DV Info Net - Total cost of upgrading to HVX

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- Panasonic P2HD / DVCPRO HD Camcorders (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/panasonic-p2hd-dvcpro-hd-camcorders/)

- - Total cost of upgrading to HVX (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/panasonic-p2hd-dvcpro-hd-camcorders/47538-total-cost-upgrading-hvx.html)

I wont use a firestore drive either... it was brought up as a lower cost alternative to P2.

As far as HDD for achival? I think it is a terrible medium. I do a lot of work in the music industry and they are already having lots of problems with nice high end scsi drives failing after only a few years of controlled storage... that however, IS another topic =o)

ash =o)

Somebody said tape only lasts 10 years. I have Betacam tapes that are 20 years old and still play with no trouble. Some DVCAM tapes are approaching 10 years old with no problems. I have had hard drives die that have never been moved or mistreated. They just quit. Expensive drives too, some costing $2500. And some cheap firewire drives have died.

I think P2 is great for TV news, or for a shoot where a person can have a second set of cards and an extra person with hard drives to download the first set of cards as he shoots with the next set, and then back up what's been downloaded to a second drive or computer. Somebody compared the P2 card to film magazines, but it's not the same. You do have spare magazines loaded, and an assistant to unload and reload the ones you're not using. That part is fair. But when the film is processed, you have your original film. When the P2 card is downloaded and erased, all you have is the hard drive, which can fail a lot easier than a tape or film can be damaged.

I think Sony is on the right track to a tapeless world with the optical disc drive. The discs are cheap enough that they can be stored just like tape. Maybe P2 cards will come down in price and up in capacity to compete with optical discs, and if that happens, then the world will be a better place and if that happens I will be in line to say P2 is better than Bluray discs.
I guess my ideal small camera would be the JVC shoulder mount one that uses real lenses, with the capability of recording Panasonic's DVCPRO HD onto Sony's Bluray optical disc. Oh yeah, and I'd like it for about $6K, thank you.

After some reflection, I guess this whole issue of tapless vs. tape is on topic. After all, it's the main selling feature of the HVX.

My 'paranoia' for capturing with both formats is justified. I shoot alot of medical device training in the OR for corporate work. Most of these are on patients whom agreed to have it filmed. After tallying up the cost in fees for paying the docs/facilities and support and total human effort, even simple mistakes cannot be tollerated.

For the record, in my opinion, tapes simply outlive Hard drives.

First. I have a drawer full of firewire drives with multiple projects. I mark the format date on each one, and usually when they get about 2 years of age, things get noisy, and files become corrupt.

Second. About once a month I have to fire up my recovery software and perform a raw scan of hard drive that simply quit working. Then I transfer the files that survived to a new drive. The process usually kills an entire day. So, I've leaned to backup up support files to DVD, and simply recapture from tape. Saving many hours of watch and wait.

Third. Every year I have to swap out the drives in my scsi array, as one usually goes down. I had a media array once, and within the first month, had to send it in for a recovery, and lost a week on the project.

So I can only go by what I've learned. Don't get me wrong. I don't have a $120K avid and $80K cameras. My entire investment comes in at about $25K. I just learned to adopt workflows from the pros. Some folks here relish technology and embrace it wholly on it's novelty. Yet, hollywoods vaults are bursting with decades old media that survives the test of time. The HVX is a great concept, and I hope it proves itself well. I plan to rent one to see for myself. But until then, I'm going with what I know works.

It's siimple man,

If you're doing videography, you won't need the freaking camera for a while anyway, because most clients (from my experience) won't care a dime's worth. Get the next generation in a few years.

If you're doing high-quality features or shorts the camera and upgrading isn't as expensive as you think, assuming your work flow really won't be much faster to begin with. Features/shorts of quality are done like a movie set. If you're moving at that speed, you have time to dump footage each night or whatever, or even on the spot. Barry Green has got the right idea. So admit that the camera is a positive thing to your craft, sell older, lower-quality stuff, upgrade for a minimal cost considering what you're getting, and get on with your shoot.

Nothing is simple, yet. We need the camera to be released before anything can truly be said about workflow or costs.

As it stands at the moment, if you have a Mac and FCP you are fine. Getting DVCpro50 or HD into a PC unless you have a high end editor is quite another matter. But it is also not just a case of your editor being able to read DVCPro files. It also needs to be able to decode the wrapper MXF format files that the HVX stores the footage in.

So if you are on a Mac with FCP 5 you will not have much to worry about editing wise. On a PC you could be in for an expensive software upgrade.

Avid offers a fully-functional end-to-end solution for both DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO-HD today. If you're using Avid on the PC, it works right now.

Other PC solutions for DVCPRO-HD include Canopus and Pinnacle.

Yes, Avid and Pinnacle offers a solution, which why I pointed out that if you have a PC you could be in for an expensive time. If you currently edit on Vegas, an Avid system, especially one with P2 compatibility isn't exactly going to be cheap.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barry Green

Well, if you want to do the same things you used to do, your additional budget would be: $0.

I mean, that presumes you're planning on shooting standard-def DV, just like you used to, and you would be using the HVX instead because of its additional capabilities (such as native 16:9 mode, longer zoom range, better focus & zoom, better lens feedback, etc). It is essentially a 16:9 DVX with a miniDV tape drive, so it could serve as a direct replacement for the DVX.

If you want to take advantage of its high-def capabilities, well, that may require a little bit of additional gear. Presumably you'd want a high-def monitor, and presumably one that supports 1080 resolution. You can get that with the Dell 2405FPW for around $900.

You'll need an editing station that supports DVCPRO-HD. Right now if you're using FCP-HD or Avid Express HD, that means no additional cost because you've already got it. If you're not using one of those, you may need to upgrade. It is expected that Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere Pro should add support, but they may not, so that's something to watch for. Canopus and Pinnacle also support DVCPRO-HD, although I don't know exactly which products or what upgrades would be necessary.

As far as editing computers, if you're using a reasonably current system, you won't have to upgrade. You may want to upgrade to the latest-and-greatest, but you should be able to get adequate performance on current computers. DVCPRO-HD is a lot easier to handle (computation-wise) than HDV is, as HDV requires decompressing groups of frames whereas DVCPRO-HD is frame-discrete. You may want to get some more hard disk storage though, as DVCPRO-HD does take up 4x as much hard-disk space as DV does.

No extra expense for a deck, because P2 cards and hard disks are directly readable by computers today. You may want a $30 PCMCIA reader device for your desktop computer, but that beats shelling out $4,000 for an HDV deck. And you won't necessarily need that either, because you can plug the camera in via firewire and read the contents of the P2 cards straight from it. Whereas that workflow was shied away from with tape-based cameras (i.e., you didn't want to put additional wear and tear on your $4,000 camera by using it as a capture deck), with the HVX/P2 situation that's a non-issue because there is *no* wear and tear when copying files off the P2 cards, whether through the camera or through a PCMCIA slot on the computer.

So that leaves recording medium. To record HD on the HVX you'll either need P2 cards or a DVCPRO-HD-capable FireStore (or comparable product) or a direct firewire connection to a laptop or desktop. If you're using a studio setup where you can direct-connect, then there's no additional cost -- you can stream high-def straight to the computer and capture it there to hard disk. If you want to use P2 cards, best to get the bundle and get two 8gb cards with the camera ($9995 MSRP for the camera and two cards, we will have to wait to see what the actual "street price" is; might be $8500 or less). If you want to use the FireStore, well, we have to wait to see what they produce before we know what that solution will cost.

If you decide to go with P2, the P2 cards can be dumped directly to USB2 external hard disks connected to the camera. Considering that there's probably 4-5 months before the camera comes out, and considering how hard drive prices keep plummeting, it's reasonable to assume that an external 300gb USB2 hard disk will cost under $150 by then. That would give you five hours of storage at about $30/hr. That's cheaper than DVCPRO-HD tape stock -- about half the price of tape, actually. And drive prices will continue to drop.

Why would Sony support Panasonic's DVCPRO-HD? Sony doesn't sell enough units, and wouldn't sell that many more units if they offered support for the format in Vegas.

Trust me, we've been asking them to support it!

I sure hope they do.

The way I look at it, it wouldn't make sense for Vegas not to support DVCPRO. I mean, they want their NLE to compete with the big boys... and the big boys are supporting DVCPRO...

It's not really a matter of Panasonic's cams vs. Sony cams when it comes to the editing programs... They're gonna try to get your business where they can, and if they missed you on the camera, they certainly want to pick you up on the NLE... besides, it's a completely different part of the company (legally it's probably an actual different company).

Anyway, I can't see how Sony Vegas could afford not to support MXF and DVCPRO, especially if this camera is as wildly popular as people think it will be...

Actually The mid range products from Pinnacle do not support P2 or DVCpro 50 or HD yet.

I use Liquid Edition Pro and only with a $1000 add-on does it support DVCpro 50. There is currently no DVCpro HD support and who knows if there will be. Now maybe on a chrome or blue system there is but now you are talking well above $20,000 for an edit system. Even the Canopus system charges you an extra $1000 on top of the high cost of their HD system just for the P2 support and DVCpro HD.

Apple and AVID are currently the only companies that offer P2 and DVCpro HD support standard in their packages.

Now depending what AVID decides to do with Pinnacle this may change but it could be a few years from now when it does.

I expect Sony's Xpri system to support HD before Vegas does. That's the system that 'competes with the big boys'.

You mean DVCproHD? Vegas aready supports high def resolutions and formats, and has done since version 4.

The big two problems here are DVCpro50 and DVCproHD which is a simple thing to sort out as it is just a point of adding the codecs. The second, and most majort problem is making all NLE systems support the MXF format. At the present time it is only the higher end editors that support this both for XDCAM and P2 mainly because at the moment the only people using these systems are broadcasters.

Vegas was demonstrated at NAB taking MXF files straight from XDCAM onto the Vegas 6 timeline. So it shouldn't be too long, I hope, before both MXF wrappers are supported.

Quote:

Anyway, I can't see how Sony Vegas could afford not to support MXF and DVCPRO,

Actually Sony has supported MXF ever since the beginning (maybe even before Panasonic)... Sony's XDCAM format already uses the MXF file structure. That's one thing P2 and XDCAM have in common.

See http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Pr...404/04-0419aE/

Unfortunately as yet Vegas does not accept MXF files. The version of Vegas 6 they showed at NAB was for demonstration purposes only. I've got my fingers crossed I won't have to wait too long though.