Serial Digital

1080i and 720p, 2k and 4k “digital film”, 35mm optical film, and 576p are all bad enough – add to that, the fact that most equipment can’t handle those higher-high-definition formats, so companies like Sony and Panasonic are “modifying” them to create sub-standards which are backwards or forwards compatible – but never quite work that way – CineAlta, ProHD, DVCPro 100, HDV… the list goes on… then you get to ingest, where you have to choose your storage format – MPEG2 HD, uncompressed HD, WMV HD for storage and archive – do you record to hard disk, tape, or flash media? What about data transfer? HDSDI? FireWire? Ethernet?

 The industry is in the messy phase of trying to sort through which formats are garbage and which formats are feasible in the long term – add to that the fact that processing power is changing so quickly that a format which was unthinkable 12 months ago is now considered too basic by today’s standards.

I think it’s clear that multi-platform systems are the only path for content development, production, and presentation applications – systems which are, in essence or reality, a PC with multiple codecs which is capable of ingress from a variety of methods or formats, and perform faster-than-real-time encoding to a single format for storage and replay, and can then also export to a variety of formats and using a variety of data transfer methods – let’s face it – it’s time to throw out your VTRs and buy PCs.