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Sony HVR V1U vs Panasonic AG-HVX200
I posted this in the HDV forum, so sorry if you have to see it twice, but I am hoping for some feedback fairly soon, here is my dilema…
I just purchased the new Sony HVR V1U, (hasn’t arrived yet) and although I had read some negative things about capturing, editing and compatiblity with FCP, I went with it and bought it more based on the good things I read about and how beautiful and sharp the picture is supposedly. Now, I have been researching the Panasonic AG-HVX200, and am starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have paid the extra 2000 dollars and gone with this camera, as it comes with a P2 card. Anybody have any hands on experience with both cameras that would want to share their opinion? I am looking for a high end prosumer camera that shoots 24p and that I can keep a fairly simple workflow in FCP as I had with my trusty Sony VX2000.
I plan to use this camera for shooting high quality stock and also working on an upcoming documentary, so any feedback would be great before I open this Sony Camera when it comes to my doorstep tommorow or the next day.
thanks,
Jesus
http://www.zeechproductions.comG5 quad FCP 5.1.2
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15 Replies
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Hey,
If the V1 works like the Z1, capturing from the component out into FCP 1080i DVDproHD is a snap, and looks amazing. Good luck with it, I’m interested in the same camera, so I’ll be keeping an eye on this thread.
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I’m going to throw in my two cents…
My main concern is the P2 thing. Before I get started, I’m not bashing the P2 concept. I’m just not a fan of any format that has not permanent storage solution. In order to use P2, you have to shoot with it and dump it to a hard drive for use. My issue is what is a good backup medium for this. At the moment, there’s not much other than lots of dual-layer DVDs or Blu-Ray data dics. Hard drives are NOT a long term solution.
I’ll lean with the Sony concept any day with this camera. You have a tape drive and a hard drive solution that can be used at the same time. When you get done, you dump your footage to your RAID and your tapes are used as backup. Great solution to the P2 issue.
Now, when you are comparing the cameras directly… I would probably lean towards the Panasonic HVX200. It shoots an amazingly gorgeous picture. Sony’s V1U is still new and I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet to test its quality (I’m hoping to do this very soon).
My co-worker has recently shot a small budget film using the Panasonic HVX200 and while it has gorgeous pictures, dealing with the P2 issue was a nightmare. As a matter of fact, we really don’t have a hard permanent storage copy of it yet (budgetary reasons). While we did use a Firestore drive with it, it still makes us nervoucs to think that the only copy of the raw footage resides on our TerraBlock with a firewire drive as a backup to that.
Workflow-wise…. Yeah, there are some issues with the Sony V1U and FCP at the moment, BUT I am fairly sure that these issues will be worked out sometime around NAB. One solution to most of the issues are that you can digitize all of your footage into the DVCProHD codec and not even bother with the HDV codec. DVCProHD covers all of your bases with the formats.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Wayne, take a look at the Canon A1, I chose it over the V1. The image goes toe to toe with the hvx, and I’m a long time panasonic fan. I could not agree with you more about the long term storage issues regarding P2, it was a deal breaker for me with the hvx. Panasonic has said that they recognize this is a major issue, and are working on affordable, relaible hardware storage solutions. We’ll see what they come up with, but in the meantime, in a couple of years, people are going to be crying their eyes out about lost footage stored on a .29 cent shiny disc that’s gone south or a fw drive that won’t spin up.
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I hear ya! Hopefully, if Panasonic wants to stay on top of the business, they’d better announce something at NAB on these storage solutions.
Storage is a MAJOR consider with us and should be for everyone else, too. We looked at the Canon also… BUT there was one major issue that we didn’t agree with that Canon dropped the ball on… No deck. Canon’s tapes don’t always work in other machines, either. Big drawback for us…
We ended up going with the XDCAM HD F350 camera with Sony Z1U’s as secondary cameras. In the real near future, we are looking at trading in the Z1Us for V1Us so that we have full compatibility with XDCAM HD.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
Canon’s proprietary 24f is a pain, but none of their competitors seem too interested in making a deck for them 🙂 Their solution, the HV10 and now HV20, is pretty good, but it falls apart in situations like yours, where you need to integrate with other manufacturer’s hardware. The V1 is certainly no slouch, doubt you’ll be disappointed.
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[Wayne Carey] “My main concern is the P2 thing. Before I get started, I’m not bashing the P2 concept. I’m just not a fan of any format that has not permanent storage solution. In order to use P2, you have to shoot with it and dump it to a hard drive for use. My issue is what is a good backup medium for this. At the moment, there’s not much other than lots of dual-layer DVDs or Blu-Ray data dics. Hard drives are NOT a long term solution.
There are many solutions available. The cheapest being DVDs and the most expensive being a server. In between we have Blue-ray and DLT. DLT has various points of price as well. I think that it does take some getting used to as far as comfort level, just as it did with me and the still image camera and digital memory there ,that I use almost exclusively at this point. I have archives of negatives but to find the one I want, well that is more challenging. To find the one I want of the digitial stills is very simple, I know where it is filed on my hard drive.
As far as hard drives not being a longer term solution, I too was challenged on this idea by one of the consultants that does some work with the folks at Western Digital and he told me that this spin-up thing used to be true and I certanily have my Zip drives to prove it, but today, apparently technology has changed. Not sure I would go there as I see the Blue-ray or the DLT and a better and cheaper solution.
I feel the beauty of the format is that it gives you a codec that was designed for the high end and doesn’t make you buy a proprietary deck to edit it. Not all deliverables are required in tape, and frankly you can rent the machine you need for the deliverable.
[Wayne Carey] “Workflow-wise…. Yeah, there are some issues with the Sony V1U and FCP at the moment, BUT I am fairly sure that these issues will be worked out sometime around NAB. One solution to most of the issues are that you can digitize all of your footage into the DVCProHD codec and not even bother with the HDV codec. DVCProHD covers all of your bases with the formats.”
The issue is in the long GOP, once you compress it is gone, HDV 25Mbs, DVCPRO HD Iframe only 100Mbs. So if you compress to a Long GOP Master, playing it out into a DVCPRO HD timeline does not make it 100Mbs in it performance. It only edits like 100Mbs. The footage still has all of the attributes of HDV. In other words, 4:2:0 turned into 4:2:2 at the time of editing, is not real 4:2:2, your original does not have the original color, you gave that away in compression. Long GOP, 15 Frames turned into I frame does not make it like an original I frame recording, and so on.
Hope this clarifies,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
How many people think tape is a long term storage solution, raise your hand! Nobody. I thought so. I’ve got 1″ tapes from 20 years ago that are for sh#@#t now. I’ve got 3/4″ tapes from 10 years ago that are worthless. I’ve got regular and Hi-8 tapes from 10 years ago that nobdy can capture. We’ve been dubbing all our archived video to Digibeta for the last 5 years, but Digibeta won’t be here in 10 more years. How is it that tape is better archive solution than a digital file? At least with a drive if you want to archive to another medium it’s just a simple file transfer.
I imagine we’ll have to archive our digibeta masters off to some other medium in five years time.
HDV. Don’t get me started. We had to color correct a Discovry show that was shot HDV then bumped to HDCAM. There’s just no color in the image. Wound up going for a “look” because “normal” just wasn’t there.Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc. -
Hi Jan,
Hope you are well. Nice to see you here.
You chose the wrong example for me with WD. If spinup and drive failure problems are a thing of the past, it sure hasn’t trickled down to them, and I have a pile of dead fw drives to prove it. As for DVD, I think that’s insanity. I just lost some business cards from a few years ago stored on dvd. The three discs store next to it were perfectly fine. Luck of the draw. Anyone who trusts camera original footage to a shiny disc is playing Russian roulette.
Fact is, Canon hdv edits great on a g5 quad, no different than dv, and side by side picture comparisons of the A1 & HVX are very, very close. Asking people to pony up for a DLT, particularly solo operators like me, not to mention the entry level indie film people who don’t even work in the industry, just to go with a panasonic cam is not realistic.
So please, either come out with an affordable Panasonic dlt for us little guys, or at the very least consider going to work for Canon:) You’re a much greater asset to Pana than P2!
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[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “The issue is in the long GOP, once you compress it is gone, HDV 25Mbs, DVCPRO HD Iframe only 100Mbs. So if you compress to a Long GOP Master, playing it out into a DVCPRO HD timeline does not make it 100Mbs in it performance. It only edits like 100Mbs. The footage still has all of the attributes of HDV. In other words, 4:2:0 turned into 4:2:2 at the time of editing, is not real 4:2:2, your original does not have the original color, you gave that away in compression. Long GOP, 15 Frames turned into I frame does not make it like an original I frame recording, and so on.”
I will agree with you 100 percent, Jan. But we do have to look at a budget and P2 is just too expensive to us to run in our situation. If the HX200 camera could record to tape, you’d be in business with us. It all comes down to the cost of running the camera as compared to the final output.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com -
I understand….
Tape is not the best solution but it has been tested and tried over the past 40 years or so…. Actually, we use XDCAM HD so are not tape based masters here. BUT when it comes to hard drives, tape has a much long shelf life than a hard drive. A hard drive that sits still on a shelf for a year will more than likely be dead. I have three hard drives that are about three years old that now act as door stops. DVDs… the jury is still out on how long they will last. And Blu-Ray…. we have no idea.
We don’t need to start a flame war… we all have our own opinions and horror stories to share. The future of our industry is going digital and so will archival methods. Its just that the archival methods are moving much much slower than the rest of the industry.
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
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