Panasonic HDC-Z10000 3D Camcorder announced

[Tim Dashwood]

HDC-Z10000 | HD Camcorder | Panasonic Global

The most surprising thing about this new camcorder is that it is from the Consumer division of Panasonic. With the exception of HD-SDI, it has everything else you would expect on a professional 3D camcorder, including optical stabilization, 1080p24, PCM audio and XLR inputs.

The fixed interaxial is 42mm and it has dedicated controls for focus, zoom, iris and convergence.

[Neil Richards]

I've been checking it out since they announced it, but can't find any price indications - have you seen any Tim?

Could be a good little corporate video/wedding cam if it's priced right

[Tim Dashwood]

I heard £3,000 from IBC this week. That translates to about $4500 USD.

[Neil Richards]

Blimey!

Those HD-SDI ports are pretty expensive aren't they?

[Juergen Hansen]

At B&H it is announced with $3.499,99 - unbelievable. Arrival approx. November.
Too bad it has no HD-SDI, that would make it the low-budget pro camera.
Has anybody any idea, how the 3D would work with this camera for objects further away (like buildings etc.)?
The IA between the lenses is 42mm and Panasonic says, it can get as close as 45 mm to an object. But for objects further away???
How does the "3D without glasses" monitor work? Is this really any good?
Jürgen

[Leonard Levy]

I'm interested in the video out choices which it says very little about in the blurbs.
It seems to have HDMI and as I recall some kind of a component or video out adapter - so what's the component out for 3D? and most important to me - what are your choices in HDMI? Can I output anaglyph as well as L, R and side by side. I want anaglyph for a mono field monitor. Does the 3DA1 output anaglyph?

I expect to get one to play with in a few weeks so I will report then.

[Neil Richards]

Leonard, I've had a play with a Z10000 and it's a very nice little camera. Output is HDMI only (no SDi as Tim said) but you can select between either frame-packed or side-by-side.

There's no anaglyph output, neither is there anaglyph on the 3DA1 - I don't know of any 3D camcorder that outputs anaglyph.

The 3D recording on the Z10000 is 1080 only, up to 30fps, so no fast 720/60p mode. The 3-ring control is very nice (no iris/convergence confusion like you get on the 3DA1 if you're not careful) but the biggest surprise was the quality of the autostereo 3D LCD viewfinder, which was very effective.

It has a macro mode so you can film close in to about 45cm as well. It uses new sensors and takes really nice pictures.

List price in the UK is £2750+tax, which is just amazing.

I'm planning to get one as a complement to my 3DA1 as soon as a) they're available and b) I figure out an editing flow for the m2ts files it generates. Tried MVC to AVI but can't get it to run on a Mac.

Tim? Help? Any plans/ideas to support m2ts somehow in S3DT?

[Wolfgang Schmid]

The Z10000 records in 3 different 3D modes:
- 1080 50i/60i
- 1080 25p
- 1080 24p

For 3D, the 1080 24p mode is nice, given the fact that the 3D blu ray specification does not foresee 1080 50i/60i. So that should be authored as 720 50p/60p for 3D blu rays, what brings always some conversion loss (even if I think that it is not worse really, given the loss in quality of 1080 50i/60i due to interline flicker in the interlaced formats).

The 3D LCD viewfinder is in its quality better then the JVC TD1, but weaker then the Sony TD10. But there is a mix mode that allows a great adjustment of the parallax.

There is a workflow for the Windows world - using either Vegas Moviestudio HD Platinum 11, Vegas Pro 11 or the Cyberlink PD10. For Vegas Moviestudio HD Platinum 11 the user should know that even the latest build is not able to read 1080 24p. What can be done is to use the mvc-decoder from Vegas Pro 11 r510/511 (from the 32bit version of Vegas Pro).

Unfortunately I do not know if there is now a workflow for the Mac world.

[Ned Soltz]

I'm reviewing camera for Feb DV magazine.

No workflow yet for Mac that I can find.

US List is $3500

[Leonard Levy]

Neil,
How does the image quality compare to the 3DA1?

[Neil Richards]

I've not had a proper play with it yet but from what I saw from the camera HDMI out to a 3D TV at a trade show it looked very good indeed. It uses newer sensors than the 3DA1 and has slightly faster glass (F1.5 vs F1.8). Some people I've spoken to think it's got better picture quality than the 3DA1.

I hope to get hold of one for a day or two to try out very soon so I'll let you know when I do. I'd like to do a side-by side (so to speak) comparison with my 3DA1.

[Neil Richards]

OK, so I'm getting a Z10000 to go shoot with next Friday 27th Jan. I'll have it for a week to go mess around with and shoot some footage which may get to be seen at the BVE show in London in mid Feb ;)

I've learnt it also outputs top-bottom over it's HDMI port as well as side-by-side and frame-packed and it auto senses the type of display connected - if it's a 2D TV or monitor that's what you see, if it's 3D it switches to 3D.

Richard at Holdan in the UK has been playing with it and thinks it's slightly oversaturated in the reds so he suggests to trim it back a little to get it flat for normal use, but overall he's really impressed with the image quality.

My biggest issue is an editing workflow for the AVCHD 2.0 output files on a Mac. I still haven't found a way to convert the m2ts files to separate left-right for ingest to FCP/S3DT. Apparently Edius 6 from Grass Valley can handle it but their free beta download is Win7 only (...must....resist....).

I thought about hanging an external recorder on but there's only HDMI out and I don't know any HDMI 1.4a recorders out there yet (will Gemini 4:4:4 do that?). Anyone know of a splitter that will take HDMI 1.4a and give me either two HDMI or 2 HD-SDI?

Anyway, pretty excited to be getting one for a week or so, I'll let you know how I get on and what it's like... unless someone here beats me to it :)

Cheers

Neil

[Wolfgang Schmid]

That is right - especially if you apply scene file settings that go into red, you end up with the Z10000 with a quite red pricture. But that can be adjusted in the scene files in a great way, even if it is a little bit trial and error. Beside that I really like the Z10000... :)

I do not know a workflow for the mac - sine I do not use that. Maybe if you can run Vegas on a Mac... what some people do.

I think there is no external recorder that could record 3D too. Would be nice to know if somebody knows a solution here.

[Neil Richards]

I've been trying to use Peter Wimmer's MVCtoAVIConvertor on a Mac running under Crossover but it stalls with an error during conversion - have been emailing Peter but not managed to get it working yet. He says another guy has it working on a Mac under Parallels although there is a requirement to have the files on an NTFS drive. I'm still playing with this.

I'm trying to find if there's an HDMI 1.4a to dual HD-SDI convertor out there, which could be a solution to the external recorder problem - hang a couple of single channel SDI recorders on each output.

All the convertors seem to be SDI-to-HDMI though, very dull :(

Grass Valley's Edius 6 beta handles the Z10000 files fine, but it's Win7 only (grrr)

There has to be a Mac solution somewhere...

[Wolfgang Schmid]

Also Vegas handels the Z10000 files - and some people run that on a Mac. But that is something where I do not have any experience. And if there is another solution for the Mac - well I do not know, but have not heard of anything. Even for the PC world the mvc decoder that reads native Z10000 1080 24p files are brand new (and only availabel with Vegas Pro 11, Edius 3D and the PD10).