Debate held at Video Forum 2006 held in Earls Court 7-9th of February
Speakers: Phil Reed -Freelance Engineer (worked with Big Brother), Phil Wilton- Sony, Ian Low- Panasonic UK, John- Rout Six (worked with Big Brother).

The spokesman from Panasonic Ian spoke about their new P2 HD card 8GB, to use with Panasonics range of P2 Series equipment for more info look here. P2 can do any format from DV quality to Digi Beta. It can work on any platform AVID etc. It works out saving you 20 min. compared with tape technology since there is no need to digitize the footage.
The P2 is sold at a price around £430 for 8 GB the price has fallen from £1500 a few years ago.
Sony instead has developed the Sony’s XDCAM™ Professional Disc™. Phil Wilton from Sony stressed that it’s the file format that is most important the Hard ware come and go, further he underlined that tapeless doesn’t mean media less.
Phil Reed described the complicated work flow of the Big Brother series which because of its Reality TV nature could really benefit from working in a tapeless environment, since they shoot so much footage and need to storage it all, at the time of recording they had 7 terrabits worth of stuff after one day.

Someone in the audience asked what one would do about servers breaking down, the panel answered with confidence that the data should always be in two places at once, when you are in production you wouldn’t erase the memory cards until the job has been finished, and aired. Also someone from channel 4 in the audience said that they use both memory card and tape at the same time as a back up.

It was interesting to hear the latest news from industry members, even though the title of the seminar made me think there would be somebody advocating tape as well, but they were in agreement that tapeless production is here to stay.

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