BobDiaz
The Professor
I remember as a kid seeing TV News cameras. Back then they used 16mm sound movie cameras and reporters used to say, "Film at 11." Today, why would anyone use 16mm movie film to shoot news? Remember when video cameras used tubes; today it's CCDs or CMOS image sensors. You could do your editing tape to tape, but everyone knows nonlinear editing is faster and easier. It's no surprise that improvements in technology change the way we work, but sometimes these changes are met with resistance from some.
The Panasonic HVX-200 is NOT the first camera to use the P2 memory cards to record video, but it is the first to do it in the $6,000 price range. It's unrealistic to expect a 1/3" CCD, $6,000 camera to match the image quality of a 2/3" $50,000 camera. Still, early reports of the camera give it high marks for image quality, function, and usage. As the gain is increased, the noise in the image increases, but setting the detail to -5, helps to reduce the appearance of the noise. Because image noise is subjective, one person's acceptable level is another person's unacceptable level.
Now that the camera has started shipping and the first user reports are being posted in the forums, this camera has developed a HUGE amount of buzz in video forums. It should come as no surprise that not everyone has the same opinion about whether this is the camera to buy or not. Some look at the recording time, at the maximum data rate (16 minutes with two 8GB P2 Cards) and find it to be unacceptable. I feel these people are seeing only the present and are not looking down the road.
Memory sizes are doubling roughly every 1 to 1.5 years. Every doubling is another step up in memory size. Even if we assume that the reports on the limits to Moore's Law are true and no other solution is possible, we still have 5 to 6 steps of memory increase possible (32x to 64x increase).
Long before we hit that limit, if it is a limit, memory sizes become big enough for most shoots. Just a 3 step increase results in an 8x increase in memory size; that would be a 64GB P2 memory card. Two of those cards would provide a little over 2 hours recording at the maximum data rate. If you shoot 720@30p, you would get a little over 4 hours of recording time. At that point in time, the only people using tape are those who locked themselves into an obsolete format.
What about cost? Won't a memory that contains 8x the capacity cost 8x more? NO, that's the interesting thing about memory size increases. Every time a new step comes out, that becomes the high price point and the older step, drops in price. Overall, with each step, the price per GB drops by 50%.
For some, all this talk about what will be in a few years is pointless. After all, you need to do the work today, not a few years from now when the bigger memory sizes come out. True, but it's interesting to read all the messages where people are figuring out ways to work with limited memory sizes. Some will use the P2 Store Drive to dump the data, some will use a laptop, some will use a Firestorm Drive, and other ways.
We are reaching the point of Video Tape's final days. Just remember, for every step increase in memory size, we are one step closer to seeing the end of using video tape.
Bob Diaz
The Panasonic HVX-200 is NOT the first camera to use the P2 memory cards to record video, but it is the first to do it in the $6,000 price range. It's unrealistic to expect a 1/3" CCD, $6,000 camera to match the image quality of a 2/3" $50,000 camera. Still, early reports of the camera give it high marks for image quality, function, and usage. As the gain is increased, the noise in the image increases, but setting the detail to -5, helps to reduce the appearance of the noise. Because image noise is subjective, one person's acceptable level is another person's unacceptable level.
Now that the camera has started shipping and the first user reports are being posted in the forums, this camera has developed a HUGE amount of buzz in video forums. It should come as no surprise that not everyone has the same opinion about whether this is the camera to buy or not. Some look at the recording time, at the maximum data rate (16 minutes with two 8GB P2 Cards) and find it to be unacceptable. I feel these people are seeing only the present and are not looking down the road.
Memory sizes are doubling roughly every 1 to 1.5 years. Every doubling is another step up in memory size. Even if we assume that the reports on the limits to Moore's Law are true and no other solution is possible, we still have 5 to 6 steps of memory increase possible (32x to 64x increase).
Long before we hit that limit, if it is a limit, memory sizes become big enough for most shoots. Just a 3 step increase results in an 8x increase in memory size; that would be a 64GB P2 memory card. Two of those cards would provide a little over 2 hours recording at the maximum data rate. If you shoot 720@30p, you would get a little over 4 hours of recording time. At that point in time, the only people using tape are those who locked themselves into an obsolete format.
What about cost? Won't a memory that contains 8x the capacity cost 8x more? NO, that's the interesting thing about memory size increases. Every time a new step comes out, that becomes the high price point and the older step, drops in price. Overall, with each step, the price per GB drops by 50%.
For some, all this talk about what will be in a few years is pointless. After all, you need to do the work today, not a few years from now when the bigger memory sizes come out. True, but it's interesting to read all the messages where people are figuring out ways to work with limited memory sizes. Some will use the P2 Store Drive to dump the data, some will use a laptop, some will use a Firestorm Drive, and other ways.
We are reaching the point of Video Tape's final days. Just remember, for every step increase in memory size, we are one step closer to seeing the end of using video tape.
Bob Diaz