went to HVX200 demo....

Heath McKnight · November 17th, 2005, 07:06 AM

http://www.nabpostplus.com/sessions.asp

One light, no crew today. Will be fun and reminds me of the days of shooting news with one light and no reporter to help.

heath

Kevin Dooley · November 17th, 2005, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Pappas

Are you writing about transferring from camera/p2 to hard drive on location?

Do they make portable drives that run on battery power?

How do you know that the file actually made it to the portable hard drive before you wipe the p2 cards for more filming?

Can we play clips from the hard drive to see if there on the drive ounce you have transfered them from p2?

All these concerns seems moot since I haven't been a shoot yet that at least 1 laptop wasn't in use and I can think of only 1 shoot I've been on (remote location on a mountain top in Mexico on a STUDENT film) where there was no power... even then, there was a "ranger" station a mile or so away that we could use power to transfer the footage on our way down the mountain. Also I have seen portable drive enclosures that instead of having a power supply, have two usb cables... one for power and one for data.

Jaime Valles · November 17th, 2005, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Pappas

Are you writing about transferring from camera/p2 to hard drive on location?

Is that only with USB or can it be done with FW too?

Actually, transferring from P2 to Hard disk without a laptop ONLY works with Firewire hard disks, not USB2 at all. USB2 is for plugging in the HVX to a PC so it shows up as an external drive on the desktop.

Quote:

Do they make portable drives that run on battery power?

Yep. Here's one enclosure:

http://www.dvvideo.com/shop/storage/...rePortable.htm

Quote:

How do you know that the file actually made it to the portable hard drive before you wipe the p2 cards for more filming?

Can we play clips from the hard drive to see if there on the drive ounce you have transfered them from p2?

I'm guessing here, but I'd think you'd need to plug the drive into a computer to check it's contents. If it's a Firestore, then it'll probably let you see it on the LCD as individual clips, like the P2 cards.

John Mitchell · November 17th, 2005, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaime Valles

Actually, transferring from P2 to Hard disk without a laptop ONLY works with Firewire hard disks, not USB2 at all. USB2 is for plugging in the HVX to a PC so it shows up as an external drive on the desktop. .

I don't think that's right - only a firewire drive like the Firestore with a built in mini-computer can capture directly from the cards/camera, while someone may be able to modify the OTG firmware in some USB drives to transfer the data from the P2 cards without a computer using the USB host protocol, although at the moment it is only designed for JPEG's etc

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaime Valles

I'm guessing here, but I'd think you'd need to plug the drive into a computer to check it's contents. If it's a Firestore, then it'll probably let you see it on the LCD as individual clips, like the P2 cards.

I think the point Michael was trying to make in his inimitable style was that how can we trust computers the way we trust tape? Only time will tell in the field. It is a salient point that hard drives, especially exposed to the rigours of the field are hardly an "archival" format.

I see a lot of trust and faith being placed in the Firestore here as the "remedy" to P2 hurdles, but I don't think the record of any portable DV hard drive solution is too "flash"... sound and heat problems and software/firmware bugs seem to be commonplace. I personally hope Focus do get it right.

Jaime Valles · November 17th, 2005, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Mitchell

I don't think that's right - only a firewire drive like the Firestore with a built in mini-computer can capture directly from the cards/camera, while someone may be able to modify the OTG firmware in some USB drives to transfer the data from the P2 cards without a computer using the USB host protocol, although at the moment it is only designed for JPEG's etc

We weren't talking about recording directly to an off-the-shelf Firewire Hard Disk. For that, you do need the Firestore. What we're talking about is recording to P2 cards, and THEN transferring the footage from P2 cards to an external off-the-shelf Firewire Hard disk WITHOUT the use of a laptop. Simply plug the drive into the HVX and dump the footage. This was confirmed by Jan, and is one of the coolest features of the HVX.

Jeff Kilgroe · November 17th, 2005, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ash Greyson

You hit on THE number one issue for a tapeless workflow... freelance shooters. Many of my jobs are shooting ONLY, I show up, shoot, hand them the tapes and they send me a check. Until solid state storage is HUGE and CHEAP, tape will rule. Tape may be dying but it is a SLOW SLOW death.

ash =o)

Uh, no.

I do tons of freelance shooting as you describe. Not that I want to keep beating a dead horse, but once again as others have said, the cards stay with the camera. With the HVX, you will show up, shoot and hand over the data files to them on a compact USB HDD or DVD media.

In your current freelance approach, do you not keep copies of what you shoot? I *NEVER* (almost never, anyway) give away my master tape. The client must wait the extra hour or so for me to dupe them a copy. If it's a serious time crunch I charge them extra to take the tapes and this extra is refundable once they return them to me (in the same condition I gave them) and then I will give them their COPIES. In my freelance agreement, it's rare that I ever give full or exclusive rights to anything I shoot (photos, video, whatever) and on the rare occasion I do, it costs them.

Barry Green · November 17th, 2005, 11:37 AM

To confirm, offloading of P2 cards is done to firewire drives, not USB drives. The camera has the capability to control an external firewire disk drive, but not a USB drive.

As far as "how do you know it got there", I would assume (there's that word again) that you can copy with verification, just like you burn DVDs with verification.

For freelance shooting, the dub-to-hard-disk solution is pretty much the only workable arrangement I can think of right now, unless the producer has the foresight to rent an ample supply of P2 cards (and banking on producers having that foresight is not necessarily a wise move!) Handing over a hard disk is an affordable option (hard disks cost less per hour than HD tape) and should put the producer in a very happy mood (no digitizing? no deck rental? instant access to the footage? happy happy)

If dubbing to a hard disk is too inconvenient, then the stark truth is that the HVX may not be the camera for you, for those purposes. No one tool can serve all purposes equally well; the very notion is impossible. If you can adapt your style to work within its workflow, it may be suitable. But it'll never be quite as simple as shoot-to-a-$5-tape, hand-that-tape-over. Then again, with the tape situation in as much flux as it is, and with there being at least eight potential "affordable" high-def formats on the market in the next year (HDV1, HDV2, CanonHDV, HVX, Infinity, XDCAM-HD, JVC GY-HD7000U 1080i, Panasonic HD-D5), all basically incompatible -- well, nothing will ever be as simple as shoot-to-a-$5-tape, hand-that-tape-over again. I think regular DV will be with us for years to come.

Jaime Valles · November 17th, 2005, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barry Green

-- well, nothing will ever be as simple as shoot-to-a-$5-tape, hand-that-tape-over again. I think regular DV will be with us for years to come.

Definitely. And, honestly, who wants their nephew's 7th birthday pool party in HD?

Kevin Wild · November 17th, 2005, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe

Uh, no.
In your current freelance approach, do you not keep copies of what you shoot? I *NEVER* (almost never, anyway) give away my master tape. The client must wait the extra hour or so for me to dupe them a copy. If it's a serious time crunch I charge them extra to take the tapes and this extra is refundable once they return them to me (in the same condition I gave them) and then I will give them their COPIES. In my freelance agreement, it's rare that I ever give full or exclusive rights to anything I shoot (photos, video, whatever) and on the rare occasion I do, it costs them.

Jeff, I don't know who your clients are, but I never a) have the time to dub the tapes at the end of a long day or b) have the authority to say I own the masters. This would never fly with VH1, Discovery, Paramount or any other client. They wouldn't hire you again if you claimed to have "full & exclusive rights." Matter of fact, they wouldn't hire you in the first place.

That said, it's a bit silly to keep arguing about what the P2 workflow WON'T work for. Nothing ever works for every scenario. The HVX will be an excellent camera for many things. Probably not for me, because like I mentioned above, I'll need to hand tapes over at the end of the day. Oh and by the way...so far I haven't had a single request for HD anyways. I know it's coming...but nothing yet. We could only wish that things moved as fast as we do here on the boards...

Kevin

Kevin Dooley · November 17th, 2005, 12:41 PM

Well, regardless of the who owns rights argument... I think dumping off to an affordable hard drive is a solution that would work for a freelance camera op such as yourself. As you said, no has asked for HD yet, but when they do, the comparative costs of a HDD versus a DVCPRO HD tape, makes the HDD a very attractive offer. Heck, I just bought a 250 GB LaCie hardrive for $100... That will easily hold a days worth of footage (provided it's not long form event recording...). Plus, as has also been mentioned, what producer wouldn't want to have the footage already "digitized" with no deck necessary. Heck, he/she can watch the footage as they fly back to New York with just their laptop...

Kevin Shaw · November 17th, 2005, 02:16 PM

The irony here is that one of the big purported advantages of P2 recording is the durability of the solid state memory cards, but the first thing most people are going to do with P2 data is dump it off to hard drives of one type or another. Given that, it follows that a lot of people will simply record directly to the Firestore drives once they become available, bypassing P2 cards altogether. It's a wonder they didn't build this camera with a slot for a removable 2.5" hard drive -- the base is just about exactly the right size to do this.

Steev Dinkins · November 17th, 2005, 02:32 PM

For me, I aim to take advantage of the massive speed superiority of P2 over hard drives. PreRecord, Clip Deletion, Clip Review in the Camera, instant recording potential, and fast file transfer into my edit station is a huge appeal of P2 to me. It doesn't sound like hard drives will have this kind of performance. For fine tuned shooting sessions that are focused on quality of multiple short takes, rather than event capturing, I may get by with P2 without hard drive transfer, no problem.

Conversely, if I know the shoot is going to be a lot of long duration event based recording, as you said, it's time to use a FireStore, or capture to hard disk via FCP to hard disk.

The final thing that helped me make my purchase decision was realizing, after all, there's still shooting to "good ole" miniDV tape in DV25.

Marty Hudzik · November 17th, 2005, 02:33 PM

You hit the nail on the head. It does seem a little bit of a waste to have P2 cards and just dump the data off immediately and trust your critical footage to a HD. I have never used any of the firestore devices but I have read enough on internet forums of problems and reliabilty issues that it concerns me. I hope it is robust.

If I can somehow afford a couple P2 cards I will be offloading them immedately to HDD and wiping the P2 card clean. I am concerned about corrupt data ending up on the HD and then having no "original" to go back to recover the shot. This "tapless" workflow has some pitfalls that really need to be worked around!

Bill Pryor · November 17th, 2005, 03:38 PM

I think it works if you're in a studio setting and have time and equipment to transfer the files and back them up, then reuse the P2 cards. In most any studio shoot I've been on, there usually would be time to do that.

Where the idea doesn't work is for the guys who may go on the road for a couple of weeks and come back with several hours of documentary footage. Even dumping the stuff to those 60 gig portable hard drives would be expensive, since 10 hours of DVCPRO HD would take 10 drives, plus another 10 for backup.

So, obviously the camera is designed for certain applications, and that's cool. It would be excellent for TV news too. I wonder how many stations are using the professional P2 camera for TV news, as opposed to the XDCAM and DVCPRO tape cameras. Seems a good match to me.

And, if capacities of the P2 cards go up significantly and prices down, then you've really got something.

Steev Dinkins · November 17th, 2005, 04:19 PM

If one had the ability to transfer to higher capacity drives like a 500GB, you could conceivably get something like 20 hours of 720p @ 24fps Native on a single drive. So then you can imagine instant editing (or one drag and drop and wait), instead of capturing 20 hours of tape. One could even do nightly mirroring of the drive on a 2nd 500GB drive for data redundancy protection.

I agree that remote shoots in challenging conditions probably require conventional tape. But it will be interesting to see what lengths people go to maximize and utilize the HVX200 and P2.

November 17th, 2005, 07:06 AM	#16
Heath McKnight MPS Digital Studios Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Palm Beach County, Florida Posts: 8,531	http://www.nabpostplus.com/sessions.asp One light, no crew today. Will be fun and reminds me of the days of shooting news with one light and no reporter to help. heath __________________ My Final Cut Pro X blog

November 17th, 2005, 12:41 PM	#25
Kevin Dooley Major Player Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Fort Worth, TX Posts: 414	Well, regardless of the who owns rights argument... I think dumping off to an affordable hard drive is a solution that would work for a freelance camera op such as yourself. As you said, no has asked for HD yet, but when they do, the comparative costs of a HDD versus a DVCPRO HD tape, makes the HDD a very attractive offer. Heck, I just bought a 250 GB LaCie hardrive for $100... That will easily hold a days worth of footage (provided it's not long form event recording...). Plus, as has also been mentioned, what producer wouldn't want to have the footage already "digitized" with no deck necessary. Heck, he/she can watch the footage as they fly back to New York with just their laptop... __________________ Kevin Dooley Media Director, Pantego Bible Church

November 17th, 2005, 02:32 PM	#27
Steev Dinkins Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 613	For me, I aim to take advantage of the massive speed superiority of P2 over hard drives. PreRecord, Clip Deletion, Clip Review in the Camera, instant recording potential, and fast file transfer into my edit station is a huge appeal of P2 to me. It doesn't sound like hard drives will have this kind of performance. For fine tuned shooting sessions that are focused on quality of multiple short takes, rather than event capturing, I may get by with P2 without hard drive transfer, no problem. Conversely, if I know the shoot is going to be a lot of long duration event based recording, as you said, it's time to use a FireStore, or capture to hard disk via FCP to hard disk. The final thing that helped me make my purchase decision was realizing, after all, there's still shooting to "good ole" miniDV tape in DV25. __________________ www.holyzoo.com

November 17th, 2005, 04:19 PM	#30
Steev Dinkins Major Player Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: San Francisco, CA Posts: 613	If one had the ability to transfer to higher capacity drives like a 500GB, you could conceivably get something like 20 hours of 720p @ 24fps Native on a single drive. So then you can imagine instant editing (or one drag and drop and wait), instead of capturing 20 hours of tape. One could even do nightly mirroring of the drive on a 2nd 500GB drive for data redundancy protection. I agree that remote shoots in challenging conditions probably require conventional tape. But it will be interesting to see what lengths people go to maximize and utilize the HVX200 and P2. __________________ www.holyzoo.com

November 17th, 2005, 11:37 AM	#22
Barry Green Barry Wan Kenobi Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: North Carolina Posts: 3,863	To confirm, offloading of P2 cards is done to firewire drives, not USB drives. The camera has the capability to control an external firewire disk drive, but not a USB drive. As far as "how do you know it got there", I would assume (there's that word again) that you can copy with verification, just like you burn DVDs with verification. For freelance shooting, the dub-to-hard-disk solution is pretty much the only workable arrangement I can think of right now, unless the producer has the foresight to rent an ample supply of P2 cards (and banking on producers having that foresight is not necessarily a wise move!) Handing over a hard disk is an affordable option (hard disks cost less per hour than HD tape) and should put the producer in a very happy mood (no digitizing? no deck rental? instant access to the footage? happy happy) If dubbing to a hard disk is too inconvenient, then the stark truth is that the HVX may not be the camera for you, for those purposes. No one tool can serve all purposes equally well; the very notion is impossible. If you can adapt your style to work within its workflow, it may be suitable. But it'll never be quite as simple as shoot-to-a-$5-tape, hand-that-tape-over. Then again, with the tape situation in as much flux as it is, and with there being at least eight potential "affordable" high-def formats on the market in the next year (HDV1, HDV2, CanonHDV, HVX, Infinity, XDCAM-HD, JVC GY-HD7000U 1080i, Panasonic HD-D5), all basically incompatible -- well, nothing will ever be as simple as shoot-to-a-$5-tape, hand-that-tape-over again. I think regular DV will be with us for years to come.

November 17th, 2005, 02:16 PM	#26
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	The irony here is that one of the big purported advantages of P2 recording is the durability of the solid state memory cards, but the first thing most people are going to do with P2 data is dump it off to hard drives of one type or another. Given that, it follows that a lot of people will simply record directly to the Firestore drives once they become available, bypassing P2 cards altogether. It's a wonder they didn't build this camera with a slot for a removable 2.5" hard drive -- the base is just about exactly the right size to do this.

November 17th, 2005, 02:33 PM	#28
Marty Hudzik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canton, Ohio Posts: 1,771	You hit the nail on the head. It does seem a little bit of a waste to have P2 cards and just dump the data off immediately and trust your critical footage to a HD. I have never used any of the firestore devices but I have read enough on internet forums of problems and reliabilty issues that it concerns me. I hope it is robust. If I can somehow afford a couple P2 cards I will be offloading them immedately to HDD and wiping the P2 card clean. I am concerned about corrupt data ending up on the HD and then having no "original" to go back to recover the shot. This "tapless" workflow has some pitfalls that really need to be worked around!

November 17th, 2005, 03:38 PM	#29
Bill Pryor Contributor Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Kansas City, MO Posts: 4,449	I think it works if you're in a studio setting and have time and equipment to transfer the files and back them up, then reuse the P2 cards. In most any studio shoot I've been on, there usually would be time to do that. Where the idea doesn't work is for the guys who may go on the road for a couple of weeks and come back with several hours of documentary footage. Even dumping the stuff to those 60 gig portable hard drives would be expensive, since 10 hours of DVCPRO HD would take 10 drives, plus another 10 for backup. So, obviously the camera is designed for certain applications, and that's cool. It would be excellent for TV news too. I wonder how many stations are using the professional P2 camera for TV news, as opposed to the XDCAM and DVCPRO tape cameras. Seems a good match to me. And, if capacities of the P2 cards go up significantly and prices down, then you've really got something.