[Blayne Gorum]

Did I miss a boat somewhere?

You can be pretty insulting. I’ve been capturing firewire since there were only iLink devices to use it on. It’s what I cut my teeth on. I have been using the 1200A since there was a 1200A. I just don’t own one. I know all about the problems. This isn’t about deck control or editing deadlines. It’s about the lack of a useful tool that exists for other formats like DV, HDV and anything that puts out component analog. Why am I wrong to want this?

Would you actually go back and read the posts I’ve written because you are about 75% off topic and starting to act like this is something personal.

Bottom Line: It would be really neat to be able to capture to a hard drive in the field. Firewire appears to be the only option. Other formats can do this. Firewire meets the DVCPRO HD specs. On what planet is this a bad idea?

PS: Next time you feel like lecturing about “misinformation” pick someone who hasn’t had idiot ACs record over footage or break timecode because of playback. It happens as you yourself wrote. You don’t necessarily know someone’s competence until they show their lack of it. Of course there are “plenty” of times when playback is necessary. Wouldn’t it be nice to eliminate some of those times by pressing a button?

[Blayne Gorum]

This is rant going longer than I think is healthy, but I just gotta say…

1) Panasonic had a two month backlog on the 1200 last year–entirely because of the FireWire option. Everybody and their brother wants the ease of FireWire. Why else would anybody rent a 1200–with the exception of some of the cross/up conversion capabilities it has.

1.5) This could be the real reason we are having a misunderstanding–Just about every tape that is shot on my camera is either converted to some SD format (50% DV and 50% everything else), or they now use the 1200A to capture from tape to disk and not leave the DVCPRO HD path. Skipping the deck to disk part of the equation is what I am talking about. Not degrading the signal. Most (not all) clients can’t tell the difference between the DVCPRO HD and uncompressed 720p footage and will never go back for an HD-SDI uncompressed online.

2) I know you have to do it sometimes, but you don’t playback from camera unless you have to. Please don’t take this as a lecture–but I just think your point is sort of needless because of this.

3) With the SDI & FireWire options it is $31k list on the Panasonic site. With a normal discount of 20% it’s $24.8K. Apparently there is also some kind of rebate for $1800 also if you buy by 8/31.

4) It’s probably all moot, because if we are all good boys and girls the next Varicam release will have the FireWire option anyway.

[Blayne Gorum]

The last time I checked the 1200 was about 25K with all the bells and whistles. Yet Panasonic has managed to fit a converter in an under 5K camera that will allow a 2K Firestore box to do what I can’t do with my umpteen thousand dollars worth of gear.

You guys are missing the point of what I am trying to say. I don’t really care about Firewire control and the idea isn’t to retrofit an old deck up to new (the 130 does everything fine thanks). The point is that for what should be less than the cost of a whole new mini camera I should be able to get firewire out of an SDI signal path. I am mainly concerned about going to disk as opposed to tape only. It would be nice to be able to capture to a PowerBook or something else (FireStore?) without having to lug a field deck around.

I’m sorry but the value proposition for something like that is tremendous. If that box existed everyone with a Varicam should want one. Of course it’s a small market, that’s why you charge 2-3K for a product that costs 200 to make and 95% of the R&D has been done–it already works in the 1200 and the new HDX2000 camera.

I’ve had at least 10 micro features shot on my Varicam. Every single one of them would have killed to have playback off of a PowerBook instead of having to rewind the camera. Being able to have everythingin DVCPRO HD quality on the drive on set would be a killer proposition for a lot of people.

Just handing a firewire drive to the editor so he can start chopping at full res if he wants. Not having to pull your hair out trying to get the EDL created from the mini dv dupes to actually conform. Being able to actually use the full 10 bits that the Varicam can put out.

Why would you not want to do any of these things that you can’t do now?

Of course you could lug your G5 out and do it. But you better not sit close to the sound guy.