[Matthew Romanis]

I have recently gone through the steep learning curve of having to buy a PC laptop to work in conjunction with an FFV Mini DVR (another story!!).
A- It was not straight forward to obtain a PC laptop with a firewire port on it,
B- Firewire in the PC world is simply not as elegant as it is in the MAC environment.
My guess would be that keeping the USB 2 option allows the camera more freedom in the PC Laptop environment, as USB 2 seems to be the transfer protocol most used there.
I’m in the position of having used a solid state device for broadcast applications (ie, minicam in tape hazardous environments) the earlier talk in some threads of using CF cards or the like is the stuff of fairytales.
The CF cards for these applications are not reliable, develop dud sectors very quickly and constantly have format issues due to the high sustained data rates. The failure rate is too high to be acceptable for use with the HVX 200, and that is using San Disk Ultra II 4 gig cards x 2.
The very high spec of P2 merits the initial cost. End of argument.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Guys,
Just a little correction on this. It’s not actually Gamma rays as such (This is ionising radiation and is of much more concern to organic materials than electronic components.)
The main concern is larger particles travelling at extremely fast velocities, most of these come from the sun everyday. In normal situations most of the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field deals with these particles by drawing them to the poles of the Earth, much like a magnet. But during periods of violent discharge from the sun (solar storms and such) many more of these particles are flung out in the solar wind. The Earth in turn passes through these “storms”, usually resulting in more activity of Northern lights and electrical disturbances. During periods of intense solar activity these storms can cause a lot of damage to electrical systems in far Northern and Southern areas, and be of particular nuisance to high flying aircraft, particularly polar flights such as those freight flights between Japan and Northern America.
Lead lining certainly helps but we are talking about many kilograms in weight because of the thickness required.
The best thing to do is monitor solar activity via the many observation web sites and avoid shipping anything (monitors and batteries included) during these periods. Equatorial flights are less of a concern, but should not mistaken for “SAFE” either.
Panasonic’s move to ship rather than fly is a responsible one.

[Matthew Romanis]

Couldn’t agree more, though has anyone sampled the canon yet. Is it 4:2:2 off the head?
Having had a Varicam now for 2 years and banging my head against the 720 vs 1080 wall more times than I care to think about, it’s going to be nice to have a camera that can do both that will appeal to some of our clients who are in this marketplace.
Now it’s just a matter of getting one to go south of the Equator in PAL guise when it’s released.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Martin.
The colour space sample rate is 4:2:2 off the CCD block using HD component out. I needed to use a converter to take the HD RGB signal and make it HDSI for capture through a BM card into my G5. So you can see that this rig is not exactly portable in comparisson to the HVX 200 and what it is offering to do. The test we carried out is not a simple nor inexpensive way to go, but does offer a different approach to capturing key material.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi John,
Due to HDV’s highly compressed nature, keys that are near perfect will key well. Any format that has a high degree of compression will present some problems when keyed.
I have recently seen a Sony Z1, DVCAM 450, and a Panasonic DVX 100 performing green and blue screen keys. All cameras and formats performed well when conditions and chroma separation were optimal. When we pushed chroma separation together the Sony Z1 lost out real quick, also when there was any degree of quick movement in frame. The 450 was the clear winner in all tests we performed followed closely by the DVX 100. Interestingly though was when we used the uncompressed output on the Z1 and recorded straight to disk. The results were brilliant. My advice would be to never think of doing a key from tape with the Z1 unless you absolutely have to.
I have been doing keys for years now with PRO 50 camcorders and recently with the Varicam and the HD 100 codec, though I prefer to to use an uncompressed codec when space and time allow. Both codecs offer excellent results, though I would have to say that PRO 50 probably is less time consuming and easier to get great results with.
Hope this helps.

[Matthew Romanis]

Our Cinewave has made for a very nice bookend in our CD production music library for the last 18 months.
Black magic is making some very nice products, same with AJA and their Kona 2 card and like.
The one thing I miss most about the cinewave card is the ability to watch renders rendering 1 frame at a time. It helped a great deal in making sure that what was intended to render was actually rendering.
Check out the rest of the forums on the cow here re what card to get. People who have the AJA product speak highly of the after sales service. I have also had an IO for about 3 years now and find it excellent.
Good hunting.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Jorje,
Varicam loves Pal world, apple and Final Cut Pro by themselves do not.
There are a couple of posts recently, yours included, that are demonstrating that people are using the Varicam without understanding how it needs to be understood with post production very much in mind. DoP’s cannot use this camera with out understanding how what they do on the shoot can really be a nightmare in post production. As DoP’s we should empower ourselves with a full understanding of the post process and be of assistance to the editor and line producer. I don’t like to hear people rubbish Varicam when the only problem seems to be a lack of real understanding about a new system. Anyway, enough of that said. Now to some help (I hope).

When your DoP used the camera, was it clocking at 60hz or 59hz internal frequency? You can find out by looking at the data on the userbit display on the 1200a. For use in the PAL world the camera needs to clocking at 60hz other wise a time artefact is introduced. The same happens if you digitise with the 1200a internal frequency set to 59hz rather than 60hz for PAL (I know this sounds like an NTSC setting but in the Varicam world it is not. 59hz is the setting to use when shooting for NTSC.)
Please don’t mistake these settings for the Variable cranking speed of the camera, they are a different set of settings with their own nuances.
When you first digitised, did you go through firewire from the 1200a to your MAC? If so, then understand that there is no real 25-fps support with HD 100 and firewire. This is an APPLE problem and why they have not resolved this within the last 2 years astounds me to this day. Transferring your material with the 59.98 frame setting was unfortunately a big mistake, you have inadvertently introduce a time artefact for going back to 25fps. If any of your edits occur after the 24th frame in a second, FCP will add that amount to the next second when you go to conform thus pushing out each consecutive out point for every shot.
There may be a way to fix this though, Graeme Nattress <https://www.nattress.com/> has a standards converter available as a pluggin for FCP. Buy this pluggin and download it from the site, follow the instructions for use. Exactly copy all the shots from your 59.98 time line onto the 25fps timeline and apply the filter to all shots making the appropriate setting change to the filter for all shots (don’t ignore placing the source material in the image well, and make sure the new time line is set to PAL 25fps) and render it back to 25fps. This will take a very long time, I have found that 6 minutes of source takes about 2hrs to render, so this may be a job over a couple of nights. If you have any problems refer back to the web site, or go to the “Panasonic P2 cameras” Forum on COW and Graeme is a forum leader there.
Once that is done you will have a properly converted time line.
You may choose to just conform as per normal without using the pluggin and make the changes necessary to each shot for the new time, it’s up to you to choose.

Once you are in the 25fps PAL world you can then rework your 60fps material using the Varicam settings for the Black Magic card you have mentioned. Make sure that the VTR menu settings are correct for what you need to do.

Is the Black Magic card a HD card and do you own it? If so then you could have captured to DVC HD 100 25fps through the BM card using HDSDI. The BM codecs allow you to do this and you would have avoided these problems.

Is the Slow Motion footage on the same tape as the intended 25fps material? This may cause you some headaches if it is. When capturing through the BM card using the Varicam slow motion settings, you will need to capture 3-5 times the amount of material off tape than what you intend on using. This can mean that the original camera tape may need to be stripped to the end of tape if one of the last shots on each tape is your intended slow motion shot, remembering that FCP will need to capture 3-5 times the amount of footage off tape than required. I have found that using the PANASONIC FRC can save a lot frustration for people who find themselves in this situation.

I hope this helps you in some way.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi John,
The problem started appearing some weeks after we did that upgrade. The G5 is running Tiger, and FCP HD Studio pack (FCP 5), and the IO has the most recent update.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi John,
I’m not so sure about that anymore. I have 1 AJ 950, 1 AJ 960, and an AJ 1200 and it is only the 950 that seems to be giving this error. Panasonic service here in Australia has given this machine a clean bill of health, and in other environments it works perfectly. Wierd.

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Jerry,
The VTR has been to Panasonic and come back with a clean bill of health. If I know where the fault is being read from I can check menu settings and or take the deck back and pin point the area of concern. The problem is that at the moment it could be coming from the time code heads, VTR control module, or any other number of areas. This is only a recent development, the VTR’s have been very reliable since we got them in 1999/2000 and have had regular servicing.