HVX Post Requirements

The "deck" is an advanced type of player that supports five card slots at once, and has all sorts of playback features on it -- quite overkill for the desktop video producer.

Getting your footage off the card will be accomplished in one of several ways -- either by plugging the camera in and transferring via USB or Firewire (no moving parts, no "hours on the camera" worries). Or you can edit straight from the camera, without even transferring the files over -- the camera itself will show up on your desktop as an external hard disk.

Or, you could plug in a hard drive to the camera and just dub 'em off, copying the P2 contents straight to the hard disk.

Or, if you want to leave the camera totally out of the equation, you just plug the P2 card straight into your laptop's PCMCIA/Cardbus slot, where it pops up on the desktop like an external hard disk. If you're using a desktop, you can get a PCMCIA reader adapter for a desktop for something like $70.

So no, you don't need any expensive equipment at all, there are several ways to do it for free, and even if you want the $70 cardbus adapter, that's still a whole lot less than, for example, a $4,000 HDV deck.
 
Well, that's up to the editing program you're using, and the flavor of HD. DVCPRO-HD is a lot easier on the processor than HDV is. If you're talking about DVCPRO-HD requirements, I'd say just cruise on over to apple.com for the FCP "minimum requirements", or Avid for the Express HD requirements.
 
Barry_Green said:
Exactly. It'll be about 2010 before over 50% of US households have any sort of HD player.

I think we're likely to see HD delivered over the internet before we see players in people's homes. And by 2010, yes the 128gb card will probably cost around $200-$400, going by Panasonic's roadmap, and the current trend of a card costing about as much as the previous card cost when it was announced.
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There’s something about this I don’t quite understand, you think it will be 2010 before 50% of the US population owns an HD anything – Right? Is that a bad thing? Do you think it should happen faster?

I’m not disagreeing, quite the opposite. If 50% of the US population own an HD device in the next five years that would represent an CAGR of more than 35% and provide more than $19B in software (content) sales. That would make it the fastest growing consumer electronics product in history, I hope you are right. Also at NAB you were hard pressed to find a standard definition image anywhere.

When I check out the screen grabs section I usually think twice before downloading anything over 25MBs, it just takes too long. HD, even with the most optimistic compression will still be in the GB’s. I’m not sure of the statistics for broadband in the US but I would imagine that it is still well below 50%. Can you imagine the amount of bandwidth required if there was a significant growth in both the number of people using broadband and the significant increase in file transfer size?

I respectively disagree, the roll out of HD has begun and it will increase significantly over the next two years. Broadband delivery of HD is probably a decade away.
 
I think 2010 is an *optimistic* view of when half the households will have any sort of HD playback device. Currently approximately 95% of the households don't even have any sort of HD display device, much less a playback device.

People talk about how quickly the public is adopting HD, and I just don't see it. It took DVDs about 7 years to reach 50% household penetration. HD sets have been on the market for 7 years and they've barely penetrated 5%. Sure, the pace is accelerating, but it's *nothing* like the adoption rate for DVD was.

As such, I think standard-def is with us still for a long, long time to come. No doubt HD is better, and HD is making very strong inroads into professional production (TV series, high-end commercials, things like that).

My comments about broadband were designed around the idea that while nobody has a high-def DVD player or tape deck, and very very few have an HDTV, somewhere around half the population do have computers with broadband internet access and 1280x720 displays. If HD content is going to reach "the masses", right now broadband delivery is about the only way that could reach a significant portion of the population. I'm not saying it's a practical delivery option, I'm just saying that right now it's the only delivery option even on the table that could reach any sort of mass base.
 
Currently my thoughts on the end to end process are as follows :

I'll shoot on P2 (yes, despite my cost moanings !)

I then want a small field device that has the pcmcia reader and that I can put caddied HDDs in to copy to. Ideally, this would be a real bare bones device that could be powered by the same battery type as the camera.

The caddied drive will then mount into the NLE PC.

For archival storage, I'm looking towards something like the Quantam 80/160 DLT drive. This gives me a good £ per gig figure, good speed and enough capacity to have the entire project archived - sidestepping the having no source "tapes" issue in the process. Though by no means a foolproof medium, DLT has, touch wood, proven itself to be robust for other applications in the past for me.

Aside from the currently vapourware P2>HDD caddy, I can buy all of these things today, so I'm comfortable that by launch time I will be ready to go.

As regard the final delivery medium, that will be client driven but I'm expecting downrezzing to play a part for most projects for the foreseeable future !

On a broader note about HD, we were doing some tests today on a new plasma HD display. Running the HD content through it, there was almost a blase "mmm....its OK, nothing special" feeling. To be honest, it looked like a Digi-Beta connected to a broadcast CRT - very clean but not something that would make you sell your house to own. Of course, we then flicked an SD source into it, a standard DVB stream from a cable Set Top Box, and the HD suddenly looked breathtaking. And there's the rub....To properly view HD content, you need an HD monitor but then to really appreciate how good it is you have to put an SD signal into it !

This is going to present a challenge for broadcasters who have mixed content as consumers buying into HD will get the benefit from the HD channels but will have to put up with the SD channels looking awful on their new HD displays. As the SD content will be the dominant one for a good time to come, this might stall takeup from the consumers until the content balance shifts to HD.

In the short-term, cable operators might reap an amount of intial HD takeup through VOD content, with consumers using HD projectors to watch films whilst sticking to SD displays for regular content. HD only programming delivered via broadband to IP Set Top Boxes may also offer similar early takeup. For mass market acceptance though, the issue of how bad SD looks on HD sets might well be more of an issue than how good HD content does.
 
pacificstreet said:
Currently my thoughts on the end to end process are as follows :

I'll shoot on P2 (yes, despite my cost moanings !)

I then want a small field device that has the pcmcia reader and that I can put caddied HDDs in to copy to. Ideally, this would be a real bare bones device that could be powered by the same battery type as the camera.

The caddied drive will then mount into the NLE PC.
Click to expand...

According to Barry Green no PCMCIA reader is necessary.
Just buy any 2.5" HD (up to 120 GB when the camera will be available). Put the HD into a portable enclosure (MomoBay for example) that features a USB2 interface.
Connect the USB2 port of the camera with the USB2 port of your portable HD and download the contents of your P2 cards onto your HD. That is all you have to do.

At home, connect your HDD to your NLE and start editing. Barry confirmed this workflow yesterday. If it works, it's marvellous.

For extra loooooong takes, use a compatible firstore.

Easy, isn't it? :thumbsup:
 
Barry_Green said:
What type of monitor to get is a far more open question with HD. With NTSC, we always said "you need a CRT, LCDs aren't good enough." But with HD, CRT is probably the least prevalent monitor style! Even though it provides arguably the best picture, CRT is the least popular because of the massive size. So LCD, plasma, DLP, D-ILA... you've got to make your choice somewhere. And in that realm, the Dell starts looking awfully appealing. Plus it's a regular computer monitor as well, and a massive one.
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On CGTalk.com, one of the founders of Hydraulx, Colin Strause, was saying that for accurate color correctiong you really need CRTs. These guys output with theater projection in mind, so wouldn't you still want a CRT if you could afford one for HD?

Here is the thread.

I dunno if LCD monitors are as bad as he makes them out to be, or if it's just him thinking in an uber-professional state of mind.
 
While we ponder the future of HD delivery to the consumer, we should remember that we have been seeing "high definition" produced content since "I love Lucy" started shooting with three 35mm cameras in the Fifties. We see content produced on film and HD everyday. Almost all high end content is originated on "high definition" systems, either HDTV systems or film. Producing content on HD, will make for higher quality images no matter what the delivery system.
 
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