choosing the "right" new format

I am a Cow member but somehow didn't realize this form existed. But was glad to find it!

I work in a fairly small (10 person) AV department of a non profit international organization. Our department has existed all throughout the 1 inch, UMATIC, Beta, Digi Beta change eras. We do both production and post production (FCP) and all finished programs are output and archived in Digibeta. We've always strived to reach good quality and employed sound production values for each project trying to make the most informed decisions possible when it came to making big purchases. So far - knock wood - we have not been disappointed in the various format roads we have chosen to pursue. We have over 15,000 tapes in our archive and catalogue not only finished programs but also all the original rushes. The older tape formats are being transfered little by little to Digital Betacam. Being a worldwide organization our finished products are distributed on DVD anywhere from New York to Manila. Eveything pertains to the organization so there is no "profit" in the traditional sense.

In addition multicamera live shoots which finish on DigiBeta, we have been doing our solo camera shooting with a Sony DVW 700 for the past 10 years and it's time to change the camera. Enter dilemma...

Where do you go from here? At this stage in the technical era things seem so volital and it's no longer a matter of simply "getting a new camera" but rather embracing a whole new way of working and hardware that it takes to get the job done. We had Sony's HD CAM over for a "test drive" and while we saw stunning pictures, the simple fact that the Sony salesman also had to bring the HD VTR and HD monitor to appreciate the quality makes even more real the fact that a future down that road is incredibly expensive and unrealistic for us. We have 4 edit bays so would eventually need other VTR's and then HD monitors, etc etc... I stated that I work for a non profit organization since our "client base" doesn't necessarily provide motivation for the HD technology at present. As I said, our end users are all over the world and in some parts of the third world especially, the transition to DVD has just been made only now.

Though Sony is running sort of an "anti SD" campaign, raising prices on their SD gear to make it "silly" not to go HD...it's just seems to be a pretty scary moment in time right now.

We are looking at the P2 technology too and that is attractive because 1) the picture quality is great and 2) you don't need the expensive VTR's to ingest the material into the edit system. It could prove a "softer" entry to the HD world.

The big quandry there is the whole archive issue. What are people using the solid state tecnology doing to archive all the rushes?

The disc based XDCAM is interesting since the media itself is cheaper but will it go the way of Beta SX? It doesn't strike me as an enduring format for the long haul, but I may be wrong...

Would it be crazy to go with a SD Digital Betacam camera for now? I feel the DigiBeta format will be around for at least another 10 years. We still have a Beta 75P that still sees work! That too was a real workhorse. We have no immediate "need" necessarily to go HD, but want to make investments that make sense also for the future.

I know there are no clear cut answers, but I feel it is more difficult than ever for those of us with limited funds to make an "enlightened" decision. Which camera to buy today affects the future direction of the whole shop. We don't want to mount the wrong horse. Things are changing too rapidly and too many factors influence which formats will be in for the long ride.

I don't normally like long posts, but I wanted to be as clear as possible.

Anyone want to chime in with their thoughts and/or exerience?
Thanks in advance.





Dual 2.7 GHz G5, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9650, Xserve RAID, AJA IO, 2 20" Cinema Display, FCP 5.1.2, OS X10.4.8