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Convenient Store

So this article’s life got started when I was helping a neighbor with their hard drive-based video camera; specifically, they didn’t know how to export the footage to the Personal Computer Box, and gave me a ring for consultation. Over the past couple years I’ve been seeing more and more consumer video cameras go from tape to hard disk for storage, the idea being that you you record on the camera’s disk, and then, when you’re done filming, export the footage to your computer.

And to be honest, I think this direction is a terrible idea.

Before I start arguing, let me clarify on a few kinds of things I’m not talking about:

• Still photography cameras.
• Professional video cameras, or any product for individuals who are extremely knowledgeable about video storage.
• Tiny video cameras, like the Flip, where the purpose is for “flash in the pan” video and not full-fledged, “family vacation to Disneyworld we want to have around in ten years” video.

The success of VHS in home video came about because of how it easy it was: you record your footage, store it, and play it back whenever you’d like. That is what makes the idea of home video so appealing in the first place; your average camera buyer doesn’t really care whether your camera uses tapes, disks, flash memory or sunflower seeds for storage as long as it’s easy and reliable.

This idea has been applicable to almost every video format before hard disks, be it reel, VHS, Hi8, or MiniDV. Playback is a matter of connecting a video out cord— something which almost always ships with the camera— and pressing “Play”. And, barring any sort of horrific disaster to the closet you store your tapes in, it’s guaranteed to be watchable in 10 years (which I even think is an extremely conservative number).

But a hard drive camera entirely eliminates this lovely procedure. I see the process going something like this:

1. Plug the camera into your computer.
2. Drag the footage onto your hard disk.
3. Burn a DVD of it and store it.

And those three steps have a lot of variables, namely:

• What format is the footage in? MPEG, MOV, AVCHD?
• Do I have DVD burning software that doesn’t suck? (and if you’re on Windows, the answer is usually “no”.)¹
• What software do I need to convert the formats to the ones that the DVD software will support?

Even if you’re savvy with computers, there’s no way one can argue that moving the footage from hard disk to computer hard disk to DVD/other storage medium is either, a) easier than tape; or b) not a waste of your time.

So the easiest route with hard disks is to just move the footage to external ones or buy extras for the camera itself— forgoing DVD burning altogether.

(oh, and yes, it is unreasonable to argue that one could just leave the footage on the camera for the span of its usage. That’s stupid.)

So by this token, hard disks are just as convenient as tapes, but still far less reliable. For one, hard disks are prone to total failures that tapes can’t experience, and they’re much more sensitive: dropping a tape, in almost any case, will just yield some anger towards butterfingers; but would you have the same confidence if you dropped a 60GB disk with your family vacation footage on it?

Now, to say hard drives don’t have their place in film entirely would be foolish; if you’re a professional videographer storing large project files and capture scratch folders, storing them on disk is extremely convenient (as I do). But most computer users simply don’t work like that— more often than not, they’ll probably just want a direct print of their recorded video to playback.

“But Austin”, you might ask, “Tape gets old too, you anti-hard drive bastard!”

And by golly, you’re right about that. And I don’t believe tape will last forever either, because eventually, all tape will degrade to the point where it just becomes unviewable.² My candidate for succession? Flash memory.

Why:

• The price of flash memory is depreciating quickly.
• It’s extremely reliable— probably more so than tape.
• Most flash drives are small enough to store comfortably.

I don’t know if any cameras actually do this yet; many accept flash memory for still photography, but if you know of a camera that’s utilizing them for recording, please let me know.

To video camera manufacturers: give me a camera that accepts regular CompactFlash cards, holds a good hour of video on each card, and uses nice formats like MPEG-4 or QuickTime, and I’ll be the first in line to buy.

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