I have tried to research this but havent found my answer. If I buy this camera and dont invest in any P2 cards immediatly and only use tapes, what formats can be shot to the miniDV tapes?

Will I be limited to SD?

Thank you for your response.

Darrin

Yes, you will be limited to only SD MiniDV in either 4:3 or 16:9.

In addition to P2 cards you can record HD to a laptop or use a device like the firestore. I only have 2 -4 gig cards, and have used the camera on a number of different HD projects with no problems.....

Are all shooting formats of the HVX200 available when shooting to the Firestore? In other words, can a Firestore completely replace P2 cards?

Are all shooting formats of the HVX200 available when shooting to the Firestore? In other words, can a Firestore completely replace P2 cards?

You can shoot in every mode except pN...
With the firestore you could shoot in 720 60p
and then use the Frame rate convertor for slow-motion.

If you're shooting DV to a tape with the HVX, can you do slomo?

Not as such, but you can use DV slow-mo in your projects if you have at least one card. You can shoot slow-mo to the card and then do an in-camera downconvert to the DV tape, preserving the slow-mo effect.

This will work only in 16:9. If you want it in 4:3 I am almost sure that you have to do the down convert from 720p in post.

I'm still considering the HVX for an upcoming personal project. I would probably get two, probably three 8 gig cards and try to avoid spending any more serious money for awhile. My laptop is an iBook, unfortunately; editing computers are dual gig G5s with FCP, just got the new 5.x crossover upgrade in the mail today.

Is it feasible to get one of those little portable firewire drives (I've seen that LaCie advertised in a sturdy housing, allegedly reasonably rugged), plug it into the iBook via a firewire hub, then download to the drive from the camera via firewire? Then I would take the drive back to the studio and upload to the G5 and backup to DLT as a temporary measure till I get a Blu-ray drive. It seems to me that archiving on Blu-ray discs is a reasonable thing.

If I could make the P2 thing work for this personal project, then we proably would go for it on a biz level when we're ready to switch to some new stuff next year. At that time we would get more cards and P2 Store drives, probably. But for now I'm looking at some economical alternative. If I can shoot for an hour (three 8 gig cards at 24pn) that should get me through most interviews.

Next question, how long would it take, roughly, to download an 8 gig card via firewire in this manner?

Is it feasible to get one of those little portable firewire drives (I've seen that LaCie advertised in a sturdy housing, allegedly reasonably rugged), plug it into the iBook via a firewire hub, then download to the drive from the camera via firewire?
You mean directly, with no computer in-between? Yes you can do that, it works fine, only real restriction is that you're limited to 60gb so don't spend too much on getting a great big drive, a little 60gb will do fine. Also, you'll need some way to power the drive because the HVX doesn't supply bus power (it's a 4-pin connector after all).

It takes about a minute per gig, maybe a bit less, to transfer direct to a hard disk. That speed is limited by two factors, the speed of the drive and the speed of the firewire bus. The fastest I ever got it to transfer was a shade under three minutes for a 4gb card, but that was to a G-Raid. Expect a minute per gig; twice that if you turn "verify" mode on.

The drawback to this workflow is that you can't be using the camera as a camera while it's offloading. If you can work around that, then yes you have a no-cost way to get cards offloaded in the field.

I could power the drive from the iBook.

can't you use a firewire drive in 1394 host mode, and record HD directly?

You can record into a computer....not to a stand alone hard drive....
the firestore is like a stand alone hard drive.