... or at least it's my question.

Looking to buy another camcorder in December. I want a smaller one that's a little more portable than my XL2. I like the DVX100B, but am thinking in terms of the bigger picture (no pun intended) and what camera will be best to get me through 2006 and allow me to collect a wider variety of formats of footage.

The way I look at it, the DVX100B is around $3,500, and the HVX200 will be a little under $6,000 without the P2 cards. (both of those MSRP, not firm #'s that will vary depending various Supply/Demmand and rebates).

I'm favoring the HVX200 route, as I can use it like a DV camera until I need to shoot something in DVCPRO50, DVCPRO25, DVCPRO. There are many other advantages as well, and I don't want to be repetitve so here's the thread for those with comments from some very experienced forum members (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=55077).

I feel like from what I've seen in DVinfo.net that the HVX200 would be the best new addition of equipment to get me through 2006 and the SD/HDV/HD times that we are entering into.

So my question is if I get the HVX200, what formats will I be able to shoot on: miniDV only, P2 only & both?

If I shoot on miniDV will I loose the 4:2:2 color sampling?

Basically, I'm trying to find out what I'll be limited to until I decide to purchase the P2 cards.

MiniDV tape will only let you record 4:1:1 regular DV, like the DVX100b. If you want anything else, you have to go tapeless and record to one of the following

1) P2 card(s)
2) Firestore (or similar products)
3) Direct to laptop via firewire

I think you're making a wise choice. Shoot DV on MiniDV tapes until you need HD or DVCPro50. At that point, you can always rent P2 cards, or buy them, or a Firestore. And if you already have a laptop, you can shoot in full 1080 HD the minute you get the HVX.

Thanks Jaime, so would it be correct to say that I would only be able to shoot in 480/60i,30P,24P if recording to miniDV?

Great idea on renting the P2 cards, as I did not even think about the rental route for such an item.

As far as capturing straight to a laptop - Another good suggestion. If I was shooting in a studio environment I suppose I could just capture straight to my dual 2.7 G5 then. And then transfer the data to another HardDrive once I figured out the footage I wanted to keep.

Great suggestions. Thanks again.

As far as capturing straight to a laptop - Another good suggestion. If I was shooting in a studio environment I suppose I could just capture straight to my dual 2.7 G5 then. And then transfer the data to another HardDrive once I figured out the footage I wanted to keep.
Dude... forget transferring footage to another hard disk. You could be shooting straight to the G5 and be EDITING the footage on the spot while you shoot! Production and Post happening at the same time... drool...

That is “drool-worthy.”

I don’t want to get off subject, but with the above now known, this would be my workflow (from shooting to editing) for studio work –

Connect the HVX200 to the G5.
Buy the appropriate Lacie Hard Drive (250 gig, 500 gig or 1 TB) and connect that to my G5.
Set the Final Cut Pro 5.0.3 scratch drive to the newly connected Hard Drive.
Shoot Footage and capture at the same time.
Edit everything that was shot on that Hard Drive, while saving all FCP files related to that project on the same Hard Drive.

Sort of a Hard Drive per project basis I guess - on an “as needed” basis.

Would the above be a good workflow for in-studio work?

I’m curious to know what others are planning on doing. I’ll be looking for a thread on the subject this morning, but to this point, I don’t think I’ve seen one for the HVX200 specifically. If anyone reading this knows of one feel free to post a link. Thanks.

Derek,
As far as I can tell, this seems Ideal...
if it is just studio work
if you are mobile then the P2 / firestore & others will be useful

MiniDV tape will only let you record 4:1:1 regular DV, like the DVX100b. If you want anything else, you have to go tapeless and record to one of the following

1) P2 card(s)
2) Firestore (or similar products)
3) Direct to laptop via firewire

.

Jaime,
Does any one know if the Firestore for tha JVC will work on the HVX200
It's firewire transfer - so I cant think why not
the next logical question is
Are there advantages to P2 (incl disks that connect to Camera's P2 slot)
Vs. Firewire transfer (to laptop/Firestore etc)

?
(Note: firestore 80G is 1600$ vs 8G P2 cards and could theoretically slide in your pocket)

John

Does any one know if the Firestore for tha JVC will work on the HVX200
It's firewire transfer - so I cant think why not

I think the Firestore specifically designed for the HVX will be the only one that works. It's due in March for "less than $2000". They're both Firewire, but the HVX version is made for DVCProHD, not HDV (you were referring to the JVC HD100?)

Are there advantages to P2 (incl disks that connect to Camera's P2 slot) Vs. Firewire transfer (to laptop/Firestore etc)

The main advantage of P2 is no moving parts. Zero dropped frames, impervious to shock, or temperature. The recording will be rock-solid. It also allows for non-stop shooting if you have more than one P2 card. You can fill one up, remove the card and dump to a laptop while the other card is still recording, and shoot continuously for, well, forever (in theory, until you run out of hard disk space). Also, P2 cards make the camera the most portable it can be. A Firestore or Laptop requires cables hanging off the camera, and external power supplies for the hard disks, laptops, etc. Also, P2 lets you record "active frames" in 720/24p, so you can fit more footage onto the cards.

Other than that, the footage will look the same on P2 or via Firewire, with no difference in quality.

Excellent info,
Thanks Jaime

No one mentioned one DV advantage the HVX has over the DVX. The HVX will shoot true 16x9 SD (it has 16x9 ccds) onto miniDV. So for 2006 you'll have a great 16x9 DV camera.

Craig, good point. Barry Green listed out a few other advantages as well in the thread I linked to up a the top. You might find his post (#6) interesting. Thanks.

Do you have to take the P2 card out of the camera to tranfer to a computer or can you just hook the HVX200 to your computer via firewire and tranfer?

Bob - From what I've read, I had just planned on not buying the P2 cards for now and hooking it directly to my computer and going straight from the HVX200 to the G5 dp 2.7 while shooting in a studio, then editing on the same computer in FCP 5.0.xx.

I like several things about the HVX200 over the Canon H1 and ONE of the things that I like is the fact that I can spend somewhere between $5,000 and $6,000 on the HVX200 to see if the DVCPRO HD/50/25 will be something that will work for me personally. THEN, if it is, the P2 cards will be next on the wish list. If it's not a good format for me, well...

someone will get a good deal on a barely used HVX200 in the DVinfo.net classified's ;)

Do you have to take the P2 card out of the camera to tranfer to a computer or can you just hook the HVX200 to your computer via firewire and tranfer?
Yes, the computer should see the HVX as an external drive, so you can transfer the footage from the P2 card to computer. If you have a Mac, use the Firewire cable. For PC, use the USB2 cable.

(never mind - I just found another thread that addresses my question)

Basically, I'm trying to find out what I'll be limited to until I decide to purchase the P2 cards.
With Panasonic releasing new pricing / bundle options on the HVX200 I'll switch gears and buy the camera with one or two of the 4 gig P2 cards, until I have the need for more and/or as prices which will make recording directly to the mac no longer an issue to wonder about.

... what a difference a week can make.

Yeah, the HVX + two 4GB P2 card bundle is less than $7000. Bliss...

That's retail -- street price might be a grand less than that. Although I don't know if we'll see much discounting until the backorders are filled...

Barry,

You and Jared did a nice job providing the HVX200 footage. Thank you.

Could you capture the footage directly to a PC as well, or does it have to be a laptop? Say, if you are in a studio enviroment, and you've got a PC sitting there, could you just firewire it in that way?

Could you capture the footage directly to a PC as well, or does it have to be a laptop? Say, if you are in a studio enviroment, and you've got a PC sitting there, could you just firewire it in that way?
Sure -- there's nothing unique about the laptop for that purpose, other than it being portable. If you're talking about a studio shoot, you could easily pipe a firewire cable over to a desktop and use your NLE's capture application to stream the full HD signal directly to the hard disk.

Barry, is that how you guys recorded the HVX footage? I noticed the h.264 Karate Kid clip was a 60p recording (59.94 actually) with 24p look. Stepping through the frames seemed to confirm the repeat frames, which I presume you wouldn't record with P2. If you did go the laptop route, did it require a fast IDE internal drive, or did you pipe it into a G5 with a RAID somehow?

Just curious...

Barry, hope I didn't offend by calling it a "Karate Kid" clip. I apologize if I did. It's very nice material. Just wondered how you acquired it.

Barry, is that how you guys recorded the HVX footage?
No, it was recorded on P2 cards using 720/24PN ("native") mode, so it only recorded the actual frames. So in 12p it only recorded 12 frames per second, etc.

It was then edited on FCP on a laptop, in a 24p timeline.

I noticed the h.264 Karate Kid clip was a 60p recording (59.94 actually) with 24p look. Stepping through the frames seemed to confirm the repeat frames, which I presume you wouldn't record with P2.
Don't judge it based on that h.264. I don't know how that h.264 clip got authored, but it got authored wrong. It should have been authored with a 24p timebase, not a 60p timebase.

If you did go the laptop route, did it require a fast IDE internal drive, or did you pipe it into a G5 with a RAID somehow?
I don't know the specs on the laptop, but I think it was just whatever current PowerBook is out. The drive we used was a regular external firewire drive, I think just a Maxtor OneTouch II, whatever Jarred picked up for cheap at Fry's. No RAID, nothing like that. We used a regular firewire drive and the editor guy was able to play back full-screen, full-res, full-motion video with no hassles at all. For that matter, he also showed me DVCPRO-HD footage playing back on a 2-year-old 1.33ghz G4 powerbook, playing off the internal hard disk. Full-screen, full-res, full-motion, no dropped frames, no problems at all.

Barry, hope I didn't offend by calling it a "Karate Kid" clip. I apologize if I did. It's very nice material. Just wondered how you acquired it.
I'll have to start calling him that! :)

You can look him up at http://jakebass.com/.

I like to get everyone's opinion. I've done tons of research on the Sony Z1 and the upcoming Panasonic VX200, but I just can't decide.

What's holding me back is the P2 cards. I want to record HD (that's kind of the whole point), but from what I've been reading, you can only record HD to the P2 cards or to a hard drive. No tape option whatsoever.

Now, I'm a video producer with a number of clients. I currently have hundreds of tapes from various shoots over the last couple of years. Some projects (like documentaries) are ongoing, others are raw footage archived for the client (special events, AGMs, etc).

If I want to shoot HD with the Panasonic, I'm assuming this would mean that I:

1. Have a separate, removable hardrive for each project and each client

2. Have a DVCPRO HD Recorder to output the footage to tape. Current cost: $25,000 Canadian.

Am I correct? This does seem like a real negative. Though I know the there are issues with Sony (no 24p for instance), being able to record HDV straight to tape seems like a real plus.

Any thoughts you could offer would be most appreciated. Again, other than having a hundred hard drives, how do I manage footage from multiple clients day-to-day?

Thanks.

Peter Reynolds
www.fortherecordproductions.com

That's the problem. In your circumstances, I'd go for the $25K deck. Even if you get a separate hard drive for each program you're working on, you still would need a second drive for backup for each one. Remember, you dump your footage to the hard drive, then erase the P2 cards. I wouldn't feel very comfortable with my only original footage on a hard drive. I've seen lots of hard drives die for no reason, but I've never seen a tape die, and I've got lots of tapes that are over 20 years old.
I'm hoping Sony or somebody would come out with an optical disc recorder so P2 footage could be backed up that way. The discs are cheap enough to store as we do tapes.

If you’re not in a hurry, you can get a Blue laser burner once it comes out in the 1st quarter of 2006. Each disk is expected to hold 50 gigs of information which equals to 50 minutes of DVCPRO HD footage if my calculations are correct.

Well, given that you're even considering the Z1, I would suggest demoing the Canon XL H1. It's easily the best HDV camera on the market. A lot of people are going to be shocked as to what that camera can do. All I know is it shoots astonishingly good HD onto cheap DV tape.

If you're only considering 1/3" cameras, the H1 would probably give you the best combination of image quality (far FAR better than Sony's) and simplicity. It can give you a very good film look in 24F mode, and shoot superb 1080i to
inexpensive media. Yes, it's more expensive than Sony, but not much more than the HVX when you consider the P2 scenario. That camera is more like a $7000 minimum investment (unless you want to try and tote around a laptop and be tethered to it) and that's with miniscule recording times.

The HVX is not the camera to own if you want a simple archive workflow.

When it comes to a film look, don't forget how much better/shallower a depth of field can be with a 20x lens compared to a 13x or 10x. I get some pretty good blurry backgrounds with my 20x XL2 lens, though you have to have a lot of room! It also makes some awkward interviews when you're standing 50 feet away! But it works...and looks great. I'm sure the H1 will, as well.

KW

I could swear there's a little more play with the 20x H1 lens then with previous lenses. Let's not forget how cool it is to be able to take the lens off and put on a mini35 if you REALLY want shallow DOF

Still trying to decide on a new camera.

I just got back from a 1-week shoot in Belize. We shot about 10 hours worth of footage on an Canon XL2.

Am I right in assumng that recording in DVCPRO HD is using about 1 gig per minute? If so, I'd need about 600 gigs to store the raw footage I shot.

If so, this would have been totally impractical. This was not a studio setting (we shot mostly in the rainforest), so I guess I'd be using a portable 30 gig in the field and then dumping to a series of hard drives at the hotel. Seems unwieldly.

Any other suggestions? I really like the new Panasonic, but I can't get my head around the "no HD tape option." I think I may have to forget 24p and go with the Z1.

HELP!

What do you mean, by "play" Barlow?

KW

What do you mean, by "play" Barlow?

KW

Just seemingly has a little more selective focus. Hard to quantify...it's probably almost exactly the same DOF characteristics as the XL2 lens, but feels a little different. Not trying to make a hard claim on that.

Still trying to decide on a new camera.

I just got back from a 1-week shoot in Belize. We shot about 10 hours worth of footage on an Canon XL2.

Am I right in assumng that recording in DVCPRO HD is using about 1 gig per minute? If so, I'd need about 600 gigs to store the raw footage I shot.

If so, this would have been totally impractical. This was not a studio setting (we shot mostly in the rainforest), so I guess I'd be using a portable 30 gig in the field and then dumping to a series of hard drives at the hotel. Seems unwieldly.

Any other suggestions? I really like the new Panasonic, but I can't get my head around the "no HD tape option." I think I may have to forget 24p and go with the Z1.

HELP!

Peter,
for Doc work and the HVX200, you should wait until March when there is a Firestore option 80 - 100 Gigs of continuous recording for less than 2000$
There will be more and more companies coming out with such...so dont frett...
or get a Canon H1

A few posts ago I mentioned that by the first quarter of 2006, the blue laser burners will allow you to store 50 gigs of information. This would be very good advice if only they would come out with 3X or higher ram disks as well. This way you can do you editing right from the disk itself.

If so, this would have been totally impractical. This was not a studio setting (we shot mostly in the rainforest), so I guess I'd be using a portable 30 gig in the field and then dumping to a series of hard drives at the hotel. Seems unwieldly.

The hard drives for the HVX200 will apparently be at least 100 GB and hence offer about four hours of DVCProHD recording in 720p/24 format. (Since that only uses 40% of the capacity per second of full DVCProHD.) So two of those would get you a whole day's worth of recording time, depending on how long your day is. But then you'd better be prepared to offload that data somewhere else before the next day's shoot, so you would need to get back to a hotel and do that. If you want to be able to go a few days without having to worry about archiving data, HDV arguably has an advantage in that regard.

Personally I think HDV is fine and will knock the socks off anything you could get out of an XL2, but the stock lens on the Sony HDV cameras isn't adequate if you need to zoom in on distant subjects. If you're used to shooting on an XL2 the XL-H1 seems like a logical choice, even if it is a bit pricey. As someone else said, it's not going to cost any more than an HVX200 with a couple of DTE recorders, so there's no cost advantage to the Panny camera. Plus the Panny DTE drives won't be available for another several weeks yet, so if you need something now that pretty much settles it.

On my new powerbook I got today there is a PC Card slot. Is that were a P2 card would go? I don't know much about either one!!

On my new powerbook I got today there is a PC Card slot. Is that were a P2 card would go? I don't know much about either one!!

Yesiree, Bob.

Man I'm one step closer to the HVX!!