Panasonic HVX – 200 and under the gun! Urgent advice sought.

[Russell Lasson]

Sounds like a good time to tell the “Boss” to start looking into a real HD system, or at least a card the can downcovert to SD on the fly.

Too bad about the IO not downcoverting. You could view it on an second monitor or just not view it out at all while editing (just watch the viewer.)

-Russ

[Mark Suszko]

Thanks everybody, just got back from the shoot, there were no P2 cards included in the rental when it arrived, so it’s SD DV I’ll be editing with in FCP and the AJA IO can handle that without a problem. I get to try this out again in a couple weeks, hopefully that one will be with the P2 cards. When I get around to it I will run an experiment and compare DVCPro25 footage shot letterboxed, with Nattress filters applied in post, versus the HVX200 downconverted to DV25 using the in-camera cine B setting we used today. I left before The message suggesting 24p came thru to me, so I went ahead and shot 30p today, and it still had enough of that fluttery film-type look to make my customer happy, yet I don’t have to mess with any pull-down issues. I’ll keep checking here periodically to see if there are any more suggestions, thanks and bye for now. It sure looks like a nice camera, for the short time I got to fiddle with it. Hopefully next time I’ll get to push it’s limits a little harder.

[Mark Suszko]

Thanks everybody, just got back from the shoot, there were no P2 cards included in the rental when it arrived, so it’s SD DV I’ll be editing with in FCP and the AJA IO can handle that without a problem. I get to try this out again in a couple weeks, hopefully that one will be with the P2 cards. When I get around to it I will run an experiment and compare DVCPro25 footage shot letterboxed, with Nattress filters applied in post, versus the HVX200 downconverted to DV25 using the in-camera cine B setting we used today. I left before The message suggesting 24p came thru to me, so I went ahead and shot 30p today, and it still had enough of that fluttery film-type look to make my customer happy, yet I don’t have to mess with any pull-down issues. I’ll keep checking here periodically to see if there are any more suggestions, thanks and bye for now. It sure looks like a nice camera, for the short time I got to fiddle with it. Hopefully next time I’ll get to push it’s limits a little harder.

[Mark Suszko]

Just an update, more of a question really, that comes up as I screen the footage today…. How smooth (how many steps or infinite) is the zoom rocker supposed to be for this camera? Because I just couldn’t get as smooth a stop-start to my zooms as I can with my studio cameras or my larger DVCPro25 format full-size camcorders with Fuginon lens. Felt like I only had a choice of avout four speeds on the rocker, instead of the fairly continous band of speeds I’m used to. I was trying for one of those 2-minute zooms, super-slow, so slow you hardly notice it. Couldn’t get the speed slow enough without it just stopping instead. I tried popping it into manual zoom but that was less than satisfactory as well, as it read my hand shakes too well:-). Maybe there’s a menu setting I could have used to adjust the low-end endpoints for activating the zoom rocker?

[Rmherd]

You need the “handle zoom.” Page 103. Menu > SW Mode > Handle Zoom > L/M/H

Then you’ll notice a switch on the handle that has three positions. Position “1” will be SLOOOOOOW. This also means you’ll need to use the zoom control on the handle.

RH