HVX200 Workflow in Africa ?

M

MikeDPLD

Active member
Barry--or anybody else...
I'm heading to Kenya in April and I wanna have an HVX200 in my hands when I go. It's a 18 day trip and I'm worried about the workflow and battery situation.
Wildlilfe documentary footage for zoo and Kenya conservation organization.
I'm estimating about 30 hours of video, based on previous trip with SD Sony BetaSX camera.

What should I do for workflow? Easy thing is to chicken out and use tape drive with miniDV tapes. But I want something better that's worthy of incredible beauty
of Kenya.

What pieces of this puzzle are necessary and how is that puzzle solved?

What accessories are must-haves? (I'm thinking Century 1.6 tele extender at
least.)

...and I'm thinking of buying enough batteries to last for whole trip, assuming
very limited AC or 12V converter potential.

I'm currently experiencing the early stages of low-level panic. It COULD get MUCH worse without major help from you guys!

Thanks,

Mike
 
MikeDPLD said:
Barry--or anybody else...
I'm heading to Kenya in April and I wanna have an HVX200 in my hands when I go. It's a 18 day trip and I'm worried about the workflow and battery situation.
Wildlilfe documentary footage for zoo and Kenya conservation organization.
I'm estimating about 30 hours of video, based on previous trip with SD Sony BetaSX camera.



What pieces of this puzzle are necessary and how is that puzzle solved?

What accessories are must-haves? (I'm thinking Century 1.6 tele extender at
least.)

.
I'm currently experiencing the early stages of low-level panic. It COULD get MUCH worse without major help from you guys!

Thanks,

Mike
Click to expand...


first, get yourself one of those cool looking safari hats and the accompanying beige fatigues. Then get one of those huge elephant guns to kill stuff with. and while you're at it, get a chrome plated, vintage looking sidearm.

okay, after that, try and find some native helper who is extremely loyal to you and calls you "Bwana". he should be the kind of guy who will let himself be trampled by a beserk rhino rather than have you miss a shot.

then rent about six elephants but make sure they're tame enough so you can ride on top.

here are some other items to consider:
1) ipod
2) cheap costume jewelry (you can barter with the natives with it. during my last trip to rhodesia, i traded a plastic necklace for a baby chimpanzee and 3 chickens!)
3) snickers bar (hard to find in the plains of kenya)
4) cheese whiz (also hard to find)
5) condoms (make excellent water pouches)
6) hot native chicks (see item 5)
7) a few issues of reader's digest (don't neglect personal growth just cuz you're in africa with a bunch of hot native chicks...)
 
Sounds like you'd definitely need the Panasonic P2 offloader drive.

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=94262&modelNo=AJ-PCS060G&surfModel=AJ-PCS060G

You'd probably want to take along a laptop with a fast DVD burner. A bunch of blank DVD-R's to backup your 4 gig cards. You'd also want to take along external drives. You should do a calculation for the space requirements needed for thirty hours of footage, broken down into the number of P2 ofloads, DVD-Rs, harddrive backup if you choose to take along drives.

You've got a pretty big challenge to backup 30 hours of shooting. Honestly, I think you might be better off looking at HDV options, maybe the JVC or Canon, or Z1 would be better suited for this job.
 
Mike,

Like Isacc suggested, a laptop would be a good option to offload the footage too and then burn to DVD. You could also pick up a firewire drive, especially one of those battery powered enclosures that were listed on various threads.

I also think that since you are leaving in April, there is a great chance that you could pick up the firestore or the cineporter.. or that other one that supposed to come out at the end of the month. I think this would be your best bet for doing that volumous amount of shooting. Also, the rep from the cineporter was saying that their unit might have hotswappable drives. Therefore, with two drives you could be shooting and then switching drives. That way, you might be able to shoot for 5 or 6 hours of footage.
 
Hi Mike,

What mode are you going to shoot in?
1080, 720@60p, 720@30p, DVCPRO50, 720@24P, or DV???

30 hours equals 1,800 minutes

1080 & 720@60p requires 1GB per minute (1,800GB of data)

720@30p & DVCPRO50 requires 0.5GB per minute (900GB of data)

720@24p requires 0.4GB per minute (720GB of data)

DV requires 0.25GB per minute (450GB of data)


I'll assume that you will shoot almost 2 hours per day. Thus a P2 store drive holds 1 hour, 2 hours, 2.5 hours, or 4 hours depending on the mode you shoot in. Later in the day (that night) the data can be transfered to a larger drive.

Burning to DVDs may not be possible unless you have a second person burning DVDs while you are out shooting. As a rough estimage, figure that 1 hour of DVCPRO50 requires EIGHT 4GB DVDs and this will take about 6 to 8 hours to burn. With 2 hours of footage, figure that htis person is going to be burning for 12 to 16 hours every day. Not impossible, but a lot of time.

The other approach would be to use removable drives. The drives would need to be hand carried and you would want a second person carrying a second copy of the files.

Tape backup might work too. One person carries the hard drives and a second person carries the backup tapes. REMMEMBER to VERIFY after writing to a computer backup tape.

Battery power becomes a real issue while out in the field. Not only for the camera, but the P2 store drive as well. You may want to have a second P2 store drive with you.

I hope this helps.

Bob Diaz
 
Mike, Isaac is a good one to talk to because he's done docs in Africa.

I dunno -- 30 hours? That's a tall task. You're talking about two terabytes of footage at 1080 res. Obviously I'd lean towards 720/24p to cut that number in half. And the practical solution would be to just shoot tape. Doing this without access to AC power?

Frankly, if I was having to do this job in those circumstances with no access to power and having to live entirely off pre-charged batteries, I'd say this is probably a better job for tape, and if you want high-def, I would probably suggest the Sony FX1. If we had 128gb P2 cards and you could get five hours per card I'd say no problem, go HVX -- but for the enormity of the task and with no way to offload footage (assuming limited/no AC power); it may be asking too much at this stage of P2 development.

If you have access to power, then the HVX with a FireStore would probably do fine. Without power? That means no way to offload footage from the cards. The workflow issues might prevent the HVX from doing what you need at this stage.

To make the HVX work in the situation you're describing, I'd say you'd want a 240gb CinePorter with 720/24pN mode -- that should give you 10 hours of storage. Three of those and you could stay "live" the whole time, but it would take a lot of batteries to pull that off, I'd bet.
 
Hi Mike,
I'm African and have shot extensively in Angola last year. We were travelling with a Sony DSR570 and I had a Mac Laptop, DSR-11 and LaCie 250 Gb external drive for for digitizing and logging at night. Here are a few suggestions:

1. You'll be surprised at the places where you'll actually find electrical power. No matter how deep you go into the bush, somebody will have a little Honda generator running for their tv. People are generally very friendly and I've often gotten my BPL batteries charged at a roadside shack while having lunch. That said, renting one of these little generators can be very handy.

2. You'll spend a lot of time in a jeep, so a good 12 volt/120 or 240 volt convertor is surprisng usefull during the long trips, definitly good for topping up a laptop and small camcorder batteries. Find out you your brand of batteries has an optional 12volt cigarette lighter charger.

3. A computer type UPS (easy to find in Africa) is great for rural hotel rooms, power is often unstable outside of four+ star hotels. If not, a spare charger (or access to one) is also suggested in case you burn out yours. A small Maglite

4. Dust, dust, dust, bring lots of garbage bags to put everything inside, even inside your luggage/camera cases etc (good against rain + bugs too). Zip lock bags are great for smaller items (AA batteries). Make sure you have a good lens cleaning kit and compressed air cannisters. I kept a spare dust brush in my pocket while I shoot and checked my lens between takes.

5. A round folding-type portable photo reflector is useful for dealing with shadows. Dark people are notoriously difficult to light in the harsh noon sunlight. That said, dawn and dusk is out-of-this-world in Africa.

6. I keep a small (2 x AA) MagLite on my belt at all times. At night it stays where I can reach it.

7. Check the weather/rainfall on the internet for the region/month you are travelling, Africa isn't always as hot as you may think, especially in the highlands... I've seen snow in Johannesburg in July.

7. Misc: a cheap pair of flip-flops are very very handy, you really want to avoid walking barefoot anywhere, including showers and hotel room carpets. Locally I always buy a litre of all purpose floor detergent to clean out showers etc before I use them. A mosquito net is necessary, especially during malaria season or if you don't want the aircon running all night, or if your tent has holes... nylon rope is usefull for setting it up, drying your towell, holding your bumper if you hit a tree.... Lots of bottle water. Tin food when in doubt. Bag of candy for kids.


8. Have fun

best of luck
 
Hi Mike,
Great advice from Kalunga!! I've also lived and worked in Africa so I know his comments make lots of sense.
I have a similar quandary and have been spending the last two months researching the problem of archiving hours of video. Like you I was very keen to take the HVX on my shoot, but the numbers and dangers just don't add up. If you wanted to store on HDD, you would need to double the number of drives just to allow yourself some form of redundancy. And let's face it, the security of shooting to a flash card (no moving parts and shock resistant) are instantly negated by the fragility of the HDDs...which will be subjected to heat, dust, thumps and fluctuating current.
I'm going to be shooting for an extended period at sea and I reckon I have a more secure situation than you do…but I have decided to go the Z1 route and shoot in PAL and then de-interlace to get the 24p we all lust after. It just makes more sense from a security perspective. After all, it's the content that is most important…and if you need a better camera than a Z1 to capture the scenic beauty of Africa then maybe you should be shooting 35mm.
Good luck,
Bruce
 
Thanks for all the great advice, folks!
...and special thanks to brianluce, without
whose biting and brilliant wit this thread
may have died of neglect.
 
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