MASTERCLASS THE MEMORY GAME
As digital workflows become increasingly common, producers need to think not only about capturing their vision but also the format on which it will be recorded, says Jigsaw24 solutions architect Jamie Allan
Random Acts: shot on Sony F3 with
Cinedeck for recording straight onto ProRes 4:4:4:4 codec
W
hether it’s a camera, codec or VFX pipeline, we are regularly asked by
our clients to design bespoke workflows around a key requirement. We always gather as much detail as possible to make the work- flow efficient, reliable and manageable. This should be the approach for anyone looking at managing a digital workflow using the ever- increasing toolset available. Being consider- ate to all stages of production and post is integral to retaining clarity and control of the workflow when working to often chaotic shooting and delivery schedules.
Good memory This doesn’t mean remembering the shot order, your lines or packing an extra battery, but on what you’re going to record your masterpiece. Companies need to be care- ful when investing in shooting media for
28 | Broadcast TECH | January/February 2012
today’s advanced digital camera systems. It can often seem attractive to bulk-buy cheap media once you’ve decided on a certain for- mat, but that can be troublesome. For exam- ple, most digital cameras use Serial Digital (SD) cards, which are becoming increasingly popular in mid-range digital video cameras. SD cards come in several different formats and multiple speed classes. With this in mind, you should always ensure your media matches or exceeds your camera’s maximum recording bitrate, as well as complying with the host reader used for transferring the content. It’s often the case that newer cards aren’t backwards compatible with older readers, and lower-specification cards don’t provide stable recording for a camera’s vari- ous frame and bit rates. This logic can be applied to all the con- sumer solid-state media on the market,
especially the Compact Flash format. Many DSLR cameras use CF but the lower-specifi- cation cards won’t shoot the video data rates these cameras can achieve. Sony has always had a hand in the devel- opment of media formats and has brought some of its own standards to the market for solid-state cameras. Its SxS format, devel- oped with SanDisk, is designed to give guar- anteed performance at the high bandwidth required for the XDCam EX cameras, and in tests it has proved its worth versus con- sumer-brand Express34 memory cards, on which its memory is based. Sony is also moving forward with a replace-
ment for the HDCam and HDCam SR tape- based formats with SR memory. The new for- mat comes in memory cards of up to 1Tb and is capable of 880Mbps for recording straight from the most demanding HD cameras.
www.broadcastnow.co.uk/technology
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