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Panasonic HVX – 200 and under the gun! Urgent advice sought.
The Panasonic HVX – 200 rental arrives at 1 today, the shoot is at 3, and I have never touched one of these at all. Feeling a little like Clint Eastwood in “Firefox”: “Gant, can you fly that plane?” Looking for some succinct tips and any gotchas to look out for. Any lifelines you care to toss out gladly accepted at this stage.
The shoot is sit-down single-camera testimonial interview for a PSA. Lady talking about a personal tragedy, standard weepy stuff. Normally for such a project on SD DVCPro25 tape I would just grind away with a 66 minute tape in free-run and tape the entire session wall-to-wall non-stop so as not to risk missing anything, changing angles between takes, but I guess with P2 I have to shoot more economically. I am not sure if this camera is coming with P2 cards or not, but seems it only has two slots and the most common cards I know of are 8 gig. If I read the manual right, at 720/30P am I getting a gig a minute for storage or something a little longer? How much longer?
The director wants it shot HD and wide screen, wants it as “film”-looking as possible, he kept going on about shooting 24P though this is never going to a film-out and will be done circulating in a year or less… My plan is to select 720P/30P for the native edit on FCP5.1 back at the shop, which should still look pretty “filmic” but not require so much conversion or hassles with graphics from Apple Motion or whatever. Am I correct? Final masters will be letterbox SD to DVC-pro25 and betaSP (I know, don’t ask).
I see there are five different scene files available that apply various “looks”, including two different cinema settings that play around with stretching gamma or dynamic range. Which of those two, if either, would be best for this particular application? Should I shoot it clean and instead apply Nattress G-film filters in FCP later? I have these but have not used them yet.
Also unknown at this stage is if the camera comes with a P2 reader box. There will be no access to a laptop to offload footage from the P2 cards in the field. I expect if we are truly shooting HD we’ll just hook the camera to the Apple when we get back to the shop using a firewire cable and download the footage that way. Is that best done using an import thru FCP, or as some kind of drive-to-drive data transfer over the desktop? Walk me thru that?
Worst case, there are no P2 cards, or maybe the director wants the camera to transfer the P2 storage to Dv in the camera. If I read the manual (well, skimmed it) right, the camera will downconvert the HD in the P2 cards to SD Dv and lay it to the internal tape, right? How do I do that? Second-worst case, they want the thing shot direct to plain DV tape in the camera (this cam cannot record true HD to the tape, can it?)for an SD Dv edit, but RETAINING the 16×9 and temporal film-like looks of the 720/30P setting. What if anything do I need to do to make that happen?
Finally, how straightforward is the audio situation? This will be a simple lav mic on phantom power.
I really appreciate any and all advice and suggestions or warnings you can give. I’ll need to hear the tips here by about 2:00PM Central today for them to do me any good for this day’s shoot, but I will be using the camera again three weeks or so from now, so later suggestions will not be a complete waste. Thanks!
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15 Replies
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720/30P doesn’t look filmic. The biggest factor in making something look “filmic” is the frame rate. If that’s your goal, you’ll need to shoot at 720/24P (I’d sugget 720/24PN because of the increased recording time). You’ll then edit everything at 23.98 in HD in FCP. Make any graphics at 23.98. It works great.
If you’re using and 29.97 footage, then you’ll want to convert it to 23.98 using a plugin or other application (I think Natress has some plugins that work).
When you’re done editing, depending on your setup and what you need, either layoff your tape masters using a Kona or Blackmagic card that downconverts on the fly and adds a 2:3 pulldown, or down convert the film in compressor and lay it off over firewire and let FCP add the 2:3 pulldown.
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Thanks for a quick response. The FCP workstation has an AJA IO.
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[Mark Suszko] “The FCP workstation has an AJA IO”
THen you are totally screwed. The io is SD only. Why are you shooting HD?
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For the best reason: Because the boss says so:-)
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Well bossman better be ready to pony up for some HD editing equipment. The AJA io is a great piece of hardware, but it won’t do HD.
Jeremy
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For post, I was expecting to edit natively in HD and then perhaps burn the final output to DVD or data DVD to retain an HD master and distibution dubs as quicktime files for the stations that can actually use spots in HD. You think that’s a plan, or am I off base there?.
But our entire flow at the shop is analog SD. We shoot DVCpro25 and go SDI in/out to FCP via the Aja IO. This HD project is a sort of nonstandard “outside” project, so I’m doing my best to adapt and work with what I have.
My biggest deal right now is mastering a new camera and format in an hour or less. I’ll worry more about the post when and if I get there.
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I wasn’t planning on going thru the IO for ingest to FCP, but to use a firewire cable and do a direct data transfer to my scratch drives. Any opinions on how to do that?
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I haven’t used the IO, but it might down covert on the fly. If not, we use compressor to downcovert HD all the time. Then you could just lay it off with a 2:3 pulldown.
As far as the camera goes, I suggest not underexposing. I can cause a bunch of noise that is hard to color correct.
As for P2 cards, at 720/24PN you can get 20mins on a 8GB card. You can put the camera in a mode to download these files to a laptop or other computer. But if you don’t have a laptop on set, the you’ll either need enough P2 cards, a P2 Store, or a Firestore. Both the P2 Store and the Firestore need some playing around to feel comfortable.
-Russ
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Do not underexpose–just the opposite open up an extra 1/3 (maybe that’s a matter taste).
Bring tape, but really it’s not that tough.
There’s a switch on the back of the camera for recording to either p2 or tape, and there’s a useful chart on page 129 called “Recording Format.” When you get to your tape, you’ll want to shoot “480i/24PA over 60i.” The “A” means advanced pull down.
Go to page 98 and there’s a flow chart of the menu system. Go to page 106 for Rec Format (Tape). The default is 480i/60i. You want 480i/24PA. Menu (by hitting the button marked menu) > (toggle with the VCR keypad) Recording Set up > Rec Format (tape)
For P2, flip the switch on back to P2, and turn the dial to Scene5.
Set the following:Scene file > Operation type > Film
Display Functions > Level Meter “Select ON to display the audio level meter.”
Recording Setup > Rec Format > 720P/24PN
Display Setup > Zoom Focus > mm/feet (to display an approximate focus distance)Overall, it’s a very user friendly camera.
RH
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[Russell Lasson] “I haven’t used the IO, but it might down covert on the fly”
It most defintely does not.
[Russell Lasson] “f not, we use compressor to downcovert HD all the time. Then you could just lay it off with a 2:3 pulldown.”
Okay, but how do you monitor in HD? If you are going to shoot HD, why convert to SD before the edit?
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