HVX200 PAL vs NTSC, whats best?

H

hoeydal

Member
Hi.

Planning on getting the HVX200 or Sony Z1U. The question is realy offcouse money. As far as i understand HVX200 is MUCH better then Z1U, it costs the same, but the P2 cards is whats killing me. So a small question is, whats the cheapest way of getting HD footage on the HVX200. A small P2 car is offcourse cheapest, but a portable drive is more usefull, since i will mostly be "run and gun", which means not beeing close to a computer.

But back to the topic. I live in Norway(PAL land) and am planing to head over to Toronto film school, and hopefully stay there after finishing, or head down to LA. I have close to none experience in filming, but am eager to learn. I have a 32" Hitachi 32PD7200, which i will be watching the footage on, and a iMac G5 20" to edit on. As far as i understand most tv's can show both NTSC and PAL, so tv'vise there is no stopping. So if my tv supports show footage from a NTSC HVX200 then im open for getting the NTSC version. Since im hoping to end up in a world of NTSC, i guess it might be a got way to go. But if all this im saying is wrong, then i might end up on the cheaper alternativ and it runs in both formats.

But hey, help me out....im struggeling....BTW i understand that an iMac G5 2ghz with 2gb ram should do half decent in editing HD, or am i wrong here?
 
I know

I know

Thanks for the hint, i am already planing og going there the 22 of march. But they will for sure not help me on wether to go PAL or NTSC.... So thats why im struggeling. So i need pros and cons for why to go either way...
 
hei hei!

Well, here's a few considerations:
Basically it's like this: most PAL-land countries' TVs and DVD players will be able to play both, PAL and NTSC. However, most USA (and some other NTSC countries) TVs and DVD players can ONLY play NTSC.

Also (and I hate to admit this, as I am not a big Sony fan at all), Sony is, and has been, quite good in as far as making their products universal. I am sure they are not doing this out of their goodness of their hearts, and it is probably driven by cheaper production costs, but even their smaller cams, going back some years were able to handle both PAL and NTSC. I have a DCR-PC100e and DCR-PC120e (both PAL versions), and they play NTSC mini-DV tapes just fine.
So, back to your decision: the Z1U has the advantage of being able to do BOTH, PAL and NTSC.
I really would have wished Panasonic had or will move in a similar direction, but as we have seen with the HVX, they aren't even close in bringing their PAL and NTSC products to being only ONE product. A REAL SHAME that.

So, for you, being a "world" traveller, getting a cam that can do both, PAL and NTSC is quite an attractive option.
 
So im right?

So im right?

So what your basicly is saying is that what i said was right. That its not dumb to get a NTSC camera, since most PAL tvs can handle both. Only thing is that if im gonna distribute footage i have to convert it to PAL, which i guess is no obstacle. So then my next question is, do i loose any/alot of picture quality/feel when converting then footage between NTSC/PAL?

Since im on the roll here, the Panasonic AJ-PCS060G is just a drive you can stick the P2 card in to offload the footage. While the FireStor FS-100 is a drive that you stream the live footage to. But then the question is, do you need a P2 card in order to shoot HD, or will the HVX200 recognise the FS-100 and allow you to shoot and store the footage directly to the drive, without any P2 cards in the actual cam?
 
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hey jack,
greetings from another pal country!
You can record the Hd stream to the FS-100, but you cant record NATIVE mode(which you can do with a p2 card), that means recording in HD on FS-100 you will always have a 100mbits stream.

If you use a p2 card, you are able in 720p to record active frames only, which means you will finally end up with something like half of the space(record about 9 minutes on a 4 gig p2 card in pal ..!)

Hope you make a good choice, if you are going to the sates for study i would suggest you to buy a ntsc cam....!
 
Warning,
shooting 50i in a 60Hz country (or the other way around) can lead to all sorts of problems with flicker from lights. Inkies and fluoros aren't too bad but discharge lamps are diabolical. Just went back to finally edit some holiday footage I shot 50i in a 60Hz country and the flicker off the sodium vapor lamps is terrible. Fortunately with a lot of fiddling in post I can fix it but it's a real PIA.

The Z1 has some magic filtering system to handle this problem.
 
robroysyd said:
Warning,
shooting 50i in a 60Hz country (or the other way around) can lead to all sorts of problems with flicker from lights.
Click to expand...

YIKES!
Sorry to hear this, but it has little to do with the frame rate: this tiny problem can EASILY be overcome by adjusting the SHUTTER SPEED, i.e. 1/60 sec for 60Hz countries, and 1/50 sec for 50Hz countries. (1/30 or 1/25 sec respectively works also of course.)
 
what?

what?

hvx_germanboy vbmenu_register("postmenu_465188", true); : Help me out here... So using a P2 card is more space saving, but thats it? Or do you then get lover quality when using firestor? Since your just saving the 100mbs stream? If so i guess the Panasonic P2 store is a much better alternative, dispite the pain of offloading the cards...

BTW : thanks for the answers guys, talked to or biggest supplyer of broadcast equipment here in Norway, which also answered a lot of questions, got a pretty good price offer on a HVX200, with a 8GB P2 card, and offcourse the katana bag and extra battery you get with the first 700 cameras sold in europe. But it doesnt help me when i want a NTSC cam now...

BTW Canada/Toronto has NTSC right...?



I didnt really understand the guy talking about the flicker of lights or what not. If i understand you right, is the lights set to the same hertz/frequency as the "tv's"?
 
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Use the sinchro scan function. The only downside when using the NTSC camera in 50hzs countries is that your shutter sppeed, in 60P or 1080i needs to be at 100 (since it can't go below 60 in these modes)
 
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