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More specifically, on the 4-pole focus/iris connector, if you call the tip A and the back sleeve D, then ring C is your reference. A 20k pot between C and A adjusts iris, a 20k pot between C and B adjust focus, and a switch between C and D toggles auto/manual iris.
On the 3-pole zoom/ss, if you call the tip A and the back sleeve C, then the C sleeve is the reference. A momentary switch between C and A will act as the Start/Stop button, and a 20k pot between C and B will control the zoom. Note that the ‘center’ position of the zoom pot, (10k setting), is the ‘do nothing’ position. Moving the pot one way will zoom in and the other will zoom out, (I forget which is which), but changing the value of the pot a little will slowly zoom, and changing it a lot will zoom more quickly.
Now for the short answer to your question. Buy a varizoom controller, build or buy some extensions, and hope for the best. Or call varizoom and see how far they think you can get away with. It’s just a few analog voltages, so I think you could probably get it to work if you use one 300′ run of quality wire, (no connectors ever 25′).
Best of luck.
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Me too. I’ve been counting the days until I could finally smash my !%@# firestores with a sledge hammer. Now my only hope is that Panasonic actually gets close to their “end of the year” delivery on the 32 GB cards. Personally, I’ll bet dinner that they will not be shipping by NAB 2008.
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Hi Barry,
I was not quite clear on this at NAB. Does the HPX-500 have the exact same DSP, feature set and menu structure as the HVX-200? Seems like I heard it was the same back-end electronics only on a 2/3″ optical block, but I’m not sure. They are also both 960 X 540 CCD’s right?
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P2 cards.
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The firestore uses FAT32 to be compatible with both Mac and PC, but FAT32 has a 2GB file size limit, so you’re stuck with it. I cannot speak for Final Cut, but in Avid I just sort the files by creation date before adding them to the timeline, then they just all seamlessly line up. Sure, I wish it didn’t do that, but I wouldn’t call it a ‘nightmare’.
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As Russell already said, Gain is the worst offender here. Make sure it is not only set to zero but that auto gain control is also disabled. Auto gain can make it look like you’re shooting in a sand storm but it’s not that noticeable in the little viewfinder.
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I’m not positive, but I think you need one with NVidia graphics. Have you checked the Avid web site?
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We have two of them and I’m really happy with them. At the end of the day, I feel it’s the best camera for the money. There are other cameras in the sub$10k class that do have higher resolution CCD’s, but that’s only one of many factors. One of the biggest challenges for all of the little cameras out there is that they all use 1/3″ CCD’s, so in order to fit more charge wells onto a chip, you have to make them smaller, which means less sensitivity, less dynamic range, and more noise. The truth is if you lock down an HVX-200 on a tripod and put it next to the Canon XH or one of the Sony’s, (the 1440 HDV cameras), and shoot a black and white resolution test chart, with no motion, and under studio lighting, the other cameras do win for MTF, (modulation Transfer Function). That is to say that yes, they resolve a higher number ‘TV Lines’. One could almost say they are higher resolution, but it’s not quite that simple.
I’m going to skip over the importance of the A/D and DSP and just go to the next big challenge. How to store the data. The HVX-200 uses the 4:2:2 100 mbit DVCPro HD codec which contains 4 times more data than 4:2:0 HDV long GOP mpeg, but it does not take advantage of mpeg’s inherent GOP bandwidth savings. The DVCPro HD codec pre-filters 1080 formats to 1280 X 1080 and 720 formats to 960 X 720, (most recording codec’s do some sort of pre-filtering like this, but they don’t put it at the top of their marketing). DVCPro HD is a 4:2:2 codec, which means that only the Luma gets recorded at 1280 X 1080, the Chroma gets knocked down to 640 X 1080, (or 480 X 720 for 720P). For comparison, 1080 HDV prefilter to 1440 X 1080, but 4:2:0 means the Chroma is sampled at 360 X 1080.
If you think HD is 1920 X 1080 with full 8 bit RGB for each pixel, this might sound kind of shockingly bad, but the truth is you cannot get “True” 1920 X 1080 4:4:4 recording for under $10K, so you really need to compare systems in the same price range. As a side note about resolution, it’s important to understand that the numbers just represents a sampling grid. It specifies how often samples are taken, but not what’s sampled or how. The quality of color behind those samples is equally important to the shear number, after all, an image is nothing but color data, so more samples of lesser quality aren’t really better.
When you consider the motion artifacts of mpeg and the noise from the higher res, (smaller pixel), CCD’s, just counting lines on a resolution chart doesn’t really tell the whole story. I guess the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. Look at the monitor and buy what you like. Me, I like the 200.
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I guess it really all depends on what you consider to be “True HD”. If you mean true 1920 X 1080 X 3 CCDs recorded as 4:4:4 10 bit logarithmic RGB files, then no, no it is not. But then life is full of compromises. It’s definitely is not a standard def DV camera either. As others have already said, it meets all of the SMPTE/ATSC requirements, and it is definitely an HD camera.
Instead of getting into every detail of the number of charge wells on the CCD’s, how the A/D quantizes it, what the DSP does, and how the codec works, just look at the picture on a good monitor. If it’s not “true” enough you can always offer someone $6000 for their Viper or Sony F23.
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1080i 24P or 1080i 30P, sometimes called 24/30P over 60i is what’s known as segmented frame and it is true progressive data but recorded into an interlaced stream. Basically, one full progressive frame is split into two fields for recording then reassembled in post to re-create the original full frame. As far as I know, this technique was developed way back in the old days, back when people still used tape. Back when tape decks offered two choices, 720 60P or 1080 60i. Just as the Varicam has to record everything at 60 fps because that is all the tapedeck will allow, (there is no PN setting on the Varicam), the 1080 decks can only record interlaced, so segmented frame was developed as a way to record 1080 progressive data in an interlaced format. As a result, this is the format the NLE’s are expecting, so even though you could write a true progressive frame to a P2 card, not many things would know what to do with it. Panasonic implemented the segmented frame technique so the data would be more widely compatible downstream. The important thing is that segmented frame is true progressive, and this, by the way, is the same way the Sony F900 Cinealta works.
As for the DVCPro HD Codec, I don’t think codec’s ever go away. Once they’re in an NLE, they’re in. I cannot possibly image that in 3-4 years Avid and Apple will announce they will no longer support it and everyone has to go throw their varicams in the river. Yes, the AVC-I codec is one of all time biggest improvements in recording formats and ranks right up there with sliced bread and ice cream, but it’s not being offered in the HPX500, at least not yet. If you look at the CCD block and DSP in the camera, I doubt that the AVC-I 100 mbit codec would really improve the MTF of that camera. The 50 mbit flavor would offer more recording time, but it’s a four-slot camera, so you already have over an hour of 1080P on 4-16gig cards, and over two hours when the 32 gig cards come out sometime in late 2009. (Sorry guys, but I was at NAB 2006 when you announced 16 gig cards ‘by the end of the year’).