4-cam comparison -- initial response

I have heard rumors that Panasonic leaked info about revisions and a new model of the HVX200 come NAB. Anyone else hear the same? Seems way too early but initial shipping numbers have me wondering a bit.
 
philarno said:
I think everyone agrees (outside Panasonic) that the cost and lack of storage is a problem for the P2 cards.
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I don't agree.

Would I like the price to be cheaper and the storage to be larger, sure, but I am very excited to begin using a tapeless workflow. I believe P2 is the next wave.

Chris
 
P2 next wave?

P2 next wave?

I have been telling everyone I know in TV news since 1990 that what we need and what will eventually arrive is a solid state memory device for recording. My vision was of something about the size of a pack of cigarettes that would slip into the side of the camera and record 20 minutes of footage. No moving parts, instant on, random access, pure perfection.

Believe me, I am delighted that P2 is here. (so to say) I think it is the perfect solution to video recording. Recording onto tape, DVD's or hard drives will always have the problem of wear and tear and moving parts that can scew up, not to mention the physical size and weight required for these mechanical devices. As a news photog most of my life one of the most important things about a camera is how light and easily handled it is. I know a lot of the users who read this don't go handheld a lot but the mechanical concerns are valid for everyone.

But......

It is because I am so hopeful about P2 that I'm concerned about the price. For someone shooting on the run and recording say, 120 minutes in a day, is it practical? You may be able to buy 2 cards and download them to a laptop everytime you reach 8 or 16 minutes (waiting 8 or 16 minutes to finish) but that would really put a dent in flow. How many card$ are practical? How many are minimum?

I just hope that something reasonable comes along. ( A price break from Panasonic, an aftermarket P2, a way to strap a mini hard drive to the camera and go direct etc.)
 
you can clearly see in the small text that the downconverted 1080p holds more detail.... but I wonder is what I am seeing on the "resized and uncompressed blue channel... Is that the not-much-talked chroma aliasing that produces the somehow faux 4:2:2
 
Barry_Green said:
What, FCP support? We'll see. JVC's been promising that it'll show up in "the next maintenance release" for a while. Two maintenance releases have come and gone, and still no support, and none in Avid either. Hopefully they will get their act together, but as of right now it's still true.
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I'm not looking to JVC for this...


Barry_Green said:
When I've cut HDV, I've used the native codec. I just don't care for transcoding; it's the old computer programmer in me. But I haven't done that much HDV post stuff. By "everyone", I mean everyone I've said "native" to: DSE, Adam, David Newman, they all say intermediate is the way to go. Fine for them, but I don't like intermediates, so I always stuck with native.
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I agree. That's why I also use native. However, what I was referring to is that when going out to a DVD, people have been dropping down to DV first before DVD. I just made a DVD directly from HDV using the new iDVD6 (no intermediate DV) and the quality is considerably better.
 
smelni said:
why mirror the two P2 cards if they are claiming absolutely no dropouts or lost frames
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I'm not worried about the P2 cards, they seem rock solid. The reason is to connect two hard disk recorders, so that you have duplicate data and remove the possibility of data loss... i.e. then we could all get comfortable with hard disk recorders.
 
Haakon said:
A completely tapeless workflow and the notion of never having to buy stock again for my camera is totally worth $650 (to me). Regardless of if that's actually what the P2 card is really "worth," it will pay for itself easily during my first shoot compared to the cost of film stock, so the cost is negligable (and then I can reuse it as much as I want at no cost). I honestly can't wait (even though we haven't been given much option but to wait...)
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I think you need to factor in the cost of archiving this into your equation. Also add something for your time and the cost of the additional equipment to generate the backups. This always puts a crimp in the P2 concept... until P2 cards are 64GB and cost $100.

Don't take this wrong... I'm going to love P2 in the future...
 
Mitch_Ives said:
what I was referring to is that when going out to a DVD, people have been dropping down to DV first before DVD.
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Oh, no no no no no! That would be a horrible mistake! :) Adding DV as an intermediate step is a good way to fling all pretensions of quality into the trash! Not that DV is bad, but going directly from HDV to DVD (or DVCPRO-HD to DVD) would be far superior to going HDV->DV->DVD (or DVCPROHD->DV->DVD). Definitely agree with you there!
 
philarno said:
I think everyone agrees (outside Panasonic) that the cost and lack of storage is a problem for the P2 cards. Any camera Panasonic wants to sell to non corporate buyers (the kind of buyers that would be interested in a $5500 HD camera.) is going to be hindered by the cost of P2. If Panasonic made this camera with affordable HD recording options there would be no good arguement against buying one.

Dispite large initial interest, unless they address the P2 problem sooner rather than later, the HVX200 may not sell enough units to sustain the line for the long haul and buyers will be stuck with another orphaned Panasonic line.

I know I had to think long and hard about how I was going to afford HD recording with this camera before I ordered one. That question still has not been resolved, so I am just hoping that this investment will not be a big mistake.

The type of shooting I and most other guys I know do is more run and gun than the "take your time, always be near an outlet, and carry you laptop with you" kind of shooting that I'm sure many of you do.

I am hoping that we will learn that indeed there is a way you can take a small 1394 portable hard drive for $200 or $300 and direct record, or that some memory company like PNY will come up with an aftermarket P2 card that they could make a ton of profit on and still be way cheaper that Panasonic.
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Very succinct. I have to say, this is one of the best crafted thoughts I've seen on this forum. This is exactly what most the people I know are saying and Panasonic is aware of this. In our meetings with Panasonic we suggested that they needed to underwrite the cost of P2 cards and suggested that at a minimum they needed to make a "sweetheart" deal with the rental houses, as we were all going to need more P2 cards than we could justify buying... and at cheap rental rates to sell the camera...
 
philarno said:
How many card$ are practical? How many are minimum?
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Minimum of two cards plus something to offload them to. As far as practical; depends on your shooting style. If using 720/24p, you can get around three hours of footage out of two 4GB cards and a P2 Store.

I just hope that something reasonable comes along. ( A price break from Panasonic, an aftermarket P2, a way to strap a mini hard drive to the camera and go direct etc.)
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We're all looking for more options. One that you didn't mention is direct-to-computer; that's here now and gives you hours and hours of continuous recording for free (provided you can be cabled by firewire). The hard disk recorders are coming in about 9 weeks (FireStore and CinePorter). I don't expect to see a significant P2 price drop for at least a few months, but by this time next year card capacities should have doubled and card prices should have fallen to half or less (they dropped 75% in the last year, let's hope they do so again).
 
Barry_Green said:
One that you didn't mention is direct-to-computer; that's here now and gives you hours and hours of continuous recording for free (provided you can be cabled by firewire).
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I'd likme to hear more about this... has anyone here actually done that? if so, what are the details? Any hiccups?
 
Barry_Green said:
Minimum of two cards plus something to offload them to. As far as practical; depends on your shooting style. If using 720/24p, you can get around three hours of footage out of two 4GB cards and a P2 Store.


We're all looking for more options. One that you didn't mention is direct-to-computer; that's here now and gives you hours and hours of continuous recording for free (provided you can be cabled by firewire). The hard disk recorders are coming in about 9 weeks (FireStore and CinePorter). I don't expect to see a significant P2 price drop for at least a few months, but by this time next year card capacities should have doubled and card prices should have fallen to half or less (they dropped 75% in the last year, let's hope they do so again).
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You say the hard disk recorders will be here in about 9 weeks. Still expensive but better in storage without getting too cumbersome. I am curious. What makes the Firestore work as opposed to a 1394 mini hard drive? They come with good capacity are self contained and very small. they could be mounted on the side of the camera easily.

Is it that there needs to be some software to allow capture of the file like a NLE? I know the 100Mbps is not a problem.
 
Mitch_Ives said:
I think you need to factor in the cost of archiving this into your equation. Also add something for your time and the cost of the additional equipment to generate the backups. This always puts a crimp in the P2 concept... until P2 cards are 64GB and cost $100.
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My cost of archiving will be $0.25 for a DVD-R that wil make a lovely 1:1 copy of the 4GB P2 content. I already own a DVD-R drive (who doesn't?) and my time is going to be spent working on this either way. Over the run of the entire film, we'll probably rack up a good $10-$15 in archiving costs. I'm not fretting too much. :)
 
Haakon said:
My cost of archiving will be $0.25 for a DVD-R that wil make a lovely 1:1 copy of the 4GB P2 content. I already own a DVD-R drive (who doesn't?) and my time is going to be spent working on this either way. Over the run of the entire film, we'll probably rack up a good $10-$15 in archiving costs. I'm not fretting too much. :)
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IF you are using $.025 media you better make a few copies of each backup. I find dvd-r and dvd+r to be extremely unreliable. I have gotten into the habit of running a scan of every disk right after I burn it to be sure that it is completely readable and the data integrity is maintained. It is critical now more than ever since we won't have a DV tape to go back to in an emergency.
 
Mitch_Ives said:
I'd likme to hear more about this... has anyone here actually done that? if so, what are the details? Any hiccups?
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You can capture HD or DVCPRO50 just like DV, straight to computer. Open up your NLE (FCP, Avid, Canopus, or any NLE that supports DV100 or DV50 capture) and tell it to capture live. I've captured DV100 to my laptop using Avid, but not for anything heavy-duty. Evin shot his ProFlowers.com spot all cabled to his lowly Mac PowerBook, recording live.

Eventually Serious Magic should have a DV100-enabled version of DV Rack which would provide for a dedicated monitor/capture application.
 
philarno said:
What makes the Firestore work as opposed to a 1394 mini hard drive? They come with good capacity are self contained and very small. they could be mounted on the side of the camera easily.

Is it that there needs to be some software to allow capture of the file like a NLE? I know the 100Mbps is not a problem.
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You are correct, there needs to be a controlling capture program. It's the same reason as to why you can't just plug a firewire hard disk into a Sony or Canon DV camera -- without a capturing controlling computer, the two devices cannot talk to each other. The FireStore is an onboard computer that handles the capture and writes it to the hard disk.
 
ecking said:
And you're telling me 500 dollars profit is a lot?
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No I wasn't. I said "many people".
But I do think that Panny's profit over p2 cards is a lot.
Considering mass production discounts they get when buying the sd memory and very simple building and caseing.
 
toke lahti said:
No I wasn't. I said "many people".
But I do think that Panny's profit over p2 cards is a lot.
Considering mass production discounts they get when buying the sd memory and very simple building and caseing.
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THAT I agree with. But the imac is a different story, that's actually good value!
 
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