Press Release: HMC150, "the new DVX"

I looked at the official website before (awfully spartan site), and all it says is "~24Mbps" for "System Bit Rate" in the specs they give (doesn't even really say that's a minimum or maximum, just "System Bit Rate" - so perhaps today's AVCHD cameras aren't up to specs, if you read that with the most literal interpretation!). The specs would seem to indicate that the maximum bit rate of 24Mbps (which I presume is an maximum average bit rate) includes the audio bit rate (which could be awfully high if it's 7.1 channel PCM!).
 
So here's a question. The HMC is going to record in a variety of different resolutions and framerates, but is each variation going to be at the same bitrate? For instance, would 720 24p and 1080 24p both be recorded at 24mbps, or would the bit rate decrease for the 720 version? If it doesn't decrease, would there be a benefit to recording 720 24p @ 24mbps Vs. 1080 24p @ 24mbps?
 
We don't know yet. I would presume that the bitrate would stay constant (as it does in the only other multiple-frame-rate, multiple-format, long-GOP camcorder out, the EX1). And yes there'd be a theoretical benefit to recording 720 instead of 1080 at that point, which would be more compression efficiency. However, we'll have to see what real-world difference that makes by actually testing it. If there's not a substantial resolution difference then it'd make sense to record 720 instead; if there is a substantial resolution difference then it all depends on how visible the quality increase of lower compression actually is in the final footage.
 
The HMC150 will sure get my interest if it shoots decent 720p60 and is priced under $3500 (street). I've always thought JVC should come out with a handheld version (with fixed lens, OIS and autofocus) of the HD200U.
 
Would anyone here, who's going to NAB and planning to ask to slip an SDHC card in the HMC150, be willing to send me a copy of the footage you shoot with the HMC150 (assuming they let you), if I send you some blank DVDs or an SDHC card to copy the files to?
 
COMPUTING POWER

Whew!! I just finished my first 100% 1080 x 1920 P2 .mxf project (less than 10 mins of finish video & less than an 70 mins of native raw footage) and my Avid nearly died processing it. If AVCHD is harder to work than this, I'm in a heap of trouble. Geez, how does anyone do more than 1/2 hour of this stuff? The RENDER files alone were nearly 100GB. Moreover, the latency was soooooo bad I could hardly edit the last parts.

I will be trying the same project on Edius when the machine gets back home from a field trip to finish up NAB people's work and hopefully it will handle this stuff better than Avid did. Geez!

How will AVCHD compare in required computing power to the P2 .mxf native editing and rendering?

And . . anyone have experience on how well Edius handles the P2 .mxf in comparison to Avid with the serious latency when all native edit/render?
 
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I will be going to NAB on Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday. Assuming that one can slip a card into the HMC150, I will try to do it. However, it never hurts for other to ask. At this point, I'm not sure if the HMC150 will be working or not. It could be just a mock-up for show. IF I can get a copy of the files, it would be in the public download section of my WEB pages.

I also plan on trying to record some Podcasts from NAB. It will not be until after Thursday next week that I will be able to post anything, because I do not have an Apple Laptop Computer. So, it has to wait until I can get home. If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to record Jan.

I have a ton of questions, but I'm not sure how much Panasonic will be able to answer at this time. The HMC150 is a work in progress, the hardware design is likely final, BUT the firmware (software inside the camera) is still subject to changes. Also, likely Panasonic will want to leave some things open in case they decide to make any last minute changes...

I just updated my Podcasts today and will have a new one by Saturday night. That should be the last one until after NAB. Also, after NAB, I should have some better photos of the HMC150 to post on my WEB Pages.


In theory, Sunday night Panasonic should provide some sort of press conference to talk more about the new products. This might be lost in a sea of everyone doing the same thing. Maybe someone who goes to the show on the first day can provide an update on Monday night. We'll see...


Bob Diaz
 
drdimento said:
COMPUTING POWER

Whew!! I just finished my first 100% 1080 x 1920 P2 .mxf project (less than 10 mins of finish video & less than an 70 mins of native raw footage) and my Avid nearly died processing it. If AVCHD is harder to work than this, I'm in a heap of trouble. Geez, how does anyone do more than 1/2 hour of this stuff? The RENDER files alone were nearly 100GB. Moreover, the latency was soooooo bad I could hardly edit the last parts.

I will be trying the same project on Edius when the machine gets back home from a field trip to finish up NAB people's work and hopefully it will handle this stuff better than Avid did. Geez!

How will AVCHD compare in required computing power to the P2 .mxf native editing and rendering?

And . . anyone have experience on how well Edius handles the P2 .mxf in comparison to Avid with the serious latency when all native edit/render?
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Sounds like you are in serious need of a new computer or an upgrade to more modern CPUs (and maybe GPU). Just a few hundred dollars on computer parts would make a night and day difference.
 
Robert M Wright said:
Sounds like you are in serious need of a new computer or an upgrade to more modern CPUs (and maybe GPU). Just a few hundred dollars on computer parts would make a night and day difference.
Click to expand...

How much more does one have to get over dual xeon 3.0ghz with 2gb ram 10,000rpm drives, 800fsb, all SATA drives, ati dual monitor ati 1650pro video card with 512mb onboard ram ????

i don't think a few hundred bucks will do it quite frankly i think it will take a lot more . . like . . RAID or serious TB drives like our BIG machine has.
 
Of course it would depend on which 3.0Ghz Xeons those are (there are huge differences), but it sounds like they are Noconas (or similar - older generation of CPU cores). A new $250 Core 2 quad processor would probably give you a big boost in performance (would need a new motherboard and probably new DDR2 memory - $150-$250). A newer GPU would probably help quite a bit also (with Avid) - maybe $150-200 or so for a nice ATI HD2000-HD3000 series card. All-in-all, well under $1k would likely more than triple overall speed. RAID might help, but probably not a whole lot.
 
IF we transcode the AVCHD file into another format, except for the long delay to transcode, editing should go faster. OK, I know that transcoding adds a generation and takes up a lot more hard drive space, but it may be worth the improvement in system performance.
By the way, who in this forum group is going to NAB?



Bob Diaz
 
Barry_Green said:
It is, it literally flies. My laptop can handle at least four streams of DVCPRO-HD in realtime, and it's nothing special, just a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo.
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We just discovered today the issue . . it's our Avid NLE that does not use the intermediate codec and handles everything straight out of the box. Thus, we'll move all our DVCProHD to Edius.

Barry, that's is very encouraging because I've wanted to do some editing on a laptop and our Avid won't even boot when I installed it . . well it would but I don't have 11 minutes to wait on the boot up. Do you use an external drive for the media/render?
 
Processor power has increased considerably over the past couple years. Performance/cost has way more than doubled.

The Core 2 processors are a lot more efficient than the older P4 cores (and their Xeon equivalents). Even what is now a fairly run of the mill processor, like a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, will significantly outperform a dual processor/core setup that uses P4 type cores. (For some reason, the 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo is considerably cheaper than the 2.4Ghz version now though, and some AMD quads have even fallen just below the $200 mark.)
 
drdimento said:
Do you use an external drive for the media/render?
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When doing laptop stuff I will either edit directly off the card, or typically use the main drive. What's cool about the Lenovo laptops is that you can get a Superbay drive, and actually have two hard disks installed internally. So you get two full-speed SATA drives internally, instead of having to choke on a USB or firewire drive and deal with the external bulk.
 
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