New Formats In ENG: Part 2
Taiwan's satellite broadcaster TVBS moves to XDCam
by Martyn Green
Missed Part One? Read it here.
Because of several strong advantages to the format, including the fact that it is a disc-based acquisition system, Sony's XDCam cameras are finding increasing take-up in Asian broadcasters' news departments. The things that cameramen and news directors seem to love include the camera's cache system, a rapid download/file transfer time, and the 90-minute recordings available on one Blu-ray disk.
Says Leon Chen, Deputy Controller of Taiwan's TVBS News Department, "Over several months in 2005 and 2006 we bought a total of 30 PDW-510 XDCams, and then a bunch of PDW-1500 compact decks and PDW-V1 mobile decks -- in all, more than 70 pieces of equipment. We have 50 camera crews but, of course, not all are on duty at the same time. We only bought XDCam camera bodies, costing about NT$700,000 (US$21,200) each, as we already have many Canon and Fujinon lenses: 15-to-1 zooms, a 30-to-1 zoom, and a starlight lens, too. We expect our camera equipment to last up to 10 years."
Although all 30 of the Sony XDCam cameras had been bought by May last year, TVBS started out buying just five or six to start with. Says Jim Lin Kwon-chun, Manager of the station's Engineering Department, "Our news server came on line in May 2006 and that was when we started to broadcast direct from the server. Before that we often shot on XDCams, but when we got the stories back to the office, we were editing onto analog Beta SP format. But from May 2006 we started ingesting news stories direct to the server."
Originally, TVBS planned to have news departments in both of its locations in Taipei, and so needed a way to be able to transfer files between the two places. "But eventually we decided to keep our news teams here in the centre of Taipei as it's much nearer the government offices," says Chen.
TVBS soon discovered some of the advantages to the XDCam system. Says Chen, "Our cameramen say there is no real difference in the XDCam's operation, but they do like the fact that it has a cache. So when, for instance, they go to cover the Legislative Yuan, where there is usually a lot of talking before something significant comes up, all they have to do is to put the cache system on, and wait for something to happen. And when it does, they won't miss the start of it, as they have up to 10 seconds in the cache which will dump to the DVD disk as soon as the camera starts shooting."
Lin adds, "While the Sony camera has 10 - 12 seconds pre-record cache, Panasonic has this feature also, as it has 16 Mbyte of flash memory in the camera body. You can have a bigger cache but, of course, it costs more. However, I think 10 seconds is enough."
He explains, "When you push Pause, and put the camera into standby mode, the disk runs with the laser lens in the same position, but the laser itself is off, because the beam has a limited lifetime -- maybe 50,000 hours. With tape-based cameras, like DVCams, using a drum head and capstan motors, they use more power, while the XDCam uses just one motor for the disk. The laser lens actuator uses very little power."
The XDCam Blu-ray optical disk technology means users get a recording time of 90 minutes, rather than just half an hour, as it is with tapes. Chen points out, "The content just gets dumped to the server's hard disk -- at a 2.5 times high resolution transfer speed -- and that can then be put in the archive later. So it is very fast to use, as you don't have to rewind the tape, while you can get instant access to any point you choose." Apart from the high download speed, another advantage of the XDCam, Chen believes, is that there is easier maintenance, since there are fewer moving parts.
Affirming this point, Lin points out, "With a tape format camera with high-speed drum motor, the tape has some tension around the surrounding drum. If you have a little moisture, you get some slack, and you cannot continue. The XDCam, being tapeless, doesn't have that sort of problem. But if the camera is brought out of an air conditioned car, where the temperature is set to 20°C., into a hot day, about 32°, as we often have here in the summer, with humidity at about 80% or 90%, you will get moisture everywhere -- on the disk, inside the camera... The problem would happen first to the lens, and the viewfinder -- you can't see anything. However, it does not create a problem for the actual disk of the XDCam."
Lin says the weight of the XDCam is more than Sony's DVCam DSR-570, "I am not sure the exact weight, but about one to two kilograms more. So we have had a few complaints from cameramen. But some cameramen like the weight, as it is that much more steady and sturdy. If they are using the long-life batteries on the back, the camera has a good balance and is very steady. The camera body is made of aluminum but it is the circuitry that weighs so much."
Chen adds, "As the XDCam is a pretty heavy camera, all-up, it's certainly no more convenient than other professional cameras. But an advantage of the XDCam system is that we don't need to give our cameramen so much media. When we used SP or XP, every cameraman used to carry 10 to 20 tapes. And very often they'd lose one or more: such as when their reporter forgot to return the tape after viewing. Or maybe they'd go to the SNG to uplink to TVBS and they'd forget a tape, because there are just too many of them around."
People naturally find it hard to keep track of so many tapes, Chen believes. "So now we can give our cameramen just five disks. Firstly they are easier to keep track of, and secondly, being quite expensive -- about five times as much as a tape -- they tend to take more care of the disks. You lose one of the disks and it's, 'Oh my god -- that's US$30!' So far no cameraman has lost a disk."
Since the camera acquisition medium is disk-based, it seems reasonable to ponder if there are any "motion problems." (Surprisingly, just as this question was being put to Lin, Taipei experienced a mild earthquake!) So, does the disk lose track when a cameraman is carrying the camera while filming, or even running with the camera, or when the camera gets knocked or shaken -- as in an earthquake?
Said an unperturbed Lin, "No, the XDCam is very stable. In 2003, at the InterBee in Japan, I watched them banging one of them, just to demonstrate, and then they took out the disk to edit, and it was okay. I did my own tests here, before we bought the cameras, by banging a camera on a table, and on the ground. But of course we didn't drop the camera from a height! Tape cameras like SX or Betacam, if you drop them too heavily, the body will get cracked. But with the same sort of tests, dropping two or three inches, with the XDCams, they were fine."
As Deputy Controller of the news department, Chen added, "Some people have worried that if the camera is subject to shock when shooting, data writing may not be stable, but in actual operation, so far we have not had any problems with the cameras."
However, he notes, "As regards the recorders and players, we have
had some synchronization problems. Sony says they have not come across the
problem elsewhere, but we've found that sometimes we could not download
some files into the server with the sound and picture in perfect sync. Or
sometimes we send a file to the server, and it appears to go, but the server
reports it did not get it. That was a big problem for us for a while, but
our engineers managed to solve it."
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