Panasonic HVX200, just arrived

[Booth]

Just in! The Panasonic HVX200 DVCProHD camera is now ours (PAL version). We'll try to post up some footage from the camera as soon as we get the Firestore to record to. Unfortunately the Firestore FS100 release has been delayed, and you need this to record 720p and 1080p high-definition footage - and variable frame-rates. Hopefully the Firestore will be with us next week. The other problem is that for PAL footage, non-linear edit programmes like AVID and Final Cut Pro aren't yet capable of editing vari-frame rate stuff, or 720/1080p - so we may have to wait some time before editing that stuff. We will be able to record and edit 1080i stuff as soon as we get the Firestore though. We'll keep this posted on the message board.

 

[Booth]

An addition ~ one of the first HVX200's in the UK

Edit ~ should have a P2 card over the next few days so we can do some HD tests.

 

[Booth]

Had a look at some HVX200 footage I recorded yesterday on my LCD HD-Ready TV.

The weather was cloudy, then the sun came out which made me realise how much the camera loves light - much better when a bit of sun was shining. There is noise in some of the mid-tones, but it's not over the whole image. It's like certain colors cause noise. If it's the compromise, I'm willing to accept it. I'd rather have 4:2:2 because the image does look like high-resolution DVX100 footage (jaggies in 720p mode are non existent - I'm sure you can create them, but it's difficult because I've been pointing the cam at a lot of horizontal lines) with nicer colors. I'm sure when it's lit specifically it'll look really good. Blue skies look like filmy blue skies instead of that crappy DV look. That red-look (everything with a watercolour pink/red) that DV has isn't there.

P2 is pretty good. I think when the bigger cards come out it'll be difficult to go back to tape. To be honest it's difficult to go back to tape now, and I've only used it a bit. It's just so much easier - especially with reviewing footage. Offloading 7gbs of data took about 7 minutes so it does indeed work on a gig per minute basis.

Haven't really played about with the frame-rates yet. Would get some frame grabs if I could, but I don't really know what I'm doing with regards to Avid. I'm sure it's all able to be worked out though, early days.

LCD is poor, viewfinder a little better. But with the focus assist you can get focus in HD modes without too many problems and as long as the subject stays still long enough for you to focus up. It's like they give us a crap LCD but knowingly implemented focus assist (software being cheaper than hardware) to make the LCD not entirely useless. Focus assist also works when you're recording unlike the JVC HD100 which is disabled when recording.

I'll post more thoughts on here as I use the camera.

 

[ctann]

I'd rather have 4:2:2 because the image does look like high-resolution DVX100 footage

Hi Michael,

Please do post your findings. I'm eager to see how this camera performs, as I am in the process of equiping for a film project, and I would _love_ to use one of these babies as my primary cam.

Is it really 4:2:2 in HD? I thought I had read somewhere that the DVCPRO-50 was 4:2:2, but DVCPRO-HD was 4:1:1. That kind of makes sense, the data rate of DVCPRO-HD is only double that of the DVCPRO-50, for 4x the resolution...

My interest in this is how well it is going to handle green-screen. Mini-DV is notoriously bad due to its 4:1:1 resolution, and I'm expecting the Sony HDV format to be even worse (because it uses mpeg-2 compression, which will "blockify" the edges). I am hoping that I will be able to chroma-key DVCPRO-HD format, without losing too much in the way of HD resolution.

I would also be interested if you had played around with firewire streaming at all. With P2 cards running $200/minute, and even the Firestore running $20/minute, I would love to find a solution that gets me a little closer to the cost of mini-DV or Raw hard-disk storage (~ .50c/minute).

Regards,

Chris.

 

[Booth]

Hi Chris.

We will publish our findings if we can get round to testing rest assured. We'll also see how it handles post-processing and perhaps try out some green-screen if Jamie at Sumners is interested.

However DVCProHD is 4:2:2 the same as DVCPro50. DVCPro50 is less compressed than DVCProHD but obviously DVCProHD records the most resolution.

From early playing with it, I can state that it does record a really nice image in both SD (DVCPro50 & even standard DV looks nice), and in HD. I've seen well lit Sony Z1 footage without any post-processing, and now seen PAL HVX200 footage without post-processing and the HVX200 looks far nicer 'out of the box. It just isn't as good as the Z1 under low-light.

So this is the camera to have if you can light your scenes well, or are shooting in a decent lit environment.

If you are thinking of buying the camera, please also bear in mind that there's the P2 cards to purchase. An 8gb P2 card is over £1000 at the moment, and records 8 minutes of DVCProHD 1080p footage - 16 minutes of DVCPro50 - or 20 minutes of DVCProHD 720pn (native). You can only record at different frame rates to under or overcrank the footage in 720pn mode.

Of course you get 32 mins of DV or DVCPro recording too.

It's then your job to offload the footage elsewhere so that you can wipe the card and use again.

It sounds a bit of extra work but it was cool to be able to just drag and drop DVCPro50 footage into Avid last night instead of digitising.

Another thing to bear in mind is that Avid doesn't currently support PAL DVCProHD 720pn or 720p. They are currently working on a fix which should be appearing sometime this month. I don't think any NLE works (Final Cut, Premiere, etc) with those PAL formats yet apart from Edius Broadcast.

You can however record DVCProHD 1080p, DVCProHD 1080i, DVCPro50, DVCPro and DV and Avid works with them fine, I've tested them personally

 

[Dominic Hailstone]

Hi Michael,

I'm thinking of buying a PAL DVX200 myself and I wanted to ask you a question if you don't mind.

In your article you mentioned that you couldn't edit in variframe mode in PAL. Do you know if it's possible to get the footage off the camera to use effectively in a program like After Effects? I'm not interested in actually 'editing' the footage in real time just mucking around with it.

Cheers,

Dominic.

 

[Booth]

I have no idea I haven't tried it. There's still no 720p pal support for Avid as yet though. 1080 edits fine. A way around this (if 720p MXF isn't supported) is to go through third party software like DVFilm maker (or Raylight) to convert the files to Quicktime and then take that file into After Effects.

http://www.dvfilm.com

 

[Dominic Hailstone]

Thanks for your help.

 

[Booth]

An update on this. The latest version of Final Cut Studio for Intel Macs will cope with all the formats that are used by the HVX200. Even variable frame rate footage can be imported straight in, and then exported out for use in other programmes such as After Effects.