Wait a minute....Barry, did you say it can "STREAM" to a Laptop Hard Drive??

Jarred Land said:
yes... so.. to sum this up.. and end the debate.. Firewire is not the problem. The only reason that the camera wouldnt output 1080i out of the firewire or USB is if Panasonic for some reason doesn't think it's important enough to implement it.
Click to expand...
That's highly unlikely that they would think it's not important for us to have that feature. It is more a matter of whether it's reasonable in terms of P2 sales, for instance.
All in all, as I said in some other thread, I think if HVX200 is to be a true competition for Z1 and possibly XL3, it needs to have a cheap way for users to capture their HD video on their hard drives. Otherwise it's not quite that relatively cheap HD solution we are after anymore.
By the way, Jarred, moderators and users - thank you for the amazing message board! LOTS of useful and interesting info here. Learnt quite a lot in the past 2 days. :)
 
I don't think they'd even give a second thought to whether it would impact P2 sales or not. They will do what they can, within the budget they're given.

You can record HD all day long to a laptop, streaming over the firewire, and never have to buy a P2 card at all, if that's the way you want to go. Or to a forthcoming FireStore type of device.

If it's possible to implement the feature, and still hit the target price, they will do it, of this I am sure. If it's not possible, they won't. Noah already said they're going to. Perhaps the engineers have already figured out a way. Time will tell. All features and specs were subject to change.
 
..no doubt. to reitterate the main points that we know ... we have to remember that :

1: as jarred said, firewire IS fast enough. and has already been being used as a standard to stream full DVCPRO HD for apx a year now.. so that IS NOT and issue.

2: we already know that the camera CAN directly control the HDD because you can hook one up and do file transfer from your P2 cards to the HDD when your not recording. so the camera HAS to be able to run the HDD in and of itself.

3: Panasonic is releasing the P2 technology as pretty much open scource to 3rd party vendors. so Panasonic WILL NOT be the only company making P2 cards. and doesnt have as much to lose by making it an option, as compared to if they were the only proprietary P2 manufacturer.

4: as barry said, you can already bypass using P2 by simply using a desktop or laptop computer to capture the material to through the firewire port. so its not as if its any different than that option aside from making it more user freindly.

...i would assume when its all said and done that the camera will be ble to do it.. but then ive been assuming that for a while. if anyone has any info on the new FW option for the spx800 that might clue us in. chances are that if the spx800 can do it,, the HVX will too since i assume its basically built around the same archetecture as far as using P2 in combo with firewire and usb2.0
 
If you want to record live through firewire with nothing in the camera, you better ask panasonic to build in some sort of bnc lock around the connector to hold the cable on, I wouldn't want to go mission critical, certainly not hand-held relying on friction to hold that flimsy little cable in place, even six pin wouldn't be enough, IMHO.
 
Not an important feature! IMHO until P2 cards obtain much more data, and are less expensive (yes we all have to dream), this is a critical feature for this cameras success. So either we can record directly to an external drive through the firewire or USB ports, or someone (Panasonic) builds a dummy P2 card with a firewire out to bypass the card to go to the drive.
This makes sense in my tiny little head, is this doable?
 
Call me Mr. Safety b/c I'm always looking for a way to have a back up, I'm assuming that we will be able to stream to our Power Book and Record to tape or even P2 at the same time.


I'm shooting my first feature length this July with my DVX, Oh... to have this new camera earlier!
 
I think we're stumbling over two issues:

1- Will you be able to capture HD from the HVX over firewire for editing in an NLE

2- Will you be able to capture HD directly to a HHD over firewire while shooting as you would to P2

From what I can tell, it's WAY CLEAR you can capture HD to your NLE over firewire -- as someone said, that's the HD in FCP-HD. As for number two, we still don't know if it's a feature Panasonic plans to implement.

I think we all think they should implement it, BIG TIME.
 
Jarred Land said:
yes... so.. to sum this up.. and end the debate.. Firewire is not the problem. The only reason that the camera wouldnt output 1080i out of the firewire or USB is if Panasonic for some reason doesn't think it's important enough to implement it.
Click to expand...

If that's the case it could be they want to protect P2. They clearly want to make money licensing that technology.

It's clear we'll be able to edit via firewire, but this streaming live thing is up in the air as far as I can tell. The other 2 cameras do it. I'd bet Panasonic will find a way to also, though it will threaten P2 if they do IMHO.

This whole debate may be nothing more than a marketing/business decision on Panasonic's part if what everyone here is saying about the technology is accurate - and I'm betting you guys are right at this point.

Didn't the guy next to Jan on stage at NAB during the DVXuser meeting say data would come in about 1gig per minute over firewire to the computer? Wouldn't that be fast enough to stream live if Panasonic wanted to?

All I know is I'd like to see it implemented. Also, I really liked how Jan specifically mentioned dynamic range as an opportunity to beat the competition. :-)
 
iamloser said:
3: Panasonic is releasing the P2 technology as pretty much open scource to 3rd party vendors. so Panasonic WILL NOT be the only company making P2 cards. and doesnt have as much to lose by making it an option, as compared to if they were the only proprietary P2 manufacturer.
Click to expand...

Jan clearly said that partners will need to have a licensing agreement... which I INTERPRETED as "you'll pay us if you want to license it". It may be open source (not sure) but it probably won't be free - but I clearly don't know that.

I think this will get ironed out in our favor, but going into NAB I don't think they were planning on doing it. Jan said it was one of the most often asked questions of her... and she sounded like she was frustrated answering it. (or deflecting it really). In the end, they'll take all that feedback and do the right thing if it's possible.
 
..by "releasing" i was implying that they would make it available.. whether they need to license it or not is arbitrary for the point i was making. its the revenue from the sales of P2 that the statement was directed towards.. not the revenue from licensing the technology. I could have been clearer in my statement.. but at any rate hope that helps in what i was saying there.. that essentially the revenue from sales of P2 isnt going to be strangleholded by pana.. so the revenue from P2 sales isnt as big of a factor as some might have been thinking, if they were under the impression that panasonic would be proprietarily recieving all P2 sale revenue.
 
Another reason I asked about my PowerBook capture option is that, at least right now, there doesn't appear to be any price difference between one 8GB P2 and a full-blown Powerbook. While the P2 is not as attractive a theft item, and is far more rugged than a PBook, it's just a stinkin' card! There are lots of things one could do with extra CPUs lying around. If Apple implements for FCPHD what they did for their pro audio app, Logic, namely distributed computing, you can imagine that a few extra PBooks could help chew up render times when not being used for shooting. That may become increasingly important as we use DVCPROHD to edit with.

Just my forward-looking musings.
 
iamloser said:
its the revenue from the sales of P2 that the statement was directed towards.. not the revenue from licensing the technology
Click to expand...

Revenue is revenue. I don't think they'd want to jeopardize either source of revenue - internal sales or licensing royalties/fees.

Panasonic could be paid royalties on every unit sold. Alternatively, licensing could be a one time bigass fee. Either way, opening up the firewire port would cost them money. Why pay either a bigass licensing fee or per unit royalties as opposed to just coming up with another alternative that saves whatever the firewire gives it? It could be another memory based alternative like Compact Flash and offer the same durability as P2.

I can't tell whether we're agreeing or disagreeing at this point. But unless Panasonic has decided to freely give P2 technology away to anyone who wants to use it (which I see no indication of) then P2 considerations COULD influence the decision to open the firewire port as I analyze it. If P2 isn't a revenue source then opening the firewire port is a no brainer and they will do it if it's technically possible... which everyone here thinks it is.

Barry - if you're heading back to NABcould you nail this down for us? Are they making P2 freely available? What about the firewire intentions? I'm really curious what the truth is at this point.

Bart's point about buying either a new laptop OR another P2 card is a PERFECT illustration of the issue here. Every consumer wants to make better use of that money if possible. Maybe streaming JVC's raw output to a 3rd party memory based device that encodes to AVID's HD codec for half the price of a P2 card would make sense (if it was developed in the next 6 months). Plug that in and edit right on it. Pretty cool - betcha we see it.
 
joelnet said:
It's clear we'll be able to edit via firewire, but this streaming live thing is up in the air as far as I can tell. The other 2 cameras do it.
Click to expand...
There's nothing up in the air as far as streaming goes. Absolutely positively confirmed by Jan, and completely contradicting Tom's Hardware's erroneous report, you *can* stream full HD out the firewire port, and capture it to a laptop or a FireStore, just like the other cameras can.

No camera on the market can stream directly to an external off-the-shelf hard disk, without some sort of computer in-between. The Panasonic can do everything the other cameras can do as well.

The question is, can it *exceed* what the other cameras can do, by providing direct streaming to an off-the-shelf hard disk, *without* needing a computer in-between (whether that computer is a laptop, or a FireStore, etc)? That's the question that's under debate, and may be implemented.

But for streaming directly to a computer or to a DVCPRO-HD-capable FireStore, that's not a question or a debate, it's a confirmed reality.

Didn't the guy next to Jan on stage at NAB during the DVXuser meeting say data would come in about 1gig per minute over firewire to the computer? Wouldn't that be fast enough to stream live if Panasonic wanted to?
Click to expand...
Yes, and yes. And yes it will.
 
ccroo said:
I think we're stumbling over two issues:

1- Will you be able to capture HD from the HVX over firewire for editing in an NLE
Click to expand...
Definitely.

2- Will you be able to capture HD directly to a HHD over firewire while shooting as you would to P2
Click to expand...
Don't know.

I think we all think they should implement it, BIG TIME.
Click to expand...
Agreed, we'd all love to see that happen, and they know it. They will do it if they can.
 
J.D. said:
Call me Mr. Safety b/c I'm always looking for a way to have a back up, I'm assuming that we will be able to stream to our Power Book and Record to tape or even P2 at the same time.
Click to expand...
Recording to P2 and streaming to the Powerbook *should* be possible... I can't imagine why it wouldn't be. But I haven't confirmed that. But with the DVX you can record to tape and also to external, I can't imagine why this would be any different.
 
Prairieboy said:
So either we can record directly to an external drive through the firewire or USB ports, or someone (Panasonic) builds a dummy P2 card with a firewire out to bypass the card to go to the drive.
This makes sense in my tiny little head, is this doable?
Click to expand...
First, let's remember that *no camera* records directly to an external drive through the firewire or USB ports. They all have to have a separate computer controlling the hard drive, whether that computer is a laptop or whether it's a dedicated single-purpose computer, like the computers in the QuickCapture and the FireStore.

The Panasonic will most definitely have the same capabilities as any other camera, so it could use a FireStore or a laptop to record directly to disk (presuming, of course, that those devices are capable of handling the 100-mbps data stream).

If Panasonic implements what we're asking, it would be unprecedented. And it would be very, very cool. And we all hope that they will.

Now, regarding your second question, the P2 card with the firewire out -- that would be basically the same thing as the computer hard disk controller we're talking about, and yes, I see that as a very viable option, but it remains to be seen if/when someone implements it.
 
Barry_Green said:
There's nothing up in the air as far as streaming goes. Absolutely positively confirmed by Jan, and completely contradicting Tom's Hardware's erroneous report, you *can* stream full HD out the firewire port, and capture it to a laptop or a FireStore, just like the other cameras can.
Click to expand...

Hello,

My name is Humphrey Cheung and I am the author of the article at

http://www.tomshardware.com/business/200504191/index.html


Quotes should have been placed around the "bandwidth limitations" sentence, because those words came from the Panasonic rep demoing the camera. He was to the right of the stage, where the lady was giving the presentation.

The gentleman said that there were USB2 and Firewire ports. A lady in the crowd asked if it was firewire 400 or 800.

I then asked about direct to harddrive recording, because I use DVRack. He said that the camcorder only does SD over the firewire connection. I should have come back to the booth to inquire more, but I had a meeting in South Hall.

This was Monday afternoon.

I've asked the webmaster to update the article with quotes around the statements.

Thanks
 
not5150 said:
Hello,

My name is Humphrey Cheung and I am the author of the article at

http://www.tomshardware.com/business/200504191/index.html


Quotes should have been placed around the "bandwidth limitations" sentence, because those words came from the Panasonic rep demoing the camera. He was to the right of the stage, where the lady was giving the presentation.
Click to expand...

Mr. Cheung,

Sure, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the rep misspoke. But then you should REVISE your article, because we all know that standard FW400 can handle DVCPROHD(100) streams. As Barry has said, Apple announced this a YEAR ago.
 
Mr. Cheung,

Thanks for coming on the board, and your willingness to revise the article for accuracy is most appreciated!

If you're at the booth, definitely talk to Jan Crittenden Livingston, she's the product manager for the HVX line and is the single most knowledgeable person about the HVX.

DV Rack doesn't currently support DVCPRO-HD. So if you were using the HVX with the existing version of DV Rack, DV Rack would only be able to recognize the SD signal. But if they were to update their software to understand the DVCPRO-HD codec, then you could definitely use it with the full HD stream. The camera unquestionably supports full-bandwidth streaming of all the codecs. The limitation about SD is DV Rack's limitation, not the camera's limitation.

Also, you had mentioned 1440x720i, that's not accurate, it should be 1280x720p.

Thanks again!
 
I remember a post, where someone mentioned the Panasonic people using an Ipod. Did they do this for recording to the Ipod straight out of the Firewire port.
Essentialy streaming, or did they simply use it to transfer from P2 to Ipod.
There seems to be so much confusion as to what Panasonic people have said,
and what people interpreted what the Panasonic reps said.

But, thinking more about the Ipod, it is a hard drive with an "intelligent" interface, that acts like a mini computer with a hard drive. Could this be the actual solution to "streaming" without a laptop, and bypassing the use of P2?

I think it could. Lets hope thats what the Panasonic people meant.Worse case scenario, a third party might be able to write a program that could do this (hint hint). Another option could be to use an exisiting portable video player, like a Zen, or the Epson one, as long as they have Firewire ports, or even USB 2, which a lot of them do. Most of these units go up to 60-80GB.

If any creative coders are reading this, i am sure tons of us would be willing to pay a small fee for a shareware that could work on these existing portable media players/recorders enabling to capture a stream from the HVX.

Thanks.
 
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