Hi all

With a wireless microphone reciever, where would I mount it on this camera if I was rich enough to buy one???

Would also be nice to build a bracket to hold two xlr sockets. Would I just wire them into the microphone socket? Anybody got a wiring diagram to do this? How is it wired on the XLR side?

If you are using two types of microphone in my setup above, patent pendng, it seems I would not be able to adjust the levels of each channel seperatly. Is this a big problem or would it be easily fixed by FCP? ie, ideally you'd want both channels at 12db (ish) but if one microphone was further away, making it impossible to lift up for fear of clipping the other channel which could be a lav mic or whatever??? I'm no audio expert but I suspect this is a bit of a drawback so I be intrested in hearing how it could be worked around...

PLUS, LAST BIG QUESTION, how would a Powebook G4 (1.5GHz, 1Meg ram) handle editing the footage from this camera. Would it be possible to do it in real time at 720p and 1080? I have the stock hard disk in my machine (4200rpm I think), handles SD fine. What is the data rate? It say 25Mb sec, I presume that's mega bits. SD is about 1gig storage for 5 minutes of footage. How much space is required for HD for 5 minutes? Will it be possible to work in real time using an external firewire hard disk over the standard firewire 400 interface?

Thanks for the help in making me drool more...
Donie

Anybody want an XL1s, going cheap for $3700 ;)

Donie, are you looking an audio product like the Mighty-Wondercam (Videosmith) ULTIMATE ROVER?:

www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=161243&is=REG

Patent pending ;-)

As far as your Powerbook handling the output for this camera, until the FCP HDV update is released, no one knows for certain what the requirements will be. Just because the bitrate is the same as DV, I wouldn't assume that it will work the same. The hard drives should have no problem spooling the footage off to the edit software, but I would imagine that the processor and RAM will take a big hit trying to render out 1080i frames, especially since FCP will also have to be constructing full frames out of an mpeg2 stream on the fly.

If you already have the Final Cut Pro HD upgrade (and if not, shame on you!) you can order a free DVD from Panasonic that includes VariCam footage you can edit on FCP. If your Powerbook hadles that, I'd bet it will handle HDV just fine. Go the the link that reads "Free Instructional DVD" to the right:

catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelList?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&catGroupId=14569

Sorry, I just noticed that the DVD is for the U.S. Maybe you know someone in the states to order it for you.

Hi Scott

Thanks for covering all bases. That adaptor seems expensive as I guess it could be made up easily, although I'm not sure how easy the variable gain would be to do.

Any chance somebody here could order the cd for me and post it on. I can pay for shipping to Ireland via PayPal...

With final cut pro hd you get some footage, I think one is 720p and the other is 1080. I'm not sure if this is the same thing though? I know my powerbook had trouble playing back the 1080 stuff. Couldn't really handle it. Is the stuff on the FCP cd the same format as this panasonic cd?

Thanks
Donie