Questions- Comments- Observations… Panasonic P2- and HDV

[Greg Flowers]

I believe the future will likely be some sort of tapeless storage system. I think it will be longer than just a few years before P2 cards, Memory sticks, Flash cards, etc. will be cheap enough, and hold enough data, to make tape completely obsolete. Current DV tapes cost $5 each and can hold an hour of footage. Solid state storage will have to become very cheap and store much more before it dethrowns tape as the primary cature/storage means for video. IMHO, I do not see this happening within 5 years. I think most companies will not abandon tape based HDV for many, many years. Some will likely add cameras to their lineup that may record to both tape and solid state in HDV. HDV is more analogous to dvd today than laserdisc, which was always just a niche item. Within a few years HD-DVD and Blue-Ray will peck away at dvd’s market, but it will be a while before dvd is completely replaced. Remember, it took dvd 7-8 years for dvd to surpass VHS…

[Joe Womble]

Yes, you will be able to jam sync time code on two HVX200s. Even with the new DVX100B.

Regards,

Cre8tive

[Barry Green]

[Michael] “Seems to me that what you get with the HVX-200 all the time via P2 (1080pDVCPROHD)… you can only get with the Canon when you’re plugged into a computer or an expensive deck. Is this accurate?

Yes. You cannot record anything on the Canon except HDV. If you want to record footage at higher quality, you’d have to plug the HD-SDI port into some sort of HD-SDI-enabled recording system (such as a $25,000 DVCPRO-HD deck or a $45,000 HDCAM deck).

Can you plug the Canon’s “jack pack” into some sort of Firestore device? Essentially bypassing the HDV/Tape and capturing 4:2:2 1080?

Yes, and no. Yes it’s possible to plug it into something and bypass HDV and get the full 4:2:2 1080 recording. But no, certainly no Firestore type of device. Maybe someday something will be developed, but right now it’d require a RAID of maybe 6 to 8 hard disks to handle recording the HD-SDI data stream.

What’s the difference between Canon’s removable lens and Panasonics/Leicas fixed lens… (As far as the PICTURE QUALITY goes)? Are they in the same ballpark?

We don’t know, and won’t know until the production units are available for testing. The HVX’s lens will have a wider wide angle, and a shorter maximum telephoto. The HVX has true manual control on the zoom, and precision manual focus including feedback in 00-99, feet, and meters. The Canon will have servo-only control, no true manual. It will have focus feedback in 00-99 scale. It’ll also have an automatic focus/zoom preset feature that the HVX won’t. As far as optical quality, that remains to be seen.

Does anyone know what in the hell Canons “24F” is? How would this compare to Panasonics 24P.

Lots of speculation, but no hard facts. A little testing will be necessary to determine how it compares.

And finally- isn

[Pierre]

Wow!

Thank you… for answering all my questions so completely.
Bottom line, as you said, is we won’t know until both cameras are available.

Thanks again.

Michael