HPX300 Preview - In Africa!

Sumfun said:
Oh, and not related to the HPX, but could you please describe your hard drive setup and workflow? Were they RAIDed? Did you download through the HPG20 or through Cardbus reader and Mac? Were the drives bus powered USB or eSATA? Etc...
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I don't use the Mac; Kevin did though. Kevin can fill you in on what he did; as far as I understand he used either the camera or the P2 Portable as the slot reader, through USB, and copied footage using ShotPut Pro onto two separate USB drives.

For my workflow, I used either the Windows laptop to copy to a single USB drive, or I used the P2 Portable to bus-power and offload to a single USB drive. Every few days I executed a backup onto another drive. I came back with three drives' worth of footage, about 1.25 terabytes, and a second copy (another 1.25 terabytes).

No RAID involved, just $90 drives from Best Buy, I used Seagate FreeAgent drives, three 500's and three 320's. Kevin used WD drives, I believe they were USB.

Kevin would offload footage during the down time between drives. I would offload footage right in the van, using the P2 Portable or the laptop, right in the field. Every few days we'd "reconcile" footage, so that footage he had that I didn't, he'd copy to my drive; footage I had that he didn't, he'd copy off my drive. So we both left there each with a copy of the footage, and I actually had two copies.

Really, P2 management was almost nonexistent. I'd say that probably 80% of the time we didn't even offload in the van at all; we'd shoot all morning and then Kevin would offload during naptime. Occasionally we'd find so much good stuff to shoot that we'd start to make progress into our second 32GB card, and at times like that I'd pop out the first card and let the P2 Portable offload it. It took about 10 seconds of my attention: "Here, can you offload this card? Sure, hold on... press copy... okay, hey, look at that warthog!" So we'd shoot the footage of the warthog for 10 or 20 minutes and then I'd hand him the card back. It really was no big deal, and I don't think I ever had to offload more than one card per game drive.

But at night, we'd both have instant immediate access to all the dozens or hundreds of gigabytes of footage. I used EDIUS 4.6 (since upgraded to EDIUS 5!) and P2 Viewer. He used Calibrated's MXF plug-in for Mac, and also Raylight. We both had instantaneous access to the footage. He spent some time cutting a highlights reel as we went, during the downtime.

I didn't do any editing during the safari, but when we got back I used P2 Viewer to scan through all the footage and mark text memos on the in/out points of footage that I wanted to keep. I also marked the "shot mark" on those clips. Then I used P2 Viewer to filter all my virtual clips down to only show those with shot marks, and copied them all to a P2 card (one click). Then I put that P2 card in the P2 Portable and used the "view text memo clips" option to show where the text memos were. On each clip I would export the text-memo'd portion to the second card slot. The results were that I got a seamless, frame-accurate, first-generation copy of only the in/out bits that I wanted, all in the original codec. No rendering, no computer involved, just exporting subsets of the clips. I then sent that card on to Jan so she could show footage in the original raw codec at the press conference, and I used a few of the clips of that footage to make the clips you saw here.

Workflow was easier than any P2 project I've been on yet. The cards were large enough (and 1080/24pN mode gives you 25% more recording time!) ShotPut Pro makes offloading effortless, including verification, as does the P2 Portable (especially because it bus-powers huge drives). And EDIUS supports the native AVC-I footage, as does FCP with Calibrated.
 
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I remember sitting next to you Barry, at last year's NAB when they showed the Africa footage shot on the HPX-3000.

I just remember you saying "Oh my God, oh my God!" (I was too).

Good to see that spurred you and Kevin to take this little adventure of your own.

Kudos!
 
I can't believe I wasn't invited!! Aside from the rolling shutter issues on a long lens, this sounds like an amazing piece of kit for the money. For wildlife photography - something I've done a bit of - moving on a long lens is a necessity. Much work is done on the doubler and to have rolling shutter is a real liability.

Still, full HD by 3MOS at $10k or somewhat less is still fantastic. As it is with CAC lens alternatives, this puts better quality HD into the hands of more and more producers for much less.

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Barry, nice review! The HPX300 sure looks sweet. Not sure I'd trade in my HPX170 for it though. I may, however, invest in it as a second camera at some point. Different tools for different needs.

On a side note, I shot lots of Massai and wildlife footage in Kenya with Richard Branson over this past summer. We ran two HVX200 cams. I didn't have the luxury of viewing a "Wildlife Training DVD" so I had to sorta figure it out quickly! LOL! And I got some GREAT shots! Nothing in the world like being about 20 feet from a pride of wild lions I tell ya! :thumbsup: Like walking around in a zoo without cages! :shocked: So I can very much relate to the amazing experience I know you had in South Africa! I really love shooting wildlife and tribal people - I'm totally itching to do more of it! :)
 
Thanks for all the hard work. When can we get some AVC-Intra files so we can view uncompressed? Like you did with the 150.
 
If Panasonic added image flip before actual release, people could use the JVC PL lens adaptor. Just a thought.
If the images hold up, this camera is actually cheaper to use than an EX3 if you want 10bit 4:2:2 files.
 
I'm sure a lot of people will think the footage is oversaturated but it's the look I've done ever since I shots stills.

From Kodachrome 64 to E-100SW I always tried to really pop the color. It's what I like. Some people may not care for it but it's how I learned to shoot.

I used ShotPut Pro to dump the footage to my internal hard drive as well as an external drive at the same time. We'd come back and while every one else was taking a nap, I'd charge batteries and dump the footage.

Never ran out of P2 space with two 32 gig cards. We sort of did once but it's because I had a killer sunrise on the card and didn't want to delete the footage until Barry had a copy of it. So, I kept that card full and we had a big run of nice situations on the afternoon drive so the camera was rolling quite a bit.

I was in Kruger a couple days before Barry arrived so I put together some clips in FCP so he could see what we'd been finding before he arrived.

It also gave us a couple days to figure out how best to shoot with the camera.

If you saw the rinky dink setup we used to film out of the van, you'd be amazed that we even got a single frame that was sharp. I know I was. :)

The phrase "Ok, I'm shooting, nobody breathe" was our battle cry the entire trip.

It was incredible to have a camera that had plenty of reach. Even the stock lens got us in nice and close. We were in the middle of a herd of buffalo and you could count pores on their noses with the stock lens.

With the big Canon lens we were shooting elephant herds across the river. It was an insane distance. We were shooting hippos at Sunset Dam and the Canon was picking up birds across the water that we couldn't even see.

The camera is a tank. If it survived "Hippo Gulch" It'll survive just about anything.

I'd tell ya about it but what happens in Africa stays in Africa.

I don't think you can beat the camera and lens for the price. The new LCD is awesome. Wish I could upgrade my 170 to it!

I'd be happy to add one to my stable any day.

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If this still is from hpx300, then i have to confess its gorgeous.Cause since its still 1/3, but what lens is not matter..then i am sorry ..this is something else which i cant put it into words:)
 
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That looks really nice! If Panny made an avc intra hand held that looks that good I'd buy 6-8 of them tomorrow. Soon I hope. Soon I hope.
 
Finally... Stills from a Pana "Sub 10K" camera worth posting as far as resolution is concerned. I've always been severly jealous of the EX1 and XH-A1 camp when they post stills.

Very nice, Kevin.
 
Yeah that's from some 300 footage.
Like I said a little heavy on the saturation but that's just my style.
 
I'm with Lumiere. Some large PNG's or JPG's would be awesome. I like the saturation. It works with the wildlife footage. I'm also not a fan of lots of color saturation usually.
 
Hi,

thanks for that interesting story!!!

Is there (or ANYwhere) a small bit of AVC intra file (100 or 50mbits) to download and import / test compatibility / speed of my nle?

Thanks

ULI
 
Does any NLE system working with acv-intra codec?Especially cs4 applicvations?Or are we going to wait just like mxf updates?
 
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