Apple-HVX Event

ullanta

ullanta

Veteran
Pretty much a waste of time, I'm sorry to say.

The most interesting point was when the Apple presenter decided to demonstrate copying folders from P2 cards in the camera to a HD over firewire... a 4GB card... and it turned out it would take 13 minutes. 13 Minutes! He aborted the process and rapidly moved on.

The presenters were all pretty ill-informed, sometimes mis-informed. The presentations were all fairly boring, static slides: no video, not really even any stills of footage. Why? Why spend time discussing color spaces, formats, Gamma, frame rates, etc, and have NO IMAGES to help? The Apple rep, in the end, did a pretty rapid fire "demo" that involved a tiny bit of footage and some barely interesting stuff... but really, nothing you couldn't get better from the little video clips on Apple's web site. He did spend a lot of time talking about FC Studio's "new" native HDV support. And the DP guy presenting the camera spent a lot of time HDV bashing. In total, there was more info on HDV than on FCP support for the HVX.

Sad, huh? Long Panny sales pitch, long Apple sales pitch, 2 seconds on FCP and HVX.
 
Thanks for the update. I feel better about not making it now. But disappointed at the same time that apple totally flubbed an opportunity to show something interesting to people.
 
I was there too.

I pretty much thought the same thing. I know that this is the start of the tour, but it was as if they were all under prepared. When someone from the audience would ask a question of the DP and he did not know the answer, I kept wondering why the 3 Panasonic Reps in the room did not step forward and answer the question.

Steve Bayely, (I may have the spelling wrong) is the new FinalCut project manager, and has been on the team for only the last 8 or so weeks. He previously worked both with Avid and Adobe Premiere if I understood him correctly. I expected a lot from him, but it was like watching someone who was new to the Mac and new to FinalCut. When it came time to mount the P2 cards directly from the camera they did not show up immediately and he appeared stumped. He eventually reset the camera and of course the firewire bus then became aware of the cards and they mounted just fine. I mean when this stuff happens you should just know what to do. This is Firewire 101 regardless if it is new P2 technology or an old Maxtor drive.

Yet the thing that is still troubling me, is why, with that big beautiful HD projector there, that they didn't show any HD footage shot by the DP present, or anyone else. I mean, this is the eye candy we all want to see. If you want to sell HVXs (Well Pany is selling all they can make as it is) show us some awesome stuff projected. If indies are going to use to shoot HD with it and go back to film cinema environments, then show us.

This last point is worrisome since this is the second Panasonic function that I have been to that has not shown anything on larger than 17" displays.

Could they really be that poor of presenters?

I think Barry Green is out in Hawaii, but I would love to get his comments on this and some additional insight into the cameras capabilities.
 
I was quite looking forward to going to the seminar today, but I'm really sad to have to agree with ullanta... the entire event was a real letdown. The representatives from both companies frequently gave the audience complete misinformation about the camera and the resulting workflow. More than once I had to raise my hand and correct/provide details for the presenters when they either inaccurately answered questions or just flat out didn't have the information at all. It probably didn't help that the Panasonic "rep" didn't work for Panasonic (he was a DP that "likes shooting on Varicam") and the first thing the Apple rep said was that he's only been with the company for 8 weeks. I was also really dissapointed that the only DVD they had to hand out was the same old "version 2.1" that they've been passing around since RESFest (you know, the one with the business woman who tries seductively to sell you on P2), especially after the Apple website proclaimed that they would be providing new versions with real HVX footage on it for everyone to see. It's nice that they're providing these things for free to help educate people on the platform, but I don't think this one helped them much.
 
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Other than your noise question which couldn't be answered there, and not even here as I am not looking at the monitor with you, what other questions couldn't they answer?

On the noise issue, have you looked at it compaered to the DVX. It is the same or less that I have seen. You may not care for that but start there. Then compare it to the JVC. I have video from broad daylight that shows that the HVX is quieter. Don't have a Canon yet for comparison.

No 1/3" camera is perfect, but I happen to feel this one is pretty good. What else did you want to know that you didn't find out. I have sent the thread to the Panasonic presenters and while they do have the smaller part of the presentation they should be interested in covering the points you want to know about.

Thanks,

Jan
 
ullanta said:
Pretty much a waste of time, I'm sorry to say.

The most interesting point was when the Apple presenter decided to demonstrate copying folders from P2 cards in the camera to a HD over firewire... a 4GB card... and it turned out it would take 13 minutes.
Click to expand...

Odd I have done the same thing on my G4 Laptop and it tookk about 3 minutes.

Something is terribly wrong.

Sorry guys.

Jan
 
4gb transfering straight from camera to a firewire Hard disk with the 1394 host option (without computer) it takes 8 minutes, so maybe was something wrong in the transfer, because 13 minutes es too much long
 
Sorry for editing my post before I saw yours, Jan; I moved the section about noise to a more relevant topic before your reply came in. Know that I have read your words and I appreciate your reply; I simply didn't want to turn this thread about the seminars into yet another discussion about noise.

I can discuss with you in private and more at length some of the issues I had with the seminar today. I think that what I have said on here is as much as I wanted to say on a public forum.
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
Something is terribly wrong.
Click to expand...

Basically, yes. It seemed like everything they tried to do had to be aborted because it would take too long - bad showmanship! Questions such as "Does the camera record 24p" were given meaningless and noninformative answers. "Does the camera have any new timecode features" was answered by "I don't know anything about audio."

And the tone was kinda low-key and... almost disinterested. Maybe because it was the second session of the day, but... not a good excuse.

Seriously, had they just popped the HVX "instructional" DVD into a machine and played that, the presentation would have been 1000 times better. Had there been integration between the FCP and the HVX presentations - rather than 2 disjunct ones - it would have been 1000 times better. "Here's a camera feature - here's some video of what it does - here's how you can work with it in FCP - Here's the next camera feature..." would have been much more effective...
 
Very often in big file transfers the computer will give an estimated time based on the volume transferred at the very start. If that's a bit slow then the computer will display something like 13 minutes. But in reality it would probably do it much faster.
The guy must have freaked out when he saw 13 minutes and decided to abort before it could get under way.
I'm sure you've all seen display times of over an hour for a 2 GB file but which suddenly jumps down to 4 or 5 minutes when the transfer really starts
 
Sounds to me like they didn't rehearse the presentation at all. Very amateurish! Would you show up on set having never turned on the camera?
 
firewire transfer

firewire transfer

it's been well documented that a yet unfixed bug in apple's firewire transfer speeds on all their g5 macs is significantly slower than the speeds on their g4 powerbook. i'm assuming they used slower g5s at the demo.

www.barefeats.com
 
I get 3min 50second transfers of 4GB card to my 2.5" 60GB Hitachi Travelstar hardrive. It does take much longer to my G5 Powermac.
 
Thank you everybody for the feedback. We regret that some of you felt the seminar could have been better. The Apple and Panasonic teams are working hard to improve this seminar based on your feedback.

There are two items that need clarification:
1. The DVD Sampler disk mentioned in the invitation was unfortunately. We are producing a brand new DVD with sample footage from the HVX-200. It will be mailed to all seminar registrants (using the address you provided when you registered) as soon as possible. In addition, the sponsoring reseller for your event will receive disks to distribute too.

2. Apple and Panasonic are publishing a whitepaper titled "Workflow for Final Cut Pro and the Panasonic HVX-200 Camera." This will be published on the Apple web-site within a week. It provides detailed information on this camera's support in FCP and step-by-step instructions. I will update this posting with a URL as soon as it's available.

Thanks again for all of the feedback. Apple and Panasonic are here and we're listening.

Paul
 
Welcome, Paul. Hope you stick around. There are ALWAYS Apple and FCP questions and rumors that could use a little expert attention.:thumbsup:
 
I'm glad to see some others having trouble with the firewire transfer. (well, not really, but it is a relief that it's not just me) I did a test writing to a 7200 RPM Maxtor external drive in an enclosure with an Oxford 911 chipset. Here were my results:

Camera to drive over FW 17 minutes for a 4 gig card.
PCMCIA slot to drive over USB2.0 was 3:20
Camera into computer over USB 2.0 back out to USB 2.0 drive was about 4 minutes.
No firewire on my thinkpad so I couldn't test firewire from camera out USB to drive.

I thought it was the firewire enclosure so I took it back and swapped it out for a different one and had the same results.... any suggestions?? It can't be the camera can it?
 
polispol said:
4gb transfering straight from camera to a firewire Hard disk with the 1394 host option (without computer) it takes 8 minutes, so maybe was something wrong in the transfer, because 13 minutes es too much long
Click to expand...
8 minutes with verify, maybe. I've been getting 7-minute transfers with verify. Without verify it takes almost exactly 4 minutes.
 
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