World Exclusive First HVX200 Footage..PART 2

Just encoding, no color timing whatsoever.

I really want to see the original footage. It's still hard to believe that Panasonic made this camera and crammed in this feature set for under 6K. :)
 
Was away for the weekend so I'm a little late to this party, but....

..I have to say I'm floored by this.

Last weekend, I attended an HD film festival here in Los Angeles. All the movies were screened using 2k projectors. Most of the fliks were shot with the Cinealta... with the exception of two features. One was shot on the Viper which, honestly, was simply stunning and looked SO filmic, I had to strain to find things which were "videoish" looking. But the other feature was shot on a Varicam.

I can honestly say, the footage in these tests are comparable to the footage in that feature. There is no difference to the untrained naked eye. This looks like varicam footage to me. Would love to see how this holds up to 2k projection-

But either way, it's official: the playing field just got a lot more equal. Now get to work on your scripts!

(Special thanks to Jarred and Barry for doing this for us. You guys are the best-)
 
Story did you see the side by side with the SDX900 at the DV expo? HVX looked sharper to me, with all the SDX's dynamic range.
 
John_Hudson said:
Awesome. That hasnt been 'messed with'?
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Took the files from the card, re-wrapped 'em from MXF to AVI, and put 'em on the timeline in Vegas. Then output as WMV9, using "best" quality.

So no, no color timing, no sharpness filter, no anything. Straight export, hasn't been touched at all.
 
===========
Originally posted by Rush
Story did you see the side by side with the SDX900 at the DV expo? HVX looked sharper to me, with all the SDX's dynamic range.
===========

Rush, is it really possible that a 1/3" camcorder to have equivalent dynamic range of a 2/3" camcorder ?
Did you compare with outdoors high contrast environment ?

...but that would be great !
 
Rush said:
Story did you see the side by side with the SDX900 at the DV expo? HVX looked sharper to me, with all the SDX's dynamic range.
Click to expand...

I wasn't at the DV expo (unfortunately). Would have loved to have seen it. I do know that daylight and sky shots stoodd out like sore thumbs in all the HD footage I saw. HD seems to have a hard time with that in general.

The Varicam feature was shot in NYC and the locations seemed to be insanely crisp. Every little detail was noticable and the DOF was endless. Don't know if this was a camera issue or a DP issue.

I think the comparisons are so close that your average movie goer wouldn't notice the difference between something shot on the Varicam vs the HVX. I think the 2/3rd vs 1/3rd chip size isn't noticeable at all (based on what I've seen so far). A good DP should be able to creatively compensate for the drawbacks. If we can nail down the film lense adapters for SDOF on this thing, we'll be smokin'.

In the end, content is king. If you have something worth shooting and worthy of distribution, this camera will help you achieve it with footage that is theatrical projection quality.
 
I just saw what they had playing there, and I felt that the HVX footage was sharper. It just seemed that the SDX had a lower res.
 
I didn't realize it was going to be 6995 wiht 2 4GB cards. That is much more doable right now, but would have to live with the much smaller memory.
 
Rush said:
I just saw what they had playing there, and I felt that the HVX footage was sharper. It just seemed that the SDX had a lower res.
Click to expand...

Doesn't that make sense since the SDX is standard definition?
 
Yeah but it just didn't compute at first in my sub-human brain, a 1/3" CCD producing a sharper image than a 2/3" CCD... :) I had to see it.
 
I know I'm late in chiming in- but I am amazed with the footage! Makes me want to run out and get one right now. But then I try and play the clips, and I'm reminded of why I'm waiting- I need a complete system overhaul to be able to use the HD footage, my little Dual Gig G4 is choking trying to play back the footage- I can only imagine what would happen if I was trying to do a multicamera edit with it ..... Looks like I need to land some more jobs, and do a complete overhaul.

Damn, that's great footage .....
 
Not to be a party dump, but...super16mm still looks better.

This looks somewhere between varicam and dvx100. Which I guess it is.

But it's a great tool. Rather than features, which I think will remain primarily film, this will be perferct for TV and downloadable net movies.
 
But Zig wan't the DVX100 used for features and shorts? So if this is better than a DVX, why can't it be used for features and shorts?
 
Zig_Zigman said:
Not to be a party dump, but...super16mm still looks better.
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The cost of creatively shooting a feature on super16mm is prohibitive to most young filmmakers, from buying the film to turning out a final product, whereas with this camera, you don't even need to buy tape after you buy a couple 4GB cards. I think this is an apples and oranges thing. Sure we'd all buy Varicams if we could afford it, just like we'd buy an SRIII and 16mm film and shoot it if the budget was there - we all want our footage to look incredible.

But the cost is THE main factor here. I don't see starving artists with $20K to blow on film.... You can get everything you need to shoot a movie for $6600, just provide actors, a car, and an alien... No begging for lights, soundsync gear, short ends, one-lite transfer, AVID time....
 
Here's my take on Zigman's point:

Film will probably have a better overall quality than video ever will and I'm sure we'd all love to be able to afford to shoot all our projects using film. But that's really not the point.

The reason most of us are opting to shoot with these cameras are the reduction in costs. I mean, yeah, we'll all have to upgrade our post production devices and there will be tremendous upfront costs for doing so. It could be argued that for that cost you could shoot your project on film. But then what? You've spent all that money and you have one project in the can. But if it doesn't (get distribution, make a profit or at least make its money back), you're in the hole for a lot of money with no way to make it back.

Using the HVX allows you to shoot multiple projects. Once you own it, it's reusable at a fraction of the original production costs for your first project and you could pick up other commercial jobs in between to offset the original cost.

I also don't think this falls between varicam footage and DVX footage (to the average viewer). I've seen varicam features and this camera doesn't strike me as being tremendously different in quality. The point being, we're trying to get the average viewer to gloss over what the project was shot on and just get involved in the project.

I think with this camera, we can all do that now.
 
STORYTELLER32 said:
It could be argued that for that cost you could shoot your project on film. But then what? You've spent all that money and you have one project in the can. But if it doesn't (get distribution, make a profit or at least make its money back), you're in the hole for a lot of money with no way to make it back. Using the HVX allows you to shoot multiple projects. Once you own it, it's reusable at a fraction of the original production costs for your first project and you could pick up other commercial jobs in between to offset the original cost.
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Excellent point! :)

And also, I have to say, I have a Mac dual G5 that I was using for DV editing, and I won't have to upgrade anything when I get the HVX. DVCPRO-HD works fine on it with my Lacie Firewire 800 drives.
 
I agree with pretty much everything Storyteller said, except this:

STORYTELLER32 said:
Film will probably have a better overall quality than video ever will
Click to expand...

To think that video will never equal the visual quality of film seems ridiculous to me.
This of how far video has come, and we've only scratched the surface.

10 years ago DV was the revolution, now we can't wait to get rid of our DV cams because they already seem to pale compared to what we have available now.
10 years ago the cinealta didn't exist, and the Genesis wasn't even being thought of yet.

10 years before that we were shooting on VHS.

Thinking about that, where do you think we'll be in 10 years from now?
20 years from now? 30 years?

Film is 100 years old, and yes it still looks great, but it's 100 years old.
It's like a shark... it's evolved to perfection. It isn't going to change much at all, and it hasn't changed much at all in the past few decades.

Technology will ALWAYS move forward.
Film looks as good as it ever will right now, it's not going to get any better.
Video looks as bad as it ever will right now, it's only going to get better from here.

Just my .02 rant.
:)
 
Luis Caffesse said:
Film looks as good as it ever will right now, it's not going to get any better.
Video looks as bad as it ever will right now, it's only going to get better from here.
Click to expand...

You're probably right in concern with film, but it's possible that film could get better... by adopting a higher print size as the mainstream (like 70mm film stock), in that case... that's just a matter of more pixels in the digital world and EVENTUALLY it would catch up to that.

You're definitely right about the digital video though, it's only going to get better from here.
 
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