[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Hi,

I thought I would chime in and see if I can add some breadth to Tosh’s character. It was the Ad Agency and several folks within Panasonic that came up with the idea because we knew that the HVX200 would be one of the most difficult to explain cameras because not only does it do so many formats but it also requires one to change a workflow. We needed an avenue for this camera to become understood and one idea was to develop an educational site that we could control the content. Forums like the CreativeCow are great but the content of the facts can become lost in the conversation sometimes and not everything that needs to be said gets said. A brochure can’t begin to say it all, and a DVD can’t say it all and so we thought about a blog, something that could naturally grow, be expected to grow. It took us quite a while to define it and give it a character.

Now depending on when you came in on it, it started with just a copyright on the bottom that clearly said it was a Panasonic Corporation of North America Website, and folks got upset. So we added an entry that was cheeky to talk about who he was, but even in his stuff about himself, it always said, I am only a blog. People still were upset, so we added brought to you by Panasonic, that still wasn’t enough, so we added the fictional character paragraph at the top. That seems to be working and we are now getting the questions and responses that we hoped to get. So now we can really start to grow the site.

The reason that we didn’t set it up as my blog, or someone real is because that person becomes the sought out person at a trade show. The web is a powerful communications medium that can make someone famous without you even realizing it. Some of you I know by your signature, like Chris or blub, but who is Chris? I use my full name and I have to say that while it was never my intent, I am famous. That part is too weird. I am a pretty private person and having so many know me is a little odd. So anyhow I have seen it happen more times than not, I will be introduced to a person by their local sales person, we will exchange business cards, have a few words, and then the following Monday, I will get an email from them and they won’t include their local person. A disconnect. Not good. We wanted an additive experience.

So we wanted a persona that could be a strong technical voice, present information clearly and that while they would become famous, they could never come between the relationship that our customers have already found in Panasonic.

We wanted him to seem real enough to talk to because we felt that adults working in a professional community wouldn’t talk to cartoon characters, they talk to people. Tosh as a person is not real, but his words are real. They are the words from a group of about 10 people within the marketing and engineering department, and he is fun. Makingall of these different people talk as one voice actually makes the information come through at a singular level and this is a good thing. One of our team is a regular speaker at SMPTE meetings and is a very strong engineer, you can find some posts by Steve Mahrer over on the VariCam Cow, another is Mike Bergeron, our camera engineer, he too posts occasionally on the VariCam Cow, or Phil Livingston, our senior technologist, VP and my husband. Some of the team are Japanese, some are management. At any rate if you knew these folks you would say that they all have their own writing style, and we wanted to keep the information to a level that anyone could understand it and have it sound like one voice. Obviously I too am one of the contributors.

Point is we wanted an avenue to share infomation as it comes out and to give it a place on the web where questions could be asked and be answered, and the thread can’t be hijacked by someone’s personal agenda. We have fun with Tosh, we blame Tosh for lots of things in the department, we try to get him in trouble, we leave notes for each other from Tosh, when somebody is looking for something, we say that we just saw Tosh walking down the hall with it, we have fun. 😉

One more thought on the matter,there is not a model for this being done before, at least not by a video equipment company in a technical arena, we could find it in the Home Economics arena but not video. Not to sound like a cliche, but it is an outside of the box idea, for a mega corporation. So we have had a bit of rocky start, and we have had our share of hate mail as we were not sure how much notice had to be there. There were a couple of times I felt like pulling the plug, my boss felt like pulling the plug, but then we would get a response from a reader that seemed like an indicator that said, this is why we did this and if we just keep tuning it, it could become the vision.

And finally, let me part with one last idea, why does marketing and education have to be always so serious? Can’t it be fun?

Best regards,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

There is only one spec that has not been disclosed, that being the chip set. Virtually all else has been discussed ad nauseum. When we brought out the SDX900, the final spec shett showed up the month we delivered. I expect the same to be true here. The same was true of the DVX. Not unusual at all, it is just the camera that is so unusual that there is so much conversation about it.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Toke,

This isn’t an issue for debate, the camera is made the way the camera is made. You may not care for the way that we have chose, but you can choose to make your own camera. I am a pretty savvy person and when an engineer says it is too expensive, it means that it is too expensive and that means possibly more than just the chips but possibly the path by which to make that happen. So this will be my last post on the subject. The chips are proms, they won’t be changed at this point. Production on Decembers cameras start next week.

Best regards,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

[toke lahti] “Ok, if your knowledge of used chip types and their prices relys on a logic: “camera is so expensive, that the chips must be too”, maybe you should ask somebody more technical in Panny’s department.

Usually nowadays the real expense is to write that code into those chips, not the chips itself.”

If your logic is that because the computer chips may be cheap then it should be cheap, maybe you should go into camera engineering. 😉 When I said the engieers told me that it was expensive, you say that it is not true. When I say that it is difficult and expensive, you say it is not true. Well I think you should go into camera engineering and see for yourself. And all of these folks that I am talking to are vastly more technical that I hope to be.

Best regards,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

toke lahti:Jan, can you tell me how much these “firmware chips” cost? And how much more they would cost if they were reprogrammable? I’ve been updating motherboards and cd/dvd-burners etc. bioses and firmwares for a decade. And those do cost less than $100.

From what I understand they are expensive and to set up the camera so that it can upgrade software in the field is expensive, this is not a trivial thing. The SPX800 does it and look at its price. It doesn’t even begin to be in the same ball park when we talk about computers and motherboards, it is not the same thing.

>What you are saying is that reprogrammable eeproms are too expensive in $6k camera!

Yep that is exactly what I am saying, it is too expensive.

>On the other hand, if the reason for not-updateble firmware is that you have to make firmware perfect at the start, that is a pretty good reason.Otherwise it might turn out to be a situation where we are now with computers/cell phones/dtv-receivers, where every second feature will work “in the next update”.”

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

[BillM] “Does the HVX200 use eproms (electrically programmable read only memory) or proms (programmable read only memory)? Proms are not re-programmable. Re-programming eproms in-camera may be difficult. If major upgrades or bug fixes are made to the firmware, Panasonic should offer a factory upgrade option to HVX200 owners, rather than forcing them to buy a newer model of the camera. The HVX200 is a first generation camera. There are bound to be problems and subsequent fixes.”

Hi Bill,

They are PROMs. Just as there was no path for an upgrade on the DVX100, because the upgrade was a new chipset and DSP, I do not expect anything that would be a bug fix on this camera. We didn’t have a bug fix on the DVX, I don’t forsee one here either. And no, I don’t believe that there are bound to be problems and subsequent fixes. There may be in a year or two another camera, but this camera would not likely to be upgraded to it.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

We are not talking flash memory, we are talking about firmware chips, and those do cost more. Sorry.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

[doka15] “The DVX-100 had some issues and with lots of feed back and a year later the DVX-100a was relesed that addressed some problems. I get a little worried when there demo video they release isn’t even shot with the camera. What also throws me for a loop is they just released the DVX-100B a couple of weeks ago. I would think they would wait until the HVX200 and sell that as the new camera and not build another DVX camera.”

Hi,

First your assessment of why the DVX100A became a reality is really incorrect. The original chipset became impossible to get and so we had to design a new camera, so with the opportunity to do so we changed some things that customers had asked for, and change the DSP because we had to. The DVX100B is based on the fact that it had to become RoHS certified in order to continue to sell into Europe, and in so doing, why not add a few features to the camera that weren’t there before. As far as not introducing the 100B at $3995 and teling everyone that they had to cough up $5995 in order to buy just a DV camcorder seems to assume that everyone has $2000 at their discretion. We don’t happen to think so.

Best regards,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

The George Bush footage was SD and supplied by New York 1 to start with and basically went along with the script but was not an indicator of the camera at all. I mean think about it when was the Republican convention?

The rest of the artifacting I blame on the DVD compression. It was shot with a VariCam and the orignals do not have the artifacts that you see. As Haakon said, there will be a third DVD pressed and I will ask them to see if they can yous a different method in the compression.

Hope that helps,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Hi,

I am not sure that we will be at the NAB Post show. I have been thinking we would be, but not sure at this point.

Best,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems