will 24p Panasonic HVX200 kill Sony Z1U?

[Max Allen]

I think the Z1 is better than the DVCPRO job because it looks better. Not talking about the codec and all that other useless crap, but the camera itself. And as we all know it's all about how your camera looks than little anal differences about the quality of it's image like 4:2:2, 4:2:1 blahzy blah blah.

Personally, I prefer a black camera to those wimpy silver ones and I am very glad to see that black is back. This will definitely get me more jobs.

[Kevin Shaw]

Thomas: you make some good points and it sounds like the HVX200 will be an excellent choice for your purposes, but practical considerations will be a significant problem for event work. No doubt some people will manage to use it for that purpose, but that's going to take some doing. As far as price is concerned, it's going to cost at least 3-4X as much to buy an HVX200 with a day's worth of recording capacity as it currently costs to buy a Sony FX1 (see below), so your comparison of $20K cameras to $4K cameras hasn't changed much. The HVX200 is still intriguing for what it offers, but it doesn't present an immediate challenge to HDV in terms of cost and practicality.

Sony FX1: $3500
5 hours worth of tapes: $15-60

Panasonic HVX200: $6000
Three 8GB memory cards: $5100
One 1-hour P2 card downloader and some hard drives for storage: ~$2000
or five hours worth of Firestore-like storage: ~$5,000

Minimum cost to put an FX1 out in the field for a day of event recording: under $3600.

Minimum cost to put an HVX200 out in the field for a day of event recording: $13,000.

[Steven White]

Minimum cost

Your economics aren't right there. Your math only works for the first five hours of recording.

The cost of recording five hours on an FX1 is the cost of 5 DV/HDV tapes.
The cost of recording five hours on an HVX is the cost of the archiving media.

The cost per hour of footage from the camera depends on how many hours you put on it. If you can make the argument that archiving HVX footage is cheaper than DV tapes, in principle if you shoot enough footage on the HVX, you're video will be cheaper to produce than the FX1. If you don't archive, the cost of using the camera for that day is effectively zero.

The formula should be:
A = cost of camera
B = cost per hour of footage (including maintence, archiving, tapes, and insurance)
C = number of hours shot:

cost/hour = A/C + B

-Steve

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Steven White

The cost per hour of footage from the camera depends on how many hours you put on it. If you can make the argument that archiving HVX footage is cheaper than DV tapes, in principle if you shoot enough footage on the HVX, you're video will be cheaper to produce than the FX1. If you don't archive, the cost of using the camera for that day is effectively zero.

I was thinking about that based on what Thomas said, and here's what I came up with:

Let's say your use the HVX200 to record DVCProHD at 100 Mbps, which is 12.5 MB/sec or 45 GB/hour. If you copy that to standard single-layer DVDs at a cost of roughly 50 cents per disc, that's ten discs at a cost of $5 per hour of footage. A little less if you use the cheapest discs and more than twice as much if you use the most expensive ones -- so essentially exactly the same cost as running an HDV camera using miniDV tapes costing anywhere from $3-12 each in bulk. Now factor in the time required to archive an hour's worth of footage to ten DVDs and then retrieve any of it later when you need it for something, and the actual cost of using DVDs skyrockets compared to storing video on one-hour miniDV tapes. But let's say we assume blu-laser DVDs start shipping at a cost of roughly $5 each for approximately 30 GB of storage, so around 16 cents per gigabyte or $7.20 per hour of DVCProHD footage, plus the time required to copy your footage to those discs. Okay, maybe when blu-laser DVDs are down to $1 per disc this will start to make sense, but no matter how you slice it you'll still have to devote more time to managing your media with an HVX200. Given that time is even more precious for most of us than money, it's hard to see how you can come out ahead here with the P2 media format.

Plus we didn't factor in the cost of hiring someone to manage your P2 media downloads while recording with an HVX200, and we don't have any data on how much it will cost per hour for maintenance -- like the cost of replacing one of those $1700 media cards if you lose or break it. Bottom line is that there's just no way the HVX200 is going to compete with the FX1/Z1U in terms of cost-effectiveness or convenience, at least not for several years yet. When I can buy a 45GB SD card for under $10, then we can talk...

[Steven White]

Bottom line is that there's just no way the HVX200 is going to compete with the FX1/Z1U in terms of cost-effectiveness or convenience, at least not for several years yet.

Which of course, isn't even an argument for most people. The main argument seems to be that "the HVX will undoubtedly have better quality" - in which case, the DVCPRO-HD footage will be worth inherently more than HDV footage - to the point that some people refuse to pay for HDV footage.

I have yet to be convinced through either mathematics or practical codec testing that the the overall quality of DVCPRO-HD is really that much better than HDV though. I'm quite confident that all other components being equal, that the only way people will be able to differentiate HDV from DVCPRO-HD is with a trained eye for their respective artifacts - with it being a toss-up between which codec's artifacts are more obvious/irritating.

-Steve

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Steven White

Which of course, isn't even an argument for most people. The main argument seems to be that "the HVX will undoubtedly have better quality" - in which case, the DVCPRO-HD footage will be worth inherently more than HDV footage - to the point that some people refuse to pay for HDV footage.

I have no quarrel with that and see the HVX200 being a good choice for customers willing to pay the extra cost of using it. But for basic event work it looks like HDV will easily be the more palatable solution, and as you say it should be good enough for most viewers. So we come down to the conclusion that there's room for both HDV and DVCProHD as (respectively) low-cost and medium-cost solutions to the challenge of creating high-definition video. It's nice to have this sort of choice, and we can all pick and choose accordingly.

[Steve Crisdale]

I'm having visions of Panasonic camcorders slaughtering any Sony HDV camcorder they come within viewfinder range of...

More conjecture about the demise of something, even before it's successor has been spawned, than at an anarchists' convention!!

So... let's just say that the HVX200 and DVCPRO-HD do 'kill' Sony's (and JVC's by default) HDV MPEG2 products.

What format are you going to mass distribute your material in, and what viewing devices do you expect your material to be viewed on?

May choice never die... and long live democracy!!

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Crisdale

What format are you going to mass distribute your material in, and what viewing devices do you expect your material to be viewed on?

For independent productions distributed directly to viewers, I would think that DVCProHD will get compressed to the same WMV and H.264 formats we're talking about using now for HDV footage, with output and playback on standard DVDs or blu-ray discs to consumer HDTVs. So distribution options will be exactly the same no matter what HD/HDV camera you use, and this will reduce (but not eliminate) quality differences between various HD recording formats.

All else being equal, one would hope that a camera which records HD at a bit rate of 100 Mbps will outperform a camera which records HD at 25 Mbps, but how noticeable will this be when compressed to disc and displayed on a mainstream HDTV? My guess is that the difference between HDV and DVCProHD won't be nearly as noticeable upon delivery as the difference between either of those and typical SD footage, so most viewers will be quite happy with output from HDV cameras.

[Roland Clarke]

Whatever the quality of the Panasonic when it finally hits the streets it is IMHO unlikely to change the general scene. Two days ago I visited the Production show in Londons Earls Court. Of all the camera kit available there Sony easily outnumbered the others by a ratio of 5:1. If you took out Panasonics own stand then it was easily over 90%. HD Cam was the format that all the hire companies were touting and was dominant amongst the crewing and production companies. There were also large numbers of Z1 HDV's.

I spoke to one of the major UK production companies and he told me "we love the Z1, in certain applications it outdoes Digibeta and if we need more we use the HD Cams". Compatability is everything, unless you are doing your production from start to finish in house you need to be using the same kit everyone else is. The Z1 in the hands of a really good DOP will yield stunning results.

For those in the serious production market the high end 730, 750, 950 will still be the main tools of choice. I respectfully suggest that the Panasonic will be seen as the "cheap" option for those that haven't got the investment, and the corporate videographer. Look at DVC pro and JVC's D9, for all their potential benefits neither of them made any significant inroads to the serious broadcasters.

HDV is perfectly pitched as the HD replacement to DV Cam, a roll it fulfills admirably. At its £3,000 price tag it certainly delivers.

Regards



Roland

[Radek Svoboda]

The Panasonic camera has 24p but CCD chipset ADC only outputs 720p and 1080i, so it will be 40 Mbps 720p24 960x720 pixel camera, but ADC will not likely put out 1080p, so 1080p will have to derive from 1080i or 720p ADC output, so no true 1080p, just like Sony FX/Z1 has no true 1080/25p, just CF25.

Although camera will record 920x720 pixels in 720p, the chipset ADC most likely output better pixel numbers, like 1280x720 for 720p, which will be interpolated to 1280x1080 for 24-25p or 1440x1080 for 30p. If it will be interpolated from progressive 720p or interlaced 1080i scan is to be seen. In either case no true 1080p.

Radek

[Robert Young]

Roland
I think your observations are very accurate. If you are in the video camera business, I would think the broadcast industry is the pot of gold, and it certainly seems like Sony is the 800 pound gorilla. I think Sony knows its market and has designed the Z1 to do exactly what it intended- replace broadcast use of dv/dvcam cameras ( a la PD-170) and to provide low cost HD capability for situations where the expensive cams are not the best option. There have already been anouncements that BBC is officially switching to the Z1.
The people who are doing film out, who love 24p, need HD with less compression, etc. are likely to gravitate to the new Pana, JVC, or other options. There's something for everyone. However, the notion that one of these other cameras is going to knock the Z1 out of the marketplace seems ridiculous. The latest sales figures I've heard for the FX1/Z1 is around 50,000. Wow. That's in the neighborhood of $200 million or more. Sounds pretty serious to me.
Bob

[Shannon Rawls]

Just wait for Canon.

Since everyone likes to wait.

It will be better then all of em most likely.


- Shannon W. Rawls

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Originally Posted by Shannon Rawls

Just wait for Canon.

Since everyone likes to wait.

It will be better then all of em most likely.


- Shannon W. Rawls

It would be sweet if they could put a new XL serie cam out, with the technical things of the Panasonic, but with interchangeable lenses.
It's all subjective offcourse, but I just like how the XL is designed and where the buttons are placed etcetera, it feels very right in my hands, so a HD-version of an XL cam would be sweet. Everybody his own opinion offcourse.

[George Ellis]

I think I see tape drives making a comeback.

:D

[Michael Struthers]

The answer to this thread is absolutely "no".

Next!