HVX + Capturing to Laptop

Mr. Blonde

Mr. Blonde

RED Advocate
So i've decided that the best path for my workflow would be to rent P2 and dump to laptop. I'm looking for a laptop pc that can handle editing or atleast reviewing DVCPRO HD footage in avid xpress. What sort of laptop pc can handle this scenario well for around $1,000 or so if any?
 
Most decent laptops would handle the dumping of footage from P2 without a problem. Editing HD on a laptop for about $1000 doesn't seem very realistic to me. High end workstations with dual processors and highend graphics cards have a hard time handling the playback of HD footage so I wouldn't plan on having great results with a laptop. However I am sure it can be done but just don't expect it to be as smooth as you'd like.

Some else could probably answer this in more detail for you I suppose. As a reference I edit DV on a dual P4 3gig desktop and when I try to edit on my P4 3.2Gig HP laptop it is much less responsive. And that is DV. There is a price you pay for portability.
 
If you rent 2 P2 Cards you can continually be dumping footage into an external (self powered) HD - you can even do this with one card, just not continuously
There is no reason to dump it into a laptop after you shoot it
But the abilty to capture Into a Laptop Directly is super cool. Maybe this is what you meant - in which case you may not even need a P2 card...

To store the footage to a laptop doesn't really need a super laptop
However to capture it to a laptop might need at least a 7200 drive
...We wait and see ...
I am also thinking this makes the most sense initially

I even think it will work to have a laptop with another external drive connected to it that the footage is captured into... No size limit here (just physical restriction of moving around - for which we will need P2 or Firestore)
Then take those files to a more powerful computer to edit

That's the solution I am looking at myself

Cheers,
J
 
If Serious Magic doesn't deliver an HVX-Rack product then I'm going to pass on my (although more than capable) laptop solution. " The AJ-PCS060G is a ruggedized, portable hard disk unit with a P2 card slot" The AJ-PCS060G has a lot of appeal, but I'd sure like to see Panasonic up the size of the hard drive.
 
Benton said:
There is no reason to dump it into a laptop after you shoot it
Click to expand...

would a benefit to dumping to a laptop be that you can review what you have shot on set? play the occasional scene back on a lap top to check quality integrity is appealing.
 
Benton said:
There is no reason to dump it into a laptop after you shoot it
Click to expand...
Actually there's a very good reason. Offloading to an external firewire drive, plugged straight into the camera, means you have to stop shooting. It ties the camera up while offloading the card.

Offloading to a laptop means that you can keep shooting while the card's offloading.
 
Sorry I guess I wasn't being clear
I wasn't suggesting stopping shooting to plug the camera into a hd & download.
Indeed I am all on board with the laptop solution (infact I have been wondering in these forums, although I have put a 7200 HD in my laptop, it is an older 1.33 Gz Apple 17" and I hope the Gz isn't a factor that will stand in the way of my doing this)
I think I only meant to suggest attaching another external HD to the laptop so that you didn't eatup all its space in an hour and could have true continuous recording
I was also mentioning having two P2 cards one always being dowloaded to that laptop, this might give youu more mobility.
Sorry for the confusion
J
 
Benton said:
If you rent 2 P2 Cards you can continually be dumping footage into an external (self powered) HD - you can even do this with one card, just not continuously
There is no reason to dump it into a laptop after you shoot it
But the abilty to capture Into a Laptop Directly is super cool. Maybe this is what you meant - in which case you may not even need a P2 card...

To store the footage to a laptop doesn't really need a super laptop
However to capture it to a laptop might need at least a 7200 drive
...We wait and see ...
I am also thinking this makes the most sense initially

I even think it will work to have a laptop with another external drive connected to it that the footage is captured into... No size limit here (just physical restriction of moving around - for which we will need P2 or Firestore)
Then take those files to a more powerful computer to edit

That's the solution I am looking at myself

Cheers,
J
Click to expand...

Well what I was going for with this laptop + P2 setup was the ability to safely and surely capture with P2 in any condition, which would also allow me to do shots that wouldn't be possible when being tethered to a laptop such as steadicam shots or crane shots.

Also, I would be able to review the footage on the laptop myself to make sure it was up to par. This would be important to me because I know how it is when you get your shots flowing when heavily time constrained and later find out that you had a fatal continuity error.

The whole portable fw hd option is just too scary for me, not being able to review it in order to make sure that it had offloaded just fine would be too much of a risk for me, the laptop solves that.

So my real question is which laptop pc would be able to handle the playback of dvcpro hd footage, if any, for around a thousand dollars? Not necessarily the editing of dvcpro footage just playback. And would the option of connecting an external hitachi 7200rpm drive help with the laptops editing power?
 
Mr. Blonde
We are looking for a very similar workflow.
I agree the P2cards + Laptop is a great option & to see the footage is necessary.

But an external hitachi 7200rpm drive will only help clearing space on your machine.
I don't think it will help with the laptops editing power
 
The AJ-PCS060G is a nice option, but I feel being able to safely view footage befor deleting a card is of most importance.
 
Mr. Blonde said:
So my real question is which laptop pc would be able to handle the playback of dvcpro hd footage, if any, for around a thousand dollars?
Click to expand...
I don't know that your question can be answered by too many of us. First it would require having a DV100 codec installed. Then it would require having an application that understands P2 MXF files. As far as I know Apple laptops can't even recognize P2 cards yet, there's supposed to be an OS update coming soon; I think someone at a trade show took some footage of it working, but I don't think that update has been released yet. And on the PC you'd probably need Avid Express Pro HD, because it has P2 MXF support and the DV100 codec installed. So maybe if you can find someone who's running Express Pro HD on a laptop they could answer; but even then they'd have to have footage to test it with.

My laptop is a Pentium M 760, and in Vegas I can play back DV100 .mov files and I get maybe 3.5 to 4 frames per second playback speed. It'd be much faster if there was a DirectX codec, but there isn't. At least not yet.

So I don't know that there's an answer to your question yet. The only possible answer would come from Avid themselves, or someone using their product.
 
Thanks Barry, yea i'm currently running xpress pro hd and would be doing the same for my laptop, guess this is a question thatll need to be answered when the camera is out and some people have played with it a bit.
 
Raid

Raid

You Will Need To Consider A Firewire Raid Drive. The Slow Frame Rates Are Due To Disk Speed Not To Processor Performance. Hdv Is More Work For A Processor Than Dvcpro100 As It Has To Encode On The Fly. I Read You Can Edit Directly Off The P2 Card If You Have A Pci Slot. Remeber The P2 Is A Raid Drive Of 4 Sd Cards, Only 8 Gigs Though
 
Mr. Blonde,

I have been working with an off-the-shelf HP nx9600 for three months now and love it. All flavors of HDV, DVCPro HD, etc. without a hiccup. It's a solid machine, and editing all these resolutions on the same timeline without rendering is a blast. As soon as I can get my hands on an HVX200, I will record directly to the computer at DVCPro HD.

Prices start at $1349 new, look in the refurb listing for even better deals.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-64295-89315-321838-f1-445351.html

BTW, all I did to this laptop was add more RAM to my machine. I bought from Crucial because I didn't want to pay HP prices for RAM.

Regards,

Cre8tive
 
I have played MXF files of 720p/23.976 off the P2 cad directly to the laptop or copy the files to the Avid Medial Files folder. Either way will work. I have yet to try direct capture of 720p/23.976 over FireWire directly to the laptop, but there is no reason why that shouldn't work since it is already supported - whether it is coming in live, off tape or imported.

Michael
 
cre8tive said:
Mr. Blonde,

I have been working with an off-the-shelf HP nx9600 for three months now and love it. All flavors of HDV, DVCPro HD, etc. without a hiccup. It's a solid machine, and editing all these resolutions on the same timeline without rendering is a blast. As soon as I can get my hands on an HVX200, I will record directly to the computer at DVCPro HD.

Prices start at $1349 new, look in the refurb listing for even better deals.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-64295-89315-321838-f1-445351.html

BTW, all I did to this laptop was add more RAM to my machine. I bought from Crucial because I didn't want to pay HP prices for RAM.

Regards,

Cre8tive
Click to expand...
I don't see how this is even physically possible. One thing we all need to keep in mind is that while laptops were great for DV shooting, the bandwidth requirements of HD make it nearly impossible to get anything resembling realtime playback on a laptop. I suppose you don't absolutely need realtime to see what's happening on set, however you could miss quite a bit if you are viewing it at 4fps. That said, there is no way you could capture directly to that 5200rpm drive straight from the camera, unless the hvx implementation of dvcproHD is based on such low bandwidth that it's no better than HDV/DV. Impossible with a 4:2:2 signal.

In the machine mentioned here, the stock hard drive is 5200RPM which is never, ever in a million years going to be capable of serving up any flavor of true HD, at least not without crushing it down to the point where you can't trust what you are seeing, which to me is one of the main reasons for using a laptop on set.. In most production environments, around 200 megabytes per second (I spelled it out to avoid it being confused with megaBITS per second) SUSTAINED throughput is the goal for HD editing without the use of proxies, dropping playback quality very low, or encountering serious performance problems. To hit this bandwidth requirement, you need at least 4-8 Sata 7200rpm drives in some raid configuration.

I'm sure someone will dispute that, but using only one 5200rpm drive don't expect anything great, that's all I'm sayin'!
 
Yo, Beeny:

DVCPro HD is small enough bandwidth to fit down a firewire 400 pipe. Ingest right into Avid via a laptop, no problem.

As for the drive speed, what can I tell you? Mine is 5200rpm, and I can do multicam HDV, DV, DVCPro HD on the timeline without rendering.

Yup, multicam using regular DV is a bit snappier, but it works with HD and/or multiple resolutions on the same timeline all the live long day. You should check it out at an Avid demo. I'll be showing this configuration as mentioned at the GV Expo this week in D.C. Stop by if you're in town. Otherwise, check out DV Expo West at

http://www.dvexpo.com/west/

in LA December 6-9.

Regards,

Cre8tive
 
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