Barry Green
Forum Replies Created
-
[Steve Freebairn] “If space isn’t an issue, what is the best resolution to shoot 24 or 30 p footage? 720 or 1080? From the previous responses I would think that 1080P would be superior to 720P. Is that correct?”
At the same framerate, 1080p will always be better than 720p, as you’re getting twice as many pixels per frame. So 1080/24p is going to have twice as many pixels as 720/24p. It will also take up twice as much space, but you already said “if space isn’t an issue”. So yes, 1080/24p should be superior to 720/24p in most circumstances.
If you plan on doing a lot of off-speed variable-frame-rate shooting, you may want to stick with 720 for the whole program. Or, if you’re planning on delivering your final product in 720p, you may want to stick with 720p for origination. Otherwise, I’d expect 1080p should be the preferred mode for those shooting 24p.
—————–
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://www.fiftv.com/db) -
I wouldn’t buy a DVX100A now, since there’s a brand new DVX100B out with some very nice, very worthwhile enhancements. It’s the same price, but the rebate is smaller, so you would end up spending a little more for the 100B, but the additional features are worth it.
The HVX offers everything the DVX does, and a lot more. Yes it will have a miniDV tape drive on it, and it’s also native 16:9, and it’s also a full high-def camera if you choose to add an HD recording system (a P2 card or a FireStore FS-100 or something like that). The HVX is quite a bit more expensive though; it’s $2,000 MSRP higher than the DVX100B. The HVX also won’t be out on store shelves for probably another seven weeks.
If you can afford it, the HVX is unquestionably the way to go over the DVX (pending some reviews and seeing if it actually delivers what they’ve been promising). If the budget’s tight, the DVX100B has an awful lot to offer. If the budget’s extremely tight, you might grab one of the few remaining DVX100A’s out there, but most stores are already sold out of those.
—————–
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://www.fiftv.com/db) -
[Steve Freebairn] “What I’m wondering, is if you took 720 30p footage at 100mbit (assuming that that is possible) and then compared it to 1080 at 30p, which would look better?”
It doesn’t work that way. With DVCPRO-HD, each frame takes up exactly the same amount of bandwidth. Shoot more frames per second, it takes more storage space. Shoot fewer frames, it takes up less storage space. But in each case, the frames are compressed exactly the same. So 720/60p = 100 megabits, 720/30p = 50 megabits, 720/15p = 25 megabits, etc.
Now, with your question regarding bigger frame/more compressed vs. smaller frame/less compressed, there is a way to evaluate that; DVCPRO50 is 50 megabits of bandwidth with very mild compression. The frame size is half the size of DVCPRO-HD 720p(720×480 vs. 720×960) and the compression ratio is half as well (3.3:1 vs. 6.7:1). But that’s standard-def; I think you were more interested in sticking with high-def.
—————–
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://www.fiftv.com/db) -
The “10 hour” claim applies to little palmcorders. The DVX uses a lot more power and gets about 5 1/2 hours out of a 5600mah battery. Put that same battery on a tiny palmcorder and yeah, it’ll last 10 hours. No way will that Power2000 battery last 10 hours on a DVX.
—————–
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://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Thousands of people have seen footage from it. It was shown at the various ResFest events around the country. The footage was 1080i-only, and wasn’t of any compelling subject matter (primarily some still-life stuff shot in front of some challenging materials, and also some handheld shots that Jan took out the window of her Amsterdam hotel during IBC), plus people have been able to shoot footage with it live on the floor at a few shows.
Many people have reported their opinions of the footage, and they’ve been very, very, very positive. And that was just off the 1080i-only prototype. Jan’s said that Panasonic US is supposed to receive a fully-functioning “engineering mule” version on November 8th, which will probably be used to generate some web-releasable footage.
—————–
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://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Not really, other than to just provide another alternative for connecting to the computer. Some laptops have USB only and don’t have firewire, for example. Other than that, I don’t know what the USB port is particularly used for…
—————–
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) -
In theory the DVCPRO50 and DVCPROHD codecs should provide a significant advantage for chroma-key work, because they sample color at 4:2:2 rather than at 4:2:0. In actual practice this results in about 78% more color samples for DVCPRO-HD 1080i vs. HDV 1080i, and 50% more chroma for DVCPRO-HD 720p vs. HDV 720p. As for standard-def, DVCPRO50 has 100% more color information than DV.
Now, that’s “in theory”. In practice, we haven’t had a chance to compare real-world results. It seems like the Panasonic should have a significant edge, but we have to see what happens to the image when it goes through the lens to the CCDs to the sampling circuitry to the DSP, and eventually to the compression engine.
—————–
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) -
[Harry] “There is no USB port on the camera. They changed it to firewire.”
Harry, your post is spot-on except for this one bit. There is still a USB port on the camera. What changed is that originally they were going to implement P2-card-offloading to USB2 drives, but now instead they have implemented it through firewire. But the USB port remains, and still functions when connecting the camera to a computer.
—————–
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) -
[jiri vrozina] “What is the difference of P2 card and the one used by Thomson Infinity?”
The Infinity uses a single compactflash card. They say it uses “professional grade”, but don’t specify what that means. Presumably they’re using the very fastest cards; a Sandisk Extreme III is the fastest CompactFlash card available, and it can handle a data transfer rate of 160 megabits per second.
A P2 card uses four of those caliber of cards (SD instead of CompactFlash) in an array, so the P2 card has the same capacity but four times the speed.
P2 cards are proprietary, CompactFlash is a readily-available off-the-shelf type of product, but: most compactflash cards are way too slow to use to record on something like the Infinity! You’ll need high-speed ones like the Extreme III.
[jiri vrozina] “Will the performance and durability be the same??”
Don’t know.
[jiri vrozina] “Why is the cost of P2 so much higher then memory stick used by Thomson?”
It’s not. A 4gb 20-megabyte-per-second Extreme III card carries an MSRP of $799.95. A 4gb P2 card (at 80 megabytes per second) carries an MSRP of $900. So yes it’s a little more, about 12% more, but then again it’s four times as fast.
Now, the street price of a 4gb Extreme III is a lot less; it “streets” at around $450. But to be fair, we don’t know what the “street price” of a P2 card is yet, so we can’t make a direct comparison. The only direct comparison we can make is by MSRP, and they’re very comparable in price.
[jiri vrozina] “5 cards supplied for Infinity is about $2,500.”
$500 for 8gb? That seems pretty unlikely. An 8gb Sandisk Ultra II streets at $725 each, and they’re only half as fast as what you’d need (the Extreme III). There is no 8gb Extreme III out yet.—————–
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) -
There’s pretty much no chance it’ll be out in November; Panasonic’s been saying “December” for a while now.
—————–
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)