New P2 deck with HD-SDI out, but no input?
 

The new Panasonic HG-HPG10 P2 deck has an HD-SDI out, but no HD-SDI input. Anybody know if there would be any possibility of a technician adding an HD-SDI input. The deck is $3,995. plus P2 cards.

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp...Model=AG-HPG10

Highly doubtful... and it begs the question, why would you want to record from an SDI input to a P2 card anyway. The SDI output on this and other similar decks is primarily intended for connecting an HD monitor, for reviewing video on a larger, better screen than the one that's included on the deck. It looks like an excellent little field deck for managing P2 ingest on site.

The P2 Gear has no inputs at all other than firewire.

If you wanted HD-SDI input, you could use the bigger P2 Mobile. We used that in the helicopter at the Iditarod; the camera head that was mounted in the chopper fed the deck through HD-SDI and recorded to the cards.

Chris;
To record off the XL H1 from the HD-SDI jack pack. I am trying to find any way possible to record full resolution HD from my XL H1. All the current solutions are too expensive.

Barry,

There is no *inexpensive* solution for uncompressed video capture, period. You need fast external arrays, lots of CPU horsepower and the right capture cards/acquisition hardware. You're running into the biggest and most overlooked fact about using HD-SDI capture: it ain't cheap. And, that is exactly why both Panny and Sony have spent mega-millions on making high-quality compression algorithms, including the latest iteration, AVC-Intra, which at 100mbs will come close to D5 quality.

Uncompressed is difficult to deal with both in acquisition and post, but if you've got the budget for it there's no compressed format today that can hold it's own against it.

I would check the development of this with great interest...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=102312

Robert Lane provides an excellent observation as to why uncompressed recording is impractical today; however your least expensive options for recording the HD-SDI signal coming out of the XL H1 to a standard tape-based format are DVCPRO HD and HDCAM. In my opinion it all comes down to the law of diminishing returns: what you gain over HDV is minimal compared to the tremendous expensive required to achieve it. Considering that, then HDV is usually quite "good enough" unless you can *easily afford* to work in a higher-end HD format.

The P2 Mobile mentioned by Barry Green above lists for about $12,000:
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp...odel=AJ-HPM100

Recording the XLH1's HD-SDI is not easy, for all of the reasons listed above but for also two more: the XLH1's HD-SDI doesn't embed timecode or audio. Frankly, it wasn't designed to be recorded, it was designed for monitoring. It works great as a feed to an HD-SDI monitor (and a monitor doesn't need audio or timecode).

If you were to record the XLH1's HD-SDI, you'd have to record the audio separately on another recorder, and you'd have to devise some way of matching them up in post because you won't have timecode available.

The XHG1's HD-SDI is actually more suitable for use with an HD-SDI recording device, because on the G1 they added embedded audio and timecode.

Barry,

If they were using the P2 mobile with an H1, they should be able to record an HDSDI video input, and use the analog audio inputs from a field mixer (or perhaps the cam itself).

My mobile is being rented right now so it's not handy, but I'm pretty sure that could work (I think the audio selections are SDI, 1394 and analog).
Just food for thought.

PS - I didn't have that mobile on my purchase list/plans this year at all - but it seems to do 4-5 "$2000" tasks - so I justified it. Clients warm up to it quickly - and I use it quite a bit to cut a live downconverted DV/DV50 copy of the long-form HD material when using the 2000. It's a cool utility. Biggest gripe is that it doesn't downconvert over firewire (like the 1200/1400 decks). All else prooves solid.