Press Release: HMC150, "the new DVX"

[drdimento]

Well, timing will be key here, since this new unit isn't due out for, what -- six months? 8 months? . . . I don't expect that'll be the case with the 150, so -- buy when you need it, and if you can be patient, others will sort out any issues and report here so you know what you're getting into.

Barry, excellent point and well taken. Looking forward it is clear that we should move on our production plans rather than speculation. If we need to move on another HD camera then as suggested we should move on what we know and not speculate and/or wait it out because we need a lot more shoot and edit time on the HVX and besides if we decided later that this new AVC?? is our thing, I'm sure that it would be easy to dispose of the HVX at pretty fair value, let alone the service $$ we will have gained from its' asset value while on board. )

Thanks for the insight.

 

[MovieSwede]

The EX1's 35mbps VBR mode is much, much, much better than HDV though. Way more than the numbers would indicate. Three years of learning about compression efficiency really paid off. It's not infallible, but HDV would totally fall apart under scenarios where XDCAM-EX doesn't even really blink. You can't compare the two by the numbers. I originally thought the same as you, that it'd be a little better, but in reality it's much better than HDV.

I expect even better from AVC-HD. With adequate bitrate, it should be fantastic. I've seen it at 8mbps, projected, and it looked great; it looked as good as HDV at 25mbps. At 20mbps it should be every bit as good as XDCAM EX.

I would like to spinn further on that.

Its not only the codec and the encoder in the camara that will effect the PQ quality. But the cameras preprocessing of the image.

The more noise the harder compression will be.

Also one aspect that is important is that everyting is done in realtime, wich put extra stress on the encoder.

 

[ecking]

I expect even better from AVC-HD. With adequate bitrate, it should be fantastic. I've seen it at 8mbps, projected, and it looked great; it looked as good as HDV at 25mbps. At 20mbps it should be every bit as good as XDCAM EX.

Not to call your bluff here but that makes little sense to me. You yourself said the camera head is of the utmost importance when dealing with a codec that might look weak on paper and that no worthy camera head yet exists for AVCHD.

So how could you have seen good quality 8mbps AVCHD projected? What source would it have recorded from?

 

[Barry_Green]

Not to call your bluff here

No bluff to be called.

So how could you have seen good quality 8mbps AVCHD projected? What source would it have recorded from?

Any source, transcoded to AVC-HD. The point was to demonstrate the format's capability. I don't know what the source was, probably HDD5 or HDCAM-SR, but the point was that they transcoded to AVC-HD at 8 megabits and projected it, and it looked pretty darn good.

As always, I'm separating the camera head away from the recording format, because the format is solid but so far it's been limited by being mated to little wimpy consumer camcorder recording heads. The format by itself is excellent.

 

[Robert M Wright]

Not in theory, no, but in practical applications, so far, it is. It's all about the bitrate. Interframe has so far been used to get extremely low bitrates; if they'd amp up the bitrates then interframe could be equivalent or even superior.


All else being equal, yes -- but that means equivalent bitrates. And that's the difference. Until they get the interframe bitrates up to the same as intraframe, or at least in the same ballpark, intraframe is superior. And as far as editing, intraframe is way superior.

I'm enjoying this discussion. Your comments have provoked some interesting thought (at least for me).

Up until now, I had been seriously questioning why Sony chose to hook up with SanDisk and blessed us with yet another standard for flash memory, with SxS cards.

On the face of it, it seemed absurd to me, since conventional flash memory was well on the way to accommodating greater than 35mbps bandwidth reliably, at relatively low cost (downright dirt cheap compared to P2 or SxS, per gigabyte).

After reading what you wrote about your hands on experience with the EX1, seeing firsthand that it smoked HDV when you tried to stress the codec, it occurred to me (duh), that they almost assuredly cooked up SxS to accommodate high peak bitrates (that likely vastly exceed what could be implemented with more conventional flash memory). I'm guessing that peak bitrate might be in the neighborhood of 200mbps (maybe higher?).

If my guess is correct, Sony may indeed have amped up the bitrate enough to exceed the overall performance of DVCPRO HD. With variable bitrates (and a super high peak), the average bitrates can be much lower with interframe compression than with intraframe only compression, and yield equal or better overall results. Of course, if you tried to shoot something like purely whip pans of Niagara Falls, the resulting file sizes would be huge.

With SDHC cards, specs (for class 6) call for a minimum sustained write speed (on empty cards) of 6MBps (which is 48mbps). If Panasonic really pushed the specs of those cards (and pushed the peak real close to 48mbps), the performance could roughly be equivalent (in quality performance) to 100mbps using MPEG2. Pushing the specs that hard would almost certainly cause problems in real world use, but there is some significant headroom to play with there. Potentially, the codec performance could possibly rival the big XDCAMS (which are almost assuredly more constrained on peak bitrate writing to blue laser disk, than the EX1 writing to SxS).


-----------
Is is just me, or has anyone else wondered why "Panasonic" doesn't pass spell check on a forum named DVXuser (and "DVXuser" doesn't pass spell check either)? :-Laugh(DBG):

 

[Robert M Wright]

Not in theory, no, but in practical applications, so far, it is. It's all about the bitrate. Interframe has so far been used to get extremely low bitrates; if they'd amp up the bitrates then interframe could be equivalent or even superior.

HDV came about largely to accommodate existing MiniDV tape and tape mechanisms (pretty smart at the time, really). For that reason it's a CBR implementation of interframe compression. I'm mildly surprised that Sony didn't offer up something like "HDVCAM" with the Z1, by speeding up the tape (like DVCAM) and using a VBR of 24mbps average with a peak around 30-35mpbs.

Flash memory (which is now getting cheap) allows for VBR implementation of interframe compression, and that can allow for average bitrates that get closer to the (image quality) performance of intraframe only compression at higher bitrates.

 

[Barry_Green]

On the face of it, it seemed absurd to me, since conventional flash memory was well on the way to accommodating greater than 35mbps bandwidth reliably, at relatively low cost (downright dirt cheap compared to P2 or SxS, per gigabyte).

Lots of discussion on that, and it all comes down to how you intend to USE the card. For simple data acquisition a cheap card might be fine, but if you're heavily WORKING with the card, then it's not enough to just get the footage onto the card. You have to be able to get it off of the card as well. P2 was designed to support six streams of HD footage simultaneously.

SxS, I don't really understand at all. After months of them saying how inexpensive it was going to be, it ends up being the exact same price. And Red has already shown that at least with a certain card (the Lexar UDMA CF card) they can get 200mbps of footage onto that card. As to why Sony felt they had to go with SxS when, in fact, its data rate is about 1/8th of Red's... I have no explanation for you there. I can only assume that the write speed of the SxS is pretty slow. The read speed is fine, it's about the same speed as a P2 card, but the write speed wouldn't need to be anywhere near that level.

Now, the EX1 does spike, and in fact you can force it into an overdriven situation (you can shoot 720/24p S&Q @ 60fps, and that forces it to go into about 90mbps mode). But even so, that's less than half what Red's doing on a CF card. I doubt an EX1 would spike much above that.

So -- no good answer for you. If they would have made the EX1 use 70mbps interframe, or (better yet) 100mbps with 4:2:2, that would have justified the SxS and make it superior to DVCPRO-HD. But they didn't, they put a 35mbps data stream on there, which seems like just wasted capacity.

If my guess is correct, Sony may indeed have amped up the bitrate enough to exceed the overall performance of DVCPRO HD.

Nope. Put it in 1080/60i, shoot some stressful stuff, and you'll see it get macroblocky and bitty and nasty. XDCAM-EX is definitely better than HDV, but it's still got a ways to go before it's defintely as robust as high-bandwidth intraframe.

With SDHC cards, specs (for class 6) call for a minimum sustained write speed (on empty cards) of 6MBps (which is 48mbps).

Funny thing, specs. Read over on reduser, those guys can tell you all sorts of stories about the "minimum write speeds". Pretty much no card on the market comes close to actually achieving its printed specifications!

 

[Robert M Wright]

It did occur to me that Sony could have got similar performance (to SxS), by simply making a card that is essentially a RAID array of conventional flash memory, and do it pretty cheap.

 

[Captain Pierce]

Isn't that exactly what P2 is? Although not necessarily "conventional" flash memory, because it still had to be pretty specific stuff IIRC (probably because of that problem with not living up to specs that Barry mentioned), necessitating a higher cost.

 

[Robert M Wright]

One would think that P2 and SxS are essentially conventional flash memory in a RAID array, but prices and sizes don't seem to reflect that.

 

[Barry_Green]

P2 started out as 4 top-of-the-line, zero-defect SD memory cards in a RAID array, along with all sorts of other micro-controller functions. I don't think they're using SD cards anymore, they've got it down to the core memory components in there now.

Don't know what SxS is.

 

[BobDiaz]

Bob Steps Up On His Soapbox...

If you go back to NAB 2005, the HVX-200 was little more than a block of wood with stuff glued to it to show what it would look like. By DV Expo west 2005, the early HVX-200 production samples could be shown. It would be late December before the first few users could get their hands on the HVX-200.

There was no shortage of naysayers and during that time, there was a risk that something could have gone VERY wrong and been a real screw-up. In a rather gutsy and risky move, Panasonic introduced a camera that could do things that no camera in its price range could do.

Today, we can look back and see the move has paid off. It's hard to read any major video magazine without seeing at least one positive reference to the HVX-200.

The HMC150 appears to be the "HVX-200 Jr.". From an engineering standpoint, it makes sense that much of the design work that went into the HVX-200 could be reused in the MHC150. Likewise, from a manufacturing standpoint, many things, like the same CCDs, could be used in both cameras to help reduce costs.


Early on, MPEG-4 started with a bad reputation of, "MPEG-4 = Bad Video". However, it was a case of people compressing the video WAY TOO MUCH. As long as there's a good quality CODEC and a high enough bit rate, there's no technical reason why MPEG-4 AVC H.264 can't produce very good looking video.

It is possible for a company to screw up a product big time, but right now, I see nothing that would lead me to believe that something is about to go very wrong with the HMC150. However, if you want to assume the worst, yes there is a remote possibility that the camera could suck rocks. Not likely, but not impossible.

My big hope is that will be a working prototype at NAB. If so, we'll get our first hint of what to expect from the camera. If the camera does ship by Fall 2008, it won't be until somewhere around September 22 --> December 21 before we'll hear from the first users what they found.

My biggest expectation for disappointment is not from Panasonic, but from other companies. Canon could pull the tape drive and put a memory card in the H1 and A1, but I get the feeling they won't. Likewise JVC could create a memory card version of the HD-110u, but I'm guessing they won't. Sony did come out with the EX-1, which is a good camera and they introduced the Z7, which is way overpriced for what it offers, but Sony seems to be obsessed with the older MPEG-2 technology.


I hope I'm wrong about this, but right now, it appears that Panasonic is two steps ahead of the other companies.


Bob Diaz

 

[Digigenic]

....
The HMC150 appears to be the "HVX-200 Jr.". From an engineering standpoint, it makes sense that much of the design work that went into the HVX-200 could be reused in the MHC150. Likewise, from a manufacturing standpoint, many things, like the same CCDs, could be used in both cameras to help reduce costs.
....

Perhaps they should also incorporate at least 1 single P2 slot then.
Right below the SD card slot. That would help to identify it more accurately as an "HVX-200 Jr."

....
My biggest expectation for disappointment is not from Panasonic, but from other companies.

There will undoubtedly be some disappointments, the worst of which might materialize in the form of silence, where nobody shows anything new at all.
However, with the Scarlet's expected announcement, a lot of people are anticipating the big four of the digital imaging oligarchy to step their game up in organized fashion with a response to what could potentially turn the prosumer video segment on its head and spin it around a million times. That is one reason why I think Panasonic has kept an update to their HVX reserved - while this HMC150 serves as mere window dressing to such an announcement.

....
I hope I'm wrong about this, but right now, it appears that Panasonic is two steps ahead of the other companies.

Rather than two steps ahead, I think they're more like two steps to the side.
By price it's easy to align Panasonic's products with the other's cameras, but when comparing the white papers, workflows, and results, it's all subjectively determined what makes the camera more suitable to the individual's needs rather than more advanced.
I feel that if Panasonic chooses to keep the camera relegated to AVCHD, then they potentially limit their suitability, as oppose to another camera which could easily implement other shooting options along with AVCHD; allowing them to appear more versatile - more appealing.

 

[Robert M Wright]

It seems to me that a lot of products for the video industry are designed without the input of somebody that has a reasonably solid, broad understanding of the technologies that could potentially be employed (something better suited for somebody who's older and worked in many different areas, rather than young and fresh out of college with really state of the art knowledge of a very narrow discipline). It's almost like a marketing guy basically defines specs and then hands the specs to someone that is too specialized.

For example, look at the way MCE's direct to disk DV and HDV recorders work. It seems (to me - and I could be completely wrong here) like it was designed by a specialist in integrating small off-the-shelf computer components and software, rather than someone with any understanding at all of how chips are designed and manufactured. The solution they came up with is essentially a full blown computer (sure, it works and "seems" like an easy approach), when a fairly simple (nothing revolutionary) chip (and fairly simple PCB) could have been designed to perform the same function, be way cheaper to produce, consume less power and fit in a much smaller space.

I haven't really looked into how P2 and SxS cards are designed, but it wouldn't surprise me a whole lot to learn that somehow, rather than simply leveraging existing technology (like maybe SanDisk essentially just taking the memory chips they were already making and putting them in a RAID array, to achieve SxS performance), they might have gone overboard inventing new approaches that weren't necessary (like maybe some sort of brilliant fundamental redesign of memory chips that boosted R&D cost, and perhaps production cost, maybe a lot, without a corresponding real world benefit).

A good example of taking a problem and applying existing technology, efficiently and effectively, is Cineform's (core) product. They realized that the most widely used (by far) lossy compression technology (DCT) was not adequate for fast performance on computers at the time (to transcode interframe compressed HD material to intraframe only compressed HD material, in real time, with affordable CPU power available then, and also be able to seek quickly, playback and re-encode, all essentially losslessly for practical purposes, in real time from NLEs) and chose a well suited existing technology (wavelet compression) to get the needed performance, not going overboard trying to create some sort of slick, fundamentally novel approach to lossy compression (or doing something like trying to hitch a ride from GPUs, to help boost DCT compression performance, inducing lots of compatibility issues to resolve).

From what I understand about RED, it seems to me that they've managed to do a very good job of choosing, refining and integrating several technologies well (not an easy thing to do). It's no surprise to me that Jim Jannard is around my age (50s), with a fairly diverse background. I'm real curious (and hopeful) to see what Scarlett turns out to be.

As far as I can tell, Panasonic isn't trying to do anything particularly risky with the HMC150. AVC isn't new anymore, SDHC is very affordable (and working at least reasonably well now), and there's nothing to indicate that Panasonic is trying to basically invent any revolutionary new technology for the HMC150. Assuming they don't make a blunder (like forgetting the focus ring on the HMC70!) or overprice it, the HMC150 sure could be a very good (or even great) camera (and at the very least shouldn't suck).

 

[Robert M Wright]

Bob Steps Up On His Soapbox...

I hope I'm wrong about this, but right now, it appears that Panasonic is two steps ahead of the other companies.


Bob Diaz

I don't know that Panasonic is two steps ahead of the other companies. It seems to me that they are simply the first to venture into offering up AVCHD in a professional caliber camera.

In a sense, this can bring them even (or maybe put them a little ahead temporarily) in the arena of offering a low cost HD option to professionals (like wedding and event videographers), after having shunned HDV.

I'm quite sure that the other companies are in a position to offer competing AVCHD cameras, without a ton of R&D, also. That's why I believe Panasonic would be wise to make this offering a reasonably strong one (and don't skimp on bitrate).

 

[Robert M Wright]

Perhaps they should also incorporate at least 1 single P2 slot then.
Right below the SD card slot. That would help to identify it more accurately as an "HVX-200 Jr."

That would involve implementing two entirely different codecs in the camera, and boost cost. It would also put the HMC150 in direct competition with their own HVX (although it would be cool).

 

[Barry_Green]

with the Scarlet's expected announcement, a lot of people are anticipating the big four of the digital imaging oligarchy to step their game up in organized fashion with a response to what could potentially turn the prosumer video segment on its head and spin it around a million times.

Scarlet's unlikely to have much impact on the prosumer video segment, because it's unlikely to be a video camera at all (Red One isn't a video camera either). Scarlet could turn the entire indie filmmaker/guerilla filmmaker market upside down, yes.

 

[FatDaddy]

Yes, for me it is a choice between an updated HVX or Scarlet. I am having my doubts that the HVX update is coming. Do we think they will have a working HMC-150 at NAB?

 

[William_Robinette]

Yes, for me it is a choice between an updated HVX or Scarlet.

AHAH! We don't even know what scarlet is!

If it is a 4k lipstick camera will it still be competition for the HVX in your eyes?

 

[Robert M Wright]

Scarlet's unlikely to have much impact on the prosumer video segment, because it's unlikely to be a video camera at all (Red One isn't a video camera either). Scarlet could turn the entire indie filmmaker/guerilla filmmaker market upside down, yes.

I won't underestimate Jim Jannard again this time. Last time around, with the RED ONE, it sounded to me like a lot of bluster, when I first read what he was saying a couple of years ago. Later it occurred to me, that by using CMOS technology, he could conceivably make good on his promises, which of course, he did.

I could see Scarlet possibly coming in well under $10k, and maybe having an impact on the prosumer market. Of course, Jim isn't trying to lose money, but it seems fairly clear that his primary objective isn't to make another billion dollar fortune on cameras either.

If it's a 2K camera head with a 16mm CMOS image sensor, it sure might be priced pretty low, and if it is, I could see somebody eventually packaging it up neatly with something akin to Convergent Design's (soon to be) encoder/CF recorder (but at a much lower price) and a reasonably low cost lens, LCD, etc., effectively delivering a camcorder that might still be well under $10k, total.