I am possibly interested in a HMC150 but I am having a hard time finding definitive information about it. I have downloade Panasonic's brochure and it is helpful but not complete enough. Specifically, can anyone tell me if it offers the following two features:

- Ability to do rack focus (i.e., A1's ability to set a focus point, and return to it via push of a button).
- Ability to smoothly ramp a zoom in/out of the zoom end points.

The HMC150 does not have an external button like the A1 to set a focus point. It might be programable for this, but I don't think so.

I don't fully understand your second question. My observations are the HMC150 has very similar zoom rockers feel, placement and operation as the A1. The initial start and final stop are smooth and there is a little more adjustment in speed. The slow setting is very slow.

Editing
 

Very interesting camera. The price range makes it really exiting as well. However my question is about editing in FCS2 and support of AVCHD format on G5. After reading on Apple web page it looks like there is only support on Intel base Macs. Panasonic web page also states, that conversion program from AVCHD to DVCPRO-HD is for Intel base processors only. Any thoughts on this one?

Hi Robert, that's been pretty much the standard with AVCHD and Macs. You'll need an Intel Mac to edit AVCHD. Look at it this way, here's your perfect excuse to get a new computer!

It is possible to convert the AVCHD to something the G5 can edit using Toast 9. I would suggest DVCProHD

This is almost a deal breaker for me right there. Compare the nightmare of converting AVCHD or the cost of buying a new tower and the difference between HMC150 and HPX170. P2 wins hands down, since i can't get a new Powermac under $1600 (and that is the price differential here). Plus the support is already there and has a proven track.

Robert, according to your other posts, you're already shooting JVC ProHD right now. Why were you considering a switch to Panasonic AVCCAM? Just curious,

Chris- size matters;). This February I am supposed to go for 10 days to Canadian Rockies and follow hard core climber on his alpine routes. Let me tell you- JVC GY-HD100 is an amazing camera, but carrying it up 3000 feet, jumaring up fixed lines, and shooting while hanging on a rope was a back braking experience. When I started this project in March of 2007 I was still using DVX100. This was a perfect combination of quality and size. Hence my interest in the new HMC150.
There is also a chance I will be going to K2 next year to shoot a documentary about Prince Abruzzi. Imagine carrying HD100 at 26 000 feet!
BTW I think I will use Canon HV20 or 30 on my trip in February. I know it's not the highest quality, but light enough and good enough to mix it up with HD100 shots.

Another question... I have an AT 897 shotgun mic I would like to use with my new camera. I see that the HMC150 has XLR input which is good, but I'm not sure what provisions are made for physically attaching a 3rd-party mic. Can anyone tell me if there is a way to physically attach a 3rd-party shotgun mic with this camera?

It comes with a detachable rubberized mount which allows any shotgun to be used. My ME66 Sennheiser fits nicely with its foam windscreen

Thanks to all in this thread and over in the XH-A1 forum for your advice. I decided to bite the bullet and order the HMC150 today. I plan to order two PNY 16gb SDHC class 4 cards, a spare large battery and 72mm UV filter later this evening. I already have a good shotgun mic, tripod, etc. I am hoping this is enough to get me going. Soon I know I will be looking for a significant upgrade to my current video PC as I start cranking through that AVCHD.

Hi Jerry,

Just wondering if you received your new camera yet, and what your initial first impressions are?

BTW, what NLE are you currently using, and will be using to edit the AVCHD files?

Best,

Hi Jeff, I've received it and have been so busy I have only done some token shots. I plan to spend most of Sunday or Monday shooting, trying all the different settings and features.

The best advice I got here was to NOT RENT an HD camera for an upcoming event that would allow me only one or two days to come up to speed with a camera new to me. Buying this camera was definitely the right choice. I've got a lot to learn and have been reading through the manual and the forums every chance I get. I love the feel of the camera and, for the most part, the layout of the controls. I came from a GL2 and obviously the IQ on this cam is so much better. Maybe the GL2 focuses a little faster though.

I think I will really like the way you can shoot with the HMC150 in manual, but then auto reset the focus or iris with a quick touch of a button - this will be very useful. I expect I will get used to the placement of these buttons - I think it would be more logical for me if they were side by side, but one with a bump and the other with an indent so you could operate those two easily by feel.

I edit in Vegas 8c but am unfortunately running on a Pentium 4 3.0ghz. But I am surprised that I can preview a single 720 24p clip in "almost" real time. I haven't yet tried compositing multiple tracks. I will be getting a quad core before long. I had planned to do that no matter which cam I bought.

I'll post more when I have some meaningful experience to share. Thanks for your insights that helped me with the decision to go with the HMC150.

Jerry

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for the reply. Definitely understand about not renting a camera you're not familiar with; a couple of days isn't enough time to learn to use it. I'm glad you like the choice you've made in buying the HMC150.

I've been also thinking about the HD migration, and started out when we bought the Canon HV30. Unfortunately, we'll need to update our PC as well (still editing with an old Dell Dimension, 3.4ghz hyperthread, 2gRam, XP); and been thinking going quad core to best deal with HDV files (and maybe AVCHD files!). Currently, we've been shooting with the XL2 for a better part of two and half years, and will still continue to shoot SD at least for the better part of next year. (Thankfully, clients have not asked for HD, but still want to be prepared when they do.)

Will be looking forward to more updates.

(BTW, I think you're mistaking me for the other Jeff, Mr. Jeff Kellam, who has generously posted photos of his HMC150, and wrote about his impressions of the cam.)

Best,

Jerry:

Update - I have found the HMC-150 will do some amazing rack focus shots. You need this tool:

Bogen / Manfrotto | 521PFI Focus Remote Control | 521PFI | B&H

Well worth it.

Jeff

My 150 is on it's way.
 

Just ordered the 150 from B&H photo for 3500. It will be here next week. Can't wait ! :-)

Been shooting with my trusty old Canon GL2 for the last four years without any problems.
That camera has been through hell and high water which included three typhoons in Saipan and the Phillipines. It "just keeps going" :-) It is one honey of a machine.
Needed to move up to HD. The Canon A1 was my 1st choice for awhile. Had a strong need to get out of the tape business.

The 150 won by being tapeless. I consider myself a rank newbie when it comes to talking about more of the technical stuff you all are talking about. Slowly getting a handle on it. Used Pinnacle 9 , 10 and Avid Liquid for most of my editing in SD.

Just bought a quad core computer with the Phenom chip and 3 gigs of RAM to edit with P-12 as soon as my graphic card arrives too. PNY XLR8 GeForce 8800 GT. The computer has XP installed. Some of my friends said that I need to get XP pro or consider the possibility of of going to Vista. Open to suggestions here.

I hope I am on the right track with this combo. Still groping in the dark and feeling my way along as best as I can.

Will keep shooting SD with my GL2 as I make the slow transition to tapeless HD. The 150 has two XLR inputs. Can I buy a mini adapter for my RODE shot gun to plug into the XLR ? I shoot mostly travel logs and an occasional wedding, lots of yacht races and surfing contest's from the back of a powerboat or jet ski. Thanks in advance for your replies on this. Bob :-)

AVC HD footage importing too quickly
 

I need some assistance. I have footage shot at 720p 30fps and when I play it back natively in toast 9 it looks great.

Any time I try to encode it either in Final Cut or Toast it renders very fast. It is like it doubled the frame rate. No matter what frame rate I import it at or what codec I use it always comes out super fast. Any ideas?

Why is the fast rendering a problem? I'm sure many would be happy with that, how about the output quality, does that look bad?

edit: Now I see I misunderstood, you meant it plays too fast?

AVCHD footage plays too fast also
 

I'm having the same problem with 720/30p AVCHD footage that plays too fast once it's brought in to Final Cut. I was told by Panasonic that of all the modes you can shoot in on the HMC150, PH mode at 720/30p is not yet supported by FCP. All other modes/frame rates are.

So I had to transfer the footage to tape on a different camera.

Hi Jeff. Thanks for the heads up on this. I like everything except the price! I especially like the ability to set focus limits for rack focus shots.

The 521pfi does not include zoom control - you have to buy the 521P to get that. So zoom, focus and iris control is north of $500.

Hi Everyone
Great Thread as I"m also considering a new camera. Right now I'm shooting with the Sony VX2000 and DSR-250. 2000 is 4 years old and the 250 all decked out is 19lbs. ugh! But I shoot legal video so need the date/time stamp that the 250 has but I don't take the 250 on the road with me. Our trip last March to Europe where I shot some tourist and railfan stuff for DVD's I took the 2000. wish I had a HD cam though. Shot natural light in Budapest's historic metro line. Wonder how this 150 would do?

YouTube - Budapest's Historic Metro Line 1.


Editing with Vegas 8 pro and Final Cut Express on my new MacBook Pro. I'll be upgrading my editing machine to a Mac Pro and Final Cut Studio 2 as well as BootCamp and XP for Vegas.

My 2 majpor concerns, well 3 if you consider editing the AVCHD format, is focus and low light capabilities. I get some fantastic low light shots like in Subways with my 2000.

So how is the 150 in low light? Also I've heard that focusing is critical with the HD cameras. Not a easy as in SD? Most ofmy technical shooting requires me to just lock the focus to infinity. Legal work is a talking head so can get the focus set and leave it alone.

Thanks
Allen

1. I believe the 150 has time/date stamp available in the menu.

2. Vegas 8.0c Pro works great with AVCHD HMC-150 material. It would be very slow rendering on a notebook machine. I use 8.0c, no problems there.

3. The auto focus is good, about typical IMO. It's a little slower in 24P. The manual focus tools are pro quality (zoom/outline/focus graph). It's easy to manually focus as needed and the LCD is as big as they get on-camera.

4. The HMC-150 is the most sensitive and lowest noise 1/3" sensor camera currently available. You will have to go to a 1/2" or 2/3" camera to beat the HMC-150. For example, the HMC-150 sensitivity is equal to the 1/2" Sony EX-1.

Thanks you Darren!
 

Hi Daren, i just want to thank you for posting your footage. It was invaluable for me as a test bench with AVCHD/Vegas 8c workflow. It seems pretty sleek, no problem at all... Slower playback than with DV, but so much more resolution! I think all will be sweet with a faster (9550 Quad) cpu , and an HMC150. Can't wait for this one arriving in Canada (next week?).

I just picked up an HMC 150 last week, as I need two cams for a lot of my shoots lately. It's a very nice cam. Went with it as opposed to a 2nd XHA1 primarily due to the codec, and a concern about how HDV was handling motion when I shot soccer. So far I think it was a very good move, however the controls are very different indeed.

On the Canon, it's easy enough to adjust white balance or gain w/o going full manual. I typically set my gain at -3db, and manually white balance but otherwise have it on automatic.
It looks like on the 150, I cannot do that type of thing? It is either full auto, or full manual without the ability to tweak wb or other parameters while retaining auto exposure, for example.
I read the manual but did not see anything covering this.
Am I missing something?

how does the lowlight compare to the hpx 170? is it the same lowlight capabilities, but with the DVC Pro Codec?

Yes, that is what Panasonic said at DV Expo.

I was just wondering if this is user error or a real issue. I’m in the market for two 150s and use half manual, half auto for run and gun all the time.

-John

What do you think is a good secondary camera to mix with the HMC150 when doing weddings? Is there going to be a problem matching up the footage when consumer AVCHD cams have 13Mbps compared to the 21 that this camera can do? What about trying to match HDV footage?

I wish I could afford to buy two 150s but that is not possible right now, so I'm trying to figure out which camera to match it with until I can afford two.

Hi,

I'm interested in this camera. I'm using Final Cut Pro on an intel mac. What are the advantages of this camera compared to my XH A1.

I know no tapes anymore and I understand there has to be made some conversion before I can edit in FCP. On a Mac Pro how fast will this be? Faster than using tapes?

btw I saw FCP 6.0.5 now supports the camera

Is this camera true 1080 or is it like the HVX200?

That's for sure on the controls being different. It's actually Panasonic, Sony & JVC that have a fairly standard controls package IMO. It's Canon with the camara style control wheel that is non-standard.

You have probably figured it out by now, when you first switch to manual, the iris goes manual and you use the thumbwheel. Press the iris button to toggle auto/manual iris. After a few weeks when you get the hang of the HMC-150, you will probably like it better. Every thing else you mention will work A1 style when you get the hang of it. Make sure ATW is on, I think default is off.

Tips to match to the A1 :
1. Turn the knee to low on the HMC-150, this keeps the highlights from blowing out.
2. By turning the master pedestal to a + number, the black level is brighter and you get a less contrasty, more A1ish look.

The only true 1920X1080 camera in the prosumer category is the 1/2" Sony EX-1.

The HMC-150 has the updated HVX200a 1/3" sensor block.

Panasonic 1/3" is a 960X540 native progressive sensor offset by 0.5 pixel (pixel shifted).
Larger more sensitive and less noisy pixels with lower resolution.

The Canon 1/3" is a 1440X1080 native interlaced sensor using non-square pixels.
Smaller pixels providing more resolving power and less sensitivity and more noise.

If you want both, get an EX-1 or wait for the next 1/3" sensor update.

Jeff, thanks for the input on Iris control and on matching the A1's output. This will make cutting footage together a whole lot simpler....I am gradually getting operational issues sorted out.
SW

HMC150 Transcoded file size are beyond HUGE
 

I have shot a few events with my new HMC150, and really just started editing them this week. I currently have to transcode the AVCHD files to DVCProHD files using the transcoder down-loaded from the Panasonic website. That was to be my planned workflow until late this coming spring when I could hopefully spring for a new computer.

But the transcoding process is a pain at the least. Now I was counting on needing about a GB a minute after files were transcoded to DVCProHD....I transcoded a soccer game of an hour in length and sure enough it was a 55GB file size.

but when I put it on the time line in Premiere Pro CS3 it would not play back smoothly and there was a red bar above the video clips. So I rendered them,,,actually it's still working on it....it's raking 12 hours to do....and now I have a file that's 105GB's and counting. It will not be finished rendering for another 2.5 hours. By that time, file size could be about 120 GB's for an hour's worth of video. I shot it at 720/60p, by the way.

Is this typical in terms of file size, of what I should be seeing? I must be doing something wrong, but do not know what. The time requirements, while outrageous, may be due to my 1.5 year old computer, running a Intel Pentium D-940, (says its a dual core w/hyperthreading), 2GB's of 533 mhz RAM, and a Nvidia "GeForce" 7600 w/256mb's on it. I have several TB's of storage hooked up to it, the drive I was copying these files was a 750 GB eSata w/ 130GB's free space on it. Well, that's gone now!

Any help or suggestions would sure be appreciated.
Are these file sizes typical when transcoding is used?
After backing up, an hour of video would cost about 4 GB's a minute. That seems excessive at the least, coming from working with HDV where an hour of edited video might cost 50GB's.

It looks like my options are to try and push forward the purchase of a new super-computer so I can edit AVCHD natively and upgrade to Premiere CS4 in the process, or...go back to just shooting HDV with the XHA1, which would certainly cost a whole lot less green.
Is this really typical of what the HMC150 needs in terms of file sizes (when transcoded) or what path(s) should I be taking here? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I think your best bet would be to upgrade to cs4 first to handle the files natively. But then again your second problem is your pc. for avchd a 1,5 year old pc doesn't cut it anymore.
That was the main reason why I bought a xh-a1 2 months ago. I knew avchd would be a pain in the ***, at least for now and i didn't want to upgrade again.

It would be better if you could avoid DVCProHD, and maybe use the NLEs native codec - ProRes for FCP, or Canopus' own codec with Edius.

There seems a concensus that this camera is best in 720p mode - that suits the res of the chips nicely, and means that the compressor is less taxed than in 1080 mode.

A good thing about this camera is that the 720 recording mode of AVCHD is full raster - 1280x720. Transcode to DVCProHD, and for 720p that has a raster size of 960x720, so you would seem to be subsampling rather needlessly.

1. Make sure that you use PPro CS3.2
2. You *must* edit your 720/60p footage in a DVCPRO HD 720p 60p project.

Good to know:
- 720/60p footage in a DVCPRO HD 720p 60p Project = No red render bar
- 720/60p footage in *any other* Project = Red render bar
- *Any other* footage in a DVCPRO HD 720p 60p Project = Red render bar

The footage must match the Project settings to avoid the red render bar on footage with no effects applied.

1080
 

I'm seriously considering buying this camcorder and I'm doing my research. I've read in this thread that the "sweet spot" seems to be 720p and thats probably what I would use it in most, but can anyone tell me how it compares to the XH-A1 in 1080 in terms of image quality?

Thanks

Check out the posts on here and on DVXuser.com.

In a nutshell, the A1 is slightly better quality in bright light and the HMC-150 is slightly better in low light. For any indoor shooting, say a childs birthday party, the HMC-150 is significantly better because of the much wider angle lens and better sensitivity and low noise. Go to the beach and shoot some of the tankers in the bay and the A1 is significantly better because of a longer lens and a little more detailed image.

They are both great cameras. Only us pixel peepers even see the difference in the cameras.
Look at the features and tapeless vs.tape.

I shot a few weddings using the HMC-150 & A1 both in 1080i since they both shoot that mode. The results cut together nicely.

I have started shooting 720P30 now that the Canons are gone, but I honestly can't tell the difference between this and 1080.

The Panasonic is more of a professional product and not as user friendly as the Canon IMO. And the Pana needs an aftermarket mic immediately. I would get the shooters kit if it can be had for a deal.

The biggest diff to me is in workflow requirements: The Canon A1 requires only the usual HDV editing computing configuration, whereas editing AVCHD requires either transcoding to DVCProHD, or having access to a pretty stout quad core to edit AVCHD files natively. I am going the transcoding route for a while, although this tends to create rather large file sizes.
I use Adobe CS3 and it was cool to be able to mix some 1080/60i from the A1 with some 720/60p from the HMC150. It actually worked. Cut well together, too.