Life of the Roving Cameraman

I am not sure if the members of tvforum.co.uk would be interested in this but I thought that I would let you know about it.

I am a cameraman working for the UK breakfast TV station GMTV. Since January this year I have been doing a Blog about my weird and wonderful life in the road covering many stories on tape and live. So far this year I have endured the rainy streets of Manchester doing vox pops, sailed the ocean blue doing live broadcasts from a cruise ship, soaked up the history of Rome during the Champions League Final and dodged the bullets in Basra.

I have tried to make things as interesting and amusing as possible whilst not altering the facts.

Please feel free to have a look http://shootinglive.blogspot.com

I hope that you do find it interesting and entertaining.

Any comments welcome either in this forum or at my e-mail address rovingcameraman@tvstar.com

Regards

Rovingcameraman

Hello, welcome, sounds fun.

You mention your on contract for ITN, I presume you're more usually a freelancer then and I presume your own kit, I'd be interested to know what you shoot on, are ITN looking to move to HD yet or are they still happy with DVCam and Digi?

What a terrible experience. My thoughts are with you.

Depending on your opinion you could call me one of the lucky staffers still knocking around.

As for the format it is still DVcam I have to suffer. When will that change? No idea. I would be happy if it did because for various reasons I don't like it.

Well, at least it's digital. SSD Cams are the future.

DSR 450, 570.... 500??

Yes and no, most people still prefer a tape, be it DVCam or HDCam and its various steps inbetween. I know some guys who are experimenting with Z7's and their ability to record to tape and compact flash, it'll be interesting to see which route they pick. They're keen on tapeless but for now people are still dubious.

Standard ITN issue DSR 450.

What makes me chuckle is the fact they film on tape (most of the time), take it to an SNG or an editor and transfer the tape to the computer so it is on hard disk. Why not just cut out the middle man?

Interesting stuff... I'll be taking a look.

Many reasons.

Tape is cheap - a small DVCam costs around £1.50 in bulk purchase. Even the cheapest flash format (SD card - either in an SxS converter or directly plugged into the JVC XDCam EX SD card camcorder) costs 30-40 times that for the same storage, and P2 and SxS are in the hundred times more expensive region...

If you want to archive the material shot - and many news broadcasters archive their rushes - you end up copying the Flash media to a hard drive (albeit often faster than real time if you have the Flash media and the editing platform in the same location - though if you are line-feeding via an SNG truck you still do this in the video domain and in real time), but then having also to archive the Flash media to... Guess what... LTO tape or similar data tape media for long-term storage.

Also - if you are part of a pool - giving a fellow broadcaster a £1.50 DVCam tape is not really an issue. However you're going to want your £400 P2 card back...

Of the non-tape formats, XDCam optical disc is proving quite popular for ENG. The discs are still a lot more expensive than tape - but cheaper than P2 and SxS - but can be archived. There is also a semi-compatible Flash variant (though XDCam HD 422 is 50Mbs and disc only, the XDcam EX HD flash format is 35Mbs and quite marginal for broadcast HD)

Some tapes are still overpriced though, DVCPro and DVCPro HD are almost identical, is the extra 50mbps from Pro 50 to Pro HD worth over double the cost?