HVX Plunge

Mark Harris

Mark Harris

Pain in the ass
Well, I did it. Ordered my brand new HVX today. Will be here Wed.

And I got this greeeeaat deal from this tiny little shop in Brooklyn!!! I mean, it didn't even look like a store, but I am sure they are TOTALLY legit.

j/k, went with spec-comm. Seemed like as good a deal as any going right now, and free shipping.

Anyway, very excited to get shooting with it. :)

M
 
yeah, I've done a few shoots, helped JDS on one, did another video with my friend Steve, and every time, I"m like: "Damn, why don't I have one of those???"
 
Yeah, I looked at the Canon, but I am getting more and more gigs shooting for other people, so all in all, I felt like the HVX was most versatile for that kind of work.

What about that firestore. I almost bought one and Specc-comm said they would give me a deal if I came back for it. But does it actually work? I've seen a million threads about it, but...
 
Wow. You could've just said no, Mark. You didn't have to get nasty.

Just kidding.

And no, Jay/Coffee , I'm not BEGGING. I'm TELLING. RAWR. What's wrong with wanting 24gigs?

Mark, the Firestore WORKS but I'd wait until the firmware update comes to record MXF to the Firestore. You also can't playback as easily as you can with p2 cards. I believe you actually have to put the Camera into 1394 Device mode to playback from the Firestore.
 
Mark Harris said:
Yeah, I looked at the Canon, but I am getting more and more gigs shooting for other people, so all in all, I felt like the HVX was most versatile for that kind of work.

What about that firestore. I almost bought one and Specc-comm said they would give me a deal if I came back for it. But does it actually work? I've seen a million threads about it, but...
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Mark dude, if you have the mulah for it then buy the FireStore 60 or 80GB. It's amazingly perfect dude. MUCH better then the P2 cards.
 
ick, sounds like a pain. I have HD rack, so I guess that indoors and p2 cards should do it.

But Jay says it's cool...hmmmm
 
Kholi said:
Mark, the Firestore WORKS but I'd wait until the firmware update comes to record MXF to the Firestore. You also can't playback as easily as you can with p2 cards. I believe you actually have to put the Camera into 1394 Device mode to playback from the Firestore.
Click to expand...


Ah so you're saying that the FS is really not the way to go for the HVX?
 
What does Jay know?

No, seriously. The Firestore is great for long shooting times. Also, for cameras that don't shoot straight to p2 media. I think, and agree with Barry when he says, right now there is no better media for the HVX than the p2 card. It's quick and painless. Only thing that sucks is the recording times but with 2 8gigs you get 40 minutes of 720/24pn. That's a nice chunk of recording time until 16gigs come down in price.
 
coffee said:
Ah so you're saying that the FS is really not the way to go for the HVX?
Click to expand...

Nah, not saying that. Firestore is getting a lot of praise from BenB and a few others here. I was going to invest in one but two 8gigs work fine for me. I let the camera go to Cuba last weekend on a production and the two 8gigs were fine for him as well.

Firestore still needs to be ironed out. Having MXF data instead of Quicktime files would be better for the user looking to archivie raw footage and audio from the camera. When Firmware update 3.0 comes I'm sure BenB will give DVXuser the scoop on it's performance.

I also don't like the idea of having to switch to Device Mode (or whatever it's called) to view clips. You have to turn the camera on and off again to get back to Record and VCR mode.
 
Yeah, but the problem, B-Man is my laptop does not have a slot for the P2 to dump to...it has a pciexpress slot, I think, but not the PCI slot for the p2. I am trying to find a USB PCI card reader...
 
I also don't like the idea of having to switch to Device Mode (or whatever it's called) to view clips.
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FS doesn't make you go to device mode. You view clips by going into VCR mode, then turning the thumbnails off. The inconvenience comes in that you can't view thumbnails on the screen, you instead have to go through the menus on the FS, looking at various text names and trying to guess which clip it is that you want to play back. If you are only looking to play back the last clip shot, it's fine, but if you want to compare two takes it can't hold a candle to how the P2 cards work.

MUCH better then the P2 cards.
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Well, let's just say that that sounds like a quote from someone who's never used the cards. ;) I think the FS makes a great interim step from tape-based to tapeless, but if the cards had bigger capacity I can't see why anyone would put up with the limitations of disk-based recording vs. solid state. Side by side, face to face, the cards are just better in every possible way, except total capacity and current cost per that capacity. But operationally, functionally, reliably, etc, the cards are just better. Shock-proof, heat-proof, dust-proof, humidity-proof, no need for a cable, no need for a separate battery, tiny size, all sorts of benefits.

So let me just put it this way: Coffee, you know how much better you like the FireStore over tape, yes? Take that same amount of improvement, and that's how much better the cards are over the FireStore. :thumbsup: There's really nothing else like them, and once the capacities jump up a bit, you'll be editing six streams of HD straight from the cards, never even bothering to transfer to a hard disk. A quantum shift in workflow is coming, probably starting with the 32GB cards.
 
Mark Harris said:
Yeah, but the problem, B-Man is my laptop does not have a slot for the P2 to dump to...it has a pciexpress slot, I think, but not the PCI slot for the p2. I am trying to find a USB PCI card reader...
Click to expand...
Stop searching, there aren't any (other than the Panasonic PCD20 or whatever it's called). Which is $2000, but it supports FW800 too.

What you want is the duel-systems PCMCIA->ExpressCard adapter, it's due out in probably two weeks and should cost something like $100.
 
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