AC160 AG-AC160 Thoughts, questions, concerns, time-stamp

M

mickee13

Active member
Just picked this cam up today. Have been reading all the threads and learning lots. So far it seems great, love the ergonomics and the image quality and low light performance so far are WOW compared to my old Sony Z1
First question; The counter, I cannot seem to reset TimeCode? I have the counter set to total and the one counter will reset fine, but can TC be reset because I've tried holding reset, nothing changes it?

My cam is going in for the time-stamp fix this week, I also use this camera for some legal work and it is needed. I have one concern though, I record an SD copy to a mini-DVR from the a/v outs and use the downconvert mode set to 'side crop' to create a perfect 4:3 crop......except for one issue, the last digit of the seconds clock gets cut off because the time/date is off-center. Now I am recording 1080HA to the SD cards for max efficiency of record time. In DV mode the time-stamp is fine in 4:3 mode, but you can barely get 2 hours to a 32GB card. It would be great to be able to record in 1080HA for a quality master and great record times and let the a/v outs do the SD recording. Apparently this works fine on the HMC150. Is there some way, now that the Panasonic engineers have fixed the time-stamp to just shift it a hair to the left? I'm sure they're rolling their eyes at this time-stamp stuff. Maybe it got shifted slightly left in the fix already? Can anyone confirm.
 
I am rolling my eyes. (sorry) My Maxell 32GB SD cards can fit 2h 23 minutes. ~$40USD a piece. I limit all my depos to 2 hours max, per media. Not sure why you would want to squeeze more than 2 hours on a DVD. Some courts are still using VHS and VHS essentially has a 2 hr limit.
What I do - All my depositions are shot in SD/DV mode. I take the firewire out to my HDD recorder. (I use iVDR VC102.) The logistics - go off the record, hit the button on the back to change cards - lay 5 seconds of color bars so I can ID the tape break easily - get right back on the record - time taken = 30 seconds. I would think using the A/V outs to be a pain. I hit one record button and it activates my secondary device. Only problem with my method is the attorney can't take anything with him at the end of the depo.
With all that said - in your defense- I would expect all the time date info to fall into the safe zone for side cropping.

Re: Time Code - (pain to change) -- you need to go through the menu for that. Look in your manual for instructions.
 
ELN614 said:
I am rolling my eyes. (sorry) My Maxell 32GB SD cards can fit 2h 23 minutes. ~$40USD a piece. I limit all my depos to 2 hours max, per media. Not sure why you would want to squeeze more than 2 hours on a DVD. Some courts are still using VHS and VHS essentially has a 2 hr limit.
Click to expand...

Where do I say I want to 'sqeeze' more than 2 hours on a dvd? That's right, I don't.
I want the time/date stamp to fit within the safety of the 4:3 framing.....which it doesn't. And I prefer to fit an entire day on a 64GB card rather than screwing around swapping 32GB cards that can only hold 2hrs 8min in DV mode. Now I'm rolling my eyes.
 
Sorry, you said was
In DV mode the time-stamp is fine in 4:3 mode, but you can barely get 2 hours to a 32GB card.
Click to expand...
so I assumed you wanted longer than 2 hr record times.
Well if I do my math two 64GB SD cards in the camera will yield over 8 hours in DV mode. Camera will automatically switch over to the second card. Does that solve the screwing around swapping issue?
Yeah I know this reply doesn't address HD mode issue w/ the TD being cut off. I can't fix that I can only suggest the above work around.
 
Thanks for taking the time to try to help, appreciate it. Yes, 8 hours of DV to 2 64GB cards....but not in simultaneous record mode. The reason I got this cam was for the bullet proof backup (or as close as one can get) and the nice long high quality record times . Is that being overly cautious when I'm also running a DVR.....maybe. But I'd rather be cautious. Anyway, the real issue is that the time-stamp goes outside the 4:3 safe area in HD mode and it seems like if they can drop it down from where it was, perhaps they can shift it a 'few' pixels to the left also to resolve this. It works fine on the HMC150. So far my correspondence with Panasonic has been very positive, and seeing actual Panasonic people here on this forum giving updates is more than I've seen from 'other' companies. I will post screen shots of what I'm talking about if it helps anyone else coming from a 150.
I resolved the TC reset issue by downloading the advanced manual and finding the reset process there.

Is anyone finding the LCD screen difficult to judge color temp? It's obviously a huge step up from the old DVX100 which was unusable, but I'm seeing a greenish/yellowish tint that no amount of adjustment is helping with. I'll try it in different light today.
 
In my experience the colour temp of the EVF is spot on, whereas the LCD does seem to have a slight tint to it on both our (130 & 160) cameras, but not as much as the AF100.

Solution, just use the EVF to white balance.

Cheers,

Vaughan
 
Vaughan Wood said:
In my experience the colour temp of the EVF is spot on, whereas the LCD does seem to have a slight tint to it on both our (130 & 160) cameras, but not as much as the AF100.

Solution, just use the EVF to white balance.

Cheers,

Vaughan
Click to expand...

Just figured that out, it's a shame the LCD has the greeny/yellow tint, it's so nice otherwise, but no big deal since the EVF seems fine and I have an external that is fine.

Just picked up 2 Lexar 64GB cards....8 hrs of simultaneous PH on cards this small is crazy. I couldn't have dreamed of that 5 years ago.
 
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