[Mike Curtis]

(this is from something I posted over at hdforindies.com, all I said there is below:)

So it’s nice to see this stuff confirmed on the Panasonic site. If I’m interpreting this correctly, and I may not be, I think the formats should break down like this:

DVCPRO HD: -1080i60, 1080p24, 1080p30, 720p60, 720p24, 720p30

The 1080 res will be 1280×1080 pixels to tape. The 720 formats will be 960×720 to tape. These are the resolutions recorded to tape, subsampled from their higher end source. This camera is expected to have a 1280×720 image sensor (see prior report).

The interesting challenge will be figuring out which resolution to record in to get most useful info. I’d previously written that the 1080p24 would be the best way to get full detail – but since the 1280×720 source chip image would be probably blown up to 1920×1080, then downsampled to 1280×1080, I’m not so positive that distortions from the stretching may goof it up. I don’t think you’d be getting a 1:1 correlation between image sensor pixels and pixels recorded to tape, even though they are both numerically 1280 pixels wide (this is different from what I’d postulated before). Or wait a minute, maybe it is, and they’re just stretching in the vertical dimension to get up to 1080 from 720. Argh. Late, tired, too much math for my head right now. I’m thinking 1080p24 WILL be worth doing, that I had it right in the first place.

720p24 mode has quality issues as well – it has been shrunk to 960×720 from 1280×720, so you’ve tossed some data out there, never to be recovered. Your NLE will stretch it back out to 1280 for display, but it’s making up pixel color values for the 960=>1280 stretch, rather than having original, accurate, recorded, non-guesssed-at pixel color values to work with.

DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO 25, DV: 480i60, 480p24, 480p30p – 720×480 pixels, in 4:2:2 (for DVCPRO50) or 4:1:1 (the others) color space

This sounds like a REALLLLLLLY nice camera. If you thought the DVX100a was the s**t, then this is the killer s**t…for probably not much more money.

They’ll spill details at NAB, but when will it ship? Probably not right away…

Mike Curtis
HD For Indies – Hi Def Filmmaking & Post for Independent Filmmakers