OTHER: First Look: Panasonic PX270

Bassman2003 said:
The shooting resolution format chart in the brochure is pretty odd. It appears that 1080p30 and 1080p24 will never be an option for this camera outside of DVCPro HD?
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That's certainly not true. On the preproduction model I used, it had 1080/24pN and 30pN enabled for AVC-Intra 100. And as scapsinger pointed out, it's also coming for LongG50 and LongG25.

Long GOP50 is a bust as well only supporting 60i in 1080. Almost borders on what's the point of saying it has LongGOP if hardly any resolutions are supported?
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LongG50 is supposed to add support for 24p and 30p. I don't know if it'll support 60p or not. But LongG25 does, so it would seem reasonable that 50 might as well. But then again, it's not on the chart, so maybe it never will.
 
Hey Barry,

Any idea is Panasonic's claim that it's one stop faster than the HPX250 is when the 250 is in default PAP2...or the optional "PAP 1"? Just curious if you know that. - Thanks!
 
Cannot for the life of me figure out how to get an SDHC card to work in the microP2 slots. It may very well NOT be possible, but it seemed to be worded such that you would be able to.

From what I can tell, looking through the manual and testing out, it looks like you can only record to an SD card in this camera if you're using the proxy recording feature (which means you can only record to an SD card if you are ALSO recording to a P2 card). It also appears to be limited to recording in the 1080-59.94i system mode (or 1080-50i).

I could be wrong, but this is kind of starting to get frustrating. I don't "need" to record to SD cards necessarily, b/c I've got 2x microP2 64GB cards, but I feel like there are a lot of things here that require a lot of back and forth in the menu to make things happen "as advertised." However, if proxy recording is only available when a full sized P2 card is inserted, then that seems to somewhat defeat the big advertising push about this being a featured microP2 camcorder.

Trying to not rush to judgement on the camera here, I'm just giving you all a stream-of-consciousness run through as I continue to work with this camera. Anyone else who has picked one of these up feel free to chime in and tell me I'm doing it wrong. I've just spent a bunch of hours trying to get things rolling and it's definitely become a bit of a hurdle in spots.
 
Yikes! Good thing I hold off selling all the old 64 Gb Series E & F P2 cards and go to all Micro P2. Was very skeptical and still not 100% comfortable w/ Micro P2. Too good to be true (mostly because at ~half the price vs P2). There're definitely functional limitations w/ Micro P2. It appears Panasonic wants pros to buy both P2 and Micro P2 to get the full benefit of the PX270. Sneaky but effective.
 
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OKAY...I'm an idiot. There's a reason Barry Green writes the books on Panasonic cameras and not me.

In all my back and forth trying to get things to work, it occurred to me I hadn't set the record mode to 1080-60i in the attempts to get the SDHC card to work in the microP2 slots.

I can confirm it DOES work. I've got a 16GB Panasonic UHS-I card in the #1 microP2 slot.

Set "SYSTEM MODE > LINE&FREQ > 1080-59.94i"

You can choose anything in the LongG settings under "SYSTEM MODE > REC FORMAT"

On a 16GB card, I show 35 minutes record time for AVC-G50/60i...it's 64 minutes under AVC-G25/60i. By way of comparison, AVCCAM cameras in PH mode (highest quality, ~22Mbps) record about 99 minutes. So there's a difference there beyond the pure bitrate, whether AVC-LongG is less efficient, or is perhaps a better GOP arrangement in terms of I frames or whatever, who knows...the bottom line is that AVC-LongG25 uses more bits per second on the same media compared to the comparable AVCCAM recording method. Whenever I get a chance to setup a side by side, I'll be able to tell better...

One odd quirk is formatting the card (which you should always do when using a card in any camcorder for the first time). The normal operation for formatting a card would be in the CARD FUNCTIONS menu, but I don't see it there (although it WILL let you format an SD card in the dedicated SD card slot here). I went into the playback mode, then selected menu CLIP > FORMAT to format any of the 2x microPD or 1x P2 slots.

So that's a nice quirk...the format options for the 3 main recording slots are in one spot, the 1x SD card format option is in another (under the CARD FUNCTIONS menu, which makes more sense to me, but that's one man's opinion).

By way of editorial, I would say that with the menus being as extensive as they are, it would make sense to me to consolidate all card functions under one menu. I realize the dedicated SD slot serves more functions than simply recording (loading metadata, scene files, etc) but I would think you could still find a way to organize the menu to make this all available in one spot, and not only under the playback menu.

I continue to caveat that I'm typing this stuff almost as quickly as I discover it, so I will probably continue to make mistakes in my observations. This one seems pretty locked down though...you are limited to 1080-60i on the SD card recording for LongG formats.
 
lonewolf2koc@hotmail.com said:
Yikes! Good thing I hold off selling all the old 64 Gb Series E & F P2 cards and go to all Micro P2. Was very skeptical and still not 100% comfortable w/ Micro P2. Too good to be true (mostly because at ~half the price vs P2). There're definitely functional limitations w/ Micro P2. It appears Panasonic wants pros to buy both P2 and Micro P2 to get the full benefit of the PX270. Sneaky but effective.
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Appears I'm getting the microP2 to accept proxy mode now, without requiring P2. That's just part of the weird instructions here, the manual consistently refers to microP2 and P2 distinctly in every instance, but when talking about proxy mode, it says P2 and does not mention microP2.

So it turns out you can do the proxy mode...although only in the 1080-60i system setting. Proxy ONLY goes to the 1x SD card dedicated slot though. That shouldn't be a problem for anyone though...I think at least that much was relatively obvious from the early Panasonic write ups.
 
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The Irish TRex said:
Hey Barry,Any idea is Panasonic's claim that it's one stop faster than the HPX250 is when the 250 is in default PAP2...or the optional "PAP 1"? Just curious if you know that. - Thanks!
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The PX270 has a "normal" sensitivity and a "high" sensitivity mode. I presume that those are the new names for P.A.P. modes. Therefore it would seem to me that for validity to the claim, "normal" should be faster than PAP 2, and "high" should be faster than PAP 1. However I was told that the sensitivity and noise characteristics were still being adjusted and therefore any testing I did wouldn't be representative of the final version.So the question remains open. I am repeating what the factory told me, which is that the PX270 is supposed to be a stop faster. In my impression the high sensitivity was definitely faster than PAP 2 and comparable to PAP 1, but I can't say if that is what they meant or if the final will be even faster.
 
lonewolf2koc@hotmail.com said:
Yikes! Good thing I hold off selling all the old 64 Gb Series E & F P2 cards and go to all Micro P2. Was very skeptical and still not 100% comfortable w/ Micro P2. Too good to be true (mostly because at ~half the price vs P2). There're definitely functional limitations w/ Micro P2. It appears Panasonic wants pros to buy both P2 and Micro P2 to get the full benefit of the PX270. Sneaky but effective.
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Simply not true as far as the PX270 goes. You can do anything the camera is capable of on a MicroP2 card. In fact if you need to do spanned recording you can only do that on MicroP2 because there's only one full-size P2 slot.Can't speak about AVCI/200 as it isn't available yet.
 
About the SD card only being able to record 1080/60i (when using SD cards in the MicroP2 slot): I'm 99.95% certain that isn't correct. The camera right now won't do 24p or 30p in any LongG format; right now LongG is only enabled for 60i. But 24p and 30p support is coming, and I cannot fathom that it wouldn't record to the SD card used as a MicroP2 substitute.Might not work as a proxy in the dedicated SD slot, but I would bet that it will in the MicroP2 slot.
 
Bassman2003 said:
It appears that 1080p30 and 1080p24 will never be an option for this camera outside of DVCPro HD? Yes 1080p60 is cool but it does not directly replace 30p and 24p. Anybody make sense of this reasoning? Long GOP50 is a bust as well only supporting 60i in 1080.
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Damn. That's just silly. If it can do 1080p60, the sensor and all the electronics behind it certainly have enough horse power to do the slower speeds. And sometimes I need those slower speeds, especially in poorly lit situations.

But forcing interlacing with LongGOP50? Sorry, that's a deal breaker. What's the point of interlaced? Is this, like, 1980? Please don't let that be true. I couldn't take 1980 again!

I'm sitting here scratchin' my head now.
 
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I wish Panasonic wouldn't put bizzare restrictions on their codecs. I see no reason why AVCIntra50 shouldn't do the same frame rates as 100, especially as we are talking lower frame rates!

At least the LongGop codecs seem to support the basic frame rates.

As we have just seen from this thread, this kind of stuff just causes pointless confusion.

Freya
 
Yes, this little resolution/codec thing has given me a bit of pause on this camera. How could these resolutions not be ready? To me that means the "camera" is not ready to be sold then. There is a history with camera releases where all/most all functions are working. Can't help but think - is there anything else that will turn into a gotcha? Trust is a big part of the buying equation and what pro video camera over the past 5 years has been released without 30p or 24p using its main codecs? LongGOP is the main codec of this camera imho. Oh well, I guess they will show up sometime in the future.
 
Another concern here is how easily is it to put a 72mm circular polarizer or ND filter to cut down the light and get it within f/4. This is quite important for sharpness's sake. It doesn't look at all easy and may have to dissemble the whole front assembly just to get that router filter off. The HPX250 has no front lens cap so I can easily remove it or change filter.
 
Why do you need an ND filter ?

Why do you need an ND filter ?

lonewolf2koc@hotmail.com said:
Another concern here is how easily is it to put a 72mm circular polarizer or ND filter to cut down the light and get it within f/4. This is quite important for sharpness's sake. It doesn't look at all easy and may have to dissemble the whole front assembly just to get that router filter off. The HPX250 has no front lens cap so I can easily remove it or change filter.
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I have a production model of the PX270 it has 3 levels of ND up to a 1/64. I have filmed in bright sunshine at f5.6 which you will find is closer to the maximum lens resolution than f4.
Furthermore all you do is twist off the lens hood and you can screw a 72mm filter on though I would recommend using a rig with a matte box and filter holder.
 
lonewolf2koc@hotmail.com said:
Another concern here is how easily is it to put a 72mm circular polarizer or ND filter to cut down the light and get it within f/4. This is quite important for sharpness's sake. It doesn't look at all easy and may have to dissemble the whole front assembly just to get that router filter off. The HPX250 has no front lens cap so I can easily remove it or change filter.
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As HDWarrior said, the lens hood pops off with a 1/4 twist. Screw the filter in, pop the lens hood back on. Identical to the HPX250 in that regard.
 
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