Brand NEW HMC150 User

R

RoadandDirt.com

Member
Hello All,
I have been reading all your feedback about this camera for weeks B4 actually buying it. (B&H $3195) I have looked around the forum to find out most of my questions. A lot were answered, thx!

I shoot Amateur Motocross for a living, for 9 years now. 45 races a year. 1000's of Mini DV tapes over the years, I don't reuse tapes. Just buy more. Finally a real solution to my tapes getting messed up from dirt, dust, heat and whatever else liked to play havoc with my GL1 and GL2 I've used since 2000.

I want to know which settings real users recommend. My end user/viewer doesn't really care how great the quality is, as long as it's good steady footage of their rider in their races. I shoot about 3 to 4 hours a day at a Big Nationals. I will dump the footage when needed on my Mac Pro Octo. I would like to keep the space the footage takes on my int. drives to a minimum. From what I read the lowest setting should be better then SD I have shot for years. But what's my best bet? less Space vs. quality

Also I can't find anywhere how long it will take to dump 16gb off the camera via the cameras USB slot and or the Panny SDHC card reader I bought. Which method is faster/better?

If I want to burn a DVD in HD quality, it looks like I need to export from FCP. what settings? Then I should burn it using Toast 9? Can I burn short 10 to 20 minute promos on a regular DVD?

Using Mac Pro Octo 16gb ram 4 int. 1tb's using FCP 6.0.5

Thanks in advance!!!

RoadandDirt.com
 
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One of the great things about the AVCHD codec is the solid way it renders motion, and considering you are shooting fast moving vehicles I would really recommend shooting in the PH mode to avoid motion artefacts.

I've never timed it accurately but I notice that it takes around 12 minutes to dump a 16GB Class 6 Panasonic card to my HDD through a standard USB2 port. It does not matter through which device you dump the card through (camera or card reader) because the transfer rate is ultimately limited by the card class & USB port data rate.
 
You recommend PH mode the highest setting. I wanted to stay away from bogging down my drives with the high end footage, taking up so much space..

Is that my best beat for fast moving motorcycles. Is there another setting that will do, without taking so much space on the card and my drives?
 
It should work very nicely on your box. I would recommend a few things. 1. Back up in the field and don't convert to quicktime to keep the data amounts down. 2. Keep the cards in tact and only dump after confirmation that you have a good backup up. SD cards are cheap so getting 10 of them would be probably less than your DV costs for the year. You can do all of your work through FCP and compressor. Doing an blueray disk will require toast to author but you can do up to 30 minutes of HD quality on an SD disk. I've been doing that via quicktime for a while.. as well as divix.


I'm in Orlando. Do you shoot up here?
 
RoadandDirt.com said:
You recommend PH mode the highest setting. I wanted to stay away from bogging down my drives with the high end footage, taking up so much space..

Is that my best beat for fast moving motorcycles. Is there another setting that will do, without taking so much space on the card and my drives?
Click to expand...

The problem that arises with shooting HD video is that it needs to capture much more information which results in higher data rate = bigger files (than SD). In order to keep the amount of data generated low, new CODECs had to be created. HD CODECs like HDV & AVCHD use heavy data compression and something called GOP (Group Of Pictures) to maintain the low data rates.

Traditionally the introduction of GOP is what often compromises the capture of fast moving and colourful images resulting in a deterioration of the picture. So if you are shooting fast moving vehicles it is imperative that you use the highest data & frame rate possible to maintain a good clean picture and Panasonic's PH mode shooting in 720 60P would be an ideal choice.

I guess you can try shooting in the HA or HG modes at 1080i however, I doubt you'll get anywhere near the clarity in your footage, especially when there's so much movement & colour in what you're capturing.

With the amount of shooting you're doing, just think yourself lucky that you're not using a DVCProHD camera... you'd need banks of hard drives!
 
Keep in mind that even in the highest-quality PH mode, the footage will still take up *less* space on your drives than standard-def DV ever did.
 
Let me add a few details to Barry's answer...

We like to think of pixel resolution, where in general, higher is better, BUT there is a temporal (time) resolution. That is FPS (Frames Per Second).

IF we shoot video at 8 FPS and play it back at the same rate, it will seem to strobe as a series of steps of movement. The time between each frame is too long.

Increase the FPS to 15 and the movement is smoother, but not perfect.

The 24 FPS rate is seen as the "video pot of gold" for some, but in reality, film's 24 FPS rate is a bit low. If you set the shutter too short, the action is sharp, but the image seems to strobe across the screen.

The 60 FPS captures the highest temporal (time) resolution possible. At 60p, movement is captured with the most detail.

IF it were possible to increase the FPS even higher, the movement becomes even more life like. I remember reading about some tests with film a while back, where the action was filmed at 100 FPS and played back at 100 FPS. Viewers described the action on the screen as very lifelike.

There is some debate as to what the ideal upper limit should be. Some suggest 100 FPS and others suggest 300 FPS. There reaches a point where increasing the FPS does not give any more smoothness to the movement.


Anyway, back to the issue at hand, 720/60p gives the best temporal resolution (important for fast action things like sports) and is why FOX and ABC (which show a lot of sports) chose to broadcast 720/60p.


Bob Diaz
 
RoadandDirt.com said:
You recommend PH mode the highest setting. I wanted to stay away from bogging down my drives with the high end footage, taking up so much space..

Is that my best beat for fast moving motorcycles. Is there another setting that will do, without taking so much space on the card and my drives?
Click to expand...

If you are transcoding into Pro Res the bitrate of the original recording probably wont make too much difference to the size of the transcoded file. You will probably find yourself needing to upgrade to a larger HD TBH. Pro Res is a much higherbitrate than DV of course.
 
Ok, I was going to just take my Mac Pro tower on the road with me. But I see Mac Book Pro's are coming down in price.
What's the minimum requirement to capture the HMC150 footage on a laptop, so I don't have to lug my tower around. I'm assuming it just needs to be at least a dual processor. I will use an external firewire drive to capture too.
Here's a link to a bunch of setups. Which is best for my needs.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/pre-...googlesearch&gclid=CKCWovfQ1JcCFQhdswodiFOGDQ
 
RoadandDirt.com said:
What's the minimum requirement to capture the HMC150 footage on a laptop, so I don't have to lug my tower around. I'm assuming it just needs to be at least a dual processor.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to transferring the footage to your MacBook Pro?

Because you capture to a SDHC card, not your computer unless you have a capture card.
 
I want to use my MAC PRO tower at my office, and want use a laptop on the road to caputure the files of all the cards I shot throughout the day. I also want to be able to edit the footage into promo's while I'm on the road. I plan on having my 1tb ext using either 400 or 800 FW to capture to and edit with. Can I get by on a mac book or do I have to get a Mac Book Pro? I just want to know which mac laptop is recommeded. thx!
 
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Gregg,

The new MacBooks don't have a FireWire port (why I am sticking with my tiny black FW-equipped MacBook) so I can hook up a LaCie Rugged 7,200 rpm external drive. The MB's FW bus is limited to FW 400 speeds, but AFAIK, the FW bus communication protocol, 7,200rpm disk speed, and the Oxford chip set, are needed to edit (that USB-connected HDs are not supported for editing via FCP at this point). Someone correct me if this is out of date.

I have not loaded FCP onto the laptop yet, but assuming a fast external drive, I can't see a problem. My intended workflow when I am on the road is:

ingest via card reader to ext. FW drive

log and transfer via FCP, with files being saved onto the FW drive (different folder).

Edit, and output as required

My MacBook has dual 2.2G processors and 4G Ram, so I am hoping that this will be fast enough.

All workflow suggestions gratefully received!
 
RoadandDirt.com said:
Hello All,
I have been reading all your feedback about this camera for weeks B4 actually buying it. (B&H $3195) I have looked around the forum to find out most of my questions. A lot were answered, thx!



RoadandDirt.com
Click to expand...


The camera is 3200 on B&H? Thought it was 3299.95. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Tell them u want them to price match ggvideos price $3195 Free S/H
Buy the extra 5800 battery from B&H 174.00 (cheapest I could find that had it in stock). Buy a UV filter from ebay cheap. I bought 2 Panasonic 16gb sdhc cards from thetwistergroup for like $80 each. I wil buy the 16gb sdhc Trascends on newegg for under $30 for the rest of my cards.
Got Panasonic SDHC card reader on ebay for 30 free s/h

that's all you'll need for this camera. I can't wait to test it at the MX track!

Merry Christmas to all of you!
 
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