HD For Indies

At a very late night meal (too late to even call dinner) with Terence from the LA FCPUG, I came to this realization:

Perhaps the Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 camera is the first "razors & blades" camera.

The camera is relatively inexpensive for all that it does...and the media costs out the wazoo (since it's RAM). The camera sounds like like it might be fairly low margin with all the features they've shoved into. The MEDIA, however, is probably going to be pretty good margin. If not a first, certainly as their get their yields up and costs down. The P2 card reader station sure seems to be decent margin for them - it's cheap for a deck, horrifically expensive for a PC card reader. But as for that media....razor blades.

Not that I'm not psyched about it, I'm looking forward to this one more than the ProHD JVC camera. 4:2:2, easy edit workflow, all coolness.

The biggest question to me is whether they are going to go with a 960x720 res sensor, to match the 720p res of the DVCPRO HD codec, or go for 1280x720, in which case they would have a nice upconvert to 1080 res, since the codec for 1080p & 1080i is 1280x1080. Horizontally it would stay the same, just get stretched vertically. Or maybe they'll split the difference - use offset, wide green pixels like the Sony HDV cameras do at 960 pixels across. Then they could claim an enhanced resolution for the 1080p stuff, something closer to 1280 wide. (This is my sneaking suspicion of what they'll do, since it offers pretty good resolution, and lower pixel count for larger sensor pad size for better low light performance.)

It should be possible to record DVCPRO HD from FireWire straight to disk, either via an Enfocus (or similar) dedicated specialty drive gadget, or worst case scenario to a Mac running Final Cut Pro HD. I've already been cocktail napkin doodling on how to keep the Mac on, running, cool, and controlled in a backpack for run 'n gun shooting. Should I get a provisional patent rolling? Hmmm.....dibs.

Below are my notes on the P2 from the huge, awesome Final Cut Pro User Group meeting tonight:

I missed a bunch of it because Jan, the product manager, whipped through her slides so fast:


STATS ON PANASONIC P2 CAMERA:

1080i60, 30p, 24p

720 60p, 30p, 24p
24p 2:3, 2:3:3:2, 30p, 2/2 modes

480 60i, 30p, 24p
24p modes 2:3, 2:3:3:2, 30p modes 2:2

8GB card
108060i720p60 duration ????

720 mode, records ONLY unique frames

off frame rates on DV res too

SD memory card for setsups, 4 in card, 4 in camera

AVC, streaming and SPB2, file transfer, all levels of data 25mb, 50mb, 100mb on the firewire!!!!


USB 2.0 connection to computer

2 remote connectors, one for zoom/start/start, another for focus/iris

time code of all flavors, rec run, free run, time of day
2 xlr mike inputs
composite in/out
s video in/out
line level audio in/out
analog compontnet HD out (d)
720p cross convert to 1080i

2 p2 card slots
Prerecord prior to hitting record
loop rec
hot swap
thumbnail display (similar to SPX 800)
shot mark/tc stamp

5400 milliamp battery, 4 hours of record time

manual audio controls for 1 & 2, channels 3 and 4 only from built in mike

13x Leica Dicomar wide angle lense, 35mm equivalient

stereo mike that's usable, because it's a silent running camera

-neutral density filter

high res 4:3 LCD to handle the 16:9 stuff

when running 16:9, info goes above/below

zoom in for focus assist, pixel for pixel (like Z1U)

available to check while in record

viewfinder can be color or B&W



SMPTE
ALL THE SHUTTER SPEED STUFF THE DVX DOES AND MORE

auto/manual mode switch is obvious an discreet, not in a men

-audio selection area

camcorder w/no P2 is $5995, camcorder w/2x8GB cards is $9995

available Q4

production person's white paper is available in the booth (!!!)

P2 workflow:

shoot
mount drive
edit decisions,
edit
finish program
smart archive with metadata

start/stop DV detection works on the P2 - so auto scene detection on import

P2 transfer rate is 1 GB/min, bottleneck is at the hard drive, card can transfer 640Mbit/min, 260 mbit/sec transfer, 3 1/2 min at present P2 card transfer rate

4 solid state memory cards set up as RAID 0

8 GB card will be about $2k by time it ships

4gb cards presently $1700

there WILL be a PAL version of the camera