HVX200a or HPX-170 or HMC150

A

avenue

Active member
Ok I am about to buy a HVX200a any day now but think that waiting for the HPX-170 might be a smarter move. Then I realized they are gonna release he HMC150 at the same time as the HPX170??? what is the difference between the 170 and 150??? I think the 150 takes SD from what I can read wich is great because their cheap... but I dont think it has DVCPRO HD??? what is the price difference??? I dont know it's all getting too confusing...:(

https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/sales_o/02products/products/ag-hmc150/ag-hmc150.html

https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/sales_o/p2/ag-hpx170/index.html

this is what I have found if you guys want to elaborate on the pros and cons of each machine that would help me alot befor i drop 5 grand on something I may not want...
 
The HMC150 is a professional-level AVC HD camcorder. It records 21mbps AVC HD footage to SD cards. It does not record DVCPRO HD--the HPX170 does. The HPX170 is the same as the HVX200A minus a tape drive plus a few assist functions for things like focusing. The HMC150 will run for under $4500, and the HPX170 will run for under $6000.

Hope this helps to clear some of this up!
 
so the HD quality of the HMC150 is inferior? what is AVC HD? I am googling it right now I need to learn because if it's quality that might be a nice product no more P2 cards??
 
The camera is professional level as far as manual controls go, but AVC-HD is simply the next evolution of HDV. Long GOP. Ugh. The images will be inferior to DVCPRO-HD, but for a lot of applications you may not notice that much of a difference. If you would be happy using HDV, you'll be a good bit happier with this as long as you have a relatively up to date editing system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD
 
HUMM ? I read that earlier in wikipedia I just really like the SD card feature because their cheap I dont know they are are all such good quality really I think I might just be fussing over little things but I would love to see some footage of that 150? the 170 is hot but also 1500 more plus P2 Cards wich are expensive compared to SD?? man Panasonic has put me in a dilemma...
 
maybe HVX200a is still the best bang for your buk for me right now??? since their still around 5000 with 16 GB card...
 
AVCHD's achilles heel is motion. Long GOP, as you may know, compresses based on differences between frames. When two frames don't share enough in common for the compression to work, artifacts start showing up. (Obviously, this is an extremely simplified explanation.) So if you're doing another Cloverfield, then AVCHD is NOT for you. You can also run into issues with editing, etc., but as oxrs said, if you're happy with HDV, and many are, you'll be fine with AVCHD.
It all comes down to how you use the camera. Your choice should be made on whichever workflow works best for you.
 
SD cards are great--especially because they're cheap. Really cheap. With AVCHD, you can get more video on smaller cards than P2. However, something important to consider is your workflow. Does your workflow support AVCHD? That is one of the biggest deciding factors.
 
whatt you mean workflow like my software during post: Final cut Studio 1???? should I would think plus I should have FCS 2 soon :)
 
so this I would assume is the difference when the P2 codec storing and the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 high profile encoding the 150 uses???
 
If you are already setup for P2 editing, please don't worry about work flow. Panasonic has a free application on there P2 Support desk site that will encode your AVC HD file to P2 HD. It's really cool and works great.

Andrew Hoffman
 
Spec-Comm said:
If you are already setup for P2 editing, please don't worry about work flow. Panasonic has a free application on there P2 Support desk site that will encode your AVC HD file to P2 HD. It's really cool and works great.

Andrew Hoffman
Click to expand...

What are you views about the 150 compared to the HVX200a ?????? since you sell them a probably toyed around with both machines please list you pros and con's on them since I am gonna buy one of them of you anyway's youd be kinda pitching me the product :)
 
The other issue is editing.

AVCHD is not a well established editing format, and not many NLEs support it directly. Most require conversion to an editing format.

That may change
 
Between the 200A and the 170, I'd recommend the 170 to everyone unless you have a specific need for that DV tape drive.

Between the 150 and the 170, they don't make the choice easy. It's largely the same hardware, but the features and the recording format are very different, making the pricetag and workflow very different.

Both have the same lens, same chips, same DSP, so the raw image should be very much the same. But the 170 is geared toward the professional user, recording DVCPRO-HD onto P2 cards and supplying a locking 6-pin firewire port and an HD-SDI connector. Plus the 170 does variable frame rates, and it does standard-definition too.

The 150, on the other hand, seems more set up for the event shooter, the prosumer, the wedding shooter, the budget producer, etc. Same core image, but it records onto inexpensive commodity SD cards instead of P2, and it uses HDMI instead of HD-SDI, and it doesn't offer standard-def or variable frame rates. But, it costs at least $1500 less, and its recording media is much less expensive, and it has a scalable codec so you can get extraordinarily long recording times (on a 32GB SDHC card you could actually record for 12 continuous hours).

Then it comes down to the recording format. DVCPRO-HD is an established broadcast standard. AVC-HD is the "new DV", the replacement for HDV, sort of a super-HDV. It uses very low bandwidth (6 to 24 megabits, vs. 40 to 100 megabits for DVCPRO-HD). It's also 4:2:0 color sampling, vs. the superior 4:2:2 of DVCPRO-HD. And it's long-GOP, vs. the discrete frame-based nature of DVCPRO-HD. But, on the other hand, it's an extremely efficient codec, it's the latest codec technology (H.264), and it does record full-raster images (1920x1080 and 1280x720).

On a pricetag basis, for the struggling indie filmmaker who can't really afford much at all, the HMC150 will probably be a lot more appealing. For the pro who needs the flexibility and performance of the P2/DVCPRO-HD approach, I don't think there'll be much question at all, the HPX170 will be preferred.

Long-GOP can cause serious artifacting in HDV/MPEG-2, and I would expect similar issues when using low-bitrate AVC-HD. However, since AVC-HD is so much more efficient, it might not be bad (or, it might even be perfectly fine) at the higher bitrates. We don't know yet. Sony says that 9 megabits of AVC-HD is equivalent to 25 megabits of HDV. I would expect that 24 megabits of AVC-HD should be equivalent to 35 megabits of XDCAM-EX. We simply don't know enough yet to be able to judge what the real-world performance is, but I would feel confident enough to say that 24 megabits of 720/24p will probably be exquisite with no motion artifacting. Not sure yet about 1080 mode; 1080p should be a lot more solid than 1080i (same with XDCAM EX); I bet 1080/24p will be just fine in all but perhaps the most demanding cases. But that's assuming using the highest-quality 24mbps mode; if you lower your bitrate, all bets are off. I bet you can force some nasty artifacting out of 6mbps footage!

Perhaps the biggest question to answer (as alluded to here before) is in editing. DVCPRO-HD is extremely well-established and extremely edit-friendly. AVC-HD is extraordinarily processor-intensive, and isn't supported in very many editing applications yet. For those who are comfortable with using an intermediate-codec approach (like early HDV adopters had to) then this may not even be an issue; iMovie transcodes AVC-HD over to AIC; FCP can transcode to ProRes, and EDIUS can read the files natively or transcode to Canopus HQ codec. Vegas has some support for AVC-HD but it only really has comprehensive support for Sony camcorders; Canon and Panasonic support is hit-and-miss over there. Panasonic provides a free tool to transcode AVC-HD over to DVCPRO-HD MXF files, so any program that supports P2 editing could then edit AVC-HD footage.

The upside of AVC-HD is in tiny file sizes, which makes it easy to store on cheap memory and it doesn't take up much space on your editing system (in native mode). The downside of AVC-HD is in the editing, and if you have to transcode to another editing codec, be prepared for your files to take up huge amounts of space; ProRes is something like 170 megabits, isn't it? That means your files will grow in size by a factor of 8 to 10 times as large when transcoding.

Editing support is expected to be much stronger in the next revisions of the major editing apps (FCS3, Adobe CS4, etc). But right now, today, the editing aspect is something to research because it's not nearly as well-supported and simple as DVCPRO-HD MXF editing is.
 
if they can come in around 5500 for the 170 I am all over it! is it coming witha 16GB P2 Card like the HVX200a?
 
Barry_Green said:
Perhaps the biggest question to answer (as alluded to here before) is in editing. DVCPRO-HD is extremely well-established and extremely edit-friendly. AVC-HD is extraordinarily processor-intensive, and isn't supported in very many editing applications yet.
Click to expand...

This is a potential problem that I have heard mentioned, but not seen a lot of time spent on. If you can edit AVC-HD natively, because of the extremely high compression, it is VERY processor intensive compared to DVCProHD. Unless you are using a very modern (last 6 months or so) editing system, you may not be able to feasibly edit (natively) with the new codec even with native support of your program. Conversion takes up tons of HD space. I believe Premiere loads the file into RAM while you're working with it, which greatly limits the length of clip that can be edited, or requires a lot of RAM. I'm sure this will become less of a problem as technology progresses, but if price is a factor, then remember to factor in the cost of a new computer if you don't have state-of-the-art hardware.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top