I just read Barry Green and Jarred Land article and even though I probably won't buy this year , I'm sold on this camera for two feature sets that are absolutely unique . Frame rates and pre-record . I don't care if it has a 100 lines less than the canon. I was already very interested in it's frame rate possibilities but when I read about pre-record , I was broadsided. Does anyone know if pre-record is only to p2 or can it be used also thu firewire out ? I think the new buyers should be excited but patient. I , for one , will look forward to the reports.
ps- why couldn't sony have done something THIS coool.

The simple reason why Sony couldn't have done something like that is the nature of P2. It's flash, so you can constantly record onto it. The whole idea of pre-recording is that the camera is always rolling to the P2 card, and if you choose to pre-record, it just doesn't re-write over the few seconds before you hit the record button. This would be impossible with tape.

Pre-recording has always been one of the big pluses of shooting on a tapeless camcorder.

Tom - is it only for p2 or can you use it with firewire out to a pwb ?

This would be impossible with tape.

Hardly. You just feed everything through a RAM buffer before it goes out to tape... when you hit record, the camera starts writing to tape the footage from the start of the RAM buffer, which will be a few seconds before you pressed record. When you press stop, it keeps recording for a few seconds until the buffer is empty.

In fact, I believe there have been Betacams on the market for years which do just that.

In fact, I believe there have been Betacams on the market for years which do just that.

100% Correct, Sony has this feature already in some of their professional cameras

I asked Jan specifically about prerecord and where it goes, and it indeed goes to a RAM buffer.

Why? (For the record this is my reasoning, not Jan's) Well, P2 is reusable, but indeed has a limited lifespan. Not a big deal for normal usage, but a prerecord buffer would likely be constantly re-recording the same part of the card... and if we're talking about re-recording the same 10-second buffer on the card, that's a lot of strain and on those little memory cells. I certainly wouldn't wanna do that with my pricey P2 card...

Also... as for firewire... that would be handled by the other side of the firewire stream. I think some of the Firestores have prerecord buffer functionality (Maybe just the "pro" versions); I'm not sure if any NLEs or DVRack do.

Varicam does variable frame rates to tape and works quite well.


ash =o)

Varicam does variable frame rates to tape and works quite well.


??? Did anyone question this? I think everyone's talking about the prerec buffer since the first post...

LOL, yea, what was the reasoning for that statement Ash?

'ps- why couldn't sony have done something THIS coool?'

Kurth - Sony was a lot cooler than that - they brought HDV to the masses at an amazingly low price a full 18 months ago. Not only that but they upped the ante with the Z1, then quickly followed with two more - the HC1 and A1.

They're so cool hypothermia is setting in.

tom.

Tom -hey amigo , I own all sonys' so don't think I'm running down sony . It's just that the 2 feature sets on the pany are so experimental, and open up so many more possibilities that , imho , this is the camera that finally rings true ," like shooting 16mm " -or even surpasses 16mm ! It's s shame they couldn't get prerecord to work with firewire out , to be able to use a notebook as hd and field monitor , esp. if it's recording to an incamera buffer but , that said ( that to use prerecord ) , then 2 8g p2 cards are a must. I can't wait to see the experimental cinema that comes out of this baby. Are we finally fullcircle , where I came in - i.e. a 16mm Bolex ? Kurth

Kurth - Sony was a lot cooler than that - they brought HDV to the masses at an amazingly low price a full 18 months ago. Not only that but they upped the ante with the Z1, then quickly followed with two more - the HC1 and A1.

They're so cool hypothermia is setting in.

tom.

The HC1 is *THE COOLEST* HDV camcorder out there. It's so compact and paired with the Ikelite underwater housing, it's the ultimate solution for easy to manage underwater/in water HD right now. Due to cost (under $3K for full underwater setup), I doubt I'd even consider getting an Equinox housing for the HVX200.

Now if Sony would only offera 70" version of their 60" SXRD HDTV set other than that Qualia thing and also not put the Dumbo-Ears speakers on it like the 60" has, but that's a whole other discussion...

Good reply Kurth. This is a leapfrog game between manufacturers, and you can bet your boots that Sony are now 18 months down the FX!'s replacement road.

I've not heard a single peep about the FX1's demise, update or replacement
of course. In fact I'd be very surprised indeed if such a thing would take
place so early in the camera's life-span.

You can bet the replacement is well along the development road though, and
early prototypes will be in the R & D lab right now. This is usually where
the 'leaks' come from, and of course this is bush fire on the web. Ignore.
Sony (as well as every other hard goods manufacturer on the planet) will
make running changes during the production run, so buying the FX1 now is a
lot safer than buying it a year ago. I'd not buy a new camera in the first 6 months of the production run, but then I've worked in car design...

Of course I could be wrong. Lead times are getting shorter year by year,
but the TRV900 was in production 4.5 years, the VX2k and its followers for
5+ years, so I see no reason why the FX1 won't hang around for another
couple at the very minimum, or at least until the flash memory prices make
tape look silly. That hasn't happened yet.

tom.

ps- why couldn't sony have done something THIS coool.

Not that it matters if what you really want is the HVX200, but you can pre-record on any DV or HDV camera now using a Firestore DTE recorder. I have my Firestore set this way and have tested to confirm that the pre-record feature works, but so far I haven't used it in a situation where that would have mattered. It could be handy at any live event where you want to catch important announcements as they happen, and you don't always have your camera rolling as the announcements begin. But this isn't much of a reason to pick one camera over another at the moment, especially if you're going to end up recording to a DTE drive anyway because P2 memory is too expensive.

As someone else noted, what Sony did was cool because they delivered a significant improvement in resolution at bargain prices before anyone else, and there's still no direct competition for the FX1 over a year after it started shipping. The HVX200 is clearly in a category by itself, but won't change anything for some of us until they make a less expensive version which records to standard off-the-shelf memory.

Just one thing to consider.

Take a 30 frame interlace 1080i interlace camcorder. Shoot at 1080i, 60 fields per second. Import into your NLE. Slow your clip down to 50% extracting the individual fields so each new frame just uses one field from the original. What you end up with is really good slo-mo with resolution that is still higher than you would get from an SD camcorder and pretty close to 720p. So if your final product is going to be SD or 720p most of the 1080i camcorders can produce slomo that is very very close to the HVX200. If your going down to 24Fps you can go slower still, and if you live in Europe there are a couple of HDV camcorders that will do both 60i and 50i, not just 50i.

And as already discussed if you need timelapse or pre-record by an FS4, cheaper than a single 8Gb P2 card! and 10x the storage.

Alister - I totally agree and a firestore might be on my list now that I know that's a feature set , but there's one small difference - progressive . I'm not saying it's worth 10k to everybody and my sony will get me by until maybe an " a " or " b" version and who knows where we'll be then , but , if I was buying a camera in the next 6 months , resolution would not be the deciding factor , i.e. I wouldn't buy the canon - I'd buy the pany. Obviously , I have other criteria such as size entering into my opinion . I'm just saying in the present atmosphere , where , the choices are mostly between the canon and the pany, look at other features , that distinguish the cameras the most. Maybe the canon offers some cool features that I'm not aware. Want ever is needed by the filmmaker should be weighed in . Kurth

??? Did anyone question this? I think everyone's talking about the prerec buffer since the first post...


Just saw the pull quote that "this" would be impossible on tape...



ash =o)