space free as possible. I noticed that when I was down to 10GB of space it would greatly increase the drop frames because the hard drive pin has to seek farther to find free space to write to. I’m guessing that defragmenting your hard drive might also help in reducing drop frames, but Apple doesn’t have a built in utility to handle defragmentation.

Advantages of using a Macbook:

• You get a computer, not just a recording disk
• You can use the screen as an external display
• Edit on set when not recording

Disadvantages of using a Macbook:

• Occasional skipped frames
• Have to keep computer within arms length of camera

P2 cards are great, but only if you have deep pockets and and excellent on-site loader who knows what they are doing. The cost of P2 makes it an unrealistic option for film students and many independent film productions who are trying to keep a tight budget. The benefits mostly remain in the portability of using the cards.

Avid last year was supporting a documentary film project that was going to be shot in three separate locations around the globe. I believe they were shooting the Nile, Amazon and Mississippi rivers. There was a meeting at Avid headquarters where they briefly instructed the heads of the crew on how the workflow would work with the HVX and P2 cards. They used P2 cards because they are durable and small enough to transport or mail back to the post-production office in America.

Panasonic demonstrated their P2 workflow at the NAB 2007, which I had a chance to check out. I recall them demonstrating the ability to edit directly off of a P2 card without having to capture it to your computer first (using Avid Media Composer). This saves you the time of capturing the footage and dealing with upconverting to the source resolution later on in post-production. The flaw to this method is that you would need to be working with either a few very large P2 cards that contain all of your captured footage, or you would need to have a lot of smaller P2 cards. Economically it would never make much sense to edit straight from a P2 card unless you are working with a very small project that can only fit on 1 or 2 P2 cards.

Advantages of using a P2:

• Hotswap capable - When one card slot fills up you can pull it out while it transfers to the second slot and then put it back in for continuous recording.
• Extremely durable - I’ve met someone who used 30 P2 cards to film the Iditarod in Alaska because it was the only storage medium that would be capable of handling the cold weather and bumpy path.

Disadvantages of using a P2:

• Indexing to computer takes extra time, unless you edit directly off of the P2 cards
• Expensive

This last option is one that I have had only a week to experiment with, and I am glad that’s all the time I had to deal with. I was given a Firestore for demo purposes during NAB 2007 in Las Vegas. I was interning for Avid Technology at the time, working at their booth recording interviews at the show then editing the video in the Avid booth. We were working with the Canon XH A1 hooked up to a Firestore device.

I can’t recollect many details from that week, but I do remember banging my head against the wall when the Firestore kept acting up. I was with a team of 4 film students, surrounded by Avid technicians and even representatives from Focus Enhancements (the people who make Firestore) and nobody was able to get a handle on why the workflow wasn’t working. I think we eventually gave up and shot HDV to tape in the end. What I learned from this experience is that if you’re going to invest over $1,500 in a storage option other than P2, you might as well get a laptop. There are too many horror stories about people losing footage because of an unreliable Firestore.

Advantages of using a Firestore:

• Slightly more portable than a laptop
• More gigabytes per dollar than P2 cards

Disadvantages of using a Firestore:

• Horrible interface
• Compatibility issues with some cameras
• Expensive