I got swampt at my booth and could not walk around at all.
Noel did some researching, so I hope he will make some reports.
There was no news about HVX200a.

Panasonic had few mockups on AVCHD based deck with Bluray recorder.
Also there was a mockup of "tapeless HVX look like" AVCHD cam.
That was about it.
I got to talk to a Panasonic girl who is in charge of image quality of P2 cams and although I'm sure they know but I explained where HVX stands at this point on the light sensitivity and the need of AVC-Intra.

Was it a P2 camera?

I can see that Bill is definitely very desperate for a new HVX200 (hopefully, with zero noise). I go into Panasonic website - nothing.

Light sensitivity most definately, but AVC-Intra? It may give comparable quality at much lower bitrates, but by all accounts needs a lot more processing power to handle, and is likely to increase power requirements.

If the motive is just to lower bitrates to 50Mbs and thereby increase recording times, why not approach the problem from the other direction? Stay with DVCProHD and move on to cheaper cards, now that CF and even SD have the necessary performance to handle 100Mbs data streams.

Such an approach would lower dramatically the cost/minute (as AVC-Intra would), but wouldn't impact so adversely on ease of editing as AVC-Intra.

David,

Since Panasonic seems to be working on prosumer AVCHD cams (I will post the pic) HVX can be little higher in class to rival PMW-EX1 (price range wise)?
At this point XH G1 costs more than HVX200, so why not Panasonic come out with hand held with larger CCD, better resolution, HDSDI output and AVC-Itra?

I 'm guessing Panasonic is studying the impact of PMW-EX1 and counter act little later. Maybe at NAB?

Larger CCD seems a good idea (better sensitivity) if they can still manufacture the camera to the right size/weight. Better resolution - got to be, now the comparison pics v the EX are around. HD-SDI output - got to have. But AVC-Intra? Maybe, but the likelihood will be it will be 50Mbs, so comparable quality for smaller bitrates, but more complexity in editing. If the only real advantage then is just to double recording times for the same memory cost, why not just design the new camera to use cheaper cards, and maintain the editing ease of DVCProHD?

The biggest SDHC cards are now double what P2 cards were when the HVX200 launched, and the biggest CF match the biggest P2. It would be very easy to then have 4 or 6 SD slots and still have a smaller camera.

As for timescales, I think a NAB announcement is only likely if they are well advanced with a next gen camera design already, and even then a shipping product is likely to be about 12 months away. If the design process is only starting now (in response to the EX), I'd expect it to be a lot longer than that.

David,

AVC-Intra could be easily editable how HDV was more editable in AIC format.
I see Edius already supporting AVC-Intra, so I'm expecting companies like Blackmagic Design aiming to make their video products compatible with AVC-Intra. It is all wishful thinking. 50Mbps version of AVC-Intra is 4:2:0, so I hope to see 100Mbps AVC-Intra gets popular as P2 cards can be utilize the bandwidth and format.

David, do you own any P2 card equipment?

Do you have a picture of it by chance? WHat did it record to?

Sorry, but AVC Intra is a codec which was agreed upon by almost every manufacturer. There is a reason for this and storage capacity is not one of them.

If you've ever seen AVC side by side to HDV sourced from uncompressed HD, (or even a consumer AVC camera shooting next to a HDV Prosumer camera, then you will Definitely be able to tell the difference. The codec in itself is not only more efficient, but much more robust in a variety of environments and shooting modes, be it high motion, or static.

Long GOP is a good format to deliver most of the time, but too much money and time was invested to let HDV go for Intra. This is why we see Sony hammering the market with HDV is these last 2 Sony models are in fact that last ones to be released.

AVC is the future, its already been decided...

Bill,

Finally got time to browse the P2 and extracted some stills. It's SDHC.

http://www.onebikeguy.com/KakugyoBlo...es/Photos.html

SD, as in...? P2 cards are made up of SD cards. Do you mean it's a compact flash unit?

Edit:SDHC I should have said.

Looking good ...
 

I missed the Red camera demo, so, was a bit disappointed but I hope to get another try, say maybe NAB. Good seeing you there!

Not familiar with it. I wonder if Panasonic is confining P2 to higher end stuff?

Dean,

Thanks for stopping by and bringing people!