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Best “B” Cam, AVCHD?
All well and wonderful shooting 24p (mostly 720) with our HVX200 and editing with FCS2 in DVCPROHD timelines.
Needed a small B-camera for many shoots so got a Canon HV20 on recommends I can easily extract 24 discreet frames from its cinema mode. Used latest Apple recommended workflow, converting clips to DVCPROHD or ProRes.
Almost every shot had a bad frame somewhere– like a momentary attack of nasty interlacing. The occurrence was irregularly timed, but frequent enough to ruin shots. Researched web on what could be wrong, only finding the conversion solution I was already using.
I want a more foolproof method to get a little camcorder’s 24 (discreet or properly flagged) frames into our DVCPROHD timelines.
So is there a small camcorder in retail existence that will happily yield 24p I can bring in (via batch conversion) to FCS2 edit projects? Would that be AVCHD?
And I tell you what, after the HV20 experience we realize how much we’ve grown to prefer tapeless anyway!
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8 Replies
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Why not buy another HVX200..??
We got the HVX200 last December and will purchase the HPX500 after NAB. That makes our wonderful little HVX200 our “B” camera…
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Would love to– and get the free card too– but we need a palmcorder form factor. Plus, our budget is in the 1-1.5K neighborhood.
This is for those shots where the camera is bungeed to a lightpole, swung or a rope, taped to a 2×4, and walked through a teeming crowd.
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The little Panny AVCHD HDC-SD1 camera is great quality but 60i. Which is not impossible to turn into 24p. There’s not much that can match the HVX200 at this price point. Either you get SD at 24p or you’ll get HD at 60i. Canon makes an AVCHD camera that shoots a sort of 24p mode- the HR10. But I think it’s quite compromised and dealing with it in post is a pain.
I’ve shot with an SD1 and it’s an amazingly sharp image considering the price and size of the camera. I’d go for that and get nattress.com’s G-Film to convert 60i to 24p. I’d do this for crash cam only though. For a true b-camera you do really need a second HVX200. With a credit card you could pay it off over a year ya know…
Noah
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Thanks for response, very good info. And I realize “b-camera” is the wrong term, sorry. It’s more about the form factor– a crash-cam may be more what I’m talking about.
I know 24 frames from my HVX200 will look better than a crash-cam’s, but the context of the shots are very different. This is mostly for documentary work and there are places and situations where a 200 simply won’t work out, small as it is.
I don’t really understand why the 24p modes of these little 60i cameras is an iffy compromise if their frames are flagged and my post app has established workflows to extract those frames for my 24p timeline. But I’m sure there’s a reason!
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About those Panny camcorders– what about the HDC-SD9 / HDC-HS9 model, which has 24p in the spec?
Do you think the method used in their recording and a workflow to FCS2 might get me to a 24 timeline without stuttering nasties?
I don’t expect stellar image quality but I do want to match the 24 motion of my main camera shots.
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Hmmm….I’ve always thought of the HVX-200 as the “B” Camera. That’s as low as you go that can shoot 24p…decently. HV20 MAYBE…but that would bear testing.
Shane
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The better term of what we need is probably crash-cam, as Noah pointed out above.
In the paradigm of small-scale documentary, for some of us the main camera is the HVX200 or similar $5-7K unit, and b-roll / nook and cranny stuff uses one or more palmcorder size HDV. These little guys work well for that stuff, but our issue is integrating clips into a 23.98 timeline.
The HV20 performed fine for shooting, it was the 24p problem we had that turned us off. Plus, tapeless is better for us now.
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Not here yet and about the size of a dvx100.
https://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Panasonic-Aims-for-an-AVCHD-Future-with-AG-HMC150-34499.htm
https://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-15511-AG-HMC150:++HVX200's+Little+Brother.html
“everything is broken” ……Bob Dylan
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