DVXuser.com exclusive hands on with the HVX200

It was mentioned that panasonic engineers have played around using an Ipod for storage. This alone would indicate 6-pin Firewire, also the Ipod can handle the data rate if Ipod specs are correct. A 30gig Ipod sels for $349 which would be an ideal susbstitute for P2 cards assuming you can record directly to the Ipod. If this is the case I'm sold. I also see DVX's going dirt cheap on ebay soon.
 
Well I don't think (Hope!) DVX's will go that cheap - they're way cheaper than an HVX with P2 will be. Almost different price markets. Well, that's what I'll keep telling myself cause I think I'm going to get a DVX soon..:)

Aaron
 
Panasonic certainly sees them as different price markets. They intend to keep the DVX as a current model, selling side-by-side with the HVX.

As for an ipod handling the data rate -- don't ipods use 1.8" drives? I don't think there are any 1.8" drives that have a sustained write speed of 15 megabytes per second. Even the new Hitachi 30gb drive falls to 9mB/sec. I'm no expert on ipods, but I do know that the drive would have to have a continuous, sustained, minimum write speed of at least 15mB/sec, probably closer to 20 for safety's sake. And I'm fairly certain no 1.8" drive comes close to that. Although, with 60gb capacity, they'd have to be doing that with either a raid (unlikely) or 2.5" drives (more likely)... so perhaps it could keep up... are there any posted spec's on sustained transfer rates for ipods?
 
The 60gig model is indeed a 1.8" drive, 4200rpm, average seek time of 15ms. With 15ms AVERAGE speed, that would probably rule out the ipod for direct streaming. The soon to be 80gig ipod will also run under the same specs.
 
Seek time doesn't have much if anything to do with data transfer rates. If I am correct, that is the amount of time it takes to move the heads to a specified location on the hard drive.
 
I must say I don't see the P2 a problem. This camera is dedicated to semi and profesional users shooting guerilla films :) and films in general. Unless you are shooting a wedding or a biiig mastershot why do you need more than 4 minutes of material.. I regularly shoot on 35 mm and a standard tape mag is 122m what is 4 minutes and nobody finds it a problem. You need just two cards (8 min. is more than enough) and swich them while downloading from one of them to ANY disc. I have never been on a set where setting up a scene, without director telling actors what to do :), takes less than 10 minutes.
 
WestEnd said:
The 60gig model is indeed a 1.8" drive, 4200rpm, average seek time of 15ms. With 15ms AVERAGE speed, that would probably rule out the ipod for direct streaming. The soon to be 80gig ipod will also run under the same specs.
Click to expand...

Would not dare to rely on an iPod or a 1.8" HD for that matter, anyhow. These small HDs are NOT meant for permanently streaming data. They grab some audio data (which goes into a data buffer) and the HD head goes back to rest until he's next called to grab the next data. Go figure the amount of data used with MP3 and/or AAC and compare that to the bandwidth necessary for DVCProHD. No way!
You may succeed with certain 2.5" HDs but certainly not with 1.8" ones.
 
@luka

It's not a problem that you can only shoot 4 minutes (or rather more if you can afford the larger cards), there's the problem of backup. If you shoot on 35mm you'll have your footage once and for all. What do you want to do with your P2 footage? Copy it to a harddisk? Leave there forever? You really trust mobile harddisks to be 100% safe for years?

I don't. Not at all. But I acknowledge that there are many users out there who disagree on that - very much to my surprise - and think harddisks never fail. Maybe it is really me who encountered, lets say, at least 5 harddisks in my lifetime who failed and killed everything on it. Well, there's a workpath and solution for that problem, sure (mirroring, manual copies..). It is just, I'll expect A LOT OF tears from MANY P2-users who have no clue of the actual reliability of data storage media today (and I do not talk about the reliability of P2 itself).
 
Y'know, we heard that same talk from photographers who didn't want to switch over to digital. "Where will my negatives be?" "How can I work without having prints?"

In the end it became a non-issue. Digital photography is here to stay, and people just adapted their workflows to work with the new technology.

Same with e-mail -- do you print out a hard copy of every e-mail you receive? And file 'em away in a great big filing cabinet? I know I don't.

Yes P2 data will need to be archived. And there are at least a half-dozen ways to do that now, and more coming. Videotape is just one way, and probably the worst way, because even though tape is digital and would represent a clone of the data, you'd lose all the cool P2 metadata. You'd be better off archiving your footage onto something like DLT or SAIT. P2 data is data. Use data methods to archive. Burn it onto a DVD-R. Burn it onto a blu-ray disc. Write it to data tape. Archive to hard disk if you want. Dump it to DVCPRO-HD tape if you want. Output to those new holographic blue laser drives they're talking about building. Just archive it in a way that you can search and find it again (via metadata) and that right there will be infinitely superior to having boxes and boxes and shelves and shelves of videotapes.
 
JanBee said:
@luka

If you shoot on 35mm you'll have your footage once and for all.
Click to expand...

Really? Why do think then that so many big movies from the 30s to the 80s of the last century are lost forever? Chemical film fades, all the more when we talk about colour film with time limited colour couplers. Thank god there is digital technology to scan the remains of some of those films, to restore the resulting data as good as it gets and to archive the outcome of this process on optical data media in digital formats. Want more info on that topic? Google for Lowry Digital and yes, have a look into Apple Computer's report on John D. Lowry. Highly reveiling.
 
JanBee said:
@luka

It's not a problem that you can only shoot 4 minutes (or rather more if you can afford the larger cards), there's the problem of backup. If you shoot on 35mm you'll have your footage once and for all. What do you want to do with your P2 footage? Copy it to a harddisk? Leave there forever? You really trust mobile harddisks to be 100% safe for years?

I don't. Not at all. But I acknowledge that there are many users out there who disagree on that - very much to my surprise - and think harddisks never fail. Maybe it is really me who encountered, lets say, at least 5 harddisks in my lifetime who failed and killed everything on it. Well, there's a workpath and solution for that problem, sure (mirroring, manual copies..). It is just, I'll expect A LOT OF tears from MANY P2-users who have no clue of the actual reliability of data storage media today (and I do not talk about the reliability of P2 itself).
Click to expand...

You are right, there is a risk going tapeless at this time. But. it is a risk that a lot of people are going to take to get the quality of DVC-PRO HD at these prices. If you think the risks are too high, then you have two choices, settle for HDV or shell out the vast sums of money needed to work with the Varicam or with HDCAM. I'll take the HVX and P2.
 
@ JanBee

Sorry but do you find miniDV tapes reliable. Or Betacam.. Or ANYTHING for that matter. 35mm will last if stored in almost perfect conditions. But even though always at least 3 or 4 dupnegatives are made. I store things on DV and Betacam tapes designed for storage (thicker than regular tapes) and rewind them every now and then. Even so I have dropped frames sometimes after storing a tape for 4 years (what is nothing). Nothing is reliable. We must live with that. And like it was said. Archive, archive, archive. ON EVERYTHING :)
 
“Whether it’s pictures you take of your kids, or 35 mm motion picture film, it (film) is incredibly archival. It’s something you know you will always be able to come back to. I wonder about all the … digital TV programs and movies. Where do they all end up?”

--Lance Acord, Cinematographer
 
thisiswells said:
“Whether it’s pictures you take of your kids, or 35 mm motion picture film, it (film) is incredibly archival. It’s something you know you will always be able to come back to. I wonder about all the … digital TV programs and movies. Where do they all end up?”

--Lance Acord, Cinematographer
Click to expand...

Yeah, I saw that from "The Difference", Kodak's latest propaganda piece.
It has some great cinematographers featured in there, but as one would expect, it's a little misleading with regard to embracing the direction of digital capture. I particularly couldn't help LMAO when I saw the expressions on John Bowring's face in his quote towards the end of the DVD, commenting on the death of videotape and how "film is living on". You could tell he was choking back the laughter of wanting to just spill the words, hard disk, solid state, blu-ray...video's becoming stronger! And film is alive but on digitally assisted life support! :grin:
 
I think that the debate of film vs. digital is way off base. Yes, from a pure technical quality point of view, digital imaging has a way to go until it beats film. With that I mean as far as resolution, lattitude, color saturation, ect. However, digital is already at a level where what really matters can be counted and what really matters is artistry, period. Nancy Schriber winning the best cinematography award at Sundance with "November" a film shot with the DVX-100 is a case in point and could be considered a watershed moment. I believe that in very short order, there will be a stable of artist that are qualified to be inducted into the ASC and who have never shot film. We'll see if the ASC can be broad minded and forward thinking enough to induct these artists.

This is what is so exciting about the HVX. It raises the technical qualtiy level that is availble to a broader range of artist. Of course it is not perfect, but it is definitly a quantum leap in the right direction.
 
Having seen November, I would say that Greg Harrison's editing carried the piece. I think Nancy got a "representative" nod toward the coming strength of digital filmmakers.
 
Der, you forgot something in your predictable review.

However, one thing seems clear to us: with only a $49 difference in price, it becomes much more difficult to understand why someone would consider the Sony Z1 over the HVX200,

WHy? Gee, let me think. It will run you $20k to have enough P2 cards to store about an hour of footage. WHat if I need 6 hours? $120k

I beileve that is reason enough.
 
It's OFFICIAL!! Videoman69 is a Troll. This is his second post in like 2 minutes. Looks like the Troll police might need to intervene!!

~reservoir~
 
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