I'm giving it up
 

Here is my tape: Fuji. Here is my film: Fuji Velvia 50, Konica VX200, Ilford Delta 400 and 100. Here are my filters: mostly Cokins. Here is my mic: Apex 191. Here are my cam bags: Lowepro Vidcam 2, Lowepro Nova 5. Here is my tripod: Manfrotto 055pro. Here is my head: Manfrotto 128RC. Here is my other stabilizer: DV Caddie (which I like a lot). Here is my still cam: Nikon FM2T. Here are my lenses: Nikon E 50mm, 100mm and 135mm (minty metal ring versions). Here are my video cams: JVC DVL9500, Pana MX300. What's missing?? One of them Black Mambas. What else is missing? The Nikkor 28mm F2.0, 50mm F1.8, 105mm F2.5. More "wants:" let me think.... a new computer for NLE. Anything else? Yes. There's always more, like maybe a GS400 with 1/3" CCDs. Now you all know what I have. It's not much, but it keeps me happy. When I'm not shooting video, I'm shooting stills...the high resolution stuff. Have a nice day. :-))

What are you giving up?

I gave up what I own in way of camera/camera stuff. You're not allowed to post here because you don't own a Pana or one of its sister cams. But since you asked, I'm going to be trading in my 135mm for the slightly sharper Nikkor 50mm 1.8 (made in China version), since I already own a 100mm---and there's not that big of a difference between the 135 and 100mm. I'm keeping my ears perked for more GS400 info, but the DVC30's got my attention at the moment.

I own a Panny DV1000 deck, 3 phones, a VCR and 2 TV's

That's fine and dandy but you don't own a Pana cam, and until then, you cannot join the club---unless Tommy gave you the permission. But you are welcome here if deep down you really want a Pana. Would you like to hear why you want a 3-chip Pana? You won't like it. :-))

Frank, you should get one of that baby for your cams =)
http://www.pstechnik.de/datasheets/d_mini35.htm
(it will help with the Lux too ;-) )

I wonder if it will work with GS400 ...

Is that one of those attachments for shallower DOF?

yep

tries to make a movie-cam from your miniDV wonder ;)

Kingsway Motion picture reps for that unit in canada.
200 Evans Avenue, Unit 4
Toronto, Ontario M8Z 1J7
+1-416-463-4345

Yes I have Tommy Mc Haupmeisters permssion.

Besides i have something from everyone. I really don't have blind brand loyalty.

I have a Black Mamba and Canon A80. That's all because i am a poor student :( I really need a tripod and mic!

Bryan, maybe you'll find the following interesting:

click here

Bryan, here is my take on the VX verses Pana thing---3 chip consumer against 3 chip consumer/Sony verses Pana. My opinion sways strongly for the VX2000 because it is overall the better cam, beefier, better built / designed, more features and of course, it has lower lux requirements. Another factor I considered is the VX's pro-sized filter threads. Where the MX3 shines is that it's small, handy, cheaper, no need to upgrade the audio and equal resolution. With the newer Pana's, you've got even higher resolution, VX beefiness but even higher LUX requirements than the MX3's (MX3000/MX350---PAL). Furthermore, when the MX3000 came out, it was a lot cheaper than the VX2000, though prices eventually dropped for both, and the MX5/DV953 were even cheaper during their debut compared with the MX3 debut's. In conclusion, bang for the buck lies squarely with the VX2. Would I ever buy a VX2? Nope. It's too heavy for me and too difficult to hold. I've always preferred small whether poker, puffy or upright.

Oh, one final thing. With the promise of the new Panasonic NV/PV-GS400, I may take back everything I said about the VX2000.

heh guys i see how adding one of these 35mm lenses would be great on something like and XL1 but what i don't understand is how it would be all that advantageous on the likes of panas and sony's where you can't remove the lens. isn't the original lens going to be somewhat a bottleneck in terms of performance because you would still have to go through the lens. any comments.

Justin

Problem is that no one has yet seen hide nor hair of the gs400 despite all the talk. Even in Japan, it seems. I'm beginning to believe supervideo that what's coming out next is a PAL version of the gs100, with a new NTSC relative coming in 2005.

i'm sorry to say patricia but you are gamer than me believing what is published on that site. I don't know how made it or anything in particular but at a quick glance a lot of it seems quite unbelievable. the reason for this is when you look at the computers there talked about. I think most of you would know what i mean. I realise that they are definately made up because i know for a fact that there is no such thing as 3.6ghz laptop but the problem is that it affects the credibility of the rest of the website and gives me the impression that he is publishing mere dreams which we would all love to be part of but probably a little too hopeful. I mean just imagine a pal gs100 HD camera. that would make you in the US rather pi!@ed. i can tell you i would love a slice of that. tell me when!!!!!!

Justin

P.S. i wasn't talking about the part where the US gets pissed off.

No need to take everything on supervideo as gospel. What's key is that the chuckmeister sometimes has better info than anyone else. If you check out his bio, there are some pretty good reasons why that has happened. Yup, he got HD and the gs100 wrong - but as has been noted elsewhere, that's partly because of the way the Japanese use the term HD as opposed to the way others use it. On the other hand, he was way out front announcing the gs100 (in his inimitable theatrical fashion) and those of us who own it are pretty happy with it. He's also been pretty helpful to a couple of people I know when things went wrong - even though they didn't buy through his sources. At this point, supervideo is probably as good a source as some of the stuff I've seen posted recently on the gs400 - unless you think everything you've read here is totally factual.

We all have recieved the PV and NV GS400 info from Panasonic, or "The Horse's Mouth," so to speak. We have 1/2 the specs and a handful of pics. There must be a design or production problem at the moment because even Panasonic is surprised with the delay. One official sourse says there's a problem with the lens. And in my opinion, and this is pure speculation, there might not even be a new GS for this summer. Perhaps Pana's even dropped it and working on a NA and PAL version of the GS100? Summer's at our doorstep, and something's not right in Denmark. :-))

Patricia, as Frank said, the info has been mostly from Panasonic.

I'm sorry (well .. not too much) that people like Chucky, who make a few bucks from the whole deal of those cam's not available in NA will not be able to anymore, but I'm happy that I'll be able to get the cam here in NA (all English =) ).

For now all dealers are trying to get rid of DV953, as the price tag has fallen to less than a half of original price. (very respectable companies are selling their dv953 for about 800$)

It may be a problem with the lens, like Frank says, after all the lens on the GS400 are huge. But I would expect that the "problem" is another thing.
Pana is trying to make a world-wide release of this product.
July 1 is being given as a release date in Europe (in us was, if not changed, July4) To be able to do this you need to have HUGE inventory. Besides as many said this is the month usually picked for releasing new cams.


like:

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/camcorder...400b/index.htm
http://www.panasonic.be/servlet/PB/m..._l6/index.html

I think I've seen Frank cite exactly what info he got from Panasonic. It was pretty sparse. Long before the dvc-30 came out, there were at least small brochures available on the web (not with all the specs, of course - and even b&h got it wrong on the lens size - ask the purchaser in the other forum who ended up with the 72mm filter and nothing to thread it into). A lot of what I've seen otherwise on the gs400 is actually not any better than something appearing on supervideo - and at least I know supervideo has gotten some things very right in the past and have reason to respect it as a source of info, with the usual caveats. In the past two posts, speculation has been that there's an issue with the lens and that it's an issue of producing a huge quantity for worldwide release. Could be. Could be anything. Could even be it's going to be released in a PAL version first. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice at this point re which rumor to believe.

Patricia, looks like you are pretty tight with "supervideo" and thats why the subjective and unrealistic opinion/view on the subject....

actually as I noticed before, on supervideo there's a "white lighning" and an "MX8000" showing information/specs of the same cam - GS400.
all releases point to July as "availability date"
both Pal and NTSC.

B&H have not posted any info at the moment about GS400, so I don't know what you are talking about.

July was the set date from the start, so there's no sight there is any problem with the cam/lens or schedule of release.

the sparce information has been compiled and put togather in the GS400 thread, so if you are curious you can take a peek there.

frankly I don't know whats the big deal... I don't think anyone with any brains will buy a cam before the GS400 is officially released, and whenever it comes it comes...

you should be very biosed to say it will be the same as GS100 since GS400 is replacing GS100 too...

Wow, now we're getting into personal attacks?

=)
hey nothing personal, just facts ;-)

Yes, I agree, but it was all from Panasonic; and as soon as I get more, a PDF ad brochure or PDF manual, etc, I'll be posting those as well. :-))

I'm siding with Patrica on this one. There has been a lot of wild speculation flung around about the GS400. Some of it was tongue in cheek (at least I hope so), but lately it's beginning to sound like folks have hard documentation that no one else seems to have seen. I'm highly skeptical of some of the more outlandish claims and the fact that they are being posted along with more reasonable data brings it all into question. I would like to see this forum get back to hard facts.

The trouble is that these hard facts are slim pickings. Since we're pushing May, there's gotta be more hard facts coming, if indeed the GS400 will be making a July 1st debut. Acording to Pana, no new info has come in, nor any fully operational units for the tech departments outside of Japan. These are the hard facts at the moment.

Compiled info are conflicting so nobody knows for sure which are the facts.

So just sit back and wait (that's the most difficult part) until the official specs are released both in English and Japanese. For the Jap website to get started with all the comprehensive (and often most reliable) info, it has to be announced by Pany Japan first.

Problem in producing sufficient quantity for worldwide release?..I dont think so; not in the $1500 camcorder business.

Issues with the lens? so that's a Leica Dicomar problem ne?

Of course, I'm only speculating :-))

Yes, that's what I got from Pana, but no real detail. I'm sure when everything is worked out, and there's production, everyone will breathe easier---maybe. :-))

since I did the "compilation" of the information posted about GS400, I can tell you that this is no "random" information added in the specs. Time will tell if I got anything wrong... but now we have conformation of the 1Mega size of the CCDs from the new Pana-BE specs.

for example:
As i said some of the information in Pana's web specs (actually only Pana-es for now) is old specs, to fill in the gaps for the web-page. But if you look at the catalogs of Pana-es, Pana-uk, Pana-es you'll see only the info that was sent to them and it's more reliable (yes the GS400 is in the pdf-catalogs)...


actually as I said earlier, there is also some signs of:
Lux1 and PictBridge, but those are a less reliable and unverifyable sources and I did not add them.

here's the GS400 specs thread for more info:
GS400 specs

damn.. there's a typo in the specs and I can't edit it out =/
it's 12x zoom, not 10x

release date
 

hi there! i'm planning to buy a GS400 soon, but very confused about the release date! the belgian Panasonic site says something about June 1st!? here on dvinfo seen talking about July 1st or 4th, and to be even more confused my local dealer here in Taiwan told me something about May!
Does anyone have any reliable info yet? Thanks a lot!!

Andreas, from what I know the availability date is July1
and the "official announcement" (of specs) will be June.

June's the month stated by a few sources..
(like pana-uk)
http://www.panasonic.co.uk/camcorders/nvgs400b/index.htm

but you will know soon, if in fact the cam will be available in June in BE, the official specs for it will be released a month before, or in a few days we'll have to have official full-specs released on Pana-be.

the best way to get the info, is to write them (Pana-Be) an e-mail and ask ;-)

first PAL?
 

hm, but all these sources (UK, Belgium, Spain) are PAL countries...
how about the NTSC version? why there seems absolutely no official info on NTSC sites (e.g. Japan, US)?
btw. i'm also very confused which model i should try to get... PAL or NTSC?? here in Taiwan of course it's NTSC, but i'm not sure how long i'll really stay here, of course i hope very long! :-)
but does anybody have a suggestion which one is better for making "worldwide" compatible videos or DVDs? i know, PAL DVD players can play back NTSC DVDs and vice versa, but which looks better on both players?
why they don't build a combined PAL/NTSC model?? ;-) i heard technically this should be possible... seems all about the money again!

Andreas, you should e-mail pana via their contact page. Ask them for GS400 info, and then post what you get, here. Keep in mind that if you're the first person to find new info, you will be the person to have out-chucked the meister---and maybe Pana USA as well. It's a panasonical idea, I think.

Andreas, there are a lot of Pal countries and only few leaked info of GS400. There are no official info leaks in US, but there are quite a few unofficial.

In my opinion Pal has better colours and gives better picture resolution. This of course won't matter if you will be able to record in HD720 ;-)

Yes, i just can agree that PAL has the better picture, as i'm from Germany and was "PALalized" for many years! ;-)
The only problem is the frame rate, especially frame rate conversion between PAL and NTSC. I just tried different programs to convert PAL to NTSC, but nothing really satisfied me. I have not tried the opposite way from NTSC to PAL, but i guess this will also look terrible!?
Of course 720p would solve this problem of conversion, but in fact i don't believe the GS400 will be able to do 720p. How should it be possible to save the stream of 1280x720p and maybe in 60fps to the DV tape? Maybe speeding it up?? Saving to SD disk is no option, way too small capacity. And no recording at all, just outputting on FireWire... hmm, not really useful if you are not in a studio or brought your large HD equipped laptop around! ;-)
So i'll try to mail Panasonic Taiwan and Japan now. Let's see what (and if) they'll reply... I'll post it!

yeah =) well.. it's 1500$ cam... actually soon Panasonic will have 1GB SD available... so just for the GS400 release ;-)

The way I would convert footage would be... well from Pal is easier, if you are not tooo picky about the accuracy.. :)

you have 25fps footage, just reset the video stream speed to 23.976 (thats "legal" NTSC too by the way). you will need to adjust the soundtrack speed. when you are done. put them togather and run them trough a "pulldown" to get the 29.97 stream =) (for NTSC-DVD)
depending on what you use to change the sound speed you may have change in the pitch (just a little), thats why u should use this if you are not too picky ;)
by the way lots of movies are transfered to 23.976 in a similar way and then "pulldown"ed for NTSC-DVDs...
(by the way... 24 fps will be better (no noticable change), but who knows weather the GS400 will have it or not)

agghh.. piece of cake, eh? ;-)

ps. I doubt GS400 will be able to record 720 on tape either.

ps2. hmm imagine a MMC - WiFi card radio-ing the H720p stream to the PC at home... hmmmm =))

ha, yeah, wireless transfer home... :-) ...but first the data rate is too low and i guess then i'd need some satellite equipment, as i often travel and shoot in the mountains far away from any access point! ;-)

ok, 1GB SD card... hmm, so that could be around 20min footage in 720p if you use the same data rate and file format as on some samples here...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx
...but... read the requirements even for playback!! 2.4GHz...
i don't want to imagine what u need to encode this in realtime and i also doubt it's good enough to be editable.

23.976fps ...hmm, good idea... i'll try that!
the pulldown should be not nessesary on the DVD as most DVD players can do this and play 23.976fps directly, right!?
But ok, then i need to get a PAL cam... might be more expensive!? :-( The guy here in the shop told me the price for the NTSC model will be likely 40,000NT$ (1,200US$). Let's see...

PS: btw. i mailed to Pany Taiwan and Japan... and now i'll try to "bother" Pany Germany! ;-)

SD cards
 

ok, email to Panasonic Germany is sent too!

I just calculated a bit about those SD card stuff...
using the new 1GB Pana SD card would give around 20min storage space at an average data rate of 7,000kBit/s.
They say the max. transfer rate is 10MB/s and even 20MB/s for the upcoming 2 and 4GB cards.
Hm, 4GB would be 80min then... or not even 6min for conventional DV footage! ;-)
So there is still a small DSP power problem about the realtime calculation of 720p in HD WMV format (or whatever codec is suitable)!
Ok, that's maybe the specification of a "GS800" then!? ;-)

hmm let me look in my glass ball.....gs800....
hmmmmmmmm.. foggy... ;)

please remember that if you have hardware encoder (as in say cams) the problem with speed can be eliminated very easy. But still it's most probable that only uncompressed stream 720 will be available trough wire (MMC/FireWire).

about NTSC DVD- only, 29.97 is legal format.
you need after encoding the mpeg2 stream, to do the pulldown.
it won't change your file size, it just adds flags for specifuc playback. As the DVD-player does the "pulldown" of frames in real-time.
(so don't do the pulldown in avid and then encode in mpeg)
but you need to do it, or you probably won't be able to author the dvd (and who knows about playback). =/

hey, Panasonic Germany replied already... but: they just write that they don't have any information yet and we should be a little more patient! hmmm, how long still?!?!?

oh, and about FireWire and UNCOMPRESSED 720p ...i think this is impossible to transfer on standart 400MBit/s FireWire... the data amount is about 2,7 times more due to the resolution change only! so should be something around 93MBytes/s! and if u really want progressive 60fps it's even double... much more than the 50MBytes/s FireWire could theoretically handle.

nah.. if there's 720 it will be 30fps...

so.. lets cross fingers and whish for MPEG4 compression for 720?
it's quite sure it won't be mpeg2-HDV

but if we take into account the mockup of 3000$ HD1080i cam:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/panasonic-p2-flash-pro-04_18_04.htm

I guess if they can make it work for 1080i they can do it for 720 =)
and record it on SD/HD.

i'm getting really tired of guessing =)

In June it all will be revieled. A whole damn month.. i'll go geeky till then ;)