I went to see AG-HVX200 in person today at InterBEE

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I believe Avid supports MXF, but I'm only starting to look into it now as it's looking like I'll have to move away from Vegas.

For my animation & effects work, I already work uncompressed, so that's still the avenue I will travel anyway for that type of work and for video to be combined into those productions. For straight video work and projects using very limited CG, it would be nice to have native MXF / DVCPro support.

[Peter Richardson]

You're right, Jeff, Avid does support MXF natively. They also allow you to mix DVCProHD footage in the same timeline as HDV footage, without rendering. Do we know if FCP does this as well?

Peter

[Thomas Smet]

If you add a Kona or Decklink card Final Cut Pro can mix formats.

[Robert Mann Z.]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kilgroe

I believe Avid supports MXF...

avid supports mxf files as does fcp but neither app has full XML metadata support

Avid files can import the metadata but once on the timeline it gets stripped, and fcp strips the metadata on the import process

the only nle that gives you full XML Metadata support is edius, which means you drop it on the timeline, render the file back to p2 and the data will still be there...

i can only assume for the vast majority this is a non issue

[Kaku Ito]

Mr. Nakagaki from Panasonic (the person helped me to shoot the P2 intergration clip) said Aivd and Canopus can play back P2 footage without converting drectly from P2 card. I envy that.
My wish is too, for Apple to support the format natively within QuickTime, so the clips can be used with QT based application software.

Additional information from Panasonic.

Mr. Kurama/Panasonic emailed me even before I email him and answered our questions about the overlay display thing, this is even the next day of tiring InterBEE attendance AND his day off (Saturday)!! I don't think he can do that so often, so I should warn you that he won't be able to answer all of the questions we have, but I will try to moderately ask important questions to him in the future. I tell you I NEVER had recieved this kind of attention from Sony. They ignored. I have to mention Canon had always been very helpful, too.

Anyway, Mr. Kurama had informed me that from the menu, you can turn the "safety zone display" off, 90% and to display 4:3. Also, switching the overlay on and off by the dedicated "DISP/MODE" button located the side of the cam.

Panasonic's determination for selling this product is super!!

[Kaku Ito]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

If you add a Kona or Decklink card Final Cut Pro can mix formats.

But most likely you have to render when you mix different format.

I heard that Canopus let you play all of the HVX200 supported format on the timeline in realtime.

[David Andrews]

Did you get the chance to see the Canopus Edius in use with HVX/P2 files? Their stand was next to Panasonic`s (ie Matsushita`s) I believe.

[Kaku Ito]

Originally Posted by David Andrews

Did you get the chance to see the Canopus Edius in use with HVX/P2 files? Their stand was next to Panasonic`s (ie Matsushita`s) I believe.

They were few booth away. But right before the show was ending, I found someone I knew and now he is working at Canopus. He is the source that explained about realtime multi-format support on thier system. But I did not see it well because it was actually after the closing time.

[Jung Kyu]

little disappointed.. color dosen't look like 4:2:2 it looks very videoish to me.
anyway thank you for detail demonstration.

[Kaku Ito]

!!? Jung, my clips are shot with HVR-A1, not with HVX200. I actually tried to negotiate with Panasonic to let me copy thier clips to the G5 Quad that we were demonstrating at AJA booth but they did not respond probably because the HVX200 they had were not the final, they said it has to go through the final adjustment of how picture looks. They said the picture will be adjusted to look to have more dynamic range to take advantage of the higher resolution.

[Dean Sensui]

Originally Posted by Kaku Ito

...any HDV cams besides JVC is failing my needs in following bikers going fast in front of me when the background is complicated looking woods and natural environment. 25MBps is not enough for action shooting. We discussed this before, but after trying FX1, HC1, A1 and XLH1, this is my conclusion.

Hi Kaku...

I gather from this that the HDV format had difficulty recording fast action with a lot of detail? Was the picture falling apart, or perhaps did it suffer some other form of compression artifacts?

By the way, was wondering if you might have been the guy I met through Audy in Hawaii back in the 1980's. Your name sounds familiar.

[Kaku Ito]

Originally Posted by Dean Sensui

Hi Kaku...

I gather from this that the HDV format had difficulty recording fast action with a lot of detail? Was the picture falling apart, or perhaps did it suffer some other form of compression artifacts?

By the way, was wondering if you might have been the guy I met through Audy in Hawaii back in the 1980's. Your name sounds familiar.

Dean, howzit.

I once found your email from an article and sent an email to you but I guess it was old or something and came back failed. Yeah, back in 80's, long time ago.

Probalby HDV would be more useful when each companies give us more format choices to shoot (which means smaller format like JVC GY-HD100). By shooting at 1080/60i, it's beautiful when you are shooting scenaries, close up of the casts, however, trying to shoot like fast or not even that fast mountainbiker passing by and either holding the camera still or following the biker with steadiest panning would introduce mpeg artifacts (like half diameter of the wheels would look like they have really big blocks around them) and lower resolution (I guess by the result of blocky compression). I have many many clips that I experienced this and I did everything I could to avoid this issue including shooting with Glidecam V8, using tripod and so on, but I can't adjust myself and change the shooting style FOR WHAT SONY WANTS TO SELL or HOW THEY WANT TO MANIPULATE THE ENTERTAINMENT CLUTURE (I personally think Sony really abuses the quality of entertainment media like video and music for the products they want to sell, I have many evidences) when honest company like JVC made desicion to go with lower resolution format in HDV to avoid the terrible looking portion of footage (usually only less than a second, but you can see as you get used to it, just like stereophile people can hear the slightest distortion in the recording) and like Panasonic decided to go with P2 that able to shoot higher resolution and frames but currently suffers with price/capacity issues. Sony Japan even advertises HC1 saying it is HD quality, but it is most of the time and it is not fully, that is an exaggerate advertisement. They advertised before that CD sounds better than analog records. Some ways they are, but not every way. They later said that was mistake (after over 20 years) and came back and said we are trying to get the audio fidelity of vinyl records on SACD to satisfy the real audio mania.... and so on.

Talking about HDV format issue, In case of Ken's problem, it is the characteristic of HDV format that it is not suitable for what he wanted to do, but DV format performed better for his needs (that simply HDV is not a better format than DV under that situation nor other situation like mine). I have done many onboard shooting with my mountain bike now and came to the conclusion for HDV that this format is not suitable for sever situations like onboard with small vibration and low frequency vibration (to back this up, I think I should shoot both DV and HDV with the same cam, say HVR-A1 because it is the latest...unless the problem is originated from the optical section, not HDV format). I haven't tried JVC GY-HD100, so please disregard it from this conclusion.

Mr. Kurama/Panasonic was a videographer before he was hired by Panasonic and he said he shot with HVX200 under sever vibrated condition and he reported that DVCPRO HD format does not suffer the same problem.

I guess Canon must have had studied the panning compression issue and vibration issue, but they probably came to the conclusion that XLH1 is going to be used more like film camera instead of video camera, so people wouldn't swing around or mount it on mountainbikes and ATB. XLH1 can capture scenaries beautifully, taking advantage on the 1080i format the best they can.

Please don't forget that my application is very niche, probably does not apply to many situation, but even in regular situation, you might run into the similar problem because it does in its extreme situations like mine and Ken's. Also, Sony did make many good products, but they are too confident about what they do and in the respect of media culture, their advertisement and sales copies are oftenly way too much wrapped around to make it sound good. I'm not enermy of Sony, I would give my points to them if they come to talk to me. I even talk about these kind of things on my column in VideoAlfa magazine which I really respect because editors let me express my points as long as I have evidences.

[Steven Thomas]

Kaku,

Now that you've seen the HVX200 up close, were you able to actually play back the P2 files? It appears from your video that you were only monitoring.

If you were able to see footage played from the camera, how did it look?

Thank you,
Steve

[Kaku Ito]

Originally Posted by Steven Thomas

Kaku,

Now that you've seen the HVX200 up close, were you able to actually play back the P2 files? It appears from your video that you were only monitoring.

If you were able to see footage played from the camera, how did it look?

Thank you,
Steve

Steven,

On the P2 integration video, the girl was shot by Mr. Nakagaki at the spot (her little stage was located right next to the P2/Power Book stand), took the P2 card out, inserted it to Power Book's PCMCIA, imported to FCP. Maybe I can look for portion of my video (probably in Japanese tho) that shows what he did. There was no trick. Only thing is that Panasonic haven't finalize fine tunning the characteristics on color and picture, so they did not want to give me the files. At 720/60p, it looked lower resolution than 1080i (ofcourse) but when you freeze it, it was taking advantage of progressive format, there was no interlace artifacts (now we can say truely interlace artifacts is bad in this situation because this camera can shoot in 60p :) ). For 1080i, my impression was not that excellent, but I'm used to monitoring 1080i in the true 1080i resolution with my digitally connected AJA HDP/Eizo S2410W combination, and what they had at the P2 integration stand was probalby lower resolution Plazma connected with component, so my normal monitoring enviroment for regular footage like girl's talking would be a lot higher resolution than that. I really have to have the cam in my hand, shoot my regular footage and bring it in to my editing environment.

By the way, Panasonic's new full resolition 65inch plasma display looked awesome.

[Kaku Ito]

deleted because I double clicked the post button.