DVXuser.com exclusive hands on with the HVX200

The thing is (and I'm sure this has been covered by now) I just can't get excited about the HVX200 until I know the size of the chips. If it's 720x1280 then, great, sign me up now. But if it's anything less then I'll just wait. And I wouldn't buy the JVC one either because I hate 1) the 19mbps HDV standard and 2) the 4:2:0 color sampling.

C'mon Canon, don't let me down!
 
A cheap solution to expensive P2 cards

Since I've notice most of you are worried about P2 cards in 2 mayor issues let me post a common sense solution. (This is not going to like to the Panasonic guys!)

Let see the facts:
1) P2 are expensive
2) Actual size (in GB) of card can hold only few minutes of HD recording

Let see what we do know:
1) P2 card are PCMCIA compatible (as stated by Panasonic)
2) A 4GB P2 card can hold up to 4 minutes of recording (giving us a 1GB/min recording rate)

So a recording rate of 1GB/min = 1024MB/60sec = 17.7 MBytes/sec

There are several HDD that can beat this transfer rate. (ie. Seagate's Cheeta 10K.7 Avg Formatted Transfer Rate = 59.5 MBytes/sec)

So a "dummy" (actually not so dummy) PCMCIA Card attached to a HDD could act as a "large" and "cheat" P2 Card.

This not so "dummy" card would be inserted into HVX's P2 slot acting as a P2 card but writing/reading all the info into a cheap HDD. Preserving Timecodes, Pre-recording, DVCPRO HD, and all those nice stuff from P2 technology. The controller inside this device is relative simple (as for the one of you who knows digital electronics could see). So a few hundred dollars electronics could be sold into a few thousand dollars solution (uppps bad idea to have said that!! jaja, if Panasonic comes with a solution like this in the next months I deserve a complete HVX kit for the idea!!)

I'm planning to buy one of these "beauties" but P2 issues (time cap. and price) are not an important to me. If where are several of you guys who really need (gonna buy) this solution I could star working on this at the moment I get my HVX so in the 1st year you can expect that P2 will no more be an issue.
 
I believe Panasonic will be making something like that anyway, and has been planning to from the beginning.
 
Great idea Rafa. From what I have heard something similar is in development. Not sure if it is actually Panasonic that will release it or one of their "P2 Partners". You also have to look at the fact of how much the capacity of the P2 cards has to grow. Per Panasonic at NAB, by the time this camera ships they are looking to have 8GB cards available, with work underway on coming up with a 16GB card. It's not going to take too many generations before (2) P2 cards will be all the storage capacity you could possibly need on a day's shoot.

..just my 1.75 cents plus tax....
 
well, still the question for storage:
let's say, we save our finished DVCPRO-HD-File on a Blu-Ray disc (announced to cost under 10 dollars per piece in 2006) ... What device can READ the DVCPRO-HD-file on the Blu Ray Disc and display it on the HD-ready screen?

I'm not talking about broadcast, but viewing my full-quality HD-Videos without converting or compressing -> DVCPRO-HD-files... on a HD-ready screen. And I don't want to save on DVCPRO-HD Cassettes as Blu-Ray is supposed to be 10 times cheaper...
 
What you're asking is not how things work. Compare it to today's workflow: you can't put a DV file on a DVD disc and display that on a television. You have to convert it to a playback format, which for DVD means a DVD-compatible MPEG-2 file.

HD-DVD or blu-ray disc players will eventually announce what formats they support, and what codecs, etc. You would have to convert your DVCPRO-HD files to whatever playback format they support, whether that's MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, or something else.

If it's just for your own use, keep in mind that there's been tremendous convergence between computer monitors and HDTVs, especially with things like the Dell 2405FPW out there, with 1920x1080 resolution. So you could put DVCPRO-HD files on your blu-ray disc and play them back on your computer, outputting through DVI or HDMI to something like a Dell 2405FPW, and see the files played back in their full quality.
 
Thanks Barry for answering!
I am an underwater videographer and want to proceed from DV to DVCPRO-HD, so for an underwaterhousing the best alternative will be the HVX200 and before selling my films, I usually present them on a screen. My flatscreen for PC is NEITHER 16:9, NOR will it display the colors and contrast truly enough. There are masses of underwater videographers, and I need a good publicity (= displaying the video) with excellent picture quality for my pictures (especially sharks and rays), so Blu Ray would be the perfect solution for my tons of videos, but I didn't know about how to make an archieve/stock of my own - you say I'll have to convert and so I'll look out for that in a way to loose as few of the superb quality as possible! - Thanks again!
 
Yes, you can expect that by the time blu-ray or HD-DVD burners are on the market, there will also be authoring applications available that will do the conversion for you, and likely the editing applications (like Avid and FCP) will incorporate from-the-timeline conversion too.
 
I bet this wasn't asked before (not very usefull)

Does it have Firewire? I bet it does
If so, does Firewire transfer data fast enough to capture straight to an external device that has Firewire like an iPod photo (60GB)
If it doesn't have Fire400, but it does have something else, is there an external device that this sort of thing could be acomplished with?

It sounds dumb but if it worked it would be kinda cool
 
USLatinContent said:
I bet this wasn't asked before (not very usefull)

Does it have Firewire? I bet it does
If so, does Firewire transfer data fast enough to capture straight to an external device that has Firewire like an iPod photo (60GB)
If it doesn't have Fire400, but it does have something else, is there an external device that this sort of thing could be acomplished with?

It sounds dumb but if it worked it would be kinda cool
Click to expand...

Sorry dude but there's a millions questions on that subject. Do a quick search.
 
I'm sorry, I skipped a ton of stuff apparently. Page 23, and well covered I might add!

That 80gig iPod isn't out yet, but it would be nice if it DID have high enough sustained write speeds to record streaming HD once it came out (it sounds ludicrous, doesn't it?). Reliability of the iPod would probably be bad, but for half of a P2's price you will probably be able to get two of them.
My point is that something of the sort would lower the initial investment needed to have an HD "work-flow" by a couple grand. Add to that someone who loves what they are doing bad enough to have spent days (or weeks) in total by the end of their project burning DVDs. Then add to that being ok with having to re-load some DVDs during editing. Good logging and smart archiving/labeling of the DVDs would be very important!
Then the only other missing piece to the puzzle is a $4500.- computer. That money can get you plenty power, 800 Gigs in hard-drives which would help a ton!, enough memory and be enough for say only one 21inch monitor.
You would be limited to 80G a day, a little under 2hs., now say your buddy gets one too... The more hard-drive space the less burning you'll have to do...
This could keep several artists busy on their short films untill 8G P2s (or bigger) and Blue Ray (or alternative) both got cheaper.
Could this be the cheapest way to get your feet wet in the HD pond?
$900.- (est) two iPods
$4500.- computer
$100.- blank DVDs
$6000.- sweetest camera ever built :D

Where am I wrong? I must be... and probably not just once.
(I feel like I'm about to get yelled at really bad)
 
FYI
I was talking about the dual 2.7 G5 with 2 gigs of aftermarket RAM plus the 512MB that comes with it AND editing DVCAM HD ("only" 4x the bandwith of DV)
The monitor a 21 inch Samsung that has 1600x1200 resolution

Ok, now go ahead, please... what is unrealistic about this? (besides the whole iPod thing)
 
IMHO it's the DVD that is unrealistic: .... How many minutes do you want to burn on the DVD in what quality? - With 4,7 GB 1 hour of Video with 10 MBps may be recorded. The DVD can't write 100 MBps but even if it could, you'd have about 5 Minutes Video. Do you want to comprime the quality that much to have 30 minutes or more on the DVD? - So why don't you film in HDV quality on DV cassette and save much more money? - You'd even save the conversion to MPEG2 because HDV IS already in MPEG2... (e.g. Sony).

If I record DVCPRO-HD with 100MBps, I want to archieve in a quality as untouched as possible. BD (Blu Ray Disc) can write with a higher bitrate than DVD and if that holographic thing of Optware really comes out, we could archieve even with 100MBps without problem (BD can't handle that). - And what you also forgot is the software that will accept P2... I work with Liquid Edition (normal version ~600USD) and if I want to edit directly from P2 card, I will need "Liquid Edition Broadcast" the ONLY LE version that can handle the P2 content... another 2000 USD .... but perhaps you have already the software to edit the content you will have on your HD... that means: XML-, MXF-, BMP- and MPEG4-files (including Metadatas) they all are part of the DVCPRO-HD recordings- am I wrong?
 
cici, you're archving. Your system doesn't need to record at realtime to archive. So even if BD can't do 100Mbps, so what. Just record what whatever speed it does do.

Sure HDV is already MPG2, but even then it's single pass (Obviously) so not as optimised as a DVD is anyway. Add to that, if you were going filmout, or wanting to project from the source, I think having 4:2:2 100Mbps DVCPRO HD over 19Mbps HDV MPG2 would be something you'd want.

Also, I can't see how LE would charge 2 k so you can use P2 cards. I mean, they are PC-card compatible, so a $20 reader can read those files and no NLE could tell the difference. Now if you were talking about codec, that's another story. But any half decent NLE will add DVCPRO-HD support or there will be cheap codecs come out simply because of the markter (Low end - lower budgets) they are aiming for.
 
You're right Aza, I'm talking about archiving but what if I want to watch the stored material? - If I recorded 50 minutes DVCPRO-HD on BD and that took 2 hours for burning because of the mass of Bytes, I won't be able to WATCH that material because BDs output won't manage 100MBps either - will it? - You're right to make a difference between Master (archive) and Copy (for presenting/watching etc.) but today I'm archiving on MiniDV and watching on DVD as I can watch with 10MBps and that's far enough for a good PAL picture. In future I won't be satisfied with 25MBps or less, so even BD is on the limit for a (highly compressed) copy of the stored Master.

I'm not too familar to codecs and the question of supported files, I just read that my LE version won't support an introduced P2 card, so I thought I'd need the only LE version that will support it - but if you say that that might be done with the right reader (for P2 card and DVCPRO-HD support) or any plug-in or whatever - I'd be pleased! The P2 is for my eyes very complex with it's file hierarchy but anybody will tell me now that I even won't need to read the metadatas... that's all new for me - with DV-Avi I just have the time-code that's the only metadata I know and ANY software can handle that... By the way - talking about the P2 card - if I see the picture of it's electronic parts, it seems like one could open it and put in his own (4GB) SD-cards... but Pana will have it's reason to be "only" at 8 or 16BG yet...
 
Ok, so DVDs for archiving might not be an exelent solution... granted. However, I'm looking at figuring out the cheapest way someone could get into HD with the HVX using DVCPRO HD. As long as it doesn't impact the quality of the actual product, compromising on ease of editing is acceptable for indie film-makers. Later on they will be able to build up their studio and for now they will be happy being ABLE to put out their stuff.

>>I'm on a quest to find the bottom $ number that will enable someone to work with this gorgeous camera.<<

So:
$100.- DVD-Rs for archiving
$900.- iPods (still a vaporware-concept)
$4,500.- Computer of choice (dual 2.7 G5 with 2.5G of RAM used as example)
$6,000.- HVX-200
$1,300.- Software of choice (Final Cut Studio price used as example)

Would this be enough?
Might there be cheaper alternatives that would be as upgradeable ad this one?
 
Thanks for the great article Jarred! Now you really have me wondering again.
I was about to buy a Z1 for a documentary series I will be shooting on a small boat on an extended offshore sail. I was planning to shoot on HDV given that that format brings HD within financial reach for me and I would like to "future-proof" my material. Now I'm wondering if the HVX might not be a better bet. However there are some questions I need to clarify:
If I were to shoot HD with the HVX 200, I need to know how best to store the material I shoot...in other words, if I can only shoot HD onto the P2 memory stick, and I obviously cannot afford to buy an unlimited supply of P2s, what do I store the material on and how would I get it there?
I was originally under the impression that one could record HD on both the P2 stick as well as the mini dv tape, but this does not seem to be the case.
Do you have any suggestions?
Another question: Does the HVX 200 have an optical imagage stabilizer, and is it as good as Sony's?
Many thanks again for your very informative article.
BQ
 
film like

film like

My question is similar, i was about to buy the xl2 myself , my question is which camera out of all these cams in the 6000 range will look or can be made to look most like real 35 film stock theatrical film stock, is it the hvx??
 
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