HVX-200 and P2 changed my life !
 

Hi everyone.

I am more a regular reader and an average Joe in the world of Video Shooting, but I would like to share my thought with all of you and especially I hope I will help to convince some people to swap to Pana and P2.

Let me first introduce myself, I own different News website I am located in Japan and I used a SONY HDV-A1 for our little video. We have roughly over 70 to 80 000 unique visitors per site and per days, this is not amazing but we needed to bring something better and the SONY was OK but I wanted more beautiful video, and an easy and quick way to edit video.

I call our contacts over at Panasonic (Japan) and ask them for a sample to test for a small review and also to decide if the HVX will be our next camera, ideally we would like 3 of them. Well 2 days ago Panasonic Broadcast drop us a HVX-200, 3 P2 Card of 8GB, a P2 Store, 3 Battery and a bag... MY MY ! I was excited... The Camera look complicated for an average Joe like me but thanks to the HVX-200 book written by on of the member here, I will be able to handle the baby soon.

I went to shoot some video yesterday, under a cloudy day, without touching to anything except the shutter speed, image look better, but once again there is a lot of fine tuning to do there and a lot of place for improvement, first I should learn how to make video ;). But my MAJOR concern was... How the Hell I will be able to edit theses clips. First Once we gave back our Test Car to Subaru in the taxi I enjoyed the fact that I could erase immediately the shoot that I didn't like, saving me a lot of time, but the best is coming!

I didn't know that it was so EASY to manipulate those cards and files! Just by curiosity and at home I decided last night to install Edius 4 on my dam old P4 2.0GHz with only 768GB of ram... Installed the CAM and P2 Store driver, the P2 viewer... and go... Edius found the video in seconds and I could make a 30 sec clip within minutes, even better I could do all this editing without ANY lag or whatever on my 4 year old PC... AMAZING ! Everything was smooth even the preview. In the past I tried Vegas 6d on the very same configuration... I could not even watch the previous... too much lags.
Now I was wondering that I may not be able to afford 3 8GB P2 card and P2-Store by Camera, and I was wondering what IF... I just have 1 P2 Card, can I edit this without having a PCMCIA slot, HVX-Camera or P2-Store plugged to my PC? The answer is YES ! Just copy the files on your HDD, Go in Edius 4 to Capture P2 Select, choose the correct folder and... HERE you are! This means that if you do not have ANY of the P2 products near you, you can always read and edit file if they are stored on an external HDD!

The time I have waist before to edit those MiniDV HD is gone! Thank you Panasonic !

Now I will shoot next week 2 new cars on a private race track and be helped by a Pro, he will handle the camera... (I cannot drive and shoot ;) I am more a Test driver than a Cameraman)... and I will see the full potential of this camera... I just hope for sunny weather.

One last word... I would like to thank all of you who contribute to this forum, your wise threads helped me so many times.

Do you have the 'Broadcast' version of Edius? If not I'm suprised that worked, since P2 support is supposedly missing from the regular version.

Well I have Edius Pro 4, I didn't even know that the Broadcast version was needed. And you are right, on Canopus Website it is clearly stated that the Broadcast version is needed...

I just Download the Trial Version of Eduis Pro4 and tried without thinking of this, since I always heard that it would work (I am a Vegas user). Before jumping to Edius and give them my money just wanted to make sure it will work flawlessly

Anyway look this is a screenshot for you, it works

That's funny, I was just told a week or so ago that the trial version wasn't supporting P2 at this time either. Maybe they updated it - I'll have to take another look.

AFAIK, Edius Pro now has all the features of the Broadcast version as standard. I think they updated it sometime in the past 60 days... Either way, Edius is the way to go for editing with the HVX on PC. Now if you need more elaboarate capabilities that Edius can't handle (stuff that Vegas, Avid and the like can do), there are other options. But none as elegant or as well integrated with the level of support for the MXF format and DVCPRO as Edius is.