Yesterday morning when faced with the reality of forgetting to replace the SD card in my Nikon DSLR (for all of you tech heads who’ve just woke up – it’s just a D40x go back to sleep) I needed to take some photos around the office – but I had left both my 2 GB cards back at the house (an hour away.)  So my lightning quick mind sprung in to action!  I’ll just go and buy another one as I’ve heard that the prices have come down a bit.  Well I guess that I was in the dark as I was not prepared for the wonderful discovery that I made in the isles of WalMart.  

I picked up an 8 GB SD HC (High Capacity) Card for less than $40.  IN WALLMART!!! Now, I never intended this site to be a place where I’d ponder the future of technology – but none-the-less I feel it necessary to at least think out load the explosion of readily available inexpensive memory cards.

Gone are the days of pulling a tape out of the archive library – but I still have Betacam SP tapes that look as good as the day that I printed them off of my timeline.  A guy that I follow on Twitter spoke up this week that he captured from a past Digibeta Tape, and how it was a foreign exercise as he’s been working on P2 and on Red Ones for quite some time.  As for me – I shoot mostly set down interview style work and have the luxury of always having my nice big laptop with me, so Adobe’s OnLocation comes to my rescue on a regular basis – but I always role tape at the same time as doing a slave record on the laptop.  

Also note – that I’m not sure why I still run tape (it’s a safety blanket – I know) but it does help me sleep at night knowing that not only is it footage already captured on the drive – but it’s on tape for archive as well.  Yes, I still archive to tape!!!  

But why all of the hype of tapeless formats and shooting – will I ever get rid of my tapeless anxiety, perhaps in time, and as these cards keep coming down in price I think that I’ll grow more fond of using them. 

Now on to what I really wanted to talk about – “How this changes things in the world of Video Production” If you are not aware, there has been a sort of revolution going on in HD (and higher) resolution shooting – behold the day of the DSLR or DSMC (Digital Still & Motion Camera as Red has named them) after announcing that RED was going to make a DSLR killer – they then pulled the plug to re-think their 3k camera Scarlet.  There has been much speculation and very little detail as to what this camera will do, but I asure you that it’s going to be an Earth shattering release for this company!  

Some have suggested that they had a break through with their new sensor that’s going to allow them to bring a whole lot more to the table!  But could all of this came about with out these memory cards.  The RED One uses a proprietary eSATA and Power cable to send to the Red RAID Drive (their equivalent of a capture medium).  Originally on the Renders that were made available for the Scarlet – you could see two CF slots on the back presently there are 80 GB CF (with 100 GB on the horizon.)  

All of this is going to forever change the way that we all shot – and the way that we archive this footage. The thing about tapeless media is that you want to be able to re-use that card as often as possible, forever gone are the days of “pass me a fresh tape.” You’re going to need a place to off-load the footage, some where to store it, and once your done a proper way of archiving / backing this data up!  (Also note – as with tapes too, having once lost a very important tape to failure – if you only have one copy on a shelf, it’s not a safe back up!)  

So I ask the question to you the community – how has this changed, if at all – the way that you work?  How are you archiving footage once your done with the project?  How do you see this changing the face of production?  

Please post a comment here, or message me on twitter – @big_b_rad

BTW – Brian Potter recently brings up some very interesting concepts on a resent post regarding the age of DSLR too, check out his blog as it’s a really great source of information and creative inspiration too!

A while back I was awe-struck with Red’s Announcement that there would be a new plug-in that would allow for a RAW 4k Workflow with-in my favorite suite of products!  Well there’s been a long lapse of time from that announcement and there have been a few more “announcements” from Adobe regarding their latest release to the Creative Suite Family (CS4 – if you’re living under a rock has been announced.)  

There are many people that are talking about it – so I’m not going to add to that noise, check out the source for all of your news needs…  But only on thing that I’m rather taken back with all of this news hype, people scrambling to get their hands on tutorials so that they are ready for Mid October (when CS4 is said to be shipping, also note that if you buy CS3 now – you’ll receive CS4 when it ships! But I digress…)

In all of the updates that we all want to discover and learn how to use – there’s talk about the new tape less work flow, and there has been mention of RED’s R3D but nothing that I’ve seen has officially listed R3D on the list.

I know that there was always a lot of talk of CS4 being the answer for all of these – as it would allow 64 bit support for more memory (needed when cutting 4k footage!).  But I recall that there was CS3 support promised for R3D Support.  So what am I missing…  Adobe’s not really talking about RED other than at the first live event for CS4 – no official mentions on their site, as if to say that it’s not a reality – yet.  

Well I guess time will tell, and the new tapeless workflow will lend itself to this addition when it’s ready!!! But I really hope that’s at time of release.

OK – I’ve been reporting on other blogs a bunch lately, but I promise that I’ll have more to report on my Shoebox project really soon – among other really great goals that I’ve set for my self!

But this bears repeating!  PVC: CMG (creating motion graphics) Blog has just posted a link to RedUser.net where it was released that within a week R3D files will work natively in Adobe Premiere and After Effects!

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