Ordered in the UK

Darkline said:
Hi Alex

I was at Video Forum today and they were doing a show offer of £3500 (Cam, no cards) with H Preston (so the panasonic Rep said). Dunno if that helps, but they said after that it would be £3900. Shipping in 3 weeks according to Pana...

Karl
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Rats! £250 cheaper and I've put down my deposit with ProAV already! Time to start negotiating...

Still, it's excellent that they're looking to ship in 3 weeks. Not bad. I may yet get an HVX for my shoot in Turkey (come on Panasonic!) :thumbsup:
 
Steve Shovlar said:
They had two HVX200's at the show, both NTSC demo versions. Played about with it and I love the focus assist.
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What did you think of it, Steve? How much bigger is it really than the DVX100?
 
Hi steve

Yup it was me you met yesterday with my friend Mark. I primarily went to check out the HVX too. Loved the focues assist!

I was toying with ordering one; but it's the whole edit set-up that bothers me. Until there is a viable way of editing on PC without me spending an extra $3000 on a mac - I might wait a month or so and see what crops up.

Im hoping someone will release a DVCPROHD plugin for premiere.

This is going off topic here, but even if I could edit DVCPROHD in prem (or even Avid - which you can), since the HD analogue ouputs are disabled on the cam when editing over firewire what card can actually ouput DVCPROHD to a monitor? Even If I got a blackmagic, I havent read anywhere whether this will be able to output DVCPROHD on a PC to a TV. Blackmagic doesnt seem to support DVCPROHD on a PC.

Anyway, was nice to meet you Steve - keep in touch and good luck with the new film. I'll get a HVX but if I get one now I might be stuck shooting SD for a few months.

Karl
 
Alex Leith said:
What did you think of it, Steve? How much bigger is it really than the DVX100?
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Bigger than a DVX100, comparable to the FX1/ZU1, perhaps slightly fatter than those cameras.

Interesting how dominant the ZU1 is though. I must have counted about 100 of them at the show. Every stand had a ZU1 on it.

Pansonic dropped the ball by not attending this show. Thousands of shooters over three days. Very big Sony stand showing off their new HDCAMS. Big AVID and Adobe stands as well.

This would have been an ideal opportunity for Panasonic to launch the camera in the UK. Instead, we had a rep struggling to get the camera off the 480i mode, with a monitor showing a Standard def image to all watching and waiting. Only NTSC demos, not finished cameras either. Is this the way to sell to the masses? I think not.


The UK might be only a small market in the scheme of things, but we deserved better than this. I spoke to a BBC producer who says the BBC are looking to buy the HVX200 in large quantities. He said they have been happy with the ZU1 but want 25P for some drama work.
 
Darkline, unfortunately I think you're right that Decklink doesn't supports real-time output of DVCPROHD the PC. I think this is more to do with the optimization of FCP than anything else.

Mind you, at this stage even FCP doesn't support 720p25 or 720p50.
 
Steve Shovlar said:
Interesting how dominant the ZU1 is though. I must have counted about 100 of them at the show. Every stand had a ZU1 on it.

Pansonic dropped the ball by not attending this show. Thousands of shooters over three days. Very big Sony stand showing off their new HDCAMS. Big AVID and Adobe stands as well.

The UK might be only a small market in the scheme of things, but we deserved better than this. I spoke to a BBC producer who says the BBC are looking to buy the HVX200 in large quantities. He said they have been happy with the ZU1 but want 25P for some drama work.
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Thanks Steve. I think you're right about the Panasonic. They don't seem overly interested in positioning themselves particularly dominantly in the UK. Just look at how easy it is to hire a PD170 or a Z1... but if you want to hire a DVX100 you have to hunt around.

I guess it must be hard for them after MII lost out to BetaSP, and Sony has held such a dominant position since then in the broadcast world. So dominant that it managed to sell BetaSX for the price it did (what a heap of ****), when DVCPro50 offered a much higher quality image for a comperable price.

Still, it will be very interesting if the BBC acquires a bunch of HVX200s. I know they bought swathes of Z1s to replace their PD150s, but there's no doubt that the HVX200 offers more possibilities creatively.
 
Who knows maybe they didn't have a strong presence due to the fact that the PAL model is not out yet, remember on the Panasonic Broadcast Europe site, it still says preliminary..
 
jazzx said:
on the Panasonic Broadcast Europe site, it still says preliminary..
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And based on past performance it will still say preliminary for at least a month after it is shipping!

They're not the quickest to get new info on their website (not in English, anyway).
 
I have to concede I dont know what to do....

I have two options.

1. pre-order this for £3500 standalone and sell my DVX

2. wait a few months for a bundle deal to come out - firestore or cineporter, then sell my DVX.

I'd hate to buy the camera now (when I cant use HD yet) and then pay more in the long run buying the firestore/p2/cineporter seperatley. I just dont know what deals they are going to be offering so it's difficult to know if £3500 for the camera alone is a good investment.

I predict at least May before I get my edit gear sorted to work with HD.
 
It looks like it! Also the forum section is a bit, how should I put it, under-used? un-answerable? something like that, I mean the Panasonic communication channel in Europe compared to the US is another galaxy, has it always been like that?
 
The biggest thing for me is proper 16:9. Most of my projects end up of DVD.

I'm debating whether to get P2 cards. At the moment they would be of limited use. Anywhere I would intend to use P2 I have to take my laptop to offload... therefore why not capture straight to the laptop?

I'm definately interested in the Cineporter when it materializes... or I might try to make a small computer/monitor if I can find a small enough motherboard and a 7" monitor with a dvi or vga connection.
 
For me It seems that I may actually need to have at least 1 P2 card, if ever want to have run-gun hi-def footage, where a laptop doesn't have a place, or wait and go with cineporter or the FS-100 and be done with it, no laptops, nothing.

I'm not sure of what to do, because the card wil cost some 600-700€ but the FS-100 with maybe double the price will have a huge recording time difference. Do you guys think that 1 card at least is a must?
 
Yeah, you're probably right. Thinking about it, I'm going to get at least one 4GB card. At very least for the slowmo / fastmo options.
 
Darkline, how's things. It was you I met by the HVX wasn't it?

Did I meet anyone else? I was playing with the camera for so long that I must have met some of you.

I have to say, I really liked the HVX, but still can't decide between it and the HD101. The JVC has a real quality control issue with the lens - the one they had at digital garage showed AWFUL CA whereas the one at CKE was really good. The form factor of teh HVX is just soooo... brick like and I'm still not sure about P2.

Did anyone else speak to Focus? The rep said the Firestore would be £1600 :(...
 
Hi - I coudn't get to the videoforum, we're just too busy with shoots at the moment.

I am looking to get a HVX from Hpreston, I'm wondering if they will honour this price if I ring them tommorow - if they do then I'm going for it.

Like some have you said here, for PAL users it gives us a nice Deluxe DVX camera from the off, and P2 when we are ready. And we are using our DVX more and more over the beta - kit which I want to completly expire now apart from live mixes.

Has anyone ordered from HP who didn't go to the show?

Does their price look about the best in the UK for the next few months?

Thanks.
 
I'm a bit concerned about editing either the 720p Pal footage, since this mode is where the camera shines...
 
ROne, I purchased my FX1 from Prestons and they have always been good for me. If you call them tell them I sent you. I might get a free battery or something!;)

MMM, was it you with the Shaggy off Scobee Doo beard? I went away and came back two hours later and the same guy was still there playing with it!
 
Steve Shovlar said:
ROne, I purchased my FX1 from Prestons and they have always been good for me. If you call them tell them I sent you. I might get a free battery or something!;)

MMM, was it you with the Shaggy off Scobee Doo beard? I went away and came back two hours later and the same guy was still there playing with it!
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Na, no beard on me. I was there from about 10 til 11 though, chatting with loads of people... explaining that you CAN'T RECORD HD TO TAPE! I guess not everyone reads this forum!:laugh:

I definitely met Darkline... but I'm not sure who else...
 
Due to a problem on the tube I didn't get there until nearly 12 noon. A good day out. I managed to go to the Arri seminar on location lighting which was excellent as well, though the HD and indie film seminar was full before I got the chance to grab a ticket.
 
Hi MMM

aye it was me :-) Nice to finally see some faces off here. I couldnt drag myself away from that camera for the first hour and a half.

I think there were a few of us off dvxuser that knew everything about the camera, more than the rep. At one point the panasonic rep went for a cuppa while I explained what the camera did to the newcomers.

Anyhow, first impressions I was impressed. The only let down for me was the resolution, perhaps not as sharp as I would have expected - but the monitor it was being shown on was pretty crap anyway... It's really hard to tell at a show with all those horrible lights, but it certainly didnt have the 'zing' I've seen from properly lit footage. It all looked a bit muddy even with me ramping colour and playing with gamma settings. I wanted to grab the thing and run outdoors (get some nice footage of security running atfer me)

The variable frame rates were not working either, I think the camera was a pre-production NTSC model.

Overall I liked it. focus ring was much nicer than the DVX. the minimum focus distance was great - I could finally get a nice eye close up with lots of DOF. Focus assist was super. I tried using it without looking at the external monitor and I managed to focus successfully on every attempt with it.

For the work I do I dont want a huge camera with a horses cock of a lens. I think Im the only one who likes the look of the HVX, eveyone else thought it was ugly.

I had a play witha fig rig and a steadicam merlin. I think I will get a merlin with the HVX :-) well, when I can edit with it without converting and see it on a monitor...
 
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