Pulling the trigger on the HVX

S

Steve Washer

Member
Greetings all,

My first post to the forum. I've been a happy DVX user for years and feel it's time to take the plunge into HD with the HVX, but OMG the drama that surrounds this technology in the pages of this forum is scaring me to death!

For my applications I have a few questions that I hope can be quickly answerd by the experienced and talented users here:

1. Will the FS-100 connect directly to a MacBook Pro and offload properly? If not, is there a better workflow?

2. Can a P2 card be offloaded to a MacBook Pro and then be reformatted?

3. Where can I buy a 16GB P2 card??

4. Will the camera record to both the P2 and FS-100 simultaneously?

5. Do you need an HD monitor to accurately focus with or will my Sony PVM-9L work for this?

5. As I haven't bought anything yet, is there an optimum and economical field workflow that involves other items I haven't mentioned here?

:dankk2:

Steve
 
Welcome to the forums!
1. Sure, it should. BenB is a very experienced Mac/HVX/Firestore user. He would be one to search through some of his posts regarding info on this.

2. Yes. I think there is a little something funky about the process, but I'm not a MAC user, so I'm not sure. Just going off memory. You can either offload your cards using the camera, or you can get Duel-Systems Adapter and use your expresscard slot, which will be much faster, and not tie up your camera.

3. Not out yet. Sometime in May from what I understand. 900 list price. Look for 850-900 street prices. Spec-Comm is taking pre-orders, and I am sure others are as well.

4. I believe so.

5. Not necessarily, but it is recommended. Read Barry Green's sticky post on focusing. It should give you a lot of useful info.
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=49375
I use the focus assist and evf detail a lot, and have good results. It certainly takes practice. Don't trust the Auto Focus at all though, if you are shooting 24p. It's pretty much useless most of the time. At least, that has been my experience.

Hope that helps a little. Hopefuly some of these Mac guys can come in and fill in the gaps.

Jason
 
Thanks for the southern hospitality, Jason!

Some random musings on taking the plunge...

I checked out BenB's posts and will be asking some more questions later, I guess. There do seem to be a lot of problems with this technology that don't exist with the DVX. I don't know if I'm ready to jump into this pool until they clean the murky water a little more. After all, you don't want to be eternally fussing with the technology when you should be focused on telling a good story.

Clearly, you're not going to be getting posts from happy users on a consistent basis. I get that. But in many cases, these problems never get solved. I've read so many posts where desperate filmmakers have thrown up their hands in despair when some cranky piece of technology ate their beautiful shots. My heart goes out to them, but i don't necessrily wish to join their ranks.

On the other hand...

Maybe I'm just looking for assurance that everything's going to work out and I'll be the one user who never has a problem with his bleeding-edge technology, which is, after all, what we are all dealing with here. And assurances in uncharted waters don't exactly go hand-in-hand, do they?

Thanks again!

Steve
 
Well, I can't talk about HVX/MAC, b/c I don't use a Mac. But, I can tell you from my own personal experience as an HVX/EDIUS user, I have experienced nothing less than 'rock-solidness' with this format and workflow. I haven't had the first problem with the P2 workflow. It's made things so much easier for me. This is just my personal experience, granted. There do seem to be a lot more problems on the MAC side for HVX user's, which is unfortunate. I would say though, that the vast majority of HVX/Mac people are using this workflow on a daily basis with little to no problems.

The workflow is a dream (if you have the right pieces to take advantage of it). And the problems aren't in the technology (P2/tapeless). My 2 cents.

Jason
 
Sounds great!

So could you describe your normal workflow in the field? For instance, what cards do you use and how do you offload them?

Steve
 
I too am in the same boat as you, going to hopefully soon get a hvx200. I suggest you take your time, get as much info as possibly on the camera, equipment, workflow, ect before you buy the camera. I've already changed my mind on what accesories to get like at least 3 different times, and all seems for the better. Knowledge rules.
 
4 8 gig cards. 2 camera's. I rarely ever have to offload in the field (I mostly just shoot 720p/24pn for the added record time, and b/c it is great for a dvd out, which is where most of my stuff ends up). But, when I do have to offload, I just stick the p2 card into my laptops pcmcia slot and offload it to an external drive that is connected to the laptop. Takes about 4-5 minutes per 8 gig card to offload. That's pretty much it. For you (on a Macbook pro) you would need the Duel-Systems adapter. Some Mac users also use a pc laptop for field offloading. They offload to a FAT32 formatted external drive. Then they take that drive to their Mac editing computer. I don't have experience with the latter though.

Jason
 
I think with the new 16gb cards coming out, if you film in 720p/24pn (2 cards would give you 80min), you won't really need a firestone fs100.
 
If you want to avoid problems with the workflow, avoid the FireStore and the Mac laptop. Use the P2 cards and offload to a cheap PC laptop that has a PCMCIA slot on it. You can still edit on the Mac if you want, just use the PC laptop's PCMCIA slot to offload the cards to an external drive; and plug that drive into your desktop Mac and edit from there.

People can get the Mac and the FireStore to work, but if you look at the extremely vast majority of issues people are encountering *today*, it's with a) the FireStore, and b) with trying to get the Duel Adaptor to work with their Mac. You can make it work, many people are happily using that combination, I'm just saying that if you're nervous and want to avoid problems, why not avoid the two most-problematical tools? Use the P2 cards instead of the FireStore, and offload on a PC laptop instead of a Mac laptop, and you will have absolutely zero problems.
 
That should work. Ooooh, a $50 rebate too. Won't run P2 Viewer worth a darn, but it should easily do the job of offloading cards, for 1/4 the price of a P2 Store! :thumbsup:
 
Barry_Green said:
That should work. Ooooh, a $50 rebate too. Won't run P2 Viewer worth a darn, but it should easily do the job of offloading cards, for 1/4 the price of a P2 Store! :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
Ohh, I didn't even see that till just now, sweet! $400 laptop for "dumping" and surfing the net!
 
And now this:

http://www.thecameraprofessionals.com/prodetails.asp?prodid=25070

Searching for pricing at one of those shopping comparison sites, I found the above and about 30 tales of woe to go along with it. $1700 for the HVX200!! And you'll very likely never see that camera in your hands.

It seems there are about a dozen shops like this in Brooklyn run by the same outfit. Their SOP is to offer a low price as bait, then send an email telling you to confirm the details of your purchase or it will be cancelled, then try to get you to buy more, then cancel the order if you don't (because these things can't actaully be sold at this price).

Pulling the trigger can be expensive in more ways than one.
 
Yeah, don't bother with that stuff. Best case scenario would be that they would just cancel your order.

Just save the stress and buy from on of the authorized dealers. We have a few who are sponsors here, and always treat our members right. You can also find some more in the "where to buy" sticky. Enjoy your HVX!

By the way... speaking of (semi)cheap laptops... I happened to come acros this core duo last night that I thought was a pretty nice deal. pcmcia, 1 gig ram, and 160 gig HDD.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2913283&CatId=2289

Jason
 
Jason Ramsey said:
By the way... speaking of (semi)cheap laptops... I happened to come acros this core duo last night that I thought was a pretty nice deal. pcmcia, 1 gig ram, and 160 gig HDD.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2913283&CatId=2289

Jason
Click to expand...
that's a pretty good setup for a duo, but it's refurbished. still looks like a good deal though.
i'm trying to see if i can get a laptop for cheaper than $400, but i probably won't. (laptop just for p2 dumping)
 
I totally missed that it was a refurb.. my bad.

Just for dumping what you are looking at is fine. I was just thinking about trying to find something I can use to dump and do a little editing with in EDIUS, too.

Jason
 
Jason Ramsey said:
I totally missed that it was a refurb.. my bad.

Just for dumping what you are looking at is fine. I was just thinking about trying to find something I can use to dump and do a little editing with in EDIUS, too.

Jason
Click to expand...
Ah I see, but nah I have a desktop already. I would love to have an editing laptop though, but I don't have extra funds right now. I wouldn't be editing on a PC/Edius setup anyway, I switched over to "the darkside" awhile ago...
 
I have a laptop with the following expansion slots. Do any of these qualify as a PCMCIA slot?

1 x Type I/II PC Card Slot, 1 x SD Card Slot, 1 x Memory Stick Card Slot, Docking Station/Port Replicator, 1 x MMC Card Slot
 
yep. the first one. And your sd card slot will be useful too. You can use it for putting custom scene files on your camera. Like when you get BG's HVX Book (if you buy from an authorized dealer). You can load his scene files from the cd onto the sd card and onto your camera.

Jason
 
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