New Formats In ENG
Taiwan's satellite broadcaster TVBS moves to XDCam
by Martyn Green
Using an instant access disc-based system, Sony's XDCam is proving a popular video camera among the news departments of Asian broadcasters.
TVBS, a Taipei-based satellite broadcaster, recently purchased 30 of them for its news gathering operations. With its Mandarin-language broadcasts, the company mainly serves Taiwan but also has viewers in North America, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Southeast Asia. Set up in 1993, TVBS has three channels, and 1,000 employees -- 500 in the downtown news division office, and another 500 in the Programme Division in Taipei's Nankang district, to the north of the city.
Says Leon Chen, Deputy Controller of TVBS News Department, "Our station has the largest share of the Taiwan audience with regard to news. Our news channel features a 24/7 service, which is live for 17 hours a day from 6 AM to 1 AM, and also serves prime-time news shows, plus two other channels featuring talk shows, and variety. We don't have news live for 24 hours -- we record evening news shows for re-broadcast during the other five night-time hours."
So why did TVBS choose the XDCam for its news system?
Jim Lin Kwon-chun, Manager of the station's Engineering Dept, explains, "The first reason was that the price (about USD $12,425) was reasonable, especially with our limited budget. So, it matched our means. The choice was between Sony's Blu-ray disc, using a 405 nm (blue-violet) laser and a 0.85 numerical aperture objective lens, Panasonic's P2 flash memory, and Ikegami's hard disk solution, the DNS-33. We looked at the three cameras, and decided that with two of them the price was rather high, while the quality was not that much better.
"We quite liked the Ikegami, as the body and circuitry is better. And also because, for a long time, Ikegami has had a technical cooperation agreement with Japan's NHK for their 4K camera." This is a 2x high resolution camera, although it is still in research stage, as it has not yet been announced.
Lin continues, "I have been to the NHK studios, and all their cameras are Ikegami -- they are very good cameras for the image they capture. So the first choice would be Ikegami, with Panasonic's P2 camera coming second."
"We did some research about Panasonic's P2 cameras before we decided to go for the XDCam," says Lin. "But with Panasonic's P2 format, we didn't feel the development of the [PCMCIA] memory cards (about USD1140 each) is mature enough right now. We weren't entirely happy about their reliability in terms of shock to the cards with the constant plugging in and out. The registration of the pins on the PC cards may not be entirely accurate over a long period of use. The other thing is that with such small cards, they could very easily get lost. It is not the cost, although they are expensive. After a cameraman gets a story, he may put the card down somewhere -- and it would be so easily mislaid, or left behind. You can yell and scream at the cameraman for losing the story, but it won't make any difference because it is gone -- it's so small and so easily overlooked. Small may be good, but in our view, not for memory. And you need to carry many pieces of memory cards -- maybe a dozen at one time. So there is even more to lose."
Lin continues, "Panasonic quality isn't bad and the mechanism is very strong, like in the DVC Pro. There are no mechanical problems with the P2, whereas the Sony Betacam SP or SX have a potential problem in that the camera can get cracked if put down too hard on a solid surface. But with the XDCam, the mechanism is small and very simple, so there's not much likelihood of any mechanical problem."
He adds, "We always use Canon lenses on our cameras, because we've found that Fujinon lenses more easily get dust and moisture. As regards the XDCam body, you can change the color rendition on the camera, as there is plenty of memory to set the profile, but if you are shooting news, the factory default is probably okay. If you are shooting documentaries, if you wish, the color can be set to be more saturated."
The XDCam uses a DVD-like disc-based system, providing rapid random access. The advantage of random access is that when a particular scene is required to be played back, its physical location on the disc has no effect on the time it takes to access it. Compared with tape-based acquisition formats, a recorded scene can be accessed in a fraction of the time, making it easier to speedily locate the desired source material. Also, as there is no mechanical contact during recording or playback, the format is ideal for continuous use or re- use.
Lin notes that the size of the PFD23 XDCam disc is the same as a DVD, but with a plastic housing, a bit like a floppy disk, which helps keep out dust and moisture -- and fingers. "Whereas a normal single-side, single-layer DVD is 4.7 Gbyte, the XDCam disc is 23.3 Gbyte, providing up to 85 minutes recording time -- depending on the bit rate -- and it can be re-used at least a thousand times," says Lin. "But I don't see Blu-ray discs going to double-side, double-layer, as with the conventional DVD format. Because the HD-DVD format made by Toshiba and Hitachi is 30 Gbyte, and that is single-side, single-layer also, while the technology is even more advanced. However, they don't produce such discs for broadcast equipment -- this is just for home use.
When asked which way the XDCam writes to the disc -- from the inside to outside like a CD, or outside to centre like a vinyl LP, Lin laughs and says, "Actually, it's inside to out, but for some while I didn't know, because we haven't had to do any maintenance on the cameras! Okay, it's the same way as a standard DVD. But it doesn't really matter, because when you are shooting, as the disc capacity is so large, you don't need to erase anything. However, when you are close to using up the space on the disc, there is a visual warning."
He notes, however, "There is a big difference between acquisition format and distribution format. Actually, in home use, DVD is recorded in MPEG-2 format, but in broadcasting we need higher quality and ease of editing, so we need DVCam format quality. With the DVCam, the quality is a little higher than you get with DV. And when it comes to editing you can get frame-accurate cuts. With MPEG-2, it is based on GOP (group of pictures) which makes it hard to find the place you can edit. It is only within 15 frames, so it is not very accurate."
Lin points out that NHK in Japan now have eight channels of HDTV programming delivered via satellite. However, the HD streaming is in MPEG-2, and so they cannot edit because MPEG-2 is using GOP.
Turning to the advantages of the XDCam with regard to editing, Chen says, "We had been using an Avid server system for two years, and we needed a camera that could download into that. Originally, we were going to use the DVCam system with a hard drive. But Avid servers do not support that format. So we had to make a choice of systems. Sony offered us a very good price for the Blu-ray DVD-based XDCam. We were committed to use something that would interface with the Avid, because we had so much investment in that system and because Sony had stopped production of the SP editing machines."
Chen continues, "The main advantage of a server is that it can digitize everything, so we can send the material to mobile phones, the Internet or any other platform very easily. Before, when we were using VTRs, we had to transfer every news item to the digital format one by one. So the idea was to acquire in digital, and keep it in digital. And if we need to send digital format news items through the Internet, it is much more convenient, since what is on the Blu-ray disc is a data file, not a video."
Lin adds, "And the media works out cheaper, too. Since they can
be used 1000 times or more, it doesn't matter that Blu-ray discs cost as
much as USD30 each. Moreover, the cameras are easy to maintain or repair.
If there is a problem with the deck it is easy to whip it out and replace
it with another, in just a couple of minutes."
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