First impressions: FX1000 vs Panasonic HMC150

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

The files on the card are fat 32 and limited to 4gb each, right?

Yes, and this is true of every HDD recorder out there as well. No way to get around joining the files as far as I know. Would love to hear if there is an alternative.

It is beyond me why they all go with FAT32.

[Luc De Wandel]

Any Mac with a journaled HD will handle files bigger than 4gb, if I'm not mistaken...

[Stelios Christofides]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Stelios, you are just determined to get me to buy a Z5, aren't you?

Well, you might be getting close! I'm going to be putting the Panasonic up for sale, and I might take your advice and do exactly what you say.

Jeff you are not going to regret it. The Z5 is not perfect (no camera is) but certainly is value for money.

Stelios

[Ben Hall]

Originally Posted by Luc De Wandel

Any Mac with a journaled HD will handle files bigger than 4gb, if I'm not mistaken...

Yes, the Mac file system handles files larger than 4GB without problems - nothing to to with journalling, which can be on or off.

FAT32 is a file system from twenty years ago, and should have been left behind quickly imo...

[Steve Struthers]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Just a quick note to offer my first impressions of the HMC150 vs my FX1000s.

I like the HMC150 very much. I MUCH prefer the way the CCDs handle flash over the CMOS.

A shooter shot a couple of hours of footage in 720p for a wedding Saturday, and I like the way it looks.

AVCHD files are no walk in the park, however I presume upshift by VASST will handle that.

I miss that the Panasonic does not shoot in SD, which is how I shoot most of the time with the FX1000 now. (I did know about that prior to purchasing)

Overall, the footage looks very nice, film like.

I use a Juiced Link box for my audio with the FX1000, and I am so over that mess. It throws off the balance of the camera and I hate it. The box works great, but other than that the arrangement is cumbersome and unacceptable.

Of course you can purchase the Z5 for an extra $700, which would be a very good choice, since it offers tapeless also. I have lots more to learn about the Panasonic, and while I like it very much so far, I would, at this point, lean toward the Z5 simply because if offers the best of most worlds (16:9 SD and HD) and it offers a tapeless workflow and pro audio.

If you are looking strictly at image quality, I don't see either one is much better than the other. I have read the posts of us comparing images, etc., and I still believe the differences are too small to care about, but it is honestly too early for me to tell. As you can read below it turns out the settings were changed by an inexperienced operator and I cannot determine how good or poor the Panasonic stacks up.

Sometime next year I hope to be able to buy a new cam that will replace my Canon HV30. I just need to find the money first! (Psst! Anybody wanna donate to Steve's Buy a New Camcorder Fund?? : ) )

I like the Canon, but would like more manual controls and a more capable lens with the ability to focus manually.

I'm looking at either the Sony FX1000 or the Panasonic AG-HMC150. If the footage I've seen on Vimeo is anything to go by, the Sony seems to have a sharper image. I also like its balanced colour gamut, while the Panasonic seems to have a bit of a greenish, slightly washed-out tinge to it.

The only thing I don't like about the Sony is that it uses tape. Card-based media would be much more convenient. On the other hand, it's good to know that the FX1000 can be mated with the HVR-MRC1 CF recording unit.

[Franklin Bencosme]

After reading those coments about the HVR-MRC1,this will be my
next $$$$$ for the Z5 !!

Franklin Bencosme !!



" We don't do videos, we do memories "

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Ben Hall

Yes, the Mac file system handles files larger than 4GB without problems - nothing to to with journalling, which can be on or off.

FAT32 is a file system from twenty years ago, and should have been left behind quickly imo...

Yes, PCs handle files bigger than 4GB as well... I was talking about the tapeless on-camera recorders, like the Sony MRC, DR60, Firestores, etc, which are neither macs nor PCs, but are meant to work with both. All use FAT32 for some inexplicable reason and none can do a single file larger than 2 (or 4) GB, to my knowledge. If I could find one that did, I'd buy it (four of them, actually) in a heartbeat.

[Jeff Harper]

Are you kidding me Adam, they all use fat 32? That is crazy.

I am looking at ADS pryro drives from someone local tomorrow, I'm so disappointed to hear this.

I'd be better off in that case with the Sony unit, I suspect.

[Adam Gold]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Are you kidding me Adam, they all use fat 32? That is crazy.

I agree and cannot figure it out. I posted a question about why this is over in the tapeless section and I hope someone who knows can explain this.

[David Jonas]

I think the reason is because they want a format that is compatible with both PC and Macs and NTFS doesn't work on Macs and HFS don't work on PCs. They should just make the cameras able to write to both formats.

[Ben Hall]

Originally Posted by David Jonas

NTFS doesn't work on Macs

Macs read the NTFS filesystem just fine, so NTFS would work as a format.

[David Jonas]

Originally Posted by Ben Hall

Macs read the NTFS filesystem just fine, so NTFS would work as a format.

True you can read NTFS on a mac but you can't write to NTFS. Remember most persons would need to both read and write back to disk. Snow Leopard I hear will write to NTFS though.

[Ben Hall]

Originally Posted by David Jonas

True you can read NTFS on a mac but you can't write to NTFS. Remember most persons would need to both read and write back to disk.

I thought that 99% of the time you'd be copying the files off the card and to the computer, so the write issue would be less of a problem. Anyway, I guess FAT32 is such a lowest common denominator format that works for the vast majority of users, they use that, and implement workarounds.

Perversely, it is a file system that is rubbish at dealing with large files, which is precisely what HD video cameras generate... go figure..! ;)

[David Jonas]

Originally Posted by Ben Hall

I thought that 99% of the time you'd be copying the files off the card and to the computer, so the write issue would be less of a problem. Anyway, I guess FAT32 is such a lowest common denominator format that works for the vast majority of users, they use that, and implement workarounds.

Perversely, it is a file system that is rubbish at dealing with large files, which is precisely what HD video cameras generate... go figure..! ;)

I completely agree. Don't have a file based camcorder as yet. Would love the HMC and would prefer an unlimited size file system. It was a pain editing with FAT32 back in the day and it can only have gotten worse since we thought that that era was over.