Review of HPX2700 Varicam
 

This past week Panasonic let me test their new HPX2700 Varicam - you can read my initial review here

Panasonic HPX2700 Varicam Review (SLM Production Group)

enjoy.

That's an excellent overview, Seth -- thanks for posting this!

Very thorough, thanks. Only real question I have with the 2700 is how well it'll hold up to 1080 cameras and big screens. Would be nice to see some comparisons with say PDW700, HDW790 etc., as a comparison to the HPX500 was never going to reveal much!
First review I've seen of the new Varicams though, so much appreciated.
Steve

Hi Seth:

Thank you so much for the review. A few questions that were not addressed in your review...

1. How is the LCD? Is it the same as the HVX/HPX or is it significantly better? I would hope for $40k that Panasonic could spring for something more along the lines of the EX1/EX3 LCD?

2. It is disappointing that they could not have integrated four XLRs and four level controls since the P2 format supports them and so many of us would use that feature. I do a lot of shoots with 3-4 talent on camera and those extra channels would come in very handy. P2 is begging for a camera that supports four audio channels at full rez (at least 48Khz/16 bit). The cards have plenty of bandwidth to support it.

3. Any indication of what street price will be on this camera?

4. Do you have any recommendations on specific lenses that support the CAC function?

I am pitching some shows and may be required to shoot 2/3" on some of them so I am considering two cameras. I am investigating whether the massive amount of extra cash that this camera would require over the HPX500s for me. I know this camera is significantly better but I am also not sure if it would be worth 3 or 4 times as much money for my needs. After all, budgets are much lower these days and the 500 is no slouch.

Thanks,

Dan

Hi Steve:

Barry Braveman's review has been up for a few months here Review: Panasonic AJ-HPX2700

He does discuss the 1080 look and feel and the comparison between a native 720 camera and 1080, 2k and 4k. I agree with Barry, very few viewers are very discerning of quality, it is more us that are concerned. Many of the top rated shows on cable are shot on outdated prosumer cams and still pull in great ratings and millions of dollars of revenues. For filmmaking, that is a whole different ballgame but for episodic television (non narrative), the 2700 looks to be a major contender. The only reason I see for shooting RED is RAW and 35mm depth of field. Other than those two issues, it seems that the 2700 would be the ideal camera. Add a killer lens though and yikes, we are we at $50 or $60k? Hmm...

Dan

Cheers Dan.
Here in the UK DS Video has it listed at £22,750. Welcome to DS Video - Search for products
Steve

Not sure what you are asking here - it is a true 1080 full rastor 10 bit camera

1- lcd seems about the same - maybe a bit better but to be honest i didnt notice.
2- totally agree - especially since the 500 has 4 independent inputs and channels
3- No - i just know the MSRP is just under 40K
4- Not specifically although they are started to have the high end lenses with CAC Files to further improve them.

Ouch, $37,339.00, that's not much of a discount off of MSRP. I am sure that this camera is hot too, perhaps after six months we will see a price drop. Who knows?

Thanks,

Dan

Thanks Seth.

1. This is their second to the top of the line flagship camera. The excuse was that on the HPX170 and HVX200, because both shoot in SD, the LCD needed to be SD, but since the 2700 only shoots HD, having a super low resolution blurry LCD is unacceptable to me. I would think that ENG and EFP people who do run and gun would be pretty unhappy about that. Guess I would have to also factor in the cost of an SDI 8" monitor to sit atop it. It's not the cost, its the weight and extra space needed. The EX1 and EX3 prove that it is possible to create a higher resolution more useful LCD at price points that are less than 1/4 of the price of the 2700. Not a dealbreaker but very disappointing if it is the same LCD that my 170 has. Good to hear that the VF is excellent, good consolation prize.
2. At this budget, only two audio channels just doesn't make sense to me at all.
3. It will be interesting to see the price points in the U.S. market
4. Budget-wise, you are looking at $20,000.00 to $30,000.00 for a "good" higher-end lens for this camera then, correct?

Thanks,

Dan

yeah prob that for a lens - but the lower end 8-10K cac lenses are better then you might expect as long as you dont need to avoid breathing.

to be clear - there is 4 channels of audio but only 3 inputs to the cam - 1 in front - 2 in rear and I didnt determine if you could use all three at the same time

I'd understood the 2700 was based on the 2100 front end - which most definately has three 1280x720 chips.

The 2100 will give an upconverted 1080 signal, but it would be incorrect to then call it "true 1080 full rastor", is it not the same with the 2700?

At the moment, if you want variable speed, you realistically have to think along 720p lines with current technology. Now that 1920x1080 screens are becoming virtually standard in TVs of 42" and above, the benefits of 1080 resolution are beginning to be noticed by more and more.

What I think Steve is saying is that with a 2700 you are stuck with 720 resolution, with a PDW700 you can record true 1920x1080 for normal speed shooting, and only have to go to 720 for variable speed.

that is true about the sensor. But rez is much more then just the pixel sites on the chip - to really make a comparison MTF tests would have to be done on both cameras to compare what they actually record. But the 2700 is full rastor 1080 in the Image processing and output section.

I did perform MTF tests on this cam but am still working at sorting the results and I would only use mine as a comparison to the other cams I was testing since I used self generated charts so its only a relative test - not an absolute one.

"rez is much more then just the pixel sites on the chip " - well not really, rez is rez, full raster 1080 means 1920 x 1080 on the chip ie 2.2 million pixels. The 2700 is 1920 x 1080 by up-rezzing in camera from 1280x720 pixels on the chips. That's why there is a 3700.
Steve

...however, that's not to say that the PDW700 picutre overall is "better" than the 2700, far from it. The AVC codec on the 2700 is certainly better than MPEG422, and the 10 bit vs 8 bit will also give benefits in dynamic range and subtlety of tones. But the rez would worry me, partly for the way it might show up on larger screens, but also from a commissioning point of view, with some broadcasters also stipulating that material is to be shot 1080. We're still in tricky times, and I'd feel uneasy spending my own money on a 720 camera - when it's provided on a job that's a different matter, it looks like the 2700 will be as much of a cracking machine as the original Varicam.
Steve

Well, rez doesn't directly equate to picture quality, true, but you can make pretty good predictions about rez from pixel sites, assuming the lens is not the limiting factor. Look at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/panasonic...-3700-a-4.html for talk about the 2100, especially posts 53-57.

The danger with MTF tests is that if done simply as H & V wedges, it can be very difficult to distinguish between true resolution and aliasing. The answer lies in zone plates, and in that other thread, I linked to a BBC R&D review of the 2100 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp...ic-HPX2100.pdf . In that case, the 2100 front end is easily seen to produce bad aliasing (the "ghost" circles not centred on the bottom/left corner), which leads the reviewer to conclude that :
Simple 2 axis MTF tests would probably make one think that the mtf extended quite high. In practice, it's the aliasing that causes the effect. Beware.
I don't think so. I think you'll find that all image processing happens at 1280x720, with final output either unchanged as 720p, or converted up to enable a 1080 raster to be recorded. It's also worth noting that it doesn't employ any pixel shifting, that's obvious from the zone plate tests.

None of this is to say it won't produce a good picture, but it is wrong to describe it as "a true 1080" camera. The 3000 series is, the 2000 series isn't.

I have an HDX900 and find that an HPX500 looks very close in most ways, including resolution. I was surprised that the 500 did well in noise, the low end Canon HD lens had less chromatic aberration than my $19K Fujinon HA18X7.6 HD lens due to CAC. Obviously, the 900 offers more handles for setup, but lacks a lot of the 500 features--no SD, no variable frame rate except time lapse.

In my opinion the 2700, if recording in DVCPRO HD, doesn't offer that much more than a 500, except ramping of frame rates and native 720 imagers(which didn't offer the apparent advantage I expected). $13K more for a 2700 seems like a steep price over an HPX2000 or
HDX900 to me. Of course, compared to the original Varicam price, it's not so bad.

Regarding audio inputs, the front input is stereo, so that's two channels, the rear is left right as well, so four inputs, just like the 900 or 2000 or 3000. The LCD display isn't that important to me, the CRT viewfinder is so much better than an HPX500 viewfinder and the LCD is just too small for critical judgements, IMO. I always use a TV Logic 7" HD LCD on my 900.

Regarding lenses, all Fujinon HD lenses have CAC these days. I'm not convinced of HD lenses being superior to the best SD series lenses. I do believe that CAC is a great circuit.

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

Ha, I absolutely flipped when I saw the list price of $39950.00 because my wishful thinking tricked my mind into seeing $3995.00

Ah well....back to the real world...

Jeff, I think you'll find that the pictures from the HPX500 and HPX2700 are on different planets, let alone in different leagues. The 2700 has about twice the resolution, plus much better processing and codec. I'm pretty sure you'll see quite a difference even on a small monitor.
Steve

Steve,

That would be great, but my HDX900 has native 720p imagers--are the 2700 CCD's different and if so in what way? My HDX900 has 14 bit processing like the 2700. So, other than variable frame rate ramping, that seems to leave AVC Intra. You can do AVC Intra with an HPX2000 for a lot less money.

I just don't see how a 2700, if comparing DVCPRO HD, could look like it's from a different planet compared to an HPX500. I had to strain to see differences between my HDX900 and an HPX500.

Jeff Regan
www.ssv.com

I can say from this test - that although the 500 creates amazing images - the 2700 is worlds apart from it. Would the casual user notice - perhaps just a bit - but the latitude and most important the graduations to highlights were far siginificantly better

Jeff, in my limited knowledge of the engineering side of things! The AVC Intra 100 is a 10 bit codec whereas DVCPro HD is 8 bit, and it also allows full raster 1280x720 as opposed to pixel shifting employed in the HDX900 (which is 960x720 shifted up to 1280x720 I think!), and from what I've heard, the combination of these two things makes a pretty big difference. But I was really referring to the 2700 vs 500, and I have to disagree with you there as my look at the 720 images from the HPX500 showed it to be pretty soft, a long way off the original Varicam which I am familiar with, let alone the new 2700. Just my opinion though. On paper the 500 is terrific, but there's a reason why it's not been used on high end doc work much (at all?) and it's because the images are just not up to scratch - but good enough for news, corporate etc.
Steve

Seth,

Are you talkng DVCPRO HD to DVCPRO HD? I agree that a 10 bit AVC Intra codec is going to
have smoother gradiations than 8 bit AVC Intra. If AVC Intra is the difference, why not save
a bunch of money and buy and HPX2000? Or a demo or B-Stock HPX3000 for less than the
cost of a 2700?

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

Steve,

The HDX900 uses native 720X1280 imagers, the exact same as the Varicam 27H series. There is no pixel shifting for 720p on an HDX900.

So, that seems to leave AVC Intra as the difference, because as much as I wanted to see
an easily discernible resolution difference between an HPX500 and my HDX900, I couldn't.
Nor signal to noise difference. I do think the 900 has more latitude, especially with DRS.

Again, I think the premium being charged for ramping frame rates over an HPX2000 with AVC Intra board is hard to justify. I could pickup an HPX3000 demo unit for $35,000 USD,
which really makes use of the AVC Intra codec by providing full raster recording or pay in
the low $20K range for an HPX2000 and add the AVC Intra board at any time.

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

AFAIK DVCPro HD in HDX900 is 960x720 and uses horizontal pixel offset to get to 1280x720.
Steve

Steve,

DVCPRO HD 720p is 720X960 with ALL Panasonic DVCPRO HD cameras, once recorded, including the HPX2700 and even HPX3000/3700.

So, let's not confuse what the HDX900 records(like all DVCPRO HD cameras) vs. what is available via HD SDI--a native 720X1280 image, no pixel shifting, no uprezzing/scaling for
720p with an HDX900, same as the HPX2000 and 2700.

In order to record 720X1280 with the 2000 or 2700 or 3000 or 3700 in 720p, that would require AVC Intra. AVC Intra also offers an additional stop of latitude. AVC Intra is a great codec, but you can get the benefits from a much less expensive HPX2000.

Yeah, that's what I said, DVCPro HD does not give full 1280x720, but AVC Intra does.
Strangely enough, the same thought about the 2000 (actually 2100 here in the UK) crossed my mind, why not get that and add the AVC board for a lot less cash, but in actual fact the difference was quite small (maybe £2-3000). Also the BBC tests of the 2100 didn't go down too well, and it doesn't seem to be regarded as well as the original Varicam let alone the new one. I assumed that it had the same chip as the 2700 but it seems probably not.
Steve

Amongst all this talk of resolutions, the biggest surprise to me was finding that the 2100 doesn't seem to have any optical low-pass filter, which I find amazing in a camera at this price point. The big question must be whether such has been included in the 2700.

At least with resolution you know what you're getting from the start. With aliasing, the pictures can look fine most of the way through the post chain, but the aliases mess up the compression system at the end or lead to broadcasters having to use higher than otherwise necessary bitrates.

In the US, an HPX2000 lists for around $25K for the body. At one point the AVC Intra board, a $3K option, was being included in the price. Even at $28K, the 2000 is still over $10K less than a 2700.

If the BBC didn't like the 2100, I assume this means they didn't like the HDX900 either? They have the same image in DVCPRO HD. The 2000/2100/900 use the same imagers as the Varicam 27H, a cleaner chipset than earlier Varicams and feature 14 bit processing vs.
12 bit for Varicam. While the Varicam 27 had Film Rec and a few other handles that the 900/2000/2100 don't have, that doesn't mean the latter cameras have an inferior image.

I am not aware of the 2700 having a different chip set, but perhaps it does. Regardless,
it would be the same resolution, otherwise it would compete with the 3000/3700.

So, I am still left with the question, what besides AVC Intra would lead one to believe that the 2700 is so superior to a 500 or 900 or 2000/2100--why is it worth a $13K + premium
over a 900 or 2000/2100, which all have native 720p sensors?

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

According to the technical guru at the BBC the Varicam, 900 and 2100 all have different images, with the Varicam top of the heap.
The latest price for an HPX2100 I had in the UK was around £21000!
Steve

Since they accepted TopGear NorthPole for BBCHD with HDX900 that seems a bit odd. Since TG is one of BBC's high end productions, according to themselves..

And while we are debating numbers, there are numerous show shoot with say Hpx2100. Here in Norway the most popular series at the moment, "Himmelblå"(not sure what the correct translation would be, but it means blue sky(sort of)) is shot with Hpx2100. 1080p25 with DvcproHD. At the most 1,4million watch, or about 1/4 of Norway. It's not film but buy far the best looking series produced in Scandinavia, broadcasted in SD though.

Sometimes the numbers in a lab don't seem to mean to much in the real world...

If were to put numbers behind every desicion quality wise Xdcam wouldn't be accepted as a format for anything else than news.

Steve,

I was in error re: US price for HPX2000, it is $27K USD for the body, not $25K, so add an AVC Intra board and you're at $30K, still close to $10K less than an HPX2700. It is very easy to buy an HPX2000 for $22K new and under $20K for a demo or B-stock unit.

As far as the 2000/2100 having different images vs. an HDX900, this makes no sense, the 2000 is the P2 version of the 900. It does have CAC, which the 900 does not, but comparing the two cameras in DVCPRO HD should yield the same image.

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

Check out the BBC test documents here BBC - R&D - Publications - WHP034 and it shows that there is a difference somewhere (I think some mention of optical low pass filters being relevant?) Anyway I seem to recall the upshot being that there was a lot of aliasing on the 2100, unlike the 900?
Steve

The tests on the 900 don't seem to have included zone plate images, so it's not possible to say from them how well or badly the 900 fared. But the 2100 did indeed exhibit bad aliasing, so bad that the conclusion seems to be that no optical low pass filter is fitted. The direct link to the report is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp...ic-HPX2100.pdf .
Well, sometimes you need lab numbers to explain otherwise inexplicable happenings in the real world, and a very good example comes from Norway. I've quoted a piece from TVBEurope before about HD pictures of the football - maybe you remember the press comments from the time? I suspect DigiBeta is a misprint for HDCAM.
And I suspect that's one reason why lab tests, including the BBC zone plate tests, have assumed so much more significance in the last year or so. You can no longer just look at camera pictures and draw full conclusions, attention has to be given to more scientific lab tests - or risk having the same problems as NRK.

It wouldn't matter if broadcasters could just throw bandwidth at the problem. Then the aliases would be of less significance. But bandwidth equals money, and whilst two cameras may look similar on straight recorded pictures, or with light compession, they could show severe differences with normal transmission compression.

Which is why the review of the 2700 I'm waiting for is one with zone plate tests. I would hope that unlike the 2100 it has the optical filter.

Great info from the BBC. Thanks Steve. I would have to think that the 2000/2100 and 900 would both have the same aliasing issues, however, these were pre-production cameras by the sound of it, so maybe low pass optical filtration was added for production versions?

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

I think it's highly unlikely. Surely any manufacturer submitting a camera to the BBC for formal type evaluation would flag up any areas in which the production models would be better than the tested model?

Even if that had been initially overlooked, I believe these reports are submitted to the manufacturer before publication, and if their intention was to add optical filtering to subsequent units, I find it inconceivable that wouldn't have been picked up on and a statement of intent added to the published review.

David,

Yes, that makes sense. The questions I have are why haven't I noticed aliasing artifacts with my HDX900 and does the HPX2700 have a low pass filter?

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

The way I understand the subject is that the impact on the straight out-of-the-camera picture may be barely noticeable. For straightforward viewing, alias artifacts may be largely masked by the actual picture itself. It's when the images become compressed that problems can start, and then will depend on bitrates, compression systems, cascaded codecs (as with the Norweigian problem) etc etc.

As I understand it, static aliases (as in a still photo) aren't too objectionable. With movement, the aliases move in the opposite direction to the shapes that are causing them, and that's what can cause coders confusion, and to waste data trying to compress something that shouldn't be there. It's the fact that they can survive unnoticed through the production process, but have a big effect right on final transmission that makes them so undesirable, and why broadcasters now HAVE to do lab tests, why you can't simply rely on "picture looks good to me". That's a fact of the digital age.
That's what I'd like to know!

I asked a Panasonic product manager if the HPX2700 had different sensors than an HPX2000. The answer was no. I neglected to ask if there was low pass filtering for the CCD's. So, I'm still unclear as to why the 2700 would look better than a 2000 or 900 in DVCPRO HD or AVC Intra for the 2000 or 2700? It would have to be processing differences, I would guess.

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

My third HPX2000 came as an a-stock with the varicam logo on it. For whatever side you're on in this continued discussion, I would think that might tell you something. Wonder how that camera was being shown around...

I'll look forward to going side by side with the 2700. I've held the thought since NAB that they're the same camera, with extra software (cranking and Film Rec), the intra card (which mine has), and the extra HD-SDI.

Good problems I guess - with a 2700, I'll have 4 cams (2 with vari logos), and I expect that they'll match & switch images identically. Just think I'm paying another $12K for math and a logo with the 2700...