Barry Green
Forum Replies Created
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I’ve taken a very good look at RED. I’m a reservation holder.
And I can say I’m not too interested in recording my footage to a hard disk, and especially to a RAID. Sure it’s big, and (comparatively) cheap. And if that’s the way you want to go, it’s an option they’re making available. But I certainly don’t plan on using that. I’m much more interested in the REDFLASH options.
And while we’re on the subject — did you notice the price on RED’s own RED RAM recording module? 64GB for $4500. Or, about 25% more than four 16GB P2 cards. As more solid-state options come on the market, natural competition will drive prices to where they need to be and should be.
And hard disks? Hard disks are a temporary band-aid of a recording solution, only really offered because of the great price-to-gigabyte ratio. But they’re noisy, power-hungry, temperature/heat/humidity sensitive, and fragile. They’ve got a place, but only as an interim solution until solid state memory gets large enough and affordable enough. Every major manufacturer is offering solid-state (Panasonic, Thomson/Grass Valley, Ikegami, Red, and now even Sony is offering solid-state memory recording).
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[HarryD] “the PCMCIA bus at 132 MBps is almost half the speed of Expresscard, yet the Expresscard memory modules are about 1/4th the price.”
Yes, the top speed of the PCMCIA bus is half the maximum speed of the ExpressCard bus, but the ExpressCard SSDs you’re talking about are less than half the speed of a P2 card.
There’s a lot of misinformation flying about because of the ExpressCard bus’s speed; people think this will make for faster memory transfers. The fact of the matter is, the PCMCIA bus is not the limiting factor! The P2 card runs at 80 megabytes per second, the Lexar ExpressCard SSD runs at 30 megabytes per second (250 megabits per second). Just because the ExpressCard bus is capable of a theoretical top speed twice as fast as PCMCIA, that SSD isn’t going to go any faster than 30mbps. It’s like if you took a 27mph-top-speed moped and put it on the freeway, it’s still not going any faster than 27mph.
So the Lexar 8GB SSD is about 1/3 the speed of the 8GB P2 card, and about 1/3 the price. Doesn’t seem all that out of line. And again, multiple sources of cards are coming; Hoodman’s H2 card is due next month, and there was another manufacturer being buzzed about on the NAB floor; I don’t remember exactly who but I think it was the “Venom” card or something like that. Competition will make sure that the customer is getting the best value possible.
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According to Panasonic they’re selling 200s faster than they sold DVX100s; over 35,000 worldwide already.
As for 100s, I don’t know the story on that; they’re still selling, but the stock issue may be related to the big price drop.
8GB cards have been hard to come by for a long time. But they’re due to release 16GB cards this month.
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The firmware update is not out yet. It’ll be available when the cards are.
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[Chris Baldwin] “Any way of jam syncing the HPX500 and the HDX200 for time code?”
Well, almost — you can sync an HVX200 (I assume you mean HVX when you say HDX, right?) to an HPX500 through the firewire sync. It’s not a 100% sync, it’s going to lose frames when you toggle between MCR and CAMERA mode, but it’s very close.
[Chris Baldwin] ”
And what do we think about cross cutting the HPX500 and the HDX200?”They’ll intercut pretty well, assuming that you’re shooting in conditions where the 200 is going to get good results anyway. If you’re shooting in scenarios where the 200 gets great footage, then it’ll intercut pretty well with the 500. The main difference you’re going to notice is the extra two stops of dynamic range, it spreads the tonality of the image differently than the 8 stops of the 200 does (obviously) so it’ll be a bit of an issue when matching.
[Chris Baldwin] “Its just nowhere as capable in low light as either 2/3″ cameras or even 1/3″ DV cameras. I’m constantly fighting this.”
Well, this is true of all the 1/3″ HD camcorders. It will be much better on the HPX500, the 2/3″ chips mean it’s about 1.5 stops faster, putting it back in league with the PD170 and DVX100 for sensitivity terms. But also its gain is a tad cleaner than the HVX200’s so you can resort to using a bit of gain if need be without worrying that you’re making the image TOO grainy.[Chris Baldwin] “I constantly face the fire from them that its a small unprofessional looking camera.”
That won’t be a problem with the 500. It looks exactly like the 2000 and HDX900.
[Chris Baldwin] “First, I’m worried how quickly the AVC codec will put dvcproHD in fat camp.”
Well, no real way to know for sure, but consider that AVC-Intra is only an option on the 2000 and P2 Mobile; it doesn’t come standard on anything but the $48,000 (body-only) HPX3000. They’re still introducing DVCPRO-HD-only camcorders; the HDX900 has become a darling of rental houses and stringers, and it’s DVCPRO-HD-only. Besides, the way I look at it, if you can’t pay off an HPX500 package in six months or less, you’re doing something wrong…
[Chris Baldwin] “And Secondly, am I going to wish I didn’t buy this discounted HD glass that comes with the package?”
Well… that’s up to you, obviously. Better glass = better images, less breathing, more reach, all that. Having a fixed lens frees you from having to make that decision; it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. With interchangeable lenses, now you have to pick and commit.
[Chris Baldwin] ” I love giving my FCP clients QT DVCPRO HD footage.”
That works for FCP clients, but if you ever get hired by someone who uses a PC, you’d be kind of hosing yourself there. Apple doesn’t make FCP QT DVCPRO-HD files compatible with the PC. Every editor can use the MXF files, but only FCP can use the QT DVCPRO-HD files (unless your clients use the http://www.dvfilm.com Quicktime Decoder program for $195).
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They should have shot in 720/25pN mode at 37 fps; that would give you the inherent slow-mo look.
AFAIK, right now there’s not much you can do with that clip on a Mac to get the frame rate you’re looking for. There’s a frame rate converter utility available for US/60Hz files that strips out the duplicate frame rates, but AFAIK it doesn’t work for 50Hz yet. Try nagging Apple to update their utility to do that.
You could take the file over to a PC and strip out the duplicate frames using Raylight, and then you’d still have to conform the timebase of the clip to be 25fps. Not sure how you’d go about getting it back to the Mac though.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
FCP supports all modes except 720/50p IIRC. It supports 720/25p, but not 50p yet. I of course welcome anyone to correct this if I got it wrong.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Of course the AVC-Intra option holds a lot of promise for better-quality footage; having the option to go for that is one reason why the 2000 is twice the price of the 500.
I found the 500 and 2000 to deliver very comparable images, especially when outfitted with comparable lenses.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
EDIUS Broadcast has full support for 720/25p and 720/50p and 1080/25p and 1080/50i.
Using DVFilm Raylight you can also get 720/25p and 50p support in Sony Vegas or Premiere Pro 2.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
FYI, the HVX’s cable is compatible with the one that’s used by the Canon XHA1 and XHG1 and XLH1 and the JVC HD1 and HD10, so if you find the kind of cable you want being offered for any of those then you can also use it on your HVX.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db)