[Joe Incardona]

That’s great, Doug, I’m with you on the question of renting the camera. We are a full-service production house, and really got the camera for our own projects as well.

I do, however, want to provide others who want to DP with the camera, or anyone needing a second or third HPX3000 camera unit, the opportunity to be able to hire our camera and an A.C./media manager from our staff, along with the 5 32 GB and 1 16 GB card and our P2 Mobile.

In addition, if we encounter projects requiring multiple HPX3000s, I would like to know other production houses with which we might be able to partner. We also own the Panasonic AV-HS400N 4-input HD/SDI switcher, which can output to the P2 Mobile for switched-live to P2 shoots.

So far, here in the Southeast, I know of only one other production house, Florida Film & Video in St. Petersburg, which owns the HPX3000.

Anyway, thanks for your input, it’s good to know there are other production houses out there that own this outstanding camera!

Joe Incardona
President
Media Source
Memphis, TN
http://www.memphismediasource.com

[Joe Incardona]

I can’t thank you enough for this, Doug, I don’t think the dealer here in Memphis who sold us the Quantum drive would have known all this. Seems as if you should get some kind of tech support fee from them for the tip you just passed along!

Thanks again, I really appreciate that, it has been frustrating trying to get all this bleeding edge stuff configured without much support from the people who sold it to us!

[Joe Incardona]

Doug, I forgot to ask: where are you located geographically?

Trying to get a handle on how many other production houses have the camera, in case there is need to collaborate with someone on a multi-camera HPX3000 situation.

The Panasonic rep for the mid-US region told me as of two weeks ago only 94 had been sold worldwide, he got that from Panasonic’s order entry people.

Thanks again for your feedback!

Joe Incardona
President
Media Source
Memphis, TN
http://www.memphismediasource.com

[Joe Incardona]

Doug, thanks so much for taking the time to read my white paper and respond to it.

We also have bought the Quantum tape drive, but the dealer here in Memphis who sold it to us has yet to help us install it in our FCP HD edit bay.

I’m anxious to hear how it’s working for you. There’s no question, I think, it’s the best option right now for permanent archival of P2 material, although it is rather pricey.

Let me know how well the Quantum is working for you, and if there are any tips you might share on how to use it best.

Thanks again!

Joe Incardona
President
Media Source
Memphis, TN

[Joe Incardona]

Hey, Jeremy, nothing wrong with a shameless plug every once in a while, that’s so cool you’re on the Sonnet site! I really like their products, our main HD edit suite has their 8 TB R800 RAID array in it for storage.

Thanks, you obviously have far more experience with the F2 drive than we do.

[Joe Incardona]

Thanks, Jeremy, that’s really helpful. The guy who our local dealer hired to configure all this stuff for us told us he thought the Io HD was conflicting with the Fusion drive because the video was not playing back totally smoothly from the timeline.

I think we got that licked later, but assumed we still had to follow his advice about getting a separate power supply for the Fusion drive.

Yes, this is what it’s like being on the bleeding edge of technology!

[Joe Incardona]

Sorry, Noah, I was just going on what a local DP here in Memphis told me last week who works closely with one of the two Red owners here. He cited the audio issue as the reason he didn’t want to use our friend’s Red, along with what he said was the difficulty in getting the footage into his Avid.

I haven’t really read up on the Red camera recently.

[Joe Incardona]

Oh, now I see I didn’t answer your question about the Red vs. the HPX3000.

We have not had the opportunity to compare them. There are a couple of DPs in Memphis who own the Red, they love them. However, they do more film-oriented work than we do, we primarily do corporate and broadcast television.

I do know one observation DPs around here have made about the Red is that it involves a lot more steps than the P2 cameras. Editing Red material in an Avid, for example, is said to be a lot more involved. We edit with Final Cut, which is said to be more Red-friendly.

In addition, the camera’s inability to record audio would be very impractical for us.

However, I know the 4K images from the camera must be awesome. The HPX3000 basically shoots 2K images.

A local DP who was planning to use the Red to shoot a music video in New Mexico now says he wants to use our 3000 instead.

This is about all I can say about the Red camera, I know it has many supporters worldwide. I do love our HPX3000, though.

[Joe Incardona]

So sorry about that, Nate, thanks so much for the heads-up on that!

My bad, there was apparently an extraneous comma at the end of the link when I cut and pasted it into my post.

Here’s the blog link:

https://joeincardona.wordpress.com

Thanks again for catching this!

[Joe Incardona]

Thanks, Ron, that was kind of you to acknowledge us for providing the comparison footage of the HPX-3000 and the EX-1. I really had wanted to shoot some test footage in the AVC Intra 100 codec, but the Panasonic rep wasn’t able to help us download the AVC Intra plug-in for Final Cut the day they were here in Memphis with the camera, so I had no way of getting AVC Intra footage into our NLE.

Just a couple days ago, the engineer from Panasonic who was here sent me a link to download the AVC Intra codec for FCP. I just haven’t had a chance to do anything with it yet. The Panasonic sales rep let me dump some AVC Intra test footage he had with him on to a hard drive in our office, so I may be able to post some AVC Intra test clips edited in FCP in the next week or so.