Sony HVR-V1U HDV Camcorder, Part 1: An Interview with Sony's Bob Ott

Interview: Page (2) of 2 - 09/20/06

Sony HVR-V1U HDV Camcorder, Part 1: An Interview with Sony's Bob Ott Talking HDV 24p, CCDs vs. CMOS, hard disk recording

DMN: What you're saying is it's doing the two to three pulldown as you play out?

Ott: Right. It's doing the 2/3 pulldown as you play out. It has that film look to it, whereas our competition, if you go to play it, you see a doubling of the frames and everything else; you'll see all sorts of aberrations in the image.

DMN: Another thing I thought was interesting with a demo was this hard disk recorder that you can plug into the camcorder. Tell me about Sony's philosophy with recording tape and then recording on hard disk at the same time.

Ott: I don't know if it's Sony's philosophy, but it's the philosophy of most people who shoot video: "God, I wish I had a backup."

DMN: [they laugh] You're damn right.

Ott: The question is, and I've been asked a thousand times, which is the backup? And I say that's up to you to decide. The backup for me would be the 4.5 disk. I know I can take the tape, throw it onto the shelf, and have assurance that that tape that's on the shelf, stored properly, will be there for the next hundred years or so. The hard disk is what I'm going to edit and work with, and if it crashes or has a problem, I have my tape. This is my thinking, as compared to the hard drive going on the shelf which doesn't make sense because you wouldn't do that. Running tape through the machine multiple times doesn't make sense either. So from that aspect, I think the tape becomes your archived piece, the hard drive becomes your piece that you use to do the actual edits. You can always go back to the tape if you need to fix something, even if you've erased the hard drive.

DMN: Tell us a little more about that hard drive. How much footage can you fit on it?

Ott: You can fit 4.5 hours of HD or SD on it. Both HDV and SD are using the 25Mb constant bit rate. It works with any number of the batteries, and also works with the HVR-V1U. You don't have to change to different batteries. And the nice part is, if you do own a Z1 or a PD-170, you can use the hard drive on those cameras, it interfaces to them with no problem. The other big advantages are the shock mounting in the drive, the memory in the drive, plus the 3G drop aspect. What the 3G drop protection does is it retracts the head and powers the drive down, so that if you did drop it past a force of 3G, you don't wipe out the drive.

DMN: That could be really important. That could save the shoot right there, especially if you weren't rolling tape at the same time.

Ott: It's very important. It saves the shoot, hands-down. Because, say you just finished shooting this stuff, it's a one-time shot that you had at it, and the drive is laying on the ground, literally, if the drive head is crashed into the drive? Forget about it.

DMN: Plus it gives you a buffer, too, doesn't it?

Ott: Yes, there's 14-second cache. I won't call it bulletproof, because I think if you shot it with a gun, it would not survive. But we've tried to take into consideration what a lot of the hard drive manufacturers said, a lot of them just wanted us to make sure the drive was covered in this nice, rubberized container, but it didn't account for shock and a few other things. And obviously, because we can put buffer memory in there -- a 14-second cache -- you're not sitting there with a hard drive running all the time. You're just moving data from the buffer memory.

Next, in Part 2, Sony's Bob Ott talks more about the new Sony HVR-V1U HDV camcorder and its release date.

Editor's Note: Read our full report of the Sony HVR-V1U HDV camcorder event here.

Page: Prev Page 1 2

Related Sites: Digital Producer , Hollywood Industry , Digital Video Editing , Audio Video Producer , BN - Broadcast Newsroom , Digital Post Production , Film Imaging , HD Issues , Oceania , BN - NAB , BN - HD , BN - IBC , BN - Production , BN - Acquistion , BN - Hardware , BN - People , BN - Sony , Digital Facility
Related Newsletter: DMN Newsletter , Waveform Newsletter , Timeline Newsletter , Digital Media Net , BN - HD Weekly , DMNForums