The FresHDV Interview

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Jack_Felis said:
Regardless of your school or job, you should be paid more than someone who doesn't have a degree no matter what, unless I'm mistaken to the exception.
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This only applies to positions that do not get judged for productivity and quality of results. Working for the goverment in some countries comes to mind. In many schools you can just buy the degree by paying your fees and producing whatever junk comes to mind without problems. This is the main reason professionals do not respect academic education in arts. You can go through the school and learn nothing. On the other hand, if you study structural engineering you have to learn some things in order to get a degree and show proficiency in treating the subject. People will depend on you when they walk on a bridge or when an earthquake comes. Sames applies to doctors. That's why you can't practice any of these without a diploma but anyone is allowed to produce art. So, you have to prove you are good and you reserve your rate just like the next guy that does not have a degree.
 
Also, you guys should read an interesting banter about P2 and Film School between myself and...
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Did read it...it wasn't interesting. Did you get beat up a lot in film school?

I like this part of the thread...

is it just me or does anyone else feel like 720p will have a very big presence in the 'HD' world b/c as on demand TV downloading grows and people watch more and more TV on their laptops, most people will be using laptops with a max rex of 1280x768 anyway? I mean, the whole transition to HD was set in motion 10 years ago but I don't think engineers or networks anticipated the time shifted / portable market (iPod video PSP, etc) which is lower than standard def right now.
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Good point dbwolfe. Seems like many around here are interested solely in film transfer. Let's not forget the other half. HD Broadcast and 'new media', networked media players, media PCs, iPods etc, etc, are going to need tons of content.

Upconvert some 720p to play on CBS or NBC 1080i signals. It will look just fine compared to the rest of the content, especially after the encoding they use to transmit butchers the picture. Send your 720p to ABC and Fox and their 720p signals, and they'll butcher it, too.

HD-WMV, HD-DIVX, MP4 H.264 are all viable, growing and going nowhere soon and will have their nitch...especially online. Any of these SUB 10k HD cameras will help fill the nitch and, yes, you can make movies with them, too.

Hooked up a 480p HDMI dvd player to my new JVC 52" 720p display. It's incredible (for most discs...specially the new ones). Looks better than some of the OTA HD and some of the D* HD. Go figure.
 
Josh Oakhurst said:
I know P2 and a hard disk recorder can be okay for certain shooting settings, BUT IT STILL COSTS TOO DAMN MUCH. If the 8GB P2 cards were $40 bucks, then poo poo yeah! You could buy a ton of them, and I would be all over this camera, but since the price of P2 will never come down significantly, this format will fail.
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Doubting the success of P2 is understandable from the timid and frugal, but announcing it's inevitable failure as a fact, is a load of sh**.

Hence other higher end cameras like the Varicam and CineAlta should have failed because they are also super expensive. Wrong.

So it comes down to your disdain and rejection of the costs involved. Instead of prophesizing how P2 will fail, you should confess how you failed to afford and justify the cost of HVX200 and P2.
 
Josh Oakhurst said:
LOL: Dare I even enter this discussion?
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Welcome, Josh! Tremendous props for jumping in! I certainly may not agree with you (and hey, waitin' around for a camera, can't agree or disagree :( ... ), but you've already earned yourself some respect by showin'.
 
The Machinist said:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=banish
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Thanks for that link, I laughed my butt off.

By the way, in case Josh is back here reading this, if you could answer 2 questions for me please:

1. If 720P is "retarded", how do you reconcile the fact that your Z1 has approximately the same detail resolving power as the HD100?

2. Why is adding a Firestore or Cineporter external drive to the HVX200 "not an option" for a one man crew?

Not trying to pick a fight or anything, but I felt a lot of what you said came across as opinionated instead of factual.

Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com
 
ullanta said:
Welcome, Josh! Tremendous props for jumping in! I certainly may not agree with you (and hey, waitin' around for a camera, can't agree or disagree :( ... ), but you've already earned yourself some respect by showin'.
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I'll second that. I certainly don't agree with many things he said, but you have to give him points for showing up here.
 
philnerd said:
Thanks for that link, I laughed my butt off.

By the way, in case Josh is back here reading this, if you could answer 2 questions for me please:

1. If 720P is "retarded", how do you reconcile the fact that your Z1 has approximately the same detail resolving power as the HD100?

2. Why is adding a Firestore or Cineporter external drive to the HVX200 "not an option" for a one man crew?

Not trying to pick a fight or anything, but I felt a lot of what you said came across as opinionated instead of factual.

Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com
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same detail resolving power I would say when in cf25, not 60i.
 
To each his own. I love P2. I will love it even more when the Cineporter comes out.

I think a "one man crew" can easily use the HVX-200 and the Cineporter. Comments against this are a little off base I think.

Especially since the cineporter connects to the bottom of the camera and becomes an extension of it.
 
People who criticize P2 itself, specifically because of cost, are just amusing to me. It's just like any other storage media. Of course it starts expensive and small, but costs will drop and sizes will start doubling, just like everything always does. There will come a day when it'll be like hard drives for us now; you'll be able to go to your local Fry's or BestBuy and pick up big P2 cards for a buck a gig. Will it be next year? No, but probably that day will come sooner than many people think, given how exponentially fast these things evolve. P2, as a technology is very solid (so to speak) and it's just being short-sighted to dismiss that form of media just because we're only at the beginning of it.
 
This Josh guy is such a bozo ! I don't care if 720p and p2 aren't around in ten years..is it great right now ? you bet. can I get a ton of use out of my expensive p2 cards for a few years ? absolutely. I went through this when micro drives came out nine years ago for my still camera. they were very pricey and everyone complained but I'm still using them and making money with them. I think p2 will be the same kind of bargain.
Aloha
-A
 
I'm late to this discussion, but what has drawn me in is the comments about looking beyond "film" or cinema.

Indeed, I just went through a lot of soul searching to figure out what camera I wanted to buy for my re-entry into film for a mix of personal and professional reasons (I'm an expensive code monkey these days). I blogged about the selection a lot in the last week. An important consideration for me was that people are so hung up on formats and distribution media, and in the end none of that matters. Hollywood may end up a dinosaur if it doesn't evolve. It's hard to say how we'll consume media ten years from now, but to think it'll always be the way things are is naive.

So that said, yeah, there's a lot of room for 720p, or even 480p at the moment! That's the big reason I settled on the HVX (ordered today), because it's a tool that I'll get a lot of life out of for a huge variety of purposes.
 
There's a lot of questions/ dissent being thrown out so I'll just latch onto a few. If I missed you then just write back.

Quote:
philnerd asked?

1. If 720P is "retarded", how do you reconcile the fact that your Z1 has approximately the same detail resolving power as the HD100?

2. Why is adding a Firestore or Cineporter external drive to the HVX200 "not an option" for a one man crew?


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1.) MyFriendImage answered this: "same detail resolving power I would say when in cf25, not 60i."

Plus, the JVC still records to 720 natively so anyway you cut it you still must uprez to 1080. Upconverted stuff (yes, even 720) looks like poo poo - we used to have to do it all the time at HDNet for "World Report" stuff - it always looked horrible and we were using some crazy, ground up proprietary converter stuff.

2.) Attaching a hard drive to the bottom of the camera is not fun if you're the one holding the camera. Even a five lb camera sucks after a few hours. So much of my one-man action is off-tripod, on location. I don't want one more thing to carry. Also, adding weight to the bottom of the camera will poo pooup the balance severly (and become more of a hassle) when using a steadycam. Can it be done? Yes. I choose no.

The Firestore or Cineporter external drives may work for you, but I absolutely will not trust the first several round of hard drives with holding my time and money. Hard drives fail (http://www.joshoakhurst.com/?p=3), and especially in the case of the Firestore - what do you do when it fails to mount to your desktop? You may trust 'em, but I don't.

Not trying to pick a fight or anything, but I felt a lot of what you said came across as opinionated instead of factual.
Well, I was INTERVIEWED, remember.

People who criticize P2 itself, specifically because of cost, are just amusing to me.

I'm not just criticizing P2 because of the cost, although cost is a huge factor. Thing is, I do not believe the increased costs provide any added benefit. Remember, even Adam Wilt and his crazy engineer team concluded (http://www.joshoakhurst.com/?p=84):

"...any of the cameras would do a creditable job in the hands of a skilled user, and that the choice of camera should be made more on features and ergonomics than on image quality. This is not to say that people didn’t pick favorites; people did. It’s just that no one, not even the most partisan among us, would have claimed that any one of the cameras was unacceptable for doing serious work."

And don't forget. I OWN and LOVE my DVX 100. Its got 171 hours on it of which I guarantee 170 are from shooting 24p.

Some of you have failed to also read some of my more in depth P2 reasoning: http://www.joshoakhurst.com/?p=111

from this morning's post
ON WHY P2 WILL VANISH:

First of all, I stated that in addition to P2’s costs and AQUISITION workflow nuances Panasonic’s past proprietary failures are all reason’s P2 will fail. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea of P2 and would like to never spend time digitizing footage. But as a one man (self-reliant) crew, I don’t want to be limited to shooting only several minutes at a time or carry a hard drive with me and pay a ridiculous amount of money to do so.

Suggesting P2 is another faulty attempt by Panasonic to revolutionize the industry because of their past failures is an absolutely legitimate arguement because it’s obvious Panny spent a ton of time an money building and marketing a product they didn’t think through to the end user. The developers of P2 should have stopped dead in their tracks when they realized capturing 8 minutes of 1080p material would cost thousands of dollars at a time. If you want to shoot constantly, P2 is not an option.

I know P2 and a hard disk recorder can be okay for certain shooting settings, BUT IT STILL COSTS TOO DAMN MUCH. If the 8GB P2 cards were $40 bucks, then poo poo yeah! You could buy a ton of them, and I would be all over this camera, but since the price of P2 will never come down significantly, this format will fail. So while pricing was not, however, a cause of failure for MII or 6mm tape, Panny’s track record for format innovation is not a good one.

The same logic of past format failures cannot be applied Sony’s Betamax and now HDV for several reasons. First, Betamax failed because of a format war with JVC’s VHS and Sony’s innability to loosen the technology licensing to other manufacturers. HDV was created from the tech conglomerate formed by JVC including input from all the major manufactures (Sony, Sharp, and Canon) accept Panasonic. Additionally, HDV is not a new TANGIBLE technology, merely a reprocessing of existing media (MiniDV tapes). P2 is wildly different in that the workflow necessary is new from the ground up.

MORE REASONS P2 WILL FAIL

One other thing to think about regarding P2: You must buy all needed storage up front to complete shooting. Example:

Let’s say you are working on a documentary and need to shoot 60 hours of footage now, and then another 60 in four months. Because the cost of archiving P2 is astronomical, you can’ just let the first 60 hours sit until you’re ready to begin post production. In order to begin shooting said documentary, you will immediately need to purchase storage for AT LEAST 3TB of media, and computer system fast enough to transfer it all. There are no tapes to store away until more project money comes in to begin editing. If you’re traveling overseas, or backpacking, or just flying around the country - where do you keep everything you shot? You can’t carry your shot media with you easily or cheaply, and because of this huge huge huge workflow nuance, the market for the HVX (in shooting HD material) shrinks considerably. In other words, in order to begin shooting on the HVX, your post production storage and editing infrastructure MUST ALREADY BE IN PLACE, and consequently, P2 WILL FAIL. Not everyone looking to shoot already has access to a computer or storage drives. Panasonic absolutely did not think about how this huge financial hurtle will severely limit their market.

Think of it this way - your upfront cost to begin shooting 60 minutes of 1080(p or i) material will be:

(on the HVX)
Camera $6,000
(1) 8GB P2 Card $1,400
Laptop/ Tower $3,000
Storage (50ish GB) $60
$10,460

(on the Z1U)
Camera $4,700
(1) MiniDV Tape $7
$4,707

Do many Indies already have an edit bay? Sure - maybe half. But an even smaller number have ample enough storage to begin shooting anything longer than a 30 second spot.

Keep in mind I believe the future of aquisition is a solid state format, just not in the form of Panasonic’s P2. In general, the HVX200 should simply the be referred to as the DVX100C with a really really expensive, and consequently, huge pain-in-the-ass option to shoot 1080.

PASS.

My film school dissent mostly stems from the fact I believe film school is a waste of money and the backlash I’ve received from film schoolers after finding out I don’t have a film degree. As with the HVX and P2, people don’t like to hear they wasted a bunch of money.

Perhaps, just perhaps, I may live too close to the People’s Republic of Boulder, CO and have been tainted by the assfaces I’ve met from CU Film School. Additionally, I have a bad taste in my mouth from all the red tape associated with higher education and cost passed on to students. Higher Education is strictly a business and I learned way more about filmmaking from my 12th grade Expository writing class than I ever did from learning how to use a piece of equpment or software. I personally posses a $38,000 BA in Communications and Multimedia that I’m still paying for, and it will never help me make films. I wish I would have bought the camera and edit bay I planned to instead of going to college all together.


All that said, I hope everyone gets a chance to create their own version of art and experience the joy of creativity. We all weave our own webs, ya’ know.

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read more of this post here>>> http://www.joshoakhurst.com/?p=111
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And to summarize - THERE IS NO PERFECT SUB INDIE HD CAMERA. Of all the options, the Z1U only wins in my book by default, really.
 
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Josh Oakhurst said:
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All that said, I hope everyone gets a chance to create their own version of art and experience the joy of creativity. We all weave our own webs, ya’ know.
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Something we can all agree on!
 
Josh, I think you're arrogant and state opinion as if it were fact. how can you say "higher education is a business"? that's a stupid thing to say.
and if you've discovered a love of writing, why are you spending all your effort talking about technology? or is it that you've discovered a love of writing about technology?
 
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Josh Oakhurst said:
I'm not just criticizing P2 because of the cost, although cost is a huge factor. Thing is, I do not believe the increased costs provide any added benefit.
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I'm not just criticizing iPods because of the cost, although cost is a huge factor. Thing is, I do not believe the increased costs provide any added benefit. I mean, my Sony Discman plays whatever I want, the discs are cheap, and there's no issue with archiving. Apple's past proprietary failures are all reasons the iPod will fail.

/end sarcasm

To suggest that Panasonic didn't think it through to the end-user is ridiculous. Of course it's expensive. Welcome to pro video equipment! I've been buying $10,000 cameras now for ten years, not to mention lots of tape. A box of DVCPRO tapes cost about the same as a hard drive these days. It's all relative. My costs at the end of the day are about the same, save for my time. I spent a lot less of it doing boring things when I'm tapeless.

And people again and again have talked about how good their ROI is on this stuff. It doesn't matter if you buy an Etch-a-Sketch to create images... if you don't have the sustainable business to get a return on your investment, you have no business buying any equipment.

Honestly, if you think the Z1U is a better value proposition, great. If it's the right tool for the job, that's super. If you need the features of the HVX to attain your goals, then so be it.

TV and film production is like creating software... it's not the equipment, it's the people that cost the most.
 
I also agree it's great that Josh jumped into this forum to defend his ideas. His attack on film school can only be seen as, well, rather immature. I have now worked in the television world for three years now and I've found, overally, in my personal experience, those that have not gone to film school to be more arrogant than those that have for the same reason that I am studying Josh: they feel inadequate for not having the formal training and therefore are attempting to prove their point and/or feel epowered because "they made it" without having to resort on traditionally training. Anyway, I find that taking classes is a really important tool in learning one's craft, just as important as getting actual experience in the field. It's all really a learning process.
 
I just wish he'd stop using the words "poo poo"...I just can't take anyone seriously who speaks like a 4 year-old...

some alternatives:

crap
sh*t
the deuce

I'm sure there are others, but I've got to get back to work...
 
Theres one reason why I will pick the HVX over the Sony. Without question. I hate, with a passion interlaced, and I want to never go through the post deinterlaced/ Magic Bullet process again. If the cost of relieving my eyes of the interlaced image is double the Sony's I am willing to pay it.
 
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