Not impressed.

[bluestar]

I went to the ResFest Chicago today, wasn't totally impressed with the HVX sample footage project, although the footage on the small lcd was very VERY VERY good, but the night shot from amsterdam jan shot was like a 6, I was hoping to see the footage she had projected instead of the crap fabric we had to stare at. Sorry it really upsetted me that I waited to see that.

On the other hand, the Canon footage I saw was brilliant, a little jitttery but David said it was the projector, I have a feeling it was the footage being interlaced(but progressive) So from all the footage I have seen, Canon hits it there right now as I'm not so impressed with the HVX.... i know i know.. I'll wait till I see a completed model.

By the way, these P2 cards? I'm sorry but PCMCIA that hold the digital cards in them? 4 gb for how much?(not sure) but if I can get 4 1gb sd card $600 and just slap it in a PCMCIA card. I think I'll find my OWN DIY P2 card by intergrating personal bought sd sticks into a pcmcia closure.

[Neil Rowe]

hey, while i do not share your opinion on the camera whatsoever. I was wondering did you get to play with the live HVX after the show.. if you did, you couldve pointed it at whatever you wanted in the hall section and looked at something other than the fabric on the prerecorded tape.

[David G. Smith]

If you want to trust a DIY P2 card on a shoot, good luck! I haven't seen any of the footage and am gonna wait til I can get my hands on one.

[braw]

By the way, these P2 cards? I'm sorry but PCMCIA that hold the digital cards in them? 4 gb for how much?(not sure) but if I can get 4 1gb sd card $600 and just slap it in a PCMCIA card. I think I'll find my OWN DIY P2 card by intergrating personal bought sd sticks into a pcmcia closure.

Yeah, this specific topic and attitude has been hashed out on this board at least 4 million and two times....wait, now three.

Look into it, the cost is high but it is what it is and you don't have to use it.

[bluestar]

nah, i mean I can't say anything much on the HVX, just that I was disappointed that the crap footage was projected rather than the good stuff Jan shot - it was pretty damn good, litterally close to looking out a window. I didn't bother touching it because it wasn't complete and I would of rather had done some tests outside rather than interior, also using the variable frame rates. Its okay i understand why panny's gotta keep some of their secrets behind the wall till release. I'll wait for the next one. Were you there by the way? Did you see the canon footage?

[bluestar]

Yeah, this specific topic and attitude has been hashed out on this board at least 4 million and two times....wait, now three.

Look into it, the cost is high but it is what it is and you don't have to use it.

Oh I know. It's just that the prices for these P2's aren't going to really get any cheaper, I just feel they're making a big profit off of something - to me, seems like I can gather up with an engineer and make our own p2 card. That's all. I'm not bashing the hvx at all, p2 maybe. The reason why is because of the cards simplicity and its huge price range. I'd love to use a p2 because its much simpler than hauling a firestore - which is what I am planning to use anyways.

[Neil Rowe]

..yes i was there. ..i am everywhere. ..lol .. anyhow, the best part about the projected footage was the candle footage which really highlights the available lattitude of the cam. and also the really nonexistant flaire or streak of the lense. .. hands on afterwards.. well it was great .. ive posted here already:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=35825

.. but yes the footage out the window and such is much more interesting than the projected footage put together imho as well. picking it up there and looking TTL was very very nice. i was really marvelling at the controls and the imagery.. the lattitude and color fidelity was just really impressive compared to a dvx. whether i opend the iris all the way or irised down to underexposure the colors remained true, and the detail was intact. both in shadows AND in highlights.. which rlled off so smoothly i couldnt even tell if i really ever blew anything out at all.. aside from direct light scources.. anyway.. needless to say i was impressed. Ive already bought one,. but after the hands on.. ,I'm just happier i did.

[braw]

I have faith that anything digital when the demand is high will get geeks out in full force to give us what we want. The Andromeda system is crazier than I though anyone would get with the DVX, so I anticipate many alternatives coming down the pike.

[Spec-Comm]

The P2 cards have an LSI chip built into the card. It's not just a bunch of SD cards. Check it out on in the "White Papers" that are floating around from Panasonic.

Andrew Hoffman

[Neil Rowe]

..yeah, building 4 Sd cards into a raid array on an LSI controller the size of a quarter isnt anything doable for 600.00 and as Jan pointed out. if you get any slight error in one.. with the raid array your data would be poop. it sounds like the firestore or laptop would be a better option for you. Jan had a FS-100 proto there with her, but it wasnt all worked out yet and ready to show. . looked nice on the outside though.


..also the thing.. .."big thing", i should say about the canon footage is that you shouldnt expect to get that imagery out of the camera under ordinary shooting circumstances. that footage was taken off the uncompressed out at 4:2:2 and digitized to DVCPRO HD tape for playback. however unless you have many thousands of dollars lying around for a field aquisition solution that can ingest uncompressed 4:2:2 HD, your likely going to be shooting HDV which is 4:2:0 or the equivilent of 1/2 the color space resolution of the footage you saw.. it will also be encoded to mpg2.. not DVCPRO HD which means it will have interframe compression.. not intraframe like DVCPRO HD.. so youll get any associated mpg artifacts from movement and suchand all that jazz, and have a much more highly compressed video stream with the reduced HDV color spaace which is the equivilent of DV colorspace. so basically in a nutshell the footage from the canon was an absolutue best case scenario assuing you have the money for capturing mobile uncompressed. check the prices on that if your unfamiliar.. its not pretty. but for regular usage.. its not a real example of the HDV most of its buyers will use whatsoever. the HVX fooateg on the other hand was also captured via uncompressed.. but analog uncompressed. then run through a a/d converter.. and digitized to DVCPRO HD.. using a camera that is only 80% done without progressive imagery or any cine-like gamma in place.. so basically its a near worst case scenario.. with a production mopdel you could make use of one of the cine-like gammas, shoot progressive, in 24p and shoot 4:2:2 directly to P2 and stay all in the digital domain. the analog 4:2:2 output of the HVX has nothing over the straight digital 4:2:2 workflow it has.. in fact ts worse.. why would you output analog just to convert back to digital .. it should be better to stay full digital straight to P2..firestore, computer capture in NLE .. DVCPRO HD deck via 1394 or whatever. so anyway .. point is your viewing a best case scenario for the canon that is likely out of reach realitsically for any sort of production outside of a studio. and a near worst case scenario for the HVX.. while the best case scenario will be available for anyone to shoot while mobile through any of the above mentioned recording methods easily. ..and not really cost any more.

anyway.. it was interestng footage. :) they are all nice cameras.

on a side note the SPX800 sitting in the lobby was of course nice as well. IT was powered up and sort of neat to comapre to the SDX900.. being in the P2 realm with its mods and such.

[Ralph Oshiro]

On the other hand, the Canon footage I saw was brilliant, a little jitttery but David said it was the projector . . .He said the same thing at the Los Angeles RESfest.

[bluestar]

hmmm, wondering if they were travelling with the same projector...

[wabbit]

. that footage was taken off the uncompressed out at 4:2:2 and digitized to DVCPRO HD tape for playback. however unless you have many thousands of dollars lying around for a field aquisition solution that can ingest uncompressed 4:2:2 HD, your likely going to be shooting HDV which is 4:2:0 or the equivilent of 1/2 the color space resolution of the footage you saw.. it will also be encoded to mpg2.. not DVCPRO HD which means it will have interframe compression.. not intraframe like DVCPRO HD.. so youll get any associated mpg artifacts from movement and suchand all that jazz, and have a much more highly compressed video stream with the reduced HDV color spaace which is the equivilent of DV colorspace..

I have read a couple of these post about how good the Canon looked and have been wondering why no one cried foul on this. The whole deal with HDV cameras is...well they are HDV. To showcase a HDV camera without using the HDV compression is just...cheating. Show us what your camera can do for the average user today.

Cheers

[Stevet]

To showcase a HDV camera without using the HDV compression is just...cheating. Show us what your camera can do for the average user today.
Cheers


My feelings exactly! and I am a fan of Canon. Always have been.
If they don't feel the HDV is good enough, they should of gone
with at least DVCPRO HD.

Steve

[icicle22]

Perhaps Canon would like to show it's material under ideal conditions. this camera is clearly not marketed around the HDV codec. It is marketed more towards a studio camera and therefore they are pushing those features. The HDV portion is really just a bonus to give an alternative affordable method of recording for those that don't need the uncompressed out.

How would you feel if all of the footage being released from Panasonic (there is none of note yet) was just DV? Wouldn;t you be a bit frustrated because you want to see the 1080P 24p features? So by that token when Panny starts to circulate 1080 24P footage will we all be on here saying "Show us what your camera can do for the average user today." Not this high quality stuff shot on thousands of dollars of P2 cards.

While I deeply wish Canon had gone with a DVCPRO quality codec in addition to the HDV, I also wish Panny would have given an option for something in between P2-=DVCPROHD and DV. IF HDV were even an option on the Panny I know a lot of people who would be all over it.

[Stevet]

Some good points icicle22, but t's apple and oranges.
With 1 P2 8GB and any old off the shelf firewire backup hard drive,
I've got a solution for DVCPRO HD for less than $8K.
That's the cost of the Canon alone!

The HD solution for the Canon involves some extemely healthy
dollars.
I do agree that the Canon is marketed around a studio enviroment.

It's only being mentioned since someone brought it up.

The bottom line is to step up to Panasonic's high end solution (P2)
is a fraction of the cost of Canon's H1 HD high end solution.

If it looks better, it had better at that cost!


Steve

[goldyprog]

My feelings exactly! and I am a fan of Canon. Always have been.
If they don't feel the HDV is good enough, they should of gone
with at least DVCPRO HD.

Steve

Panasonic has exclusive rights to this format. But I know what you mean-- they could have tried creating a newer format that is similar to the DVCPro HD 1.667 compression figures . . . especially on tape!!! I think that is what a lot of us were looking for, even with the revolutionary p2.

I could also name a few other things . . but I'll leave that for another thread. Just keep in mind that these cameras brought a lot in this generation of cameras-- I'm still going "wow," and haven't even seen one operate!!!!!!!

[wabbit]

While I half see your point Icicle, I haven't really seen the Canon marketed as a studio camera. My one experience at Resfest was it had little to do with studio work but independent productions. Canon appears to be going after the prosumer upgrade market. Seeing what it can do under the best conditions is great and everyone totally understands why a company will demonstrate that but showing what it will do under more average circumstances is important (without a deck that cost twice as much as the camera).

More importantly, were they being very clear about how the footage was captured compared to a more standard usage? To turn that back to Panasonic, I have never seen any attempt to say you can get HD footage without some further investment beyond the $6000 camera. They have been very straight forward to that point. But that has just been my observations.

Cheers

[Loki]

DVCPRO-HD is not 1.67:1 compression.. it is heavier than DV... at 6.7:1 compression..

142MB/sec for uncompressed 8-bit 4:4:4 video (this is based on pixel calculations, actual video might work differently, not sure on the storage format of uncompressed video)

DVCPRO-HD is about 12.5 MB/sec..

of course not exact figures but rounded a bit..

[icicle22]

Well not too long before the H1 was announced I caught wind of some inside information about it and all of the hype was about how it was going to revolutionize the HD market for studios. It was bringing features that only $50K cameras had. It was going to really turn the afoordability of HD in smaller studios and events (Sports) upside down with features that aren't normally found anywhere near this price range. That was the hype I heard. and...oh yeah...it will do HDV also if you want to use that. but back to the cool studios stuff....

That was the tone of the info I heard just a little before the official announcement. So I have never thought of this as an HDV camera. But to each his own.

[Stevet]

That was the tone of the info I heard just a little before the official announcement. So I have never thought of this as an HDV camera. But to each his own.


Well than this brings up the question on who has the best deals on HD Decks?
These are not cheap. Are there other cheaper HD-SDI solutions?

[fiercecurry]

The only other solution and a cheaper one, is to bring a desktop computer with a RAID hard drive set-up to your location, and capture with your NLE. For studio environments this shouldn't be a big problem, on location it could be.

[stokestack]

Yeah, I have a Sony Z1 sitting around, but of course it's HDV and that sucks. But it does have component output, and I also have a Panasonic HD1200a DVCPro HD deck. So my big idea was running the component out of the Z1 into an Aja Io and then SDI out of that into the Panasonic deck.

No dice. The $2000 Io (in addition to having to be tethered to a Mac just to select inputs) doesn't do HD. Lame.

BUT, Aja also has a little converter called the HD10A, which looks perfect for this. Unfortunately, the Panasonic deck is still $20,000 I think, and although it's small for a deck it's bulky for a portable setup. Still, this seems like the cheapest DVCPro HD setup for the time being.

[Ralph Oshiro]

I have read a couple of these post about how good the Canon looked and have been wondering why no one cried foul on this.Yeah, I thought that was goddamned weird too! Thank god, someone in the RESfest L.A. audience pointed that out in the Q&A, and I was like, "Whhhhaaaaaattt???" Then they showed this BTS footage of the Canon H1 demo shoot. They had as much gear on that shoot as I've seen on any Hollywood feature production! Camera cars, cranes, dollies, huge HMIs . . . I mean, the scale of production was ridiculous. And to record that to an HD VTR is just plain misleading. Shame on Canon for not ANNOUNCING (without being questioned by a savvy attendee) that what we were watching was actually a goddamned full-res, 4:2:2, non-MPEG, HD signal.

[evinsky]

And it still had motion issues!