Digital Video - October 2007 - (Page 56)

STORAGE MEDIA BY LARRY LUECK HOW LONG CAN THE CASSETTE HOLD ON? TAPE’S PLACE IN FUTURE HDV CAMCORDERS. I n its original design for the consumer market, the HDV format produced high-definition video recordings on magnetic tape cassettes. Contrary to popular belief, however, an HDV recording does not have to reside on tape. Harddisk drives, 80mm DVDs and flash media, all of which now can be found at the heart of many entrylevel camcorders, could soon vie with tape for a place in consumer and professional HDV gear alike. But don’t expect the venerable cassette to give up the ghost easily. Since its market bow in 2003, HDV has benefited greatly from continuous improvements in tapes developed for other digital recording applications. These improvements are expected to continue, driven mostly by the need for higher capacities in enterpriselevel data storage operations. The latest (fourth-generation) LTOtype data cartridges, for example, carry uncompressed capacities of 800GB. This format’s roadmap assures still higher performance and storage capacities in the near future. The next LTO generation, due perhaps in 2010, is expected to use cartridges of the same size as those in use today, but with 1.6 terabytes (TB) of capacity—and a sixth generation, due in 2012 or thereabouts, will double that capacity again. Since these are uncompressed capacities, compression can easily double the format’s “native” capacity values for data storage—and do much better than 2X in video recording applications. All of this bodes well for the continued use of tape as the favored recording dv october 2007 medium in both consumer and professional camcorders. It is true, of course, that there is a major effort underway to replace tape in all types of recording applications. Where weight and removable media are not major considerations, hard-disk drives already offer very viable alternatives. Drives retailing for less than $400 in the U.S. already provide native capacities of 1TB. Removable hard-disk cartridges, with native capacities as high as 250GB, also are readily available—although they’re still expensive compared to tapebased storage. To date, however, hard-disk camcorders have been largely targeted at consumers, with applications in professional video limited mostly to capture acces- sories and postproduction tools. Considerable progress is also being made in increasing the storage capacity of blue-laser optical disc media—with experimental results demonstrating that capacities as high as 500GB can be attained using a 120mm diameter disc, and perhaps as much as 200GB on an 80mm disc. Commercial introduction of such media, however, is still several years in the future. Solid-state video recording systems, usually based on flash memory, are being used in consumer and Tape has had a good run with DV camcorders, but will its ease-of-use and affordability save it in the age of random access? 56 www.dv.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - October 2007

Cover Contents Letters DV Update R&D Fest Circuit Light Brigade Follow Focus Shootout Image Conscious Instant Expert Close-Ups Eastern Europe Exploit Call of the Wild Four Principles of Storage Storage Media Production Diary

Digital Video - October 2007

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