Need advice on HVX's HD capabilities

[aravance]

I have an HVX200 with 2 4gig p2 cards, and that setup suits the majority of my work just fine for recording in HD since it's start and stop.

However, I'm curious if you would be able to capture HD for extended periods of time? For example, an hour and a half LIVE show with a three camera setup.

Would it be possible to hook up several HVX's to a switcher and record HD, recording live to tape using something like the Panasonic AJ-D950 DVCPRO50 deck?

How would you hook up the HVX's to the switcher (component/firewire?)

What would this setup look like?

I don't know if any of this is covered in Barry's new book...I'm still waiting on mine from Panasonic.

But any advice/recommedations would be extremely helpful.

Thanks.

[Richard Sutcliffe]

We have covered a three day sporting event with 4 hvx200 shooting 10-12 hours a day with no problems whatsoever. We were. however shooting DV50, shooting HD would have required more P2 cards. My opinion is that you can cover pretty much anything with the HVX, question is, do you have the equipment to do it. Throw enough cards at the HVX and you can do whatever you want. With 3 p2 cards and the right workflow setup you can do a helluva lot.

Somebody else better deal with the switcher, we ran free run timecode and cut in post.

[aravance]

Yeah, we are looking to cut LIVE, and therefore use a switchboard...so I think using p2 cards is out of the question.

Thanks though.

Any other advice?

[Barry_Green]

However, I'm curious if you would be able to capture HD for extended periods of time? For example, an hour and a half LIVE show with a three camera setup.
If you went ISO to DV Rack 2.0 HD or FCP, you could record each camera's stream in HD that way.


Would it be possible to hook up several HVX's to a switcher and record HD, recording live to tape using something like the Panasonic AJ-D950 DVCPRO50 deck?
DVCPRO50 isn't HD. You'd need to use an HD deck like the AJ-HD1200A or AJ-HD1400. With that said, um, I guess you could but I don't know of any firewire switchers that handle DVCPRO-HD; maybe they're out there but I haven't heard of 'em.

[quyote]How would you hook up the HVX's to the switcher (component/firewire?)[/quote]
Component is likely to be more prevalent than a firewire connection, I would assume.

[aravance]

So could you go Component Out from the cameras to the Switcher?
And then just send that to the HD Deck?

[rwatkins]

What about recording to a firestore array via firewire and using the component out to go to your switch system. otherwise you'll need to swap out P2 cards every four or eight minutes and hope you can get the files transferred in time to get them back into the camera.

[aravance]

What would be the purpose of using a firestore array on the camera if we were to use the component out to the switcher which is then routed to the HD deck?

[ozduc]

You wouldn't need the firestore if you are going component out to a switcher. However consider this scenerio. Your director says "take cam 2" and so you are recording cam 2 to the HD deck meanwhile something great happens on cam 3 and he doesn't get to the button quick enough to record that shot. My advice would be to have all 3 cameras recording to some device individually as well as having the output from the switcher recording a live switch. That way if you need to go back in post and add something that was missed live, then you have the ability to do that. Watch any sports and you will see that they can always pull an instant replay from many different camera angles because each camera is also recording to an individual deck or NLE.

[aravance]

I think having that option would be nice, however it isn't necessary for me at this point. I'm just looking to somehow hook up three HVX's to a switcher and record their HD signal either direct to disk or to a DVCPRO-HD deck.

However, I just ran across another thread in which Jan Crittenden writes:


As I said there are no, I repeat no low cost switchers at this point in time. So why would I use a $40,000+ switcher to switch a bank of $6000 cameras, it doesn't make production business sense. It isn't a sellable production solution. Eventually this will change, but it may be several years.

So am I just chasing a pipedream here?

Is there really no feasible way to do this right now?

[panchromatic]

I believe there is an edirol hd video mixer...
http://www.edirol.com/press/html/2005/041805_v400hd_pr.html
Maybe not good enough to record from, really the edirols seem to be designed for live feeds to a screen etc, but check it out.

[aravance]

Actually, that Edirol might actually work.

Sweet find! Thanks!

[Jan_Crittenden]

I think having that option would be nice, however it isn't necessary for me at this point. I'm just looking to somehow hook up three HVX's to a switcher and record their HD signal either direct to disk or to a DVCPRO-HD deck.
Is there really no feasible way to do this right now?

The new Roland swicther is pretty nice, not sure how clean it is but I used it during a presentaiton at WEVA and it looked pretty good. I put the Component Analog inputs into the switcher, combined that with the output of the standard def, Y/C out of the camera and my computer and it it looked pretty good. But keep in mind that this is not an HDSDI input switcher, you have to come in component analog, and it you are going to be running any distance on the cames, you my have frequency rolloff, depending on the quality of the cable. I would advise using a local recording device like either the P2 cards or a FireStore, so that should something go wrong, you have back up.


Best,

Jan

[Spartacus]

What about the upcoming Panasonic AV-HS300 HD Mixer?
And how much is the Edirol?

[Jan_Crittenden]

Hi,

The Panasonic switcher will be a fairly inexpensive HD switcher with HD-SDI, it is not delivering today and not sure of the exact roll-out but hopefully soon. I believe you will be able to purchase the Component analog in, but again, it is not available today. The Roland switcher is about $12,000.

Best,

Jan

[aravance]

Since we are planning on using HVX's because of our limited budget, we would still have to go Component Out regardless of the mixer, right? The only difference would be getting analog component --> HD-SDI converters to hook up from the cameras to the Panasonic mixer.

Would this really preserve the signal any better to justify the cost?

Thanks for all the wonderful input. It has been very informative.
DVXUser pwns.