Love my AG-HPG10, P2 Gear

murrayjob

murrayjob

Member

Hi all, just a quick note regarding my recent purchase of a AG-HPG10 P2 card drive.
I work in Auckland New Zealand as a full time Freelance News Camera op. my camera is a P2 HPX502 (Asia Pacific version of the 500), with all of the different formats out there at the moment it has been a real pain working with the different news networks with all of the different formats, some networks shoot XD and SX one is on P2 and another is on IMX and DVCAM-!!
At least all of the networks can take DV so I would shoot P2 and dub it to mini dv on the drive back to the office.
I realized that everyone has SDI so I purchased the AG-HPG10 so now I use that for ingest with which ever network I am working with on any given day-!!
It works brilliantly-!!
I know that there is a new model out now, the HPG20, but for what I use it for I didn't need the extra features for the extra cost.
 
So after the gig, you´re heading to the station and ingest from the HPG10 via SDI everytime?
What if, you don´t have the time to do this, cause another job is waiting?
And do you work for different stations and are the all OK with this solution?

But you opened my eyes to this solution, thanks...
 
Hi murrayjob,
How many Kiwi dollars for the AG-HPG10, Also I thought the HPX502 had SDI out , why buy more gear than needed as a freelancer. Do you shoot DV or DV50.

Cheers from across the ditch
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
The problem I had was only one of the four main News Networks I work for use P2, for the others I had to dub my vision (via firewire) to a handycam on the drive back to the office, if I knew the job was time critical I would mount the little handycam on the back of the 502, and it would record to tape as well as the P2 card each time I hit record, this would do the job but was a lot of stuffing around.
Now with the HPG10 I simply come in to the office and plug the HPG10 in to there ingest system and leave it in there for the day.
Yes the 502 does have SDI out but the problem was that as soon as you get back from a shoot you need to go out to another one so I couldn't ingest from the camera.
I just show the ingest guys how the HPG10 works, all of the networks are fine with this. So long as the vision is good and you can get it in there servers they don't mind what you shoot on.
Most network like to use DV25 but one uses IMX 30mb so I like to shoot DVCPRO 50 for them and that looks real nice.
The cost was just over $5000. NZ$ inc gst tax.
The new HPG20 can record from the SDI, and record and play AVC intra.
 
Hi Murrayjob,
My workflow when DV or DVCam is required from my P2 in the field,is to hook up a small AJA SDI to Y/C convertor
http://www.aja.com/html/products_converters_D4E.html
$400 and dump to a DSR 11 $1500, this I've done while travelling from the location to the delivery point, thus wasting no time. Lets face it most news items should be "shot, to be edited fast", should be between 5 and 20mins duration.
No doubt the Pana HPG20 is great, but, you could have purchased a AJA convertor box for $400, that's much less than spending $5000 to just get vision onto DV / DVCam and have to travel to your office to do it. Sounds an expensive workflow to me, recently News services here are so cost driven that even some normally good yarns go begging just to save a few bucks.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
Hi Tom,
Yes, I hear what your saying, but I wanted to be able to pull out the P2 card stick it in a player and ingest back at any News network.
The HPG10 does that $5000 was a good investment.
-Cheers Murray J
 
Hi murrayjob,

if I were in your situation I would have put that $5000 towards and bought a HVX170 (has SID out)and used that to download your vision,it would have also doubled up as a spare cam. I have a small Pana 3chip for those needs when the Big Broadcast cam won't fit the location.
And is very handy for DV capture / monitoring and replay.Just my thoughts to a fellow stringer.

cheers
Tom k
olinevideo.com.au
 
Hi Tom, Yes I considered purchasing the 170 but it would have cost about $8000- and as you know ingesting from a player is quicker and easier than trying to fight your way through menu's on a camera. Plus I wanted it to be sSOoo simple that a 16 year old tv school graduate being paid $300 for a 60 hour week could operate it.... I'm sure you know what I mean :-)
 
I discovered a small operational fault with the AG-HPG10 (P2 Gear) when copying clips from one card to another the copy process would get to about 80% and then would appear to crash, just turn off, no lights, no warning.
After trying lots of different cards etc. I returned it to the Panasonic NZ service centre and the very "on to it" tech discovered that it simply was turning off after 5 minutes due to having the "Power save" function on. - disable this function and problem solved, The factory has been informed. hopefully this fix may be included in a future firmware update.
 
murrayjob said:
Hi Tom, Yes I considered purchasing the 170 but it would have cost about $8000- and as you know ingesting from a player is quicker and easier than trying to fight your way through menu's on a camera. Plus I wanted it to be sSOoo simple that a 16 year old tv school graduate being paid $300 for a 60 hour week could operate it.... I'm sure you know what I mean :-)
Click to expand...

Hi murrayjob,
Now Resting my heavy SPX800, so I very recently bought a lightweight HPX172 , had only a few hours on the clock, cost about $4500, I see some HVX200 on ebay here in OZ for about $4, as a card reader / spare / sec camera is good idea.
Easy to just connect via USB and push in button and P2 icon is up on the desk top.
a trained monkey could do it, not rocket science.
anyway good to hear your away and running. P2 is good workflow when your aquainted with all the methods.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
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