Is HPX 170 Native 16:9?

no no no!
youre still being blinded by tech-speak "1920x1080" is just a resolution. thats dealt with in-camera while shooting and has nothing to do with transferring to your computer.

you get footage to your computer from either camera by USB, firewire, or a variety of card readers.

the HPX170 has usb and firewire
the HMC150 has usb

the hd-sdi on the 170 is only used for monitoring or IF you have an hd-sdi capture card. and from what im reading about your needs. you dont need to worry about the hd-sdi. its not going to be a help nor a hindrance to you
 
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quoting KMR: 'The camera does all of its image acquisition and processing in 1920x1080. When recording in DVCPro HD, it is downsampled to 1280x1080 or 960x720 (these are the only dimensions that the DVCPro HD format records in). Most NLE apps are able to handle the DVCPro footage properly in 1920x1080 or 1280x720 projects.'

wgzn, just to finally understand, so the footage from the hpx170 is anamorphic? it records 1920x1080 in 1280x1080? then once I transfer the footage via firewire to my pc and get it to my NLE, will it be handled as 1920x1080?
 
i dont think you need to bother yourself with the 1920, 1280, anamorphic, etc... information.
the camera will acquire its "1080" image however its hardwired to do so. and all of these "budget hd" cameras have their own ways to do it. whether thats 1920 or 1440 or 1280 or whatever...

premiere will have presets for dvcprohd or avchd and it will interpret the footage the way it needs to.

i am over simplifying this. but you are over complicating it. its clear from your questions that all you want is a 16:9 blu-ray end product. and either camera is capable of doing that with your existing computer and software.
 
now as far as needing a raid setup or not.

in many cases, drive and data transfer speed have as much or MORE to do with performance as does ram and processor speed.

for example. i saw a greater performance increase when i changed my external drives from firewire800 over to esata, than i did from either moving from a G5 quad to an octo macpro computer. or from doubling my system ram

a raid will be better. but a single drive unit is acceptable. i have both in my setup.
 
im sorry to be barraging you with all these oversimplified answers. but its clear that you are over-worrying yourself with information that wont have any effect on you.

i think you have worked yourself into a frenzy because you have been reading threads and articles written by people from both ends of the spectrum.

at one end are the newbies screaming about things that they only half-understand and at the other are the film and technology industry folks that are concerned with things that wont effect you or what youre doing. and here you are in the middle trying to make sense of it...

but again. BOTH of these cameras will get you what you want with what you have.
one has more features, better color sampling. and shoots to a more robust storage format
the other is cheaper.

if you can afford the hpx170 and one big or two smaller P2 cards. you should.
 
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thanks for all the input wgzn! you're right, my goal is to achieve the widescreen look in my personal narrative projects, so that's why im interested in the 16:9, 1920x1080 look, and being able to make a blu-ray disc.

So, after all the input, I think I'm going for the HPX170.

Sorry if I was a bother to someone, and thanks for your patience!
 
no. youre not a bother at all! these are good questions that need to be asked.

there is just a LOT of information out there and its easy to get bogged down in specs and stats that may or may not actually have any effect on your end product.
 
another thing youre going to need to consider is how you offload your footage in the field.

if your only computer is a desktop model, you obvioulsy wont be able to drag that around with you. so you will have two options:

1. buy as many P2 cards as youthink youd need for a full day shoot
2. buy two smaller, same size P2 cards and a laptop with pcmcia slot or a laptop and a card reader. so you can shoot to one card while offloading the full one.
 
Hey! Thanks for the advice on offloading the footage in the field!
By the way, are the P2 cards compatible with PCMCIA slots? If yes, I didn't knew that!

wgzn, I also have plans for shooting a feature lenght project, maybe in a year or two, do you think that with the specs of my computer, and getting a raid setup, can I accomplish that? In my experience in short films, I always choose one shot of each scene, and delete the rest. So, lets imagine that I already have all the shots, of each scene, can i get through with my pc specs? and a raid setup? or should i consider upgrading my pc, maybe to a mac?
 
yep! a P2 card is PCMCIA

in a year or two who knows? but as long as both your computer and your camera (whichever you choose) remain in working order. you will be fine for arguably - FOREVER...

from a technology standpoint, shooting a feature length project is no different than shooting a 30 second commercial. its just a matter of needing more space to store the larger amount of footage. and you can either use a number of smaller drives or a big "raidy" type deal

im not sure if youre understanding what a raid is for. a R.A.I.D is an acronym for "redundant array of inexpensive disks" and it accomplishes one or a combination of two things. speed and or reliability. depending on the type of formatting, a raid will either create an exact copy of whats on one drive simultaneously to another one (reliability) or will write data to two drives at once. effectively doubling your performance (speed)

and as far as getting a mac. well, im a mac user so im jaded. i hate everything about windows and the pc experience. not because i dont know it. ive used both windows and macs my whole career. but there is so much schlock to sort through in the windows world. i just dont have the time or interest to futz with it just to get my machine to run. ever buy a pc then get it home and want to install a clean version of windows on it? you have to track down about 8 different drivers just to get core functionality going. but i digress... no. windows and mac will both do the same job of video editing on any size or complexity of project.
 
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Thanks wgzn for all the help!
hope for your assistance at another time!

Thanks again! I guess i wanted to follow the steps of the people i know in the editing bussiness, almost all of them use macs and final cut pro, very few use also macs with premiere. But VERY few use pc or notebooks with windows os, and premiere. But at the end, the final edited project look great! Either mac+fcp, mac+premiere or pc+premiere.

And, unfortunately maybe, i'm more used to work with pc's and premiere. But someday I'll give a try using macs+fcp!
 
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dont sweat what other people use or is in fashion. use what makes you happy and suits your needs ; )
 
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