Panasonic HVX200

First teaser was the JVC HD1/10, then Sony showed up with the FX/Z1 with 3 CCD HAD at 1080i and with the Z , dual color system. Canon ups the ante with the XL HD1 and their version of 1080i. JVC answers with the HD100 at 720P at 24P and 30P. Panasonic announced their entry in April at NAB but only recently started showing the camera. And this bad boy is the bestest of the HD camcorders (outside Varicam like Sony F900).

Why? How about variable frame rate from 12-60fps in incremental steps, all in 720P! Plus 1080i at 24/30P and 60i, all in DVC Pro HD at 100mb/s and 4:2:2 DVCPro50 and DV25 all in one camera...WHEW!

Ok, was this forged by the elves? Not really. Drawbacks are in how to capture HD. Standard DV is recorded to mini-DV tapes and the higher def (DVCPRO HD,50) uses P2?? P2 is basically 4 SD cards raided to get the bandwidth to record the 100mb/s DVC PRO HD. It's ain't cheap either! The 8GB card which can only record 16mins of 720P/60, is $1795. So for u/w you can only record 32 mins of super clips before you are out. So it's crap right...not really! A company called Focus Enhancements makes a 100GB firestor FS100 drive which can record up to 200mins of 720P at 60fps. That would make a fine substitute to the P2 system (until P2 prices drop).

What about housings?

Well at DEMA, Gates promised to have their housing available to the HVX200 and Seacam (the US one, not the euro one) also promises a housing. Depending on the optics of the housings, this camera could well be the de facto production house camera. For u/w, I guess the housing manufacturers just have to make sure the housing is big enough for the firestor 100 drive and wires.

Here are a few links to read about it:

Panasonic HVX200 official website

DVUser comparison article

Focus Firestor 100 article

Hi Drew,

I'll give you a reply.. had a quick look..Seems o.k but I think the storage side is putting a few people off. Thats alot of money to lay down for a few mins of footage..

I am looking forward to seeing this baby in action ???

Has not put me off the A1E idea though..

Dive safe

DeanB

Dean

The point is that there are workarounds to the storage problem. 4:2:2 720P DVC Pro HD at 60fps is nothing to sneeze about. The A1 is in a different market segment.

Drew I have a question for you.

I have been looking at this

http://www.shining.com/products/totalsolution/citidisk_hdv/

Going by the specs, it should fit inside the Phenom housing with the camera and then I can record to tape and hard drive at the same time. Tape for backup and in the cubboard and hardrive for instant editing.

As 25mbps m2t suffers from motion blur abit, I wonder if one can increase the recording data rate more than 25mbps with the drive. It does not get compressed to m2t out the firewire live feed of the FX1 or Z1, its the raw res that the drive gets and then the drive encodes to the m2t.

What do you think? If one could record at a higher datat rate, less motion blur.

Wags

I believe with the FX1/Z1, going thru firewire, it is already HDV and not SDI output. I don't have my manual with me or even the camera so I can't say for certain.

The motion blur comes from the compression, so if you can bypass the compression, you in theory should get better motion. I believe somebody has already worked on a bypass solution. However the hardisk would have to be pretty fast.

Drew

The firewire live feed out while you are filming with the FX1 is uncompressed.

I was looking at this new drive as well. http://www.shining.com/products/totalsolution/citidisk_hd/ maybe record the live feed into DVCPRO HD format to the drive.

The drive would fit in the housing.

I'm waiting on info from the company about it.

If it can take the feed and record to DVCPRO HD then thats really cool.

Wags

That product is pretty much the same as theFirestor. However DVCPRO HD is compressed. Just not as much as HDV.

Uncompressed would require 186 MB/s write speed if I remember correctly. That's a lot more than firewire can handle.

I think these products use the Seagate 7200 100GB 2.5 drives. Be interesting to see what happens to the bandwidth when the end of the drive is near.

I hope more of these devices come out so the HDV200 has a strong backup. DVC Pro HD at 60fps in such a small form factor is fantastic.

Here is a sample 1080i DVCPRo HD downconverted to H264 from the HVX200.

HVX200 clip

you'll need Quicktime 7