Hvx??? Idk!!!

R

Raw and Vital

Active member
Not sure if this is posted in the right thread or not but I'll give it a shot.

I'm looking to make a purchase next year. And I'm not really familiar with the HVX and all the little gadgets that go with it. So I was wondering if some of you can help me out and would tell me what exactly I would need. I come to this site a lot and read up on a lot of things.

I guess the camera goes for about 6,000.

- Now if I want to shoot HD I will need a P2 card correct? But I have been reading on certain threads that people have a seperate laptop to capture the footage of what's on the P2 card? I dunno if im missing something or if this is just for convienience when you are out on the field shooting. So if you guys could help me out what I would all need or what a overall setup I would need when it comes to the P2 card and capturing the footage. Also my buddy was telling me about programs I will need to even view the footage? I'm also confused on a lot of that?

So if you could help me out with what I would need for capturing the HD footage. P2 cards? laptops and software/hardware I would need. External/Internal drives that I will be needing and passibly the price range i'll be looking at for these things.. Basically an overall package of what I would need when comes to handling a HVX I'd be greatful. Like I said, I'm very familiar with a DVX 100 but clueless about all the little kinks that are needed for the HVX.

Sorry if this is a stupid post, but I really need some help. Thanks a lot.
 
The best way to start is to read this forum.

You need a computer and an editing system that supports DVCProHD. For Macintoshes, that is FCS 5.1.

You can capture directly from the cam to Final Cut Pro. Or you can capture to p2 cards, and then transfer those to the computer.

But reading is the first step.
 
Basically what I did read on this site is The HVX is one expensive camera. haha. But yeah, P2 is needed to capture the raw footage, One of my friends also said you could just use a External Harddrive and use that as a capture card.
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[SIZE=+0]Is that true, are you able to use a harddrive and use that to capture. If so why do people insist on buying a P2 card if it only holds 4gigs.[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=+0]From the p2 or whatever they use they dump it on a laptop which they can store and check the raw footage. Then take it home and edit on a editing station. I think I got that stuff pretty right. I just don't know programs needed for the capturing or drives etc. Thats what I was hung up on. I have seem some stuff on here mentioned but never saw a definite "this works without any kinks" comment. So that's why im wondering what is a solid program/hardware unit.[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=+0]But please reply in regards to using a External harddrive in place of the P2 card. if or if it wont work and why. im curious. seems much more convenient[/SIZE]
 
Don't mean to offend, but if you read this site, then you know that you cannot record to an external hard drive.

You can purchase a $2k FireStore, and record to that, or a similarly priced Cineporter when it is released.

You can however transfer recorded p2 footage to a powered external USB or firewire drive.
 
With a P2 card, you're not tethered to a computer. In many shooting situations, having to drag a laptop around is just not practical.

Regarding the card capacity, the smallest cards were 2GB, and currently the largest ones are 8GB, not 4GB. 16GB cards will be available proably Q1 2007. With two 8GB cards, you can shoot for about 40 minutes in DVCProHD 720/24PN. Since the camera will automatically and seamlessly switch between slots when one card fills up, it is possible to record indefinitely by offloading one card while recording on another.

You cannot record directly to an external OHCI hard drive. You need something with some brains like a FS-100, Citidisk, or a laptop with a capture program to record the output of the DV port. However, the HVX200 can off-load to an OHCI hard drive (it can even format the drive), but you must stop shooting to do that.
 
I don't own an HVX200 (yet!) but have been researching the options. I am planning with studio shooting in mind primarily. For that, as far as the P2 workflow goes, I think I would opt for

* two 8GB P2 cards
* a PC with lots of RAID 5 storage
* an SCPCI-P2 card ( http://www.spec-comm.com/scpci-p2.php )

My understanding is that this will allow us to quickly download the contents of one P2 while continuing shooting with the other, and continue on like that indefinitely, switching out the P2 cards. The SCPCI-P2 plus a computer seems to give the best bang for the buck of the solutions I've seen. Though some dislike having to insert the P2 cards at the back of the computer, that doesn't bother me.

I'm also thinking about getting a Marshal V-R70P-HDA 7 Inch LCD Monitor. Another, less expensive option, is DVRack 2.0. I haven't looked into that much yet. A thread on that:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=76223

 
For more fault tolerance, you could add a second PC with RAID 5 and mirror all the data over to that, probably over Gigabit Ethernet.

For long term archiving, you could use HD-DVD. Or, if you keep all your clips under 4.7GB (one way to ensure that would be to use 4GB P2 cards), you could archive to regular DVDs, which would be considerably cheaper than HD-DVD, though more DVDs to manage. Maybe use the cheaper medium (regular DVDs), back everything up twice, and store the two backups in geographically separate locations.
 
. . . or you could back up your master files to LTO-2 tape (which is what I'm doing now while reading the forum). Drive (used) $750 on eBay, tapes $20-25, 200gig capacity uncompressed and hey, IT'S TAPE!

really.
 
LTO, an interesting option and great cost per MB! :)

Out here at Beaver Hill we dump to two hard drives simultaneously for everything. One hard drive goes to backup safe the other is used for editing. We burn through two Caviar 250GB per week, and we love it.

:bath:
 
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