Barry Green
Forum Replies Created
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Doh! I thought I blew it. It was Mark RANDALL of Serious Magic who said that. Sure wish we could edit posts here!
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That was part of a conversation we held on the Serious Magic DV Rack forum. Mark Mapes said that they were most interested in supporting DVCPRO-HD, and that they were already talking to Panasonic to make it happen.
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The chips will be 1/3″. That’s set in stone. If you want larger chips, Panasonic has already teased about the next camera that will be 2/3″, removable lens, etc. I don’t know if it’ll be the anticipated P2-VariCam or not. Undoubtedly it will cost significantly more. IINM, the cheapest 2/3″ camera on the market is probably the new P2-based SPC700, at about $13,000 for the body alone (plus of course you buy your lens separately).
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FireStore is developing a new unit for the HVX200.
The existing FS-4 would work to record DV. It will not record DVCPRO50 or DVCPRO-HD. The existing FS-4 can only handle a data rate good enough to support DV25 or HDV. They will be designing a new unit that handles the full 100mbps data rate of DVCPRO-HD.
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To answer the original question: no, no P2 card is needed. The firewire port will stream HD data right out of the box, so if you plug it into a laptop or desktop running FCP-HD, Avid Express HD, Canopus Edius, or (forthcoming) DV Rack-HD, you will be able to capture full HD footage right from the outset, no P2 card needed. Or, for those who want tape, you could firewire it over to a DVCPRO-HD tape deck.
Having a P2 card will make your system a lot more portable, of course, but it’s not an absolute requirement. You could capture the HD stream from the firewire port instead, either to a computer hooked up to the firewire port, or to a DVCPRO-HD-aware hard disk capture unit like the forthcoming FireStore, or to tape on an AJ-HD1200A DVCPRO-HD tape deck.
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Luis, PLEASE understand that post wasn’t directed at you personally! You are and always have been fully “relaxed”! 🙂
I was just responding to the things I’ve heard a hundred times on various boards. In fact this post is a rewrite of one I already had to write over on DVXUser. And like I ended the one on DVXUser — if the HVX lens controls are not up to snuff, if they’re bogus servos like on the other cameras, I’ll be the first to leap off the HVX bandwagon and throw it in the trash. I expect *more* control, *better* control. I expect it to be fully usable.
However, I just can’t fathom how having the focus ring “stop” makes any bit of difference at all, in any real situation. I just don’t get it. I think somehow people are stuck in a mindset that says “no hard stops = no control; hard stops = real focus”. That’s not the way it has to be. And I’ve used dozens of broadcast lenses with hard stops. I demand focus control at least as good as a hard-stop lens. But the HVX won’t have hard stops. So? I mean, what does it matter?
In the old-school way of working, yes, it matters, because you can’t see where the lens is positioned, you get no feedback. So you’d want to focus by “feel”. But you don’t have to do that with the DVX or HVX, because it tells you right in the VF or LCD where the lens is. That’s “new school”. There’s no need to rely on “going by feel”, because you get discrete, distinct feedback, with far more precise feedback related to lens position than you’d ever get with any “hard-stop” lens. And if you want to slam the ring to infinity and freeze it there, you can push the “push to infinity” button. Not EXACTLY the same thing as slamming a real ring to the hard stop, but at some point you have to recognize that “a difference that makes no difference IS no difference.”
I fully recognize that it’s different. I’m just trying to understand why it’s inferior. If you can do everything that you could with the other system, but with more precision, with more feedback, and also a couple of goodies like optical image stabilization and the option to use autofocus — how is that not good enough? It’s different, yes, but I think there’s enough bonuses to make it at least as good.
Do we wish it was interchangeable? Of course we do. Who wouldn’t want more options? But does that make the existing option bad? Not by a country mile, I say.
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[Luis Caffesse] “But, why not a fully manual fixed lens?
What is so difficult about giving us an iris, focus, and zoom ring with reliable markings that is not a servo based infinite spinning design?At that point many people would stop screaming for a removable lens, realizing that all along what they wanted was the same manual controls you would get with a removable lens, but at the price of a fixed lens design.”
Forgive me for sounding facetious, but — isn’t that EXACTLY what they’re delivering? Except better?
Here’s what I mean: the zoom is a fully manual, cam-driven zoom. Certainly should be every bit the match of any other manual lens zoom. Much better feel than the DVX lens’ zoom, it’s an improved design. So it should be at least as good as what you’d expect on a “manual” lens, because it *is* manual. How is it better? Because instead of just relying on markings on the barrel (which it will have, of course) it also offers a much more precise scale in the viewfinder. Where the barrel markings on the existing DVX lens show 20mm and 45mm, and if you want to know the focal length inbetween (via the markings) you have to guess, the in-camera viewfinder Z00-Z99 scale shows 25 discrete distances between 20mm and 45mm. And in the HVX, they’ll probably incorporate actual mm displays in the viewfinder too.
Okay, on to iris: a “real” lens has a ring. The HVX will have a wheel. Exactly what more control do you get from the ring, than from the wheel? Granted you can take your eye away from the viewfinder, tilt the camera up, and dial in a specific f-stop on the ring. But using the viewfinder display you can dial in exactly the specific f-stop you want using the wheel, while not having to take your eye away. I know the ring is familiar, and “feels right”, but does it actually give you more control? Yes the ring can be set between f-stops, but so can the wheel. The wheel on the DVX gives you 1/6 stop control. You have more control with the wheel than the display even shows — the display shows half-stops, but the wheel is calibrated in 1/6 stops. Again, not being facetious, I’m asking a serious question — what is it that you can do with the iris ring on the lens, that you can’t accomplish with the wheel on the DVX? I’ve used every modern broadcast camera, I’m not arguing that the wheel is “better”, I’m just saying — I can do everything with the wheel that I can do with the ring. What additional feature are you looking for?
Finally, focus. Everyone seems to gripe about the “infinitely spinning servo wheel”. And to that I say — this ain’t no VX2000 or XL1. The DVX focus ring has no hard stops, that’s true, but it provides precise, measurable, repeatable focus moves. It doesn’t move the focus elements based on the speed you move the ring, like the PD150 does. It is directly, precisely, completely measurable. It moves the elements based on how you move the ring. That’s why Century could make their markable focus ring with hard stops — because the DVX ring was precise and repeatable.
So what was it missing? Markings and hard stops. That’s about it. And how does the HVX address it? First, the ring will have more dampening, more control, more precision. Second, it will have markings. Not on the barrel, but in the viewfinder. Which is, of course, more usable and better. Why? Because the markings on the barrel must inevitably be done in certain steps, so you’ll see a marking of maybe 10′ and the next marking is 15′. On the HVX, you’ll be able to turn the ring to 10′, and turn it further and it’ll say 15′. But what if you want 11′? With the markings-on-the-barrel, you have to look at the 10 and the 15, and then kind of guess as to where 11 would come in, realizing that 12.5 is *not* halfway between 10 and 15 of course. So if you measure 11′ from film plane to subject, using lens barrel markings on a broadcast lens will be imprecise. But with the HVX, just turn the ring until it says 11′. It’ll read out 11′ in the viewfinder, far more precisely than the lens barrel markings would. You will have precise, repeatable, discrete focus control, and you will have distance markings — they’ll just be in the viewfinder, not on the barrel. Which is more user friendly anyway — now the operator can see the markings while still looking through the viewfinder, instead of having to pull his head away from the viewfinder to go look at the physical lens barrel. And an AC can have the same functionality by turning the LCD panel around — instead of looking to the barrel, they can see more precise distance marks by looking at the LCD.
So — as a practical, functional matter, the HVX is going to offer you all the manual control that you would otherwise be getting on a “fully manual” lens, because it is a fully manual lens (except that it also supports optical image stabilization, and the possibility for autofocus if you choose to use it, something you’re not going to have available on a fully manual lens). So what’s the problem? Is it the lack of hard stops? Do having hard stops somehow help you focus better? Really? Does the ring stopping really make it easier to focus with? I’ve never found a circumstance where in an actual, real, production environment, the fact that the ring stops has made any difference. The HVX lens will stop at infinity and minimum object distance, whether the ring stops or not — so what difference does it make? And, assuming that someone just really *needs* hard stops, you can have that — get the Century manual focus ring, which adds gear teeth, hard stops, and a markable surface.
Which is a several-thousand-word way of saying “relax — they’re already giving you a fully manual lens.”
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In the menus: Other functions -> Tape Protect.
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Adding DVCPRO50 to tape would have raised the price about $7,000. And made the camera much, much larger.
Adding DVCPRO-HD to tape would have raised the price about $15,000. That’s what the parts cost. The cheapest DVCPRO-HD deck on the market (with firewire out) is $25,000.
By going with P2 they were able to deliver the DVCPRO-HD format at a massively cheaper price.
Look at the SDX900 vs. the SPX800 — basically the exact same camera, except the SPX records to P2, the SDX records to tape. The SPX is about $8,000 less than the SDX.
P2 recording makes it possible to do things at a price point that was never possible before. That’s one of the things that’s so cool about it.
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SBP2 is part of the spec, the camera does support it. It’s used when you go into “dub” mode. During “live” mode (i.e., camera recording) the data on the firewire port is a live streaming version of the 1080/60i or 720/60p signal, employing AVC protocol. When you go into “dub” mode, the camera can then control an external drive by using SBP2 protocol, which allows you to copy the contents of a P2 card over to an off-the-shelf hard disk.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available at https://www.dvxuser.com/articles/dvxbook/ and at Amazon (https://tinyurl.com/54u4a)