The End of Video Tape
I’ve been thinking a lot about video tape.
About its future.
Back when video tape was introduced, it was a release from the high duplication cost and heavy shipping weight of reels of film. Durable and relatively light, they are easy to duplicate and ship. We love Fedex. The tapes get boxed, the Fedex guy comes and off they go, into a huge distribution stream of red, white and blue boxes. Sort of a patriotic network of goods and products in transit.
As of this writing, there is still a healthy demand for video recorded on tape formats. From Mini DV on the low end to D5 at the high end of high definition, there are a range of tape formats to suit every need. New machines are being introduced, along with switchers and other editing gear. Tape formats offer a relatively low cost way to store large amounts of data, and even store the data long term without consuming any power.
However, the mechanical hardware world within which tape is dependant, is passing like the age of the 8-track. Non-linear editing facilities, using computers and software for video editing, are growing at a fast rate. Today’s off the shelf computers are more than powerful enough to record, playback, and edit video, and some even come bundled with the editing programs and DVD burning software. Video cameras are currently being introduced that have no tapes, no mechanics or moving parts, but rather are a brick of memory that can record and then download the video to a computer via USB or Firewire.
On the low end, DVD is killing off VHS tape and the brick memory video cameras will cause the Mini DV format’s extinction. On the high end, tape is still a better format to archive in, however full resolution can be pulled from the tapes onto computer hard disk, so there is a good argument that tape is not needed for archiving.
I use a 100 gig lap top hard drive that has been mounted in a portable case. It takes either USB or Firewire input/outputs. The portable hard drive is a little bigger than a deck of cards and it comes in a leather slip case. The drive is far more versatile than tape, and like tape it stores the video data without need for power. Plus it’s fun to take it out of my pocket, looking like a PDA, but instead filled with hours of movies.
The professional editing houses that I use, even the top end boutiques, are installing servers with terrabytes of storage space. As network cables replace video cables, and servers replace tape machines, multiple editing rooms can share these resources across the network. In fact, editing rooms can share resources across the Internet between any two points on Earth. Tape requires Fedex.
More and more customers are calling for digital formats, where the tape is played back into a computer and compressed into a file format. The file is then placed on an FTP server for immediate download. Customers can get videos anywhere they have a network connection, by cable, DSL, Wi-Fi, or even cell phone.
For capture, I still shoot good old film. Yes, FILM. Motion Picture Negative. Oddly, the old format has still held up as the new transfer machines are able to pull more and more from the negatives over time, so the image only gets better and better. At some point, digital video capture will match the fine grain negative stocks of 35mm motion picture. Or perhaps they already have.
The film negatives have kept up after all these years, but I can’t say the same for video tape. I have tapes from machines that they don’t make any more and are hard to find. And many of the old tapes are easy to spot the age of the video image if its more than about 10 years old. There just isn’t enough color information in the older tapes to make any improvements in the image. While the color film negatives are estimated to last at least 100 years, the video tapes will get iffy after about 10.
I am expecting that my next series of film to video transfer sessions will be tapeless, recording straight to hard drive. Adobe has a format called a Digital Negative and there are others, including Quicktime Animation that hold full resolution. With a secure server, customers can download videos straight from an online shopping cart purchase.
The result of all this digitization? Video is free of the tape, music is free of the disk, images are free of the photograph, and text is free of the paper. Media elements are files now, nuggets of digital data filing through a net of endless connections. Without physical form, they are transmutable and transferrable. In this format-less world, media is unbound.
I just hope the Fedex guy doesn’t lose his job!