What looks better HDV, DVCPRO HD or DVCPRO 50?

With Panasonic and Canon introducing the HVX200 and XL H1, and prices that are now in between $9,000 and $10,000 (if you get the P2 cards with the HVX200), they are nearing the cost of some entry level 2/3" CCD professional cameras.

If displaying the final product on a High Definition TV was NOT a concern and if one was considering going the HDV route purely for better image quality and color, and looking at a camera that was $9,000 to $10,000, why not save a little longer and go for a Panasonic AJ-SPC700 that retails for around $12k - $13k that shoots DVCPRO 50 and has THREE 2/3" CCD's?

The second part of the equation involves Post Production -
Which format is easier to work with when editing in a NLE?
Would editing in DVCPRO 50 cost more (hardware and storage wise), the same or less than editing in HDV or DVCPRO HD?
Does DVCPRO 50 require the same large amounts of storage space that HDV or DVCPRO HD do?

What do you think?

Case in point (which was pointed out by someone else in another thread) -
XL2 + Mini35 + 35 mm lenses or cinema lenses + misc. equip to hold it all together = $15 - $25
Panasonic AJ-SPC700 = $12,995 (not sure of street price)
Panasonic SDX900 = Retail $26,750 (not sure of street price)

Both HDV and DVCproHD trade resolution for compression. They trade it with different balances, but the result is the same - you get more pixels, but each pixel is compressed more. For SD work, both DVCpro50 and DigiBeta look utterly superb, and especially when shot on a 2/3" camera with decent glass on the front, will also uprez to HD very well. That said, they cost a lot.

HDV offers a lot of bang for the buck, but you're also buying into a set of compromises that may or may not fit in with the way that you want to work. The HVX200 is offering a different set of compromises, but it's still compromised - it has to be for the price.

Graeme

If displaying the final product on a High Definition TV was NOT a concern and if one was considering going the HDV route purely for better image quality and color, and looking at a camera that was $9,000 to $10,000, why not save a little longer and go for a Panasonic AJ-SPC700 that retails for around $12k - $13k that shoots DVCPRO 50 and has THREE 2/3" CCD's?

Depending on your needs that's a sensible question, but a better question would be why not wait a little longer for HD cameras with bigger sensors? Everything is heading in the direction of having most video content captured in HD -- even if there are no immediate plans to distribute in HD -- because HD will be the standard display format of the future. Unless you have a pressing need to use the best possible SD equipment and have someone willing to pay you to do that, why invest in a recording format which is headed for obsolescence? Just in terms of marketing considerations, all SD cameras will be in peril when customers start asking whether you shoot in HD, at which point a $3K HDV camera may have a perceptual advantage over a $13K SD camera. (Whether or not that really makes sense.)

As far as editing is concerned, note that HDV in its native form requires 1/2 the storage space of DVCPro 50 and 1/4 the storage space of DVCProHD at full 100 Mbps bandwidth. This difference could be significant for small producers considering P2-based HD recording, because simply archiving your master footage could get expensive if you shoot a lot of material. The bottom line here is that HDV is easily the most cost-effective way to produce HD output, so as HDV cameras get better they'll be useful for a wider and wider range of projects. Cameras using more robust recording formats will still have a quality advantage, but HDV will likely be considered the "best value" recording format of the future. We should be better able to assess what this means when we start seeing cameras like the Sony XDCAM HD with 1/2" sensors or the JVC pro HDV with 2/3" chips.

Good points Kevin, and now knowing that the storage requirements would be double that of HDV, I would rule it out based just on that fact. I rented a Z1 over the weekend and could not believe how much storage the footage took. I knew it would be a lot, just not that much.

After I posted this question I found an interesting thread in another forum from a SDX900 owner wondering if he should sell it and get two HVX200's when they are available. That thread had 10 times the amount of traffic of any other recent threads, so I guess it's on quite a few minds right now.

I think after learning all that I have over the past couple of weeks, if someone was to ask me which camera I would buy (or pre-order) today, it would be the HVX200.

I really love my XL2, but after using the Sony Z1 for the weekend, I never realized how much easier it would be to handle a smaller camera. Does it mean I'm going to sell the XL2? No, especially when I see new footage every day on-line shot with the XL2 that looks amazing (and downloads FAST). BUT, if I did not own a camera right now and was looking to get one, it would be the Panasonic HVX200.

Could someone tell me the difference between the two formats in regard to the 4:2:2: compression as they both seem to share the same. I guess I'm really talking about the XLH1 (HDSDI out) and the Pana HVX, and which would be better for chroma keying.

I rented a Z1 over the weekend and could not believe how much storage the footage took. I knew it would be a lot, just not that much.

Derek: did you capture the HDV footage directly or convert it to an intermediate editing format? In its native form it shouldn't take up any more space than DV material; in the intermediate formats it's somewhere between the storage requirements of DVCPro50 and DVCproHD.

One of the problems people are going to encounter with the HVX200 is that simply archiving your master footage requires 1GB of permanent storage per minute of source material, plus another 1GB if you want a redundant backup of that. If you do that on hard drives it could start to get expensive; if you use any other solution it's going to take time to do the archiving. Also, since the HVX200 has 1/3" chips while the SDX900 has 2/3" chips, I wonder whether owners of the latter would be happy with images from the former. We'll find out in a few weeks.

Could someone tell me the difference between the two formats in regard to the 4:2:2: compression as they both seem to share the same. I guess I'm really talking about the XLH1 (HDSDI out) and the Pana HVX, and which would be better for chroma keying.
Your question is quite complex, because it's not apples-to-apples. For example, HD-SDI is not a format. It's a cable.

The HVX shoots HD and records it to DVCPRO-HD, using 4:2:2 color sampling.

The XL H1 cannot record using 4:2:2, it only records using 4:2:0. However, it does provide access to an uncompressed output port, HD-SDI. If you were to attach a device that can record that signal, you would be getting full uncompressed high-def, which would almost unquestionably be superior, for chroma keying, to the compressed DVCPRO-HD.

However, the question becomes: how do you record it? Do you run a cable to a $25,000 DVCPRO-HD deck? If so, you'll be compressing again, and giving up any advantage. Do you run a cable to a $50,000 HDCAM deck? You'll be compressing again, and also cross-converting the color sampling to 3:1:1. Do you run the cable to an HD-SDI hard disk box? If such a thing existed, that would be an option that would preserve the full quality; but someone here posted a link to such a product and it was $40,000.

If you were to run that cable to a desktop computer with a SATA RAID of hard disks, you could record and preserve the full quality directly on the computer. Of course, that computer setup is probably going to set you back $15,000 but it should also make for a quite killer editing station too. Wouldn't exactly be field-portable, but that's part and parcel of the tradeoffs that would need to be made.

The HD-SDI is a great port for getting a pristine digital signal out of the camera head. The question you have to answer is: what will you do with that signal? If you can find a way to record it that works with your workflow, then yes it would be the ultimate for keying.

Wow! Thank you Barry. The knowledge and community spirit of members and their willing to share never ceases to amaze me.

Kevin,

Sorry, but I don't know. I was doing several things over the weekend and did not get to spend as much time as I would have liked with the Z1. When I captured the footage to my G5 on Monday morning I just used the same process as I do with my XL2 - Just plugged in the FireWire, turned the Z1 into the VCR mode, hit play and then hit Capture in FCP 5 (after changing the easy setup in FCP to the 108060i format).

After reading your post, I was probably doing the 1gb per minute scenario.

But the footage looked great!

"If you were to run that cable to a desktop computer with a SATA RAID of hard disks, you could record and preserve the full quality directly on the computer. Of course, that computer setup is probably going to set you back $15,000 but it should also make for a quite killer editing station too. Wouldn't exactly be field-portable, but that's part and parcel of the tradeoffs that would need to be made."

If we were to talk minimum specs to get the job done, what would we be talking about? Lets not make it a full editing suite, just a machine that would do its job of capturing. What kind of CPU? Would dual CPU really be nesessary for capture? The MB would have to support what kind of slots? PCi/PCi-X/Pci-E? What are we talking HDD wise? 4 RAID SATA or higher would it need more? What kind of RAID card would that be?
I would like to set-up a similar PC for the 480p60 analog out of my HD10 as training for a full HD uncompressed out of a future cam.

With hard drive prices plummeting and high-end SATA RAID controllers offering impressive performance levels, it shouldn't be hard to build an uncompressed HD capturing and editing system (including software) for under $10K -- or about the cost of 48 minutes worth of P2 memory cards. Depending on how much bandwidth and capacity you need it could be feasible to fit all the hardware in a standard computer case, then pack that with an LCD monitor in a large tote with wheels and away you go. Kinda limits your mobility compared to other recording solutions, but for anything with a fixed camera location near an electrical outlet it could work.

The HVX200 raises almost as many questions about recording options and workflow as trying to use the HD-SDI ports on the Canon camera. Since most people can't afford any useful number of P2 cards and the Firestore drive won't ship until at least next March, what are early buyers of the HVX200 going to do with it? Once the Firestore does ship, how many of those would you need to get through a typical day's or week's worth of shooting? How are you going to archive footage from the camera and who's going to take the time to manage that process? How are you going to edit and deliver footage from the HVX200 to viewers, and will the delivery solution eliminate much of the advantage of having a higher bandwidth recording format?

Some of the challenges posed by these new cameras may not have easy answers, so hopefully people will think all that through before making a purchasing decision.

Lets skip the editing and software part. What are we talking for a barebones capture PC? Anyone care to list out some hardware/specs/prices?

Lets skip the editing and software part. What are we talking for a barebones capture PC? Anyone care to list out some hardware/specs/prices?

That would depend on the bandwidth you need to sustain, but how about this for starters (prices per Pricewatch):

Antec tower case with 550W power supply: $189
Asus P5LD2 motherboard: $110
Intel Pentium D dual-core processor 3.0 GHz (retail): $318
2GB Corsair DDR2-533 memory: $156
Nvidia Geforce 6600 dual-head video card with 256 MB memory: $105
3Ware 9500s 4 port SATA RAID controller: $288
Four Western Digital WD4000KD hard drives (400GB each): $848
Windows XP Pro: $142
Keyboard, mouse, etc: ~$100
Blackmagic Decklink HD: $595

Total cost: about $2850

Add a little over $1000 if you need an 8-drive solution for a total of ~$4000. That's not bad compared to ~$5000 for 24 minutes worth of P2 memory cards...

$2500.00 Apple G5 Dual
$595.00 Decklink HD
$2000.00 Lacie 5 disk raid external SATA II for uncompressed HD.

That would be $5100.00 for the mininum to capture uncompressed 4:2:2 HD. If you wentt with internal hard drives you could get 5 drives for as cheap as $300.00 total. That would make the setup only cost around $3500.00.

You can also buy the Bitjazz Sheervideo lossless codec to cut the hard drive bandwidth in half.

For those who already own a high end Apple G5 system you only really need to add on $1000.00 to $2600.00 and you are all set for uncompressed HD.

The only problem is so now you've got it captured, edited and distributed to your client. Now where do you keep all this great footage for future use????

Good stuff guys.
Kevin- That Asus board will already do a 4 drive RAID 0. Why would you need the 3Ware card?
Is dual CPU really nesessary? As with the 2Gb of RAM, remember its just straight capture? Video card as well shouldn't make a differance for capture.

The only problem is so now you've got it captured, edited and distributed to your client. Now where do you keep all this great footage for future use????

Why, copy it to 3.5" floppies, of course! :-)

Seriously, how about capturing and editing using the Avid 10-bit DNxHD codec with a bit rate of 220 Mbit (27.5 MB) per second? That way you could fit about 4 hours of HD content onto one of the WD hard drives described above, at a current cost of $53 per hour of material. Or you could archive to less expensive hard drives at a cost around $35 per hour, which isn't bad for minimally compressed HD footage.

So $9K for a Canon XL-H1 plus $2500 or so for a decent capturing setup gets you 16 hours of HD recording capacity, while $6K for an HVX200 plus $5100 for three 8 GB P2 memory cards gets you 24 minutes of lower-quality HD capacity. Additional capacity for the HVX200 costs about $200 per minute; additional capacity for the XL-H1/Avid solution is $53 per hour. Hmmmm.

Regarding Ken's question, if you use the Avid codec you should be able to get by with a pretty basic computer setup, like a simple two-drive RAID in a Shuttle-type compact case, or maybe even attached to a laptop. Now you've got something you could sling under a tripod on a dolly with a long power cord and even get some mobility, although that isn't the way most of us would like to work. But hey, you could be doing "same day edits" using minimally compressed HD footage -- how cool is that?

Thomas-"You can also buy the Bitjazz Sheervideo lossless codec to cut the hard drive bandwidth in half"

That would be very nice. Could a codec like that be used for real time capture though? They are in beta of the .avi version of that codec at the moment. QT versions for Mac & PC are available now.

That would depend on the bandwidth you need to sustain, but how about this for starters (prices per Pricewatch):

Antec tower case with 550W power supply: $189
Asus P5LD2 motherboard: $110
Intel Pentium D dual-core processor 3.0 GHz (retail): $318
2GB Corsair DDR2-533 memory: $156
Nvidia Geforce 6600 dual-head video card with 256 MB memory: $105
3Ware 9500s 4 port SATA RAID controller: $288
Four Western Digital WD4000KD hard drives (400GB each): $848
Windows XP Pro: $142
Keyboard, mouse, etc: ~$100
Blackmagic Decklink HD: $595
h
Total cost: about $2850

Add a little over $1000 if you need an 8-drive solution for a total of ~$4000. That's not bad compared to ~$5000 for 24 minutes worth of P2 memory cards...

While this is intriguing, it's more a theorectical "how cheap" that a reasonable proposal for critical image recording not fair to compare to P2.

First, 4 drive SATA RAID 0 may not be fast enough for robust uncompressed recording and playback, 8 drive would be probably be more reasonable. 8 Drive RAID 0 is not a very reliable setup though - one drive fails and all is lost and with 8 drives being pushed hard, not a completely unlikely scenario , so for serious productions RAID 1+0 or RAID 10 would be much better, but now you are talking 16 drives and external enclosure and probably high end SCSI, or FibreChannel.

P2 will be cheaper soon and I can put it all that P2 storage in my pocket and don't worry if I drop it on the ground while I'm shooting in the middle of nowhere. So my guess is far more people will shoot P2 on the HVX, whatever the price.

You could not it cheap but it would not be very robust. Barry's original number is more reasonable for most productions.

Of course, I'm an indie guy and hardware hack and might build one cheap but most people can't rely on that type of solution.

I will still shoot for a 8 drive sata in hotswap bays and some method of mirroring your data though. Bummer to capture all the stuff and the lose it.

Thomas-"You can also buy the Bitjazz Sheervideo lossless codec to cut the hard drive bandwidth in half"

That would be very nice. Could a codec like that be used for real time capture though? They are in beta of the .avi version of that codec at the moment. QT versions for Mac & PC are available now.


Yes. I got confirmation from the creator of the Sheervideo codec. On the Apple you can capture live in realtime to the codec with Decklink cards. The sheervideo codec even has presets made just for Decklink cards. Capturing is realtime.

The only problem is that editing will not be realtime. Final Cut Pro only likes realtime with it's native codecs. Sheervideo is trying to get support for their bitjazz codec in Final Cut Pro. You can still edit in Final Cut Pro but all of the realtime effects will need to be rendered.

Usually you will get a 2 : 1 compression ratio. The lossless compression changes based on the amount of changed detail in the image. For if you are shooting bluescreen stuff where almost the whole entire screen never changes you may be able to get a 3 : 1 or even 4 : 1 compression ratio

P2 will be cheaper soon and I can put it all that P2 storage in my pocket and don't worry if I drop it on the ground while I'm shooting in the middle of nowhere.

I'd be worried about dropping one and losing it, which at up to $1700 each for 8 minutes of storage would be a problem. But that's just one of those things people will learn to deal with for shooting with the HVX200.

In any case, it turns out that Cineform is co-developing a hard-drive based recorder which can capture directly from an HD-SDI input to 10-bit 4:2:2 ProspectHD at a bit rate around 130-140 Mbps, so that'll be a good recording option for the Canon XL-H1 camera. And if you happen to fill up your drive, you'd still have the option to record to miniDV tape, which is available almost anywhere now at negligible cost. Other than the fact that the Canon camera costs a little more, that sounds like a good setup to me compared to the HVX200.

I'd be worried about dropping one and losing it, which at up to $1700 each for 8 minutes of storage would be a problem. But that's just one of those things people will learn to deal with for shooting with the HVX200.

That's what insurance is for. But my guess is P2 cards won't lose data if you drop one, even onto concrete. I've dropped plenty of flash storage in my time and yet to have that lost data. However, I just dropped 2.5 USB drive about 3 ft. Drive survived but it was writing data and the data did not - reformat was in order.



In any case, it turns out that Cineform is co-developing a hard-drive based recorder which can capture directly from an HD-SDI input to 10-bit 4:2:2 ProspectHD at a bit rate around 130-140 Mbps, so that'll be a good recording option for the Canon XL-H1 camera. And if you happen to fill up your drive, you'd still have the option to record to miniDV tape, which is available almost anywhere now at negligible cost. Other than the fact that the Canon camera costs a little more, that sounds like a good setup to me compared to the HVX200.

Most producitons do not want cameras tethered to AC power devices. Sure, a few will take advantage of it, but power, noise, size, reliability are way too big of an issue to brush off solid state storage.

Solid state storage is the future. P2 is the first of many solid state image recording tech. Moving head disks will be replaced because solid state beats them on every issue (except price and space right now).

You are welcome to buy a camera and tether it to a huge disk system to get 4:2:2 or uncompressed. Otherwise, every Hollywood film would shoot on a Viper. But that won't work for me at all - I simply could not shoot the films I need to shoot. Getting 4:2:2 at 100 Mb/s on a little card - now that's a filmmakers dream.

Supposodly you can immerse a P2 in salt water for a day, or drive over it with a car and the data is ok. Even if the shell gets damaged, Panasonic can take out the chips and put them in a new shell - don't know how much this kind of service costs though, and if you get it wet, call Panasonic who will tell you what to do!

Graeme

I think we are confussing things a bit. P2 cards are not capturing uncompressed. If you want uncompressed from a HVX it will be the exact same situation.
With the Sheervideo codec 1/2'ing data rate, we are much closer to our goal. It is a great lossless codec noted for its speed. A 4 disk SATA Raid should be able to handle this 1/2 uncompressed data rate.
Can anyone throw out some regular uncompressed #'s of 480p60(HD10)/720p60(HD100) and 1080i(FX/Z1) so we can judge what is a feezable HDD bandwith?
Question: If the output is 60p is it possible to select just 30p for capture, or do all frames have to captured?
Also, I have read some info on dissabling the inner tracks of drives to keep a constant high data rate. Data rate slows dirastically as it is writen to the inner tracks. Effectively loosing 20% of each drives storage, but maintaining peak speeds seems like a good trade off.

I think we are confussing things a bit. P2 cards are not capturing uncompressed. If you want uncompressed from a HVX it will be the exact same situation.

I'm not confused :)

First, we were talking about uncompressed, but then the Cineform 4:2:2 compressed solution was also discussed which is comparable to P2 4:2:2.

Most producitons do not want cameras tethered to AC power devices. Sure, a few will take advantage of it, but power, noise, size, reliability are way too big of an issue to brush off solid state storage.

But then hardly anyone will be able to afford to capture to P2 memory for now, so most HVX200 owners will end up recording to the proposed Firestore drive or other similar solutions for a while. If the Cineform capture drive works on battery power there's no functional difference there, and if I was shooting a movie I might rather have 140 Mbps of data from a 1440x1080 sensor than 100 Mbps of data from the lower-resolution sensor on the Panasonic camera. We'll see how all this shakes out when all of this stuff is actually shipping, but I wouldn't be surprised if Canon takes a few sales from Panasonic for indie purposes.

But then hardly anyone will be able to afford to capture to P2 memory for now, so most HVX200 owners will end up recording to the proposed Firestore drive or other similar solutions for a while.

"Hardly anyone"? That's not what I hear from potential buyers. I would say 50% of potential buyers on the DVX boards are considering it, especially since Panny is considering a couple of different P2 bundles.

If the Cineform capture drive works on battery power there's no functional difference there, and if I was shooting a movie I might rather have 140 Mbps of data from a 1440x1080 sensor than 100 Mbps of data from the lower-resolution sensor on the Panasonic camera. We'll see how all this shakes out when all of this stuff is actually shipping, but I wouldn't be surprised if Canon takes a few sales from Panasonic for indie purposes.

The Cineform capture drive run on battery? That's unlikely to be small or portable, certainly not firestore-sized and way bigger than P2.

If people are willing to pay over $200 per minute to capture video on P2 cards, or deal with the hardware and workflow requirements of off-loading that to other storage solutions, that's okay by me. Regarding the Cineform drive, I see no reason why that couldn't be similar to the Firestore, except maybe it needs a little extra size to accommodate the HD-SDI inputs. Main drawback with Cineform for some indies would be that it's primarily a PC-oriented solution, so that's another consideration. Like I said before, we'll see what happens when all this stuff is shipping.