another one down

R

roentgen

Member
Made the decision to take the plunge to JVC this week. Have 3 DVX100s now. Love them. Will miss them greatly. But clients are starting to ask for HD and no matter how we slice it, cannot make the P2 cards work for our run/gun needs. Why, oh why did Panasonic close the door to all of us who depend the extra income from event filming?:(

Just thought people should know, especially Panasonic. :angry:

Rush, just sent you a PM for $$ quotes.

I’ll be posting my DVXs for sale shortly but anyone wants a head start, send me a PM
 
I'm sure you will enjoy the JVC. I do hope Panasonic reads these because I was really hooked on the HVX but couldn't make the workflow happen.

It's not just event filming as I had to shoot some narrative material the other day and as I was shooting I thought to myself "there is now ay I could have done this with P2".

Let me explain: I had to hike in about a mile to shoot some scenic valleys. Once I hiked in I spent several hours shooting various things. Guess you could classify this as 2nd Unit Film Crew work. Well what would I have done when my two P2 Cards filled up? Guess I could have copied them to a laptop but that means hiking in with a laptop and enough power to keep it going long enough to transfer my material several times through the course of the day. A generator was not an option nor was hiking all the way back to the parking lot every other time. Extra batteries for the laptop? Perhaps but that is extra weight and cost. Had it been a 16 or 35 mm film camera I would have just brought extra rolls of film and changed them out as needed. They would have sat there happily in the film cans tell I got back to the parking lot.

Now I'm sure there are ways around this but none that are acceptable to me, at least not at the level where it makes shooting fun and less stressful.
 
As far as I understand, a simply USB hard drive in an enclosure would have worked. I do understand that this is even more cost :)
 
It would have? What USB hard drive is this? What enclosure? How is it powered? How do I verify it recorded what it should have? Sorry but that is not workflow.
 
FullRez: That's exactly correct. There are a dozen work-arounds but none that are practical. We film a lot of corporate work in the field (training/marketing) and use DVRack on laptops when we can but too often need to be mobile in remote locations. Do the math and p2 cards and/or CinePorter for 4/6 hours filming on 2to3cameras and you're looking at a lot of $$. Hard to recoup all that. Not to mention the lack of trust in delicate hard drives.

After very serious consideration, and then some very serious trying to talk myself out of the obvious only decision, I still tried to rationalize going HDX but could not make it work. At best, we could use it for 50% of our contracts. Where the JVC will do 100%. At the end of the day, we need to be profitable. No matter how much we like a camera.

I know we're not very different than the other studios out there. I wonder what percentage of DVX users are like us and do not have the option to go to P2 cards?

Did anyone do a survey here yet that I missed?
 
FullRez said:
It would have? What USB hard drive is this? What enclosure? How is it powered? How do I verify it recorded what it should have? Sorry but that is not workflow.
Click to expand...

Not sure, was just putting it out there. I don't have an HVX, nor a DVX, so I'm not promoting it, that's for sure. In fact, I've lately bene looking at the JVC. It's just that, IIRC, you can buy any of the small, portable bus powered USB drives, plug it in and DUMP the p2 footage to it. It doesn't actually record to it. So you check your footage from the P2 card, just like you need to do with tape.

I could never afford/justify the HVX, but I was quite keen on it, but the form factor, and the less than stellar initial reviews, has definately made me not worry about that fact that I might have to go with another camera.

On another topic, is there anywhere where I can download good quality footage from the HD100? I'm keen on seeing what this can do, and if the MPG artifacts are anything to worry about. I'd prefer footage with some good movement in it, no still flowers.
 
when I look into my crystal ball, I can see P2 is the future. But they're not the now. When these cards are cheap and bordering on disposable (the way DV tape is, and the way that recordable DVD's and CD's have become--remember they were like $20 for EACH recordable CD when they first appeared on the scene) then P2 will truly obliterate tape. Why bother with tape. It will be like the 8 Track vs. the MP3 player. But that's gotta be a few years off yet. If Panasonic could find a way to make super cheap P2 cards so you can hike into that valley with seven of them things in your pocket, then I bet we'd all be buying the HVX.
 
Aza, I'm sure if you search around you will find some HD100 footage. I'll try to post some when I can find time. After seeing the HD100 on film at the DGA screening it was clear that this camera could hold up to 35mm film blow up and/or Digital Projection.

Notwithstanding: You are very correct here. I love the "ditch tape" idea but it's still years away before it really is affordable enough to replace tape 100%. I needed a camera now so I'll go out and enjoy shooting HD at a decent price and have some fun while I wait for the prices to fall and technology to catch up a bit. Then in a couple of years (maybe less if we get lucky) I'll sell the HD100 and move over to the best thing available at the time using tapless workflows.
 
I'm sure when the change over is ready to happen (to P2 or similar device) it will be fast. Look how quickly film still cameras vanished. In like 24 months the photographer's tool that had not really changed for decades suddenly became digital. Manufacturer's who made regular photo film products suddenly closed their doors. But the timing for P2 has to be right. If the digital camera wasn't as cheap or CHEAPER than regular film still cameras, my bet is we'd all still be using regular film still cameras right now. It will be interesting to watch how it unfolds and determine if Panasonic starts a revolution, or if they jumped the gun and failed. Remember how we backed up our computers a couple years ago? iOmega zip drives? Those were the big thing for about 5 seconds...and they vanished when USB memory sticks and recordable CD's/DVD's appeared.
 
Panasonic increased the real cost of the camera with P2 cards and a hard disk unit to offload or hard disk recording solutions. And that is for only 60-120 gb I believe. We are supposed to be the low end camera users that care about cost. On the other hand, companies make it easier for users of more expensive equipment. Sony has cheap optical disks for their XDCAM HD camera ($30 for 23gb) and Thomson has got Infinity that uses much cheaper Rev disks ($40 for 35gb). There is affordable HD media and easy backup for all companies except Panasonic! We know P2 is reusable but so are other solutions and we can afford not to reuse those and have easy backup.
 
Hi Roentgen, I just sent you back a PM, unfortunately I just ran out of cameras at the old price, and no longer competitive. JVC raised the price $600, so now the price is $5600. Sorry sir. :embarasse
 
I like limo's point here - there are other cheaper HD mediums. Why go with P2? I think the simple answer is, P2 may look a little outclassed at the moment, but don't buy, rent, because in a year you're going to be kicking yourself when your friend with dual 8gig P2s and a cheap USB HDD is going tapeless and saving tons of time (which = money for shooters) with a simplified workflow. Also, what's with the 'digital is evil' sig? Aren't you on the wrong forum? :P
 
Thanks for the fast reply Rush.

Penfever: We're talking about needing dozens of 8gig P2 cards to have a practical workflow.
Until they are < $100 each or so, it's not cost effective. The price will come down every month on them but it will be a few years before they get that low. By then, there will be another camera on the 'must have' list and the HDXs will be piling up on eBay just as the DVXs are now.

In the end, no matter how people spin it, Panasonic cut off probably half of their current and potential customers. I'm sure I'll get used to JVC and will make great movies with ProHD. After all it is just a tool—a means to an end. The real product is the movie. The money paying audience is not going to care what camera it was filmed with.

I'm just annoyed that now I have to unload all my extra batts, verizooms, and other DVX-specific equipment.

Sure wish Panasonic didn't force me down this path....
 
Digital IS evil:) Most users spend too much time in choosing a digital camera or talking about digital cameras. Specifications, formats, storage technologies etc. And new cameras appear one after the other. Way too fast. In the analog days we knew a film type worked and a lens was nice and used that in whatever was available. Many decades with the same technology that still works better than most digital solutions.

Digital camera companies play games with us. They expect we will get a new camera every two years. They underpec and overprice everything. They introduce new features only if they have to. It's modern marketing at all its glory.
 
Penfever: The problem is that you can get the Hard Drive recorder for the JVC (and other cameras) and use the same tapless workflow. The P2 Cards will be appealing when they can hold 20+ min per card and you can have 10-20 of them in your bag.

The offloading during production is not a workflow no matter how people try to spin it. Even if you compare it to traditional film making. With film I can snap on a new loaded magazine and shoot while the other one goes into storage. I don't need to wait while the film is copied to another storage medium and verified before I can put another magazine on and keep shooting. Plus this P2 camera is suppose to be "Affordable". Having another person on set just to juggle cards is not "independent" friendly. Trust me when I say that Panasonic did not intend for us to swap out cards every 4 minutes. Unfortunately they need to do damage control until the cards get to where they should be.

Now in a few years when costs come down then it becomes a viable solution.
 
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