HVX-200 Vs. Sony HVR-Z7U

[danielisaiah]

So I see that Sony is coming in the market with a true 1080p cam like the HVX (for $6K+ though)

But, after reading the fine print, it looks like this is a knock-off of the good ol; trusty HVX. And unless Sony has changed their spec sheet on what their "HDV" standard is, this camera will be down converting from 1080p to 1440x1080 and will not offer any good 720p options.......

what do you all think of this new SONY contender?

I think I'm going to stick with my HVX acquisition.....

[Pjs2020]

I know nothing, except when I first read about the Sony I thought I made a big mistake getting the HVX200. The Sony records to cards too, but the Sony 25 gig card is only $28 bucks! Can't wait for the P2 cards to be that price!

[wgzn]

if the sony still shoots HDV format. the discussion is over before it begins.

HDV = YUCK

[ProfessorU]

It would be nice to see some more pressure on Panasonic to bring P2 cards into competitive pricing. I would think a 500GB firestore would have the same effect.

[ullanta]

I know nothing, except when I first read about the Sony I thought I made a big mistake getting the HVX200. The Sony records to cards too, but the Sony 25 gig card is only $28 bucks! Can't wait for the P2 cards to be that price!

Ummm... Sony 16GB card is around $900 (around the same as P2). There's no "25 GB card"... you may be thinking of a 25GB Professional Disc?

[Barry_Green]

The Z7U doesn't use SxS, it uses CompactFlash, so the memory is probably quite a bit cheaper per gig.

[cheezweezl]

records to CF - awesome
interchangeable lenses - more awesome
HDV - not awesome

that's definitely a dealbreaker for me.

[hiproductions]

yeah...DVCPro HD has a better compression rate...but its still 720p.
The images from Sony's 1/4" CMOS chips are gorgeous and beautiful.
Even more so than the HVX. BUT NOW Sony is putting 1/3" chips in
the new Z7 with an even greater low light response which blows the
HVX200 away. Gorgeous Beautiful Wonderful Sony images.

HVX200 - No Estarle Me Gustan, Z7 - Gorgeous Beautiful Wonderful

Video Production Las Vegas
http://www.hiproductions.com

[hiproductions]

But then again, this is a Panasonic blog so I guess Pro-Sony opinions are not welcome.
Balanced blogging is overrated anyway isn't it?

[Barry_Green]

yeah...DVCPro HD has a better compression rate...but its still 720p.
HVX is 1080p.


The images from Sony's 1/4" CMOS chips are gorgeous and beautiful.
Even more so than the HVX.
Your opinion, but when the light gets low can you still say that? How about when the rolling shutter causes issues? There's a lot to consider.


BUT NOW Sony is putting 1/3" chips in
the new Z7 with an even greater low light response which blows the
HVX200 away.
SAYS WHO? Have you tested them side by side? The 1/4" chips are about 2 stops slower than the HVX, the best the 1/3" chips would do is match the HVX.


Gorgeous Beautiful Wonderful Sony images.
Ah. Explains much. Well, you're entitled to your opinion; I'd rather test 'em side by side.

[David Saraceno]

BUT NOW Sony is putting 1/3" chips in
the new Z7 with an even greater low light response which blows the
HVX200 away. Gorgeous Beautiful Wonderful Sony images.


Blows it away in who's estimation?

Yours or some international standards commission?

Give us a break. If you had stated you liked the Sony image better, then I don't have a problem with that

But all this subjective.

BTW, what are your views on Long GOP and CMOS rolling shutters?

[Aram Keledjian]

Panasonic does not make a fire-store for the HVX, "Focus Enhancement" does. FS100 has been a very faulty piece of equipment, stick with the P2 cards made by PANASONIC.

[Justyn]

As stated before.. this is a personal choice.. a hammer for different carpenters. Personally though I'd rather have my eyelids burned off than buy a sony camcorder... again just a personal choice as well as I've been making money off the HVX now for almost 2 years and year it will be 2 years and counting.

[David Saraceno]

FS100 has been a very faulty piece of equipment, stick with the P2 cards made by PANASONIC.

Well, not really. A "very faulty piece of equipment?" Errr, no, I don't think so.

What you see here are reports of issues, not reports of no issues.

To be objective, the latest firmware has presented less problems.

Not many in a doctor's waiting room stating that they just dropped by to say that they weren't ill.

[Mouayed Zabtia]

look also HVX work fine with adobe OL not as sony camcorder.

[rpmnava]

I gotta ask a question... I see a reply stating the HVX is 1080P ? all I see is 1080i 30P ?? please clarify.

Nava

[David Jimerson]

The (NTSC) 200 shoots 1080/24p and 1080/30p. Both are 1080p.

But they're recorded in a 60i stream. No matter, because the original progressive frames can be extracted.

[Barry_Green]

The HVX shoots 1080p footage. It gets recorded using an interlaced codec, but the footage is progressive and your NLE will un-wrap the interlaced "wrapper" and return it to its original native progressive state.

[rpmnava]

Thank you guys sooo much... I know its sounds stupid but this has been on my mind for awhile. If I shoot 1080i 60 then no luck right? For slow mo .

Thank You

Nava

[David Jimerson]

You can only shoot interlaced at 1080/60, yes.

[drdimento]

We didn't respond to this thread previously because we didn't consider ourselves experienced enough to comment and for the most part still don't but having been a reasonably seasoned HVX200 and HVX200A user and recently going the distance into the HVR-Z7U HDV world we thought we'd offer at least some early input . . .

ROLLING SHUTTER - alhthough touted to be a major hazard with the CMOS chip we haven't seen this. Whether the CMOS rolling shutter issue has been fixed by Sony's new EIS (enhanced image stabalization) or the new pre-filtering of image noise system, we have not seen this come into play BUT the camera time is somewhat limited at the moment reporting less than 10 hours.

LOW LIGHT - absolutely astonishing. Great images at low light and right there with a DVX100B with -18db gain or the low light PD170 cranked . . BUT . . at these levels there are problems with auto focusing when doing any kind of pushes where the camera hunts and chases quick and dirty on close ups and totally "bad" for production use and thus - must go to manual focus in this scenario and is especially a challenge in low light. For our low light wedding receptions and event applications however not a big issue, set the back focus carefully and maticulously on the removable lens (like you should with any removable professional lens), set the zoom to wide (no push) and move the camera not the zoom . . which is the way we usually do it anyway. Our DVX's did this too when hand held zooming but not even 1/10th as much as the Z7. In fact, move the camera a little like in a handheld situation (which is ALWAYS for us on wedding receptions) and do a zoom and it's actually funny (not really but for a pun anywho) to watch the camera hunt and chase for an image. The first time I asked myself, "where is that coming from?" However, a quick search finds that there are helps to make it better as indicated above. The end result is about like the DVX on auto focus . . or . . just go manual and the problem is not there. For us we like auto in this scenario and thus we go infinity and move the camera which is what we did with the DVX and HVX anyways. Handheld zooming is an invitation to make viewers sick :o)

HDV RECORDING - not at all as bad as we had thought. Having formerly had HVX200A we were very very worried about the image quality and very worried about this compressed codec but the newer design image noise clean up in the Z7U apparently sends down a cleaner and more robust HDV image to be recorded and the result is a cleaner picture which has way more color than we were expecting and so here we were quite pleased. Also, haven't experienced any drops yet either which was something we were very worried about although "time" may change this present experience.

REMOVABLE LENS - this is a beauty. The ability to control everything (zoom, focus, iris) with one hand in one location without moving around is like heaven. I had never experienced this before but I love it. The ENG guys have all the tools :o) If we only had their budgets :o)

REMOVABLE RECORDING UNIT - this is a sweetheart. For the guys who like the external hard drive recording like with the Focus Enhancement gear, you will love this Compact Flash drive unit. We don't know all the ins and outs yet but the ability to take the thing off, use it in the field with a camera battery as an external drive for other apps, is a like "where did this idea come from?" Also, Compact Flash is soooooo simple to use it's a dream. Pull it from the unit, plug it into a laptop with a port or an external adapter that can be picked up from Wal-Mart for 20 bux and Windows or OS X recognizes it instantly and the HDV material is available instantly. This is nice . . PLUS . . see the next comment.

ARCHIVAL - we were even more impressed with this feature and have found our hearts journey . . we get both tape for archiving and safety factor and direct to edit Cards like we had with the P2 and for our TV, event, and commercial applications, we can actually go straight from the shoot, edit from the Compact Flash material (with the tape waiting anxiously in the background in case the Compact Flash was disastered) copied over, and output within the hour.

TOTAL STORY - We recently went from Avid to Apple Final Cut with a MacBook Pro and MacPro with Avid Liquid and Edius Broadcast on a Windows Boot Camp partition, and found that we can take the MacBook Pro to the clients, shoot the video material with the Z7U on CF and tape (again the latter simply for backup/archival), load into the laptop in minutes using a Sony fast external card adapter (have tried many and learned that this Sony one is extremely fast for some reason?), edit the commercial on location while the shoot crew is packing up, fix any corrections right at the customers, and upload to the TV server via ftp upload and left with a check. Now that's the way to do commercials. We just termed this process as "Production On Location" or POL for short.

PRODUCTION NOTE - BTW, because of our lack of experience with Final Cut at the moment, and our present continuing growing experience with Edius, for speed we use Avid Liquid Pro on the Windows side; however, it will only be a matter of time for us to probably go 100% FCP Suite 2 because of it's total flexibility and workability for our broadcast, event, and movie needs.

So, there is our limited experience update on this threads question and hope that this helps at least some as we too struggled with this camera question as we sought to improve our workflow and ease our fears of solid state production.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the LCD is a real comfort both in position and look (looking comfortably forward and easy to look onto the subject from the panel) plus has a nice crisp apparent HD image. Also, we're hoping to try some DVcam to see how that looks and now that we have it, learn how to use the histogram. The HDMI was nice for instant viewing on an HDTV and as far as the feel of the device in our hands, it's pretty much size and feel of the HVX with a nice egonomic handle but without the front end load of the EX1 which we didn't like at all for many many reasons not the least of which was the front end off balance and the "no immediate backup - archive" on the fly.