Old Varicam Is DEAD!!!!! RIP 27H

[Ernie Santella]

Whoa! The HPG20 sounds amazing. Exactly what I was thinking and more. Killer!

Anyone know what kinda’ price this thing will go for?

Ernie Santella
Santella Productions Inc.
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[John Cummings]

Yea, it’s a great unit…if you don’t mind having something the size of a lunchbox hanging off your camera.

I saw one in action recently. Holy Cow, that thing is huge! I figure it must have vacuum tubes in it…or perhaps a small nuclear reactor.

J Cummings
Cameralogic/Chicago
cameralogic.tv
HDX-900/HDW-730S/DXC-D50

[Chris Cardno]

Yeah, it’s not small or particularly light but what it offers makes up for that in my opinion.

Ernie, list is $5,295 and I believe it’s due out now. If it were a Sony product, that would mean first quarter of 2010…

It’s not listed on B&H yet, but my guess would be around $4,700-$5,000 street price. Of course, you then need some P2 cards so all in you’re probably looking at $8,000 for (2) 32GB cards and the unit. Still, it beats shelling out $25,000 for an HPX2000 and it gives you a LOT of options for your clients.

Here’s a link to the page on Panasonic.com:

https://tinyurl.com/b8noa8

Cheers,

Chris Cardno
Visual Edge Productions
Bethesda, MD

[Joe Hedge]

If you’re going HD SDI out, why not go the Aja IO HD ProRes422 HQ route for half the cost (not counting P2 cards) of the HPG20? Surely ProResHQ is just as good as Intra 100, it’s Apple native, and the IO HD does way more than the P2 gear except run on batteries?

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

[joe hedge] “If you’re going HD SDI out, why not go the Aja IO HD ProRes422 HQ route for half the cost (not counting P2 cards) of the HPG20? Surely ProResHQ is just as good as Intra 100, it’s Apple native, and the IO HD does way more than the P2 gear except run on batteries?”

This method would get you the recorded material, but would not help a great deal when it comes to the archive of that material. One of the things that we all need to think about as we move to a tapeless, data-based wrkflow is how are you going to find your shots later and the answer is in the metadata. There is a Metadata workflow paper on our website http://www.panaosnic.com/p2hd under the resources area.

As far as the rest of the discussion in discontinuing the tape-based Varicam, I know from the user perspective it seems odd to discontinue because it has become a defacto standard in the production arena. Having the manufacture discontinue something does not mean that the product is dead. Look at the SDX900, it is still one of the most popular standard definition rentals out there.

And as Chris pointed out, the P2 Portable, AG-HPG20, does allow owners to extend the life of their Varicam and get a taste of what it is like to work in File-based workflow. I actually have a customer that is doing this with his HDX900 and is hooked on handing the client the tape and doing the edit that evening off the P2. Client needs the tapes for thier archive as they have not figured out a file-based archive yet.

Hope this helps,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, HPX500, HVX200, DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Ethan Sigman]

I think Jan, despite her infinite wisdom, has under emphasized the power of the meta data. I also think tape to clients completely depends on your clients. If you have broadcast clients, then they may have a deck and some future use for that tape. The rest of the world goes back to an office full of computers and no decks.

I pre-fab all my meta data into the sd card with titles that are instantly loaded to my clips when i hit record. they then show up in my edit bin with the names thanks to raylight. new fcp studio 2 plugin will take mxf also, so if you hand a client pre-tagged meta files on a drive and put all p2 viewer software and p2cms on there, i think they are better off, and more capable. Web based companies take to this quickly. everyone sees the time savings immediately, and while my clients seemingly understand little most of the time, they understand less time, which makes it easy to sell.

another power of the gear is to create a “DIT Station” at a multicam shoot where you can now use five kinds of cameras and run them back to a desk where one guy can swap and offload footage for all the cams whithout ever a pause in recording and no stock cost.

the last under emphasized part of the p2 gear is as an archive tool. you can play old footage back through the gear to convert an old tape library from any format to mxf, which carries its meta via extensible markup language, xml- univerally availablet to other IT equipment, and therefore, searchable.

oh, and it verifies your offloads to the byte, tape what? tape who? tape why?

http://www.EZSproductions.com
http://www.productionmeeting.com/profile/EthanSigman

[Rod Paul]

I have a Varicam and an HPX 3000, and as I intercut their material I am struck by how very good the Varicam (F) looks.

The P2 system is great, but we still lack a pure data input process that looks as good as HDSDI. Perhaps AVID and Apple will have solved this by NAB, but a for now scene to scene test shows the noise and resolution difference very clearly.

[David Linstrom]

the P2 Portable, AG-HPG20, does allow owners to extend the life of their Varicam and get a taste of what it is like to work in File-based workflow.

Does it record in 720/25p? I need to shoot for domestic/international distribution simultaneously.

dlinstrom