The Producer Report: ENG File-based recording is not only faster in the


field but it’s also important for sharing media – physically in terms of swapping media from person to person – and also exchanging content with other broadcasters.” It’s envisaged that


camera operators will


be handed 10 cards per assignment although the composition of the media has still to be determined. “Professional SxS cards provide a greater transfer speed than Secure Digital cards but SD cards are cheaper,” says Coles. “We will work with camera staff to give them the knowledge to make their own decision on the mix they want to work with.” Paul Francis, a senior BBC broadcast camera


journalist, explains that while the SxS cards acquire full HD at high speed, they are expensive. “We have a range of new, practical concerns such as how do we carry these expensive memory cards so they don’t get lost? Or when we hand a card to a journalist in the same way we currently do with a tape – will we ever see it again? Journalists have to be more accountable with this media.”


BENEFITS OF FILE-BASED MEDIA That said, Francis, a 30 year veteran with six visits to Afghanistan under his belt, welcomes the new investment. “With no tape mechanism the 350s will demand less power so we’ll have fewer batteries to carry. We tested one in the freezer area of the BBC canteen, left it for an hour and then put it into the boiler room and it didn’t fail. Sounds trivial, but if you’re in a hot country and you’ve left the camera in a car overnight then you can’t guarantee with tape that you can start


shooting because the tape sticks to the head. There have been occasions when cameraman have been left with egg on their faces with the journalist twiddling their thumbs while they wait for the camera to warm up. The new cameras are climate adaptable and that’s a big plus.” The BBC’s initial focus is to create value out of


the move to file based but Coles says “over time as output moves to HD – which is inevitable – we have the capability to respond with the camera’s SD/HD codecs.” A smaller number of PMW- 500s will be used in the nations on a broader range of programming. “Whereas the 350 captures 4:2:0 at


rates


of 35Mb/s the 500 gives 4:2:2 colorimetry at 50Mb/s so it provides flexibility in terms of being able to do more complicated colour separation in post,” says Coles. From the point of view of an ENG camera-


operator an element of tapeless workflow falls, Venn diagram like, between acquisition and post. “As a skilled cameraman who doesn’t ever edit my material – which is the same for the majority of camera-ops – a file-based approach means you are doing part of the work of post,” says Tim Sutton, freelance camera-operator (reached via The Crewing Company) who has worked on Panorama and Dispatches. “For self-shooting journalists there’s clear


benefit in being able to shoot and deliver a package efficiently provided you have a base where the media from the cards can be logged on ingest and someone takes responsibility for downloading and formatting it.” For Sutton the fundamental questions with


solid state workflows are ‘who owns the cards?’ and ‘have you got a power supply at your location where you can plug in a laptop hard drive to perform critical data transfer?’ “Downloading Compact Flash, SD or SxS cards requires a laptop and ideally two hard


32 theproducer Winter 2011


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