PC/Windows NLE Mess - Jan - what can be done?

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stephenvv said:
I would argue that that's too long. The DVX has support in much less time as did HDV flavors.
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While in general I'd agree with this, and I'm sure there are plenty ready RIGHT NOW to jump in with both feet to the HVX workflow (where do you all get this money???), I think a lot of this handwringing is a bit premature.

edit: nevermind.

I think there's going to be a bit of a bumpier ride than many here care to admit, and NLE support is simply one piece of the puzzle.

IMO, the HVX looks to be a killer camera -- just not for another year. The HVX-200b will be the one to get, and by then NLE worries will be a problem of the past...
 
well brian remember you can use the hvx to shoot DV and cut in vegas until the cows come home.

i think it all depends how serious you are in the whole editiing thing.. when i started robins feature last year and realized i was gonna be cutting HDCAM.. i was forced to go buy a dual xeon box with some serious RAID drive arrays and a blackmagic card.. i wasnt emailing intel or sony asking why i couldnt just edit the HDCAM crap on my home pc... when you hit this level of content you need to realize a camera isnt where the upgrade stops.

But i must admit.. at first i assumed i wouldnt have a problem cutting this dvcpro hd stuff on a pc.. me and barry both. You coulda heard a needle drop in the hotel room during DVexpo west last month when me and barry finally plugged a p2 card into our laptops for the first time and realized we where screwed... as mr. smarty pants Apple standing next to us on a 3 year old piece of crap mac powerbook was playing back and cutting dvcpro hd in realtime.

I think we need to look at the HVX less and less like a prosumer camera.. and more and more like a small professional camera that does alot of prosumer things.

But, regardless, pc support will come in. The camera has only been out for a week, and software vendors not only need to write code to get the P2 format to be recognized, but they need to handle the DVCpro licensing issues as well.
 
I think everyone on the EVS list with a PC should boycott and drop off the list.

Of course I have a Mac and I'm number 46 on the list so I might be biased. :)

Seriously though, I have several friends who work in the PC world and the consensus seems to be that there will be a solution for those editing systems very soon.

Chris
 
It is unfair to market this as a prosumer camera and now change the whole deal as it is released and many of us have held off projects, taken gambles based on this camera and frankly have been mislead by the exclusion of information.

This unbeleivable actually - very maddening. We can make excuses or reasons why panny isnt responsible but they are just rationalizations covering the reality. Panny screwed up - they should have included a conversion program or something.

Not once in any of Jan's presentations did she state any of these issues - but she was fast to tell us how we would save on tape stock.

Dont get me wrong - i have a preorder in and I am getting the camera but this is just not right.
 
bklyndv said:
IMO, the HVX looks to be a killer camera -- just not for another year. The HVX-200b will be the one to get, and by then NLE worries will be a problem of the past...
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Amen
 
Jarred Land said:
<snip> DVCproHD is not a consumer format, it is a professional format. Just like if someone gave you a HDCAM file and tried to injest it your system would puke. Professional formats require professional tools. Panasonic is allowing many of us to get a taste of the real world wit dvcpro HD in this $5000 camera.. so we cant give them to much hell about it.
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Hi Jarred, the only thing is that's kind of a two way street. Yes, DVCPROHD is a professional format, but by giving it to customers in a $5000 camera they are by default attracting an entirely new audience as compared to varicam owners. When DVCPROHD was a $65,000 club there were no complaints about lack of NLE support on windows - those folks have the dough for Mac or some other specialized real time editing system.

Panasonic has planted this camera squarely as a competitor to HDV cameras and has touted the camera's superior features a lot. If they're going to compete with $5,000 HDV camcorders on the hardware side they're probably going to have to compete on the software side too. That means that PC users shouldn't have to spend $1000-1500 on editing software just to view a native DVCPROHD video file. Considering how established HDV is now (any PC with VideoLan can open an HDV file, even Canon's funky 24F implementation), I really would have expected Panasonic to provide a very basic capture and edit utility with the HVX. Releasing a Playback-Only DVCPROHD codec for public consumption might have been a good idea too. My old Canopus DVRaptor (a classic!) had a proprietary DV playback codec so you could move the DVRaptor files to a different system and view the video. I seem to recall that JVC released some basic software with the HD1/10 to alleviate similar issues at that time (perhaps an early HD1 adopter can verify).

Oh well, I'm sure this will all be worked out before mid-year. I'd be REALLY surprised if the next version of Premiere doesn't support this camera. Still, it sure would help if the hordes of interested PC users could at least view DVCPROHD files natively.

Just my tired 2 cents, no offense meant to anyone.

Philip Williams
 
smelni said:
Not once in any of Jan's presentations did she state any of these issues - but she was fast to tell us how we would save on tape stock.

Dont get me wrong - i have a preorder in and I am getting the camera but this is just not right.
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again.. Panasonic is not responsible for what Avid, Sony and Adobe do.. Panasonic offered these companies assistance from the getgo.

And when Jan was making these presentations, she was under the assumption that all these companies would have a solution... thats what they told her, and publically announced.

It wasnt till dvexpo when Avid packed up and left the demo that most people realized the software guys where not ready yet... and Panasonic couldnt do anything.. the only thing they could do was buy Avid to make Avid release support. Ditto for Sony.

Sony didnt even ask.. Me, Barry, David and a number of people lobbied the highest level Sony guys we could for the last year to make sure they would support it.. and it was very clear there was only mild interest.
 
Jarred - i meant no offense to Jan or what the camera is -

I guess I am just venting frustration that when, god willing, ihave the camera in my hands end of January that i wont be able to do what I want with it.

Still stands - its an amzaing camera and I cant wait (and cant wait till i can edit it)

thanks for your opinions
 
philnerd said:
Panasonic has planted this camera squarely as a competitor to HDV cameras and has touted the camera's superior features a lot. If they're going to compete with $5,000 HDV camcorders on the hardware side they're probably going to have to compete on the software side too. That means that PC users shouldn't have to spend $1000-1500 on editing software just to view a native DVCPROHD video file. Considering how established HDV is now
Philip Williams
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you kinda made your own point.

When HDV came out.. you couldnt edit it on a PC without conversion. Vegas didnt support it for an entire year. Serious Magic didnt supported it for a year, etc. etc.
you had to buy cineform conform to edit in HD... if you had a powerfull enough pc. Well you can do that right now with DVmaker.

I cant believe nobody remembers the HDV issue of being forced to do a proxy down res and then a EDL conform.
 
CMessineo said:
I think everyone on the EVS list with a PC should boycott and drop off the list.

Of course I have a Mac and I'm number 46 on the list so I might be biased. :)
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LOL! Most honest post of the day!

Jarred Land said:
You coulda heard a needle drop in the hotel room during DVexpo west last month when me and barry finally plugged a p2 card into our laptops for the first time and realized we where screwed... as mr. smarty pants Apple standing next to us on a 3 year old piece of crap mac powerbook was playing back and cutting dvcpro hd in realtime.
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That was just last month! And you guys are the in-the-know, connected gurus (well, perhaps in everything but housekeeping, Jarred). Imagine how us ordinary trolls feel?

I guess the point I'm unsuccessfully trying to hammer through here is that if there is a solution to the PC NLE issue, why shouldn't we be kicking in the door and switching on the lights for Panasonic so Panny can see that it's in their own best interests to come up with a workable PC-NLE solution - and fast!

Do I want a $6000 HVX that I'm shooting like a DVX? Not unless I know there's a cost-effective HD editing solution for me in the near future. Either that or I bite the bullet, spend the cash and switch to the G5. And if I did that, you likely have some idea about how pissed off I'd be if Panny (or Sony or whoever) came up with a PC NLE solution a month later. But how can I make that decision based on the presently available information?

AK!

I am now going to clean off my shoes and sit down and put some nice, soothing music on my eight-track player.
 
stephenvv said:
That's very convoluted logic...by that logic a HVX plus a new Corvette is cheaper than a Varicam?
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Why does eveyone take everything so litterally here??
An HVX and a new MAC system is cheaper than a VariCam.
If I could afford a new Corvette I would buy the VariCam instead.
There is no logic too any of these discussions. What is not logical is Sony digging in and not supporting DVCPRO HD. I supported Sony products through BetaSP but when they went Digital Beta and BetaSX they lost me. I could not justify the prices for a format that showed a slight edge over what I had. Once Sony bought Vegas I quit upgrading that as well. I have rented the VariCam and the F900, nice pieces of equipment, but I had to downconvert to SD before editing. Now here we finally have a combo the HVX and FCP that can do what independent filmakers have been dreaming about. Now that is logical!!
 
Well, what doesn't make sense is saying that this is a professional camera that can only be edited succesfully on a MAC. So are we saying that the PC is no longer a professional platform? Some may :) don't get any big ideas you MAC guys. I personally don't mind using a MAC, at home I have a PC, but I use them both interchangeably, but I definitly don't feel that I should have to UPGRADE to a MAC, as the term upgrade would mean that I am now getting a professional platform. I don't mind using Avid on a PC, so why doesn't it work. Is Avid not professional enough?
 
Jarred Land said:
<snip>
I cant believe nobody remembers the HDV issue of being forced to do a proxy down res and then a EDL conform.
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We're all spoiled, lazy and expect everything to be ready instantly in the digital world :)

In the meantime, had I an HVX (I do not), I'd probably shoot DV for a few months to really get to know the camera, then switch to HD when the PC was ready for it. And if someone does have Avid, while it doesn't seem to extract a 24P stream from the 1080i footage, it does play very nice with standard 720/60P. I've played some of Kaku's 720P material through Avid 5.2.1 and I must say I was surprised how much I like the look. I'm a big fan of 30P and just assumed I'd think the 60P stuff would look too "video-ee", but its really got a look all its own IMO.
 
obin said:
Best deal out is CineForm's DI workflow with HD-SDI in and out and REALTIME EDITING and EFFECTS!! not only do you get a TOP OF THE LINE codec to do your Color grading and VFX work with,but it's all SOFTWARE! evrytime you buy a faster CPU you get MORE from your original buy of the CineForm system!
I just bought from them, I can now edit in REALTIME 720p 1080p and 2k files! cost? about $8,000 total...a bit less then an AVID...and a better codec for post work.
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uh, so you're saying that instead of just pulling the files over from the P2 cards, and edit in on a low-end powerbook (yes, with realtime effect preview, and all post work would be done in uncompressed codecs anyway), i should spend 8k instead and get a system with HD-SDI, meaning i have to play back all the stuff on a P2-deck with HD-SDI out (if there were one), possibly loosing all the timecode data in the process? in slow real-time captures? and recompress everything to another codec?
i'm a bit confused.

as for vegas to support DVCPRO:
Vegas is Sony and Sony is HDCAM and HDV... i strongly doubt they'll do panny the favor and add DVCPRO support, loosing even more camera (and system) sales.

AVID on the other hand will probably go for it, but theiy're still overpriced and limited in file exchange (says someone who as somebody who worked on Adrenalines for like 30K, and on FCP on Powermacs, iMacs and macMinis for a tenth).

but then again, i'm strongly mac/fcp biased (just the operating system would be worth the money to switch ;) ... so take all this with a grain of salt .
++ zem
 
CMessineo said:
I think everyone on the EVS list with a PC should boycott and drop off the list.

Of course I have a Mac and I'm number 46 on the list so I might be biased. :)

Seriously though, I have several friends who work in the PC world and the consensus seems to be that there will be a solution for those editing systems very soon.

Chris
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Yes, Yes please do!! I have a new Quad G5 on order!!
Thanks
 
DVCProHD has been around for several years, Apple adopted it a couple of years ago and I'm sure Adobe, Vegas and others had the opportunity and if they didn't take it, well shame on them.

It’s hard for individuals in forums like this to challenge the prerogatives of major corporations, for us its just mental masturbation. It’s not that Panasonic has so much ridding on the sale of this camera, I’m sure their other fine products will continue selling well, it’s more that we have such high hopes for what this camera can do for us. But it comes with a fairly high barrier to entry, HD vs. SD, tape vs. P2 and a proprietary DVCPro codec. It’s not simply about the price tag.

These are the same challenges that professional users face and if they are sharing the same concerns that are being expressed here, and many of them have been for several years, Panasonic should know this and be able to lower the barrier to entry.

We are living that Chinese proverb/curse “ May you live in interesting times.”
 
everyone needs to remember your on the bleeding edge here in HD workflow.. its not normal to have these problems, it happend with HDV, hell it even happend with the orignal DVX and 24p... and still happens, Windows 64bit edition has been out for 6 months already and only a handful of hardware companies actually support it.

So be patient everyone :) If you need to cut HVX stuff right now, your gonna hafta buy a mac. if you dont want to, wait a few months till the PC gets it's shiznit together and supports it. If your pissed, dont buy the camera. But dont blame Panasonic.
 
Jarred Land said:
everyone needs to remember your on the bleeding edge here in HD workflow.. its not normal to have these problems, it happend with HDV, hell it even happend with the orignal DVX and 24p... and still happens, Windows 64bit edition has been out for 6 months already and only a handful of hardware companies actually support it.

So be patient everyone :) If you need to cut HVX stuff right now, your gonna hafta buy a mac. if you dont want to, wait a few months till the PC gets it's shiznit together and supports it. If your pissed, dont buy the camera. But dont blame Panasonic.
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Does this mean that Barry Green is getting a MAC??
 
Jarred Land said:
everyone needs to remember your on the bleeding edge here in HD workflow.. its not normal to have these problems,
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hmm, i'm editing kaku's 720P clips on a fist generation 500 dollar MacMini here with no problems (ok, i gotta render on effects)... but hardly bleeding edge. ;)
++ zem
 
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