HMC150 vs HVX200A?

I will have to sell my DVX to afford the HVX or HMC. At first glance i think that the HMC will do me just fine, however i have lots of DV tapes and will have no deck to play them on, any suggestions? But with the HVX i will get the HD solid state camera that i am looking for, will be able to have LOTS of fun with timelapse/slow-mo, and still have a deck for recording to tape. Im not confused right? the HVX200A is capable of both recodring HD to the solid state P2 card or record to a DV tape, correct?
 
I have had trouble with my DVX in the cold. mainly with the recording heads. i am VERY excited to go solid state. i missed an entire beautiful day of filming in wyoming because of it :(
 
aleebee156 said:
I will have to sell my DVX to afford the HVX or HMC. At first glance i think that the HMC will do me just fine, however i have lots of DV tapes and will have no deck to play them on, any suggestions? But with the HVX i will get the HD solid state camera that i am looking for, will be able to have LOTS of fun with timelapse/slow-mo, and still have a deck for recording to tape. Im not confused right? the HVX200A is capable of both recodring HD to the solid state P2 card or record to a DV tape, correct?
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If you have to sell your DVX to afford an HMC150, how on earth do you afford an HVX200A? The HVX costs about as much more than a 150, as you can sell your DVX for! Not to mention, those P2 cards will cost you just a wee bit more than SDHC cards will (think arms, legs, second mortgages...). A $400 P2 card won't even give you 1/2 an hour of recording time with 100Mbps DVCPRO HD. An SDHC card that costs you $40 (ten times less), will give you well over an hour of recording time with AVCHD.

Bottom line - you wind up with more cash in your pocket if you keep the DVX and get an HMC150, than if you sell the DVX and get an HVX200A.

If the only problem you have parting with the DVX though, is simply having a way to playback MiniDV tapes, just get a used consumer MiniDV camcorder off eBay. They're cheap as dirt nowadays. You can pretty easily find something that will work just fine for under $100.
 
I just got done shooting a convention with 2 hvx 200s, 1 hvx 200a, 1 hpx 170, and 2 hmc 150s. We bought the 150s days before the shoot because we had a LOT to record and all I can say is that I'm now trying to convince my boss to sell his 2 hvx 200s and get 2 more hmc 150s. The 150s have a MUCH better lcd screen, easier focusing help, and I can get 200 minutes out of a 32gb card in 720p 24fps. 200 minutes! When we put the footage side by side with any of the other cameras we could not tell a difference between avc and hvcpro hd. If you do ANY long format recording the 150 is worth it's weight in gold. We also got an extended battery and were able to record the full 200 minutes with it. I can't say enough good things about this camera. The ONLY downside I found was that log and transfer takes about an hour for a 32gb card. If you just want to offload to a hard drive without using log and transfer it took about 25-30 minutes.

If you wanted to record 200 minutes with p2 you'd need a 64gb cards at a price of $899 (e-series at b&h) plus 1 16gb card at a price of $395.00 (e-series at b&h)= 1294.00

Compare that to 1 32gb 6-series sd card = $115.

In the end you'll have to decide if p2 is worth the extra money but personally I never want to go back to p2 except for green screen work.
 
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jrmiller_entertainment said:
The ONLY downside I found was that log and transfer takes about an hour for a 32gb card. If you just want to offload to a hard drive without using log and transfer it took about 25-30 minutes.
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Log and transfer includes re-encoding, correct? This would count as very quick in my book: copying and converting 200 minutes of footage in 60 minutes is more than 3 times faster than capturing DV or HDV.
 
Robert M Wright said:
If you have to sell your DVX to afford an HMC150, how on earth do you afford an HVX200A? The HVX costs about as much more than a 150, as you can sell your DVX for! Not to mention, those P2 cards will cost you just a wee bit more than SDHC cards will (think arms, legs, second mortgages...). A $400 P2 card won't even give you 1/2 an hour of recording time with 100Mbps DVCPRO HD. An SDHC card that costs you $40 (ten times less), will give you well over an hour of recording time with AVCHD.

Bottom line - you wind up with more cash in your pocket if you keep the DVX and get an HMC150, than if you sell the DVX and get an HVX200A.

If the only problem you have parting with the DVX though, is simply having a way to playback MiniDV tapes, just get a used consumer MiniDV camcorder off eBay. They're cheap as dirt nowadays. You can pretty easily find something that will work just fine for under $100.
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The brooklin Camera scammers are selling them on Ebay for the same price I almost fell into that mess myself.
 
Log and transfer includes re-encoding, correct? This would count as very quick in my book: copying and converting 200 minutes of footage in 60 minutes is more than 3 times faster than capturing DV or HDV.
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correct it makes the file prores 422. It is quick compared to the footage but with tape you shoot it and shelf it until post. We shot 3 hvxs with a laptop to external hard drive, the hpx on p2, and the 2 150s with the sd cards. At the end of the night we had to dump ALL of that to external terabyte drives...which took around 4-5 hours using multiple dumping laptops because we didn't have the available media to shelf the day's shoot. That was the difference and why halfway through we switched from log and transfer to just dumping the original data to the external.
 
I've got nothing against Macs, but I sure get the impression that the Mac platform is not very ideally suited for handling footage shot with AVCHD camcorders - at least currently.
 
Still, even using both log & transfer and raw copying, it is twice faster than realitme capturing.
 
You would think Apple would want to at least make it possible to drop the footage from AVCHD cams right onto the timeline with Final Cut. I don't really understand why they haven't already.
 
Cranky said:
Still, even using both log & transfer and raw copying, it is twice faster than realitme capturing.
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right but that's not my point. My point is that if you shoot to tape at the end of the day you pop the tape out and put it in a safe place. You're done. The next day you put in a fresh tape and repeat.

We didn't have enough of 32gb cards to allow us to just shelf the day's shoot and insert a fresh one the next day...plus we also shot to p2 and fcp to external. We had about 430gb of data shot per day. There was a lot of time wasted transferring data in order to wipe the cards clean for the next day. In post production we will be glad that we shot to sd card because it'll save us hours because we do not have to ingest tape in real time but during the production phase, for the amount of footage and days we shot the transfers caused very late nights. But am I glad I went solid state vs tape? Hell yeah.

here was our workflow-
hvx200-mac- g drive 250GB external
hvx200-mac- g drive 250GB external
hvx200a-mac-maxtor 300GB external
hpx170- 2 32GB p2s, 2 16GB p2s, 3 8GB p2s
hmc150- 2 32GB SD cards
hmc150- 2 32GB SD cards

Dump all to 3 external 1TB maxtor drives in docks connected via esata.


Robert M Wright said:
You would think Apple would want to at least make it possible to drop the footage from AVCHD cams right onto the timeline with Final Cut. I don't really understand why they haven't already.
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Agree, that kind of pisses me off too. Almost every other editing system can natively edit P2 and AVCHD. Mac needs to convert them to quicktimes. When they do that then you have 2 copies of the footage, the quicktimes which are stored in the capture scratch and the original footage...which takes up more space. It's what avid does when you import a video that's not mxf format. You end up with 2 copies. It might be because it makes the program more stable since everything is in the same format. I'm almost positive that's avid's reason.
 
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jrmiller_entertainment said:
Still, even using both log & transfer and raw copying, it is twice faster than realitme capturing.
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right but that's not my point. My point is that if you shoot to tape at the end of the day you pop the tape out and put it in a safe place. You're done. The next day you put in a fresh tape and repeat.
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I guess I am still not getting it.

With tape-based process you spend 200 minutes to capture (or log & transfer, whatever, it is also realtime) 200 minutes of footage. After that you can (1) start editing, and you can (2) put the tapes with raw video on the shelf. Next day you will be shooting on new tapes, and unless you are prestriping (do people really do this?), no additional time is used.

With AVCHD, you spend about 100 minutes to log & transfer to your editing disk and to copy raw files to your backup disk. After that you can (1) start editing, an you can (2) put the backup disk on the shelf. Oh, I forgot another 20 seconds to quick-format the card, that you will be using next day.

(After some thinking) Ahh, I get it now. It is indeed twice faster, but you have to do it the SAME NIGHT, you cannot leave it until you finish. On the other hand, it seems that some (many?) want to capture footage as early as possible to make sure there are no issues with tapes or with content. In this case they will be doing capturing from tapes the same night like you do, only it would take twice longer.
 
There's a lot of things I don't get with NLEs (on the Mac or on the PC). These NLEs can run into thousands of dollars (just for the software - regardless of hardware), yet many fundamentals are just horrible (or certainly very weak). I don't get things like NLEs that can't support common native format footage shot by every widely used camcorder. It's just nuts when an NLE costing several hundred dolars (if not well into the thousands), can't handle something like progressive encoded MPEG-2 video streams (for example) with ease. It's crazy that, as far as I know, no major NLE can even do simple image resizing well. I just don't get that at all. It's almost as if the NLE makers are essentially just hacks, patching together slick editing features along with broken fundamentals.
 
Robert- Thank you for the advice on the cost of the P2 cards, something I had overlooked. I have a unique situation where my employer is willing to pay for the HVX as long as I can give him the money from selling the DVX. Lucky me!!

As far as P2 cards go, at highest quality the 16gb card that it comes with will shoot only 30mins? I am really mostly drawn to the HVX200A because of the options with frame rates. The slow-mo and timelapse abilities are what atract me so much more to the HVX than the HMC. The HMC is as Barry mentioned "tailor-made for me". But while filming with the DVX i've always wanted a way to overcrank and also achieve very nice timelapse pieces.

Thoughts?
 
Well, you have more options too; you could get the very-inexpensive HMC40, which has time-lapse. It can do limited slow-mo, at 60fps. Its weakness is low light performance, but for outdoor stuff it's pretty killer, and very inexpensive ($1850 street, last I checked).

The HMC150 doesn't have the time-lapse feature.

The HPX170 has all the features of the 200A, and all the features of the HMC150, and more, and costs much less than the 200A (last I saw it was about $4400, including a 16GB P2 card). You'll get about 42 minutes of recording time on a single 16GB card; if you get a 64GB card that can deliver about three hours (assuming 720/24pN). But, again, if you're spending a lot of time in freezing temperatures, the HPX170 will have the same focus ring situation as the HMC150 does. The HMC40 and HVX200A won't.
 
i honestly haven't looked into the HPX170. Just gone done reading about everything i could on it and it sounds like a great choice.

Barry- You say it has ALL the features of the HVX200A and the HMC150.... what does the extra $ for the 200A get you? just the DV deck? i know the HPX170 is an upgrade from the HVX200 but it is virtually the same as the 200A correct? From what i've read, the 170 has the same time-lapse/ slow-mo features as the 200A, no difference right?

Possibly the HPX170 is a good fit for me, save me some money from the 200A. with the savings i could get a larger P2 card.

Thanks for the heads up on that!!
 
The 200A has the tape deck, and a larger lens with a very slightly wider maximum aperture at full telephoto (2.8 vs. 3.0). Other than that, I don't know of anything that it offers over the 170.

There was a raging debate when these cameras first came out that the 200A had "less noise" than the 170. We eventually determined that the 170 is tuned for slightly sharper/higher res images, which enhances the appearance of noise, and if you boost up the coring +1 or +2 it equalizes things out. But some still hold to the opinion that the 200A produces nicer pictures. I don't think it does, but other opinions vary.

The 170 is much smaller, lighter, better ergonomically balanced, and has a lot more features than the 200A does. If someone doesn't NEED a tape drive, I would strongly recommend the 170 over the 200A, except in cases where they're expecting to do a lot of work in freezing weather. The free-moving focus ring of the 200A can be a big advantage in that case.
 
Thank you again Barry. I think that i am going to go with the 170! and get a cheap DV camera like Robert suggested to use to play/transfer my DV Tapes...

Question?- Just to make sure, the cheap DV camera that i get will be able to transfer the 24pa that i have shot on my DVX correct? along with all the other frame rates, 30p, 60i, it will recognize all the sqeeze mode i shot. It should becuase its imbedded in the tape correct? the main worry i have is the 2:3:3:2 pull down when i transfer onto FCP6 through firewire. basically, am i going to run into any problems with this.

Sorry about the subject change...

As far as the freezing cold goes. it is a MAJOR bummer about the focus ring on the 170. just cant have everything. i am correct in thinking that the auto focus will still work fine in freezing temps just not the manuel focus correct?

Either way, mostly filming winter in Tahoe where 70% of the winter is blue bird and cold, but its no alaska. Gonna be in Jackson Hole and Colorado this year filming, excited for that!!!
 
Imagine Honda selling a car that would require manual cranking at below-zero temperatures. Impossible. Yet, a sticky focus ring is not considered a problem. Am I ranting again?

aleebee156, users report focus wheel getting sticky even slightly above freezing point, so you don't need to go to Alaska to experience the... um... issue.
 
Thanks Cranky. well, i will definitley shoot in those temps at times... with work and things now probably only 2-3 times a year... worth going to the 200A? not sure, i like the idea of the smaller slicker camera, same features minus the focus ring... just a decision i have to make now. Thanks everyone for the info and help on this! Ill let you know where i go with it and post my footy once shot!
 
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