<strong>MPEG-4 really wasn't designed for applications like these. MPEG-4's primary application is low-mid bandwidth internet based media distribution.</strong><hr></blockquote>
MPEG-4 is more versatile and of higher quality than everyone here is thinking. As a bit of proof:<a href="http://www.creativemac.com/HTM/HomeSet1.htm"; target="_blank">Creative Mac</a></strong><hr></blockquote>
The SV-AV10 e-wear? SD A/V Recorder is the ultimate way to step into the age of digital entertainment, and is so small, you can take it almost anywhere. In one incredible, lightweight, pocket-sized unit you get a digital camcorder, digital still camera, digital audio player and digital voice recorder. And since all features use SD technology and SD memory cards, you only need one format to take advantage of its many uses.
Digital Camcorder
Use the included SD Memory Card to record MPEG4 video clips and then transfer them to a PC* to save or edit.
I've been converting a few typical Beta-recorded home video tapes to DVD, and some of the tapes have 4+ hours of footage on them...a few of them are 2+ hour long recitals, so yeah, 90 minutes may be enough for the usual home video, but it's not enough for presentations, recitals, concerts, speeches, etc...
With tapes, you can buy a whole bunch and swap them in and out. You aren't forced to download the video to another medium before recording again...
A 20 GB HDD would be a great *addition* to a MiniDV cam if the price was right.
Hold on a second. :eek: Sony has a video camera with a PCMCIA slot so you can use MiniDV tapes for video and flash/microdrive for still shots. And last MWSF in Jan. or NAB (not sure which) a bunch of companies came out with devices that plug into the Firewire port of a DV camera and record to a drive in real time. Those hard drives were replaceable, but if you are talking about a hard drive built into a camera, well, that's pointless. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> Loading film into a 35mm camera seems to take a long time now, and I won't wait for a DV stream to download. I do think it is time to introduce a new format soon other than DV like MPEG 4, especially whenever consumer HD video cameras come out. DV at 720X480 creates a huge file in no time, just think how many hard drives DV at i1080 resolutions will take. <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" />
actually, a product with the functionality being described in this thread already exists. it's called FireStore, and is a Fire Wire controller that uses pocket firewire drives (such as those made by LaCie and SmartDisk) to capture directly to DV file from a miniDV digital video camera.
the drives are later connected to a Mac running Final Cut Pro for editing--no capture necessary. in this workflow the miniDV tape in the camera is considered a back-up (and if you really want to work without a safety net you could just skip the tape alotgether).
<strong>actually, a product with the functionality being described in this thread already exists. it's called FireStore, and is a Fire Wire controller that uses pocket firewire drives (such as those made by LaCie and SmartDisk) to capture directly to DV file from a miniDV digital video camera.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes! Yes! That's what I'm talking about. I couldn't remember the name. Awesome little things.
<strong>...(not to mention tape being a better anchival medium than discs)...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I just couldn't let that go. Tapes are famously poor for archival. They start to deteriorate after a few years. Most of my old Hi-8 tapes have dropouts and unplayable sections.
Properly stored in a dry, oxygen free environment they will last a little longer, but who does that at home?
Long term archival of data is a big problem. Sealed hard drives have the advantage of being isolated from the environment. There is still the question of how long the electronics will last.
For home use, optical storage may be the best bet. Even then, I would make at least two copies and those should be refreshed in five or ten years when we get better technology. I haven't seen anything about how well home-written CD-Rs or CD-RWs stand the test of time.
[quote]And it uses FAT32 which has some funky artificial formatting limit in Windows 2000 of 32 GB or something...Blah.<hr></blockquote>
yeah...blah indeed. one of these is on my table and they're a pos as long as they don't update their firmware and make it work as advertised. but then again, i'm on a mac
I just couldn't let that go. Tapes are famously poor for archival. They start to deteriorate after a few years. Most of my old Hi-8 tapes have dropouts and unplayable sections.
Properly stored in a dry, oxygen free environment they will last a little longer, but who does that at home?
Long term archival of data is a big problem. Sealed hard drives have the advantage of being isolated from the environment. There is still the question of how long the electronics will last.
For home use, optical storage may be the best bet. Even then, I would make at least two copies and those should be refreshed in five or ten years when we get better technology. I haven't seen anything about how well home-written CD-Rs or CD-RWs stand the test of time.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can't speak for the archival quality of Hi8 (or even MiniDV for sure), but on the whole, tape is a better long-term backup and storage medium. That's why all serious backup is done to DAT, DLT, SyQuest, etc. going way back. Super DLT is incredible backup media. In part, it's purely due to the storage capacity of tape (80GB compressed for a standard DLT tape, and SuperDLT is even higher, I believe), but there are other major benefits to it such as better error checking, etc.
I can't speak for the archival quality of Hi8 (or even MiniDV for sure), but on the whole, tape is a better long-term backup and storage medium. That's why all serious backup is done to DAT, DLT, SyQuest, etc. going way back. Super DLT is incredible backup media. In part, it's purely due to the storage capacity of tape (80GB compressed for a standard DLT tape, and SuperDLT is even higher, I believe), but there are other major benefits to it such as better error checking, etc.</strong><hr></blockquote>
We use tape for backup because its capacity and price per MB are better then anything else currently available. Unfortunately, according to the manufactures and other interested parties, tape will not hold up over the long run.
For long term storage you should go with an optical or magneto-optical system. Depending on the exact media and device used they can last well over 50 years without any loss of data.
Now back to the topic
I really could see apple coming out with some sort of iCamra -- they already came out with the coolest audio/mp3 device, and I think that they will try their hand at video or still imagery (or perhaps a mixture of both).
If they do use a small ipod type hard drive, they should make it removable so you could swap it out for longer recording times (and that way they squeeze out even more money from Joe consumer).
<strong> If all we need is about 3.6MBps we could concievably drop the rotational speed down to a constant 1000rpm or so. This might be even better than constantly spinning the drive up and then down.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Question, If I remember HDD architecture right part of what makes it work right is the rotational speed of the drive causing the heads to float over the platters on a cushion of air right? If you slow down the platters to 1000 RPM's do you lose enough of that cushion to make a diffrence (ie, would the hard drive heads "crash" more often?)
For home use, optical storage may be the best bet. Even then, I would make at least two copies and those should be refreshed in five or ten years when we get better technology. I haven't seen anything about how well home-written CD-Rs or CD-RWs stand the test of time.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Home burned CD-Rs are supposed to last about 7 years, give or take.
Yamaha has some neat CDr tech that produces near studio quality recording out of standard CDr media. To do this is drops down to 4x but burns the pits deeper into the disc (more like a studio disc) making them -- according to reports -- readable even in some very CDr unfriendly CD players. Good stuff.
I've got some Kodak CDr discs here which are rated (by Kodak) for 25 years. Take it with a grain of salt perhaps, but I'm guessing they'll last quite a bit longer than 7 years. I've never had a problem with them and they seem to work everywhere.
Comments
<strong>MPEG-4 really wasn't designed for applications like these. MPEG-4's primary application is low-mid bandwidth internet based media distribution.</strong><hr></blockquote>
MPEG-4 is more versatile and of higher quality than everyone here is thinking. As a bit of proof:<a href="http://www.creativemac.com/2002/05_may/news/cw_eboxmpeg4.htm"; target="_blank">Creative Mac e-Box article</a>
[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: murk ]</p>
<strong>
MPEG-4 is more versatile and of higher quality than everyone here is thinking. As a bit of proof:<a href="http://www.creativemac.com/HTM/HomeSet1.htm"; target="_blank">Creative Mac</a></strong><hr></blockquote>
I think you wanted to post this link: <a href="http://www.creativemac.com/2002/05_may/news/cw_eboxmpeg4.htm"; target="_blank">http://www.creativemac.com/2002/05_may/news/cw_eboxmpeg4.htm</a>;
Dave
<strong>
I think you wanted to post this link: <a href="http://www.creativemac.com/2002/05_may/news/cw_eboxmpeg4.htm"; target="_blank">http://www.creativemac.com/2002/05_may/news/cw_eboxmpeg4.htm</a>;
Dave</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks for catching that, Dave. I should have checked my link. I changed the link in the original post to help save confusion.
Look at this, I just saw the commercial and it reminded me of this post. Looks like it has already been done.
<a href="http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/ewear/sd_av.asp"; target="_blank">http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/ewear/sd_av.asp</a>;
Four-in-One Technology
The SV-AV10 e-wear? SD A/V Recorder is the ultimate way to step into the age of digital entertainment, and is so small, you can take it almost anywhere. In one incredible, lightweight, pocket-sized unit you get a digital camcorder, digital still camera, digital audio player and digital voice recorder. And since all features use SD technology and SD memory cards, you only need one format to take advantage of its many uses.
Digital Camcorder
Use the included SD Memory Card to record MPEG4 video clips and then transfer them to a PC* to save or edit.
[ 05-22-2002: Message edited by: Ti X ]</p>
With tapes, you can buy a whole bunch and swap them in and out. You aren't forced to download the video to another medium before recording again...
A 20 GB HDD would be a great *addition* to a MiniDV cam if the price was right.
[ 05-27-2002: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
the drives are later connected to a Mac running Final Cut Pro for editing--no capture necessary. in this workflow the miniDV tape in the camera is considered a back-up (and if you really want to work without a safety net you could just skip the tape alotgether).
check it out:
<a href="http://www.focusinfo.com/products/firestore/firestore.htm"; target="_blank">http://www.focusinfo.com/products/firestore/firestore.htm</a>;
<strong>actually, a product with the functionality being described in this thread already exists. it's called FireStore, and is a Fire Wire controller that uses pocket firewire drives (such as those made by LaCie and SmartDisk) to capture directly to DV file from a miniDV digital video camera.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes! Yes! That's what I'm talking about. I couldn't remember the name. Awesome little things.
<strong>...(not to mention tape being a better anchival medium than discs)...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I just couldn't let that go. Tapes are famously poor for archival. They start to deteriorate after a few years. Most of my old Hi-8 tapes have dropouts and unplayable sections.
Properly stored in a dry, oxygen free environment they will last a little longer, but who does that at home?
Long term archival of data is a big problem. Sealed hard drives have the advantage of being isolated from the environment. There is still the question of how long the electronics will last.
For home use, optical storage may be the best bet. Even then, I would make at least two copies and those should be refreshed in five or ten years when we get better technology. I haven't seen anything about how well home-written CD-Rs or CD-RWs stand the test of time.
yeah...blah indeed. one of these is on my table and they're a pos as long as they don't update their firmware and make it work as advertised. but then again, i'm on a mac
<strong>
I just couldn't let that go. Tapes are famously poor for archival. They start to deteriorate after a few years. Most of my old Hi-8 tapes have dropouts and unplayable sections.
Properly stored in a dry, oxygen free environment they will last a little longer, but who does that at home?
Long term archival of data is a big problem. Sealed hard drives have the advantage of being isolated from the environment. There is still the question of how long the electronics will last.
For home use, optical storage may be the best bet. Even then, I would make at least two copies and those should be refreshed in five or ten years when we get better technology. I haven't seen anything about how well home-written CD-Rs or CD-RWs stand the test of time.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can't speak for the archival quality of Hi8 (or even MiniDV for sure), but on the whole, tape is a better long-term backup and storage medium. That's why all serious backup is done to DAT, DLT, SyQuest, etc. going way back. Super DLT is incredible backup media. In part, it's purely due to the storage capacity of tape (80GB compressed for a standard DLT tape, and SuperDLT is even higher, I believe), but there are other major benefits to it such as better error checking, etc.
<strong>
I can't speak for the archival quality of Hi8 (or even MiniDV for sure), but on the whole, tape is a better long-term backup and storage medium. That's why all serious backup is done to DAT, DLT, SyQuest, etc. going way back. Super DLT is incredible backup media. In part, it's purely due to the storage capacity of tape (80GB compressed for a standard DLT tape, and SuperDLT is even higher, I believe), but there are other major benefits to it such as better error checking, etc.</strong><hr></blockquote>
We use tape for backup because its capacity and price per MB are better then anything else currently available. Unfortunately, according to the manufactures and other interested parties, tape will not hold up over the long run.
For long term storage you should go with an optical or magneto-optical system. Depending on the exact media and device used they can last well over 50 years without any loss of data.
Now back to the topic
I really could see apple coming out with some sort of iCamra -- they already came out with the coolest audio/mp3 device, and I think that they will try their hand at video or still imagery (or perhaps a mixture of both).
If they do use a small ipod type hard drive, they should make it removable so you could swap it out for longer recording times (and that way they squeeze out even more money from Joe consumer).
<strong> If all we need is about 3.6MBps we could concievably drop the rotational speed down to a constant 1000rpm or so. This might be even better than constantly spinning the drive up and then down.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Question, If I remember HDD architecture right part of what makes it work right is the rotational speed of the drive causing the heads to float over the platters on a cushion of air right? If you slow down the platters to 1000 RPM's do you lose enough of that cushion to make a diffrence (ie, would the hard drive heads "crash" more often?)
<strong>
For home use, optical storage may be the best bet. Even then, I would make at least two copies and those should be refreshed in five or ten years when we get better technology. I haven't seen anything about how well home-written CD-Rs or CD-RWs stand the test of time.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Home burned CD-Rs are supposed to last about 7 years, give or take.
I've got some Kodak CDr discs here which are rated (by Kodak) for 25 years. Take it with a grain of salt perhaps, but I'm guessing they'll last quite a bit longer than 7 years. I've never had a problem with them and they seem to work everywhere.
it is based on mpeg 4.