DVXuser.com exclusive hands on with the HVX200

Videoman69, it will only cost people that much if they're an idiot with too much money, and in that case, your point becomes moot. That is not the way P2 is designed to be used at present. Given the financial and technical limitations (We have 4GB cards max at present AFAIK) you can't store hours and hours of stuff on P2 without it costing you the earth. So, for the zillionth time, you offload to a hard drive or record to something like a Firestore. Simple.

If you need to record long form, AND you don't want to use an external device to either offload or to record to, AND you want to use DVCPro (In any of it's forms), AND you don't want to buy a bundle of P2 cards - then you don't buy the HVX200 - you buy something else.

Aaron
 
P2 isn't meant to be treated like tape. You record to your cards, offload to a laptop, and then reuse the cards again. Wash, rinse, and repeat. You'd be wasting your money by spending twenty thousand on cards.

Read through the threads. This has been debated to death. You're making points that have been made at least ten times, answered twenty, will be asked about one hundred more times until everyone pulls out their hair. Trust me, the answers are here if you take the patience to read up a little.
 
I just sent Panasonic a rant about P2 being bloody expensive, how am I going to back up without cheap tape, et cetera, et cetera. Not sure I'm totally convinced yet, but they got back to me in a few hours with a personal email (I'm impressed!), and sent the following link to their whitepaper, which answers a lot of questions.

Go to:

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webap...rfCategory=Cinema Series Cameras&displayTab=R

And click on white paper.

And it looks like Panasonic is very shortly going to come out with an 8 GB P2 card.

https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/sales_o/p2/p2card/
 
you do have tape.. SD of course, but you still have tape. And after spending 100 bucks per hour for HD tape anyways, after 15 hours you got yourself a P2 card that can theoretically hold endless data.
 
Jarred Land said:
you do have tape.. SD of course, but you still have tape. And after spending 100 bucks per hour for HD tape anyways, after 15 hours you got yourself a P2 card that can theoretically hold endless data.
Click to expand...
True, but what I don't have is an archive of my HD camera footage. And that's the sticking point; either I burn DVD-Rs (VERY time-consuming) or I purchase a LOT of high-capacity storage (still far more expensive than tape). And in either case, I have to add a transfer procedure to my production day, while I'm shooting, since the P2 is so small in HD mode (8 minutes in 1080).

It's like having one very high-quality (and expensive) 8-minute tape, which you have to record on, digitize, then record over again.

And, since the transfer for an 8 GB card takes anywhere from 4-8 minutes, there's no significant time difference between digitizing and transferring.

There's gotta be a better way. Without going out and dropping 60K on a Varicam. Or spending $25K on P2 cards. Or hiring a guy to burn DVD-R's round the clock.

The basic idea is good. The camera front end is awesome. But the archiving of media is impractical in real-world low-budget production.
 
Vanguy, yes it is inconvenient for sure. We'd all like 2 terrabyte P2 cards that we don't have to offload, but at the moment we don't have them that big.

That's the price you pay for DVCPro in a camera of this price bracket. I think it's simple. There are problems with the system, for instance (Especially in your case it seems) you may have to waste all the time you saved on capturing, later on just to archive. Maybe you can't offload as you need to keep shooting and you don't have anyone else to help you. The question I think people need to ask themselves, is "Do I want Panasonic's version of HiDef" (DVCPro codec, 1080p etc)? If you dont - then it would probably be better for you to get a different camera that doesn't have these shortcomings (HDV for example). I think we just have to live with the inconvenience if we want DVCPro - I will.

Aaron
 
Not dead yet

Not dead yet

You're right of course. Basically what I want is a VariCam for under 10K. Which is not gonna happen. Tradeoffs.

It's still an amazing camera, and possibly with the use of two 8 GB cards and a couple of Panasonic P2 Store drives on my belt (I shoot about 2 hours of footage a day), it might be practical on set. Now we're up to about $13K, and I still have to offload the drives onto my edit system every night. That's doable, I think.

But then, I'd need to put the whole show on my edit system in hi-res, which means I'd need something like 5 TB of high-speed storage for a feature. Add $13K.

Now, comes time for the archiving. Say I want to keep half my footage. I'd need to get a DLT drive ($4K+) and a bunch of DLT tape ($1000), and archive for over 20 continuous hours. What's my total so far? $31K? Plus 20 hours of archiving plus the time spent double-transferring the footage (to the P2 store and then to the 5 TB array), and it all looks pretty complex and expensive.

Alternatively, to save money on a DLT system and tape, I could back up to about 300 double-layer DVD-Rs. Which would take over 75 hours, even with an 8x burner.

Sounds like a rant, doesn't it? It's because I'd really like to use this camera; it looks like the giant-killer, if not for this issue. Am I missing something? Is there some cheap, efficient way to store all this data, especially during the offline process? That would at least save $13K on the array...
 
I'm confused. Very confused.

In all of the conversations everybody seems set on getting this new camera with the P2 cards. Around 10k. Add to that all the other bits and bobs and you are talking serious money. And yet these are the same people who bought DVX100's because shoulder mount cameras were out of their price range!
 
Okay, I've done some more math. Sorry, I think I might have overstated it a bit.

If you transfer to large LaCie drives (about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of a high-speed array), you spend about as much money as you would on DVCPRO-HD tape (about $5K for a typical low-budget feature). Then, I suppose, you could just stash the drives somewhere, and buy more for the next show. And no digitizing, although I still think transferring all that data amounts to the same thing.

But you've still gotta transfer your cards every 8 minutes on set. And it's still about ten times the media cost of HDV.

Unless someone out there has a cheap and easy way to archive without swapping DVD-Rs for days?
 
And, looking further, I found an interesting, only slightly impractical solution:

http://www.coolatoola.com/

A way of backing up data to regular DV (or Digital8) tapes, up to 17.5 GB on a 60 minute tape. Which would hold 17 minutes of HD 1080 video on a tape you can get for a few bucks. The downside? it takes an hour to an hour an a half.

Sorry for the flood. I'll keep quiet for awhile.

Vanguy out.
 
I'm considering the HVX for Independent film. My intention is to record in HD and dub to mini-DV for editing. Use the downrezzed SD version for making DVD's for festival submission, while acrhiving the HD original on DVD's or a Harddrive to use for possible theatrical blow up. Granted this isn't the best way for archiving but it's a cheap alternative until a better inexpensive option is available.
 
vanguy said:
Unless someone out there has a cheap and easy way to archive without swapping DVD-Rs for days?
Click to expand...

Take it to a cost per gigabyte and then you can see that tape is the most expensive, hard drives are next and then on from there. Look at the workflow paper:
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webap...rfCategory=Cinema Series Cameras&displayTab=R

Click on white paper. There a couple of ideas for less expensive archive there. Keep in mind you cannot compare this to HDV. It isn't anything like it, this is real HD and so it has to be compared to an HD workflow and not HDV. The results are absolutely different.

Best,

Jan
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
Keep in mind you cannot compare this to HDV. It isn't anything like it, this is real HD and so it has to be compared to an HD workflow and not HDV. The results are absolutely different.
Click to expand...

You need to talk Jarred into putting that up top of the forum, this seems to be the most misunderstood aspect of this camera.
 
I'm sorry but where is real HD and where is HVX.. Even though I must say I like the HVX a lot I can't agree it's a real HD. You only say about resolution and forget about color sampling and sampling and quantization. This is also in the specs for HD :) A HD camera needs a chip that has around 2000k pixels and a 2/3 chip would be a nice feature. You might say it is a small problem but 4:2:2 from HVX is not much compared to HDCAM's 4:4:4.. So. My point is HVX is not HDV but still not a HDCAM.
 
Luka_Brazzi said:
I'm sorry but where is real HD and where is HVX.. Even though I must say I like the HVX a lot I can't agree it's a real HD. You only say about resolution and forget about color sampling and sampling and quantization. This is also in the specs for HD :) A HD camera needs a chip that has around 2000k pixels and a 2/3 chip would be a nice feature. You might say it is a small problem but 4:2:2 from HVX is not much compared to HDCAM's 4:4:4.. So. My point is HVX is not HDV but still not a HDCAM.
Click to expand...

Luka,

THe HVX records in a HD format, DVCPRO HD. Each frame is handled as a resolution independent frame with color sample at 4:2:2. It is not highly compressed with a long GOP as it is in HDV. The audio is uncompressed. Is it a VariCam or HDCam, no, but does it deliver DVCPRO HD.

If we were to follow your narrow interpretation of real HD there would only be HDCam SR, as a choice, and frankly that just is not true. The ATSC, Advanced Television Systems Committee, has a chart of standards, known colloquially as the Table 3. It notes the formats as 1080, 720P both as HD standards. No where does it say that the chip on the camera has to be what ever in order to be considered HD, it states the picture size has to be either 1080 or 720P to be HD.

So perhaps I am even wrong at saying that HDV is not real HD. However, the key difference is between working with the DVCPRO HD codec and the HDV codec is the fact that the DVCPRO HD is a frame independent algorithm. That motion and detail don't work against the picture resolution. That basically what you see through the VF is what you get on tape, just like it happens in DV and HD. That is not necessarily true in HDV and that is based on the fact that it works in groups of pictures.

And that would be HDCAM SR, HDCAM is not 4:4:4, HDCAM SR can be. HDCAM is 3:1:1. And the HDCAM SR is just a smidge more money, and it isn't even a camera, it is a deck. Then you have to buy the camera. And as far as productions that have been done in HDCAM and DVCPRO HD, they vastly outweigh the programming that has been done in HDCAM SR.

Best regards,

Jan
 
Luka_Brazzi said:
I'm sorry but where is real HD and where is HVX.. Even though I must say I like the HVX a lot I can't agree it's a real HD. You only say about resolution and forget about color sampling and sampling and quantization. This is also in the specs for HD :) A HD camera needs a chip that has around 2000k pixels and a 2/3 chip would be a nice feature. You might say it is a small problem but 4:2:2 from HVX is not much compared to HDCAM's 4:4:4.. So. My point is HVX is not HDV but still not a HDCAM.
Click to expand...

The Sony F900 and the Pana VariCam are both 4:2:2 cameras.
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
Take it to a cost per gigabyte and then you can see that tape is the most expensive, hard drives are next and then on from there.
<snip>
Click on white paper. There a couple of ideas for less expensive archive there. Keep in mind you cannot compare this to HDV. It isn't anything like it, this is real HD and so it has to be compared to an HD workflow and not HDV. The results are absolutely different.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I'm feeling cantankerous today. So I'm calling you on this one, Jan:

1) I did the math. On a cost per gigabyte basis:

DVD-R 10c
DV tape 27c
internal hard drives 68c
external hard drives $1.00
HDCam tape $1.35
DVCPRO-HD tape $1.67
Sony Blue-Ray disks $1.74
P2 cards $212.00

So, tape, at least DV tape, is significantly cheaper than hard drives. Interestingly, HDCam is cheaper than DVCPRO-HD when you calculate it this way.

1b) The production manager doesn't care about cost per gigabyte. If the picture quality is good enough, he cares about cost per minute of film or tape. And then, DV tape is ten to twenty times cheaper than hard drive space.

2) I can too compare this to HDV. Both formats offer a 720p and a 1080 line format, and although the compression is substantially higher for HDV, and the color space is not as good, these are the marketplace options out there, and they are up for debate. And by using MPEG type compression, a higher apparent quality of image can be recorded at the same bit rate. True, DVCPRO HD has four times the bit rate of HDV, but that's partially offset by HDV's compression scheme.

2b) I've shot with HDV, HDCam, and I've even worked with a VariCam. In the case of HDV (since that's what's up for debate right now) I used the Sony FX-1 camera, and although I didn't really like the quasi-24p frame treatment, the image quality held up very well. I shot 4 hours of tape, watched every second in playback, and noticed:
- High image quality
- No apparent blockiness, stuttering, or other significant motion artifacts, even though we were shooting action footage
- No major dropouts, and I didn't even see any minor ones, although if I'm honest, I could have missed them.

The results are not "absolutely different". They are at least similar. Sneering at the competition is a sign of weakness.

3) Archive options:

I've been doing some research here, too. Given: I shoot up to two hours of footage a day (I have shot more than that at special events). That translates to 120 GB of media for DVCPRO-HD at 1080 resolution, give or take. A P2 Store is 60 GB, so I'd need two. Cost: $2400. A laptop would require an additional external storage device (or two) and that combination would be clumsy and cost about as much as a couple of P2 Stores.

Once I've got the footage on an editing system somewhere, I have to archive it, or lose it forever (no filmmaker would even consider losing ANY of his footage). For workflow, the best option is to simply store the external drives themselves. LaCie drives, for instance, cost about $1 per GB, and are, as you say, cheaper than DVCPRO-HD tapes, so that's sorta feasible.

But, wait. HDV tapes are WAY WAY cheaper than that. So I've been looking for a cheaper archive option. And there's two: burning insane numbers of DVD-Rs, or backing up to cheap tape using something like DV Backup. Either option is EXTREMELY time-consuming, from 2-6 times the time spent shooting the footage in the first place.

You've also suggested some more exotic solutions, like Blue-Ray and Blue Holographic. The Blue-Ray disks I've found are still pretty expensive; $40 for a 23 GB disk, which is quite a bit more than even DVCPRO-HD tape (per GB OR per minute), and holographic is still pretty much vaporware. Maybe by Christmas, they'll make some kind of impact, but for now, they're not that realistic.

4) the workflow isn't anything like HD. HD records to tape, which you then digitize (probably at offline resolution), edit and then redigitize. P2 requires an on-set transfer to an intermediate storage device (unless you're shooting in the edit suite), a subsequent transfer from that device to your editing system array, and a THIRD transfer to an archive medium.

Why am I so cantankerous? I'd really like to see the HDX work. I really like the idea of an Everyman's Cinema Camera, which it has the potential to be.

But, right now, even in the best analysis, it's not; the necessary HDX add-ons and archiving costs make the package cost a lot more that HDV, both to purchase and on an ongoing basis, plus it's clumsier, requiring constant P2 transfers on set. A little bit more money is acceptable, because it's a better format, but a lot more money is not.

What I'm saying to you, Jan, as a Panasonic rep, go back to your people and see if there's another option, or something that can be done to make this thing more feasible for your primary market; independent filmmakers.
 
vanguy said:
2b) I've shot with HDV, HDCam, and I've even worked with a VariCam. In the case of HDV (since that's what's up for debate right now) I used the Sony FX-1 camera, and although I didn't really like the quasi-24p frame treatment, the image quality held up very well. I shot 4 hours of tape, watched every second in playback, and noticed:
- High image quality
- No apparent blockiness, stuttering, or other significant motion artifacts, even though we were shooting action footage
- No major dropouts, and I didn't even see any minor ones, although if I'm honest, I could have missed them.

The results are not "absolutely different". They are at least similar.
.
Click to expand...

You make some valid points.

I heard alot of people that say that they have shot HDV and that it looks fine. That may be the case, however, I want to hear from someone that has shot a feature (or other long form project) on HDV and compare that to projects done with DVC-PRO HD.
I think that a lot of people believe that they can drop $6K on a Z1U and they are in the HD business. This is not the case. Besides the cam there is the cost of computer upgrade (for a lot of people), monitors, HD cards and storage.

IMO, to professionally work with HDV will mean posting in a higher data rate/less compressed format/codec. You may be able to offline in HDV, but finishing should be done in an uncompressed format (I believe that DVC-PRO should be finished this way). This finished project will need to be archived also and you sure would not want to go back to HDV tape for that, so there is that expense.

When you look at the total cost of getting into HD business, I believe, that the precieved cost savings of shooting in HDV be insignificant. I think that starting with a higher qualtiy format will be smart for the long run.
 
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