Questions About Professional and Prosumer Codecs

[Chris7]

...While the P2 cards are more complex and robust than regular flash media, which makes them more reliable for repeated use, I think the industry is headed away from reusing memory cards and heading towards writing once and putting it on the shelf. Once flash memory prices start to become in line w/tape prices I think we'll see people shooting to a flash card once then shelving it or handing it off to a client just like they do tape...

That is definitely the direction we're going in...and we're really not that far off...

Somehow I had assumed that flash media was not as reliable as tape. Am I wrong about this?

The reason we don't see more high quality codecs is, basically, because they are expensive to create and implement. Having all that circuitry on board a camera takes up space and can create a fair amount of heat. The early Red Ones, for example, had over heating problems as well as very load fans (two things you don't want in a camera)...

It’s been a while but I was wondering – does the heat come from the sensor or the chip that converts the footage into Redcode RAW?

 

[LethalWolfe]

Assuming equality in build quality I think flash media would be more robust than tape because there are fewer moving/mechanical parts involved and flash media is less susceptible to the environment (hot, cold, humidity, dust, etc.,.).

The heat cameras generate comes from both the imaging sensor(s) and the chips that process the info coming from said sensor(s).


Lethal

 

[KeithPratt]

What tape has is a track record.

 

[Chris7]

What tape has is a track record.

Assuming equality in build quality I think flash media would be more robust than tape because there are fewer moving/mechanical parts involved and flash media is less susceptible to the environment (hot, cold, humidity, dust, etc.,.).

The heat cameras generate comes from both the imaging sensor(s) and the chips that process the info coming from said sensor(s)...

Thanks. I guess it looks like flash media should be more reliable than tape, but tapes been around longer for us to see for sure?

Regarding the heat from the sensor and associated electronics on the RED One, I guess what I'm really wondering is if the heat is in just in the chips processing the sensor data or the chip(s) that do the transcoding, but maybe that's a little hard to tell. The reason I'm asking is I'm wondering about what future cameras have to deal with if they use better codecs... trying to extrapolate the info about RED to figure out if, for example, the chip that transcodes into AVC-Intra would get any hotter than the chip that transcodes into HDV. At first, it would seem that it would be easier and therefore generate less heat to use a higher quality compression, as there's less compressing to be done, but I don't know
Anyway, thanks for all your help on this thread.

 

[bigbossbmb]

The reason I'm asking is I'm wondering about what future cameras have to deal with if they use better codecs... trying to extrapolate the info about RED to figure out if, for example, the chip that transcodes into AVC-Intra would get any hotter than the chip that transcodes into HDV.

there is absolutely no way to tell without being part of the engineering team for the cam company.