HD For Indies

I couldn't be there, but got a bunch of reports in from DV Expo West today. UPDATE: More Reports at bottom - just keep reading! Here we go:

I asked the Panny rep a couple of questions about our favorite camera at the DV Expo in L.A. today.
Probably nothing you don't already know, but...

720 24p is native, but if you do 1080 24p you have to do it 29.97 and then remove the extra frames later. He said there are a couple of options, but the one I remember is to do PA and remove the extra frames during realtime capture just like their DV cams.

I asked two reps what the true native resolution was (960X1080? 1280X1080? 1440X1080?) and they both said "I don't know."

I asked one rep if the component out sends the signal out before adding compression and he said, "I should have that answer for you, but I don't."

He was pushing the P2 cards. I asked what the advantage of those was compared to the hard drive and he said: No moving parts, so it is quieter (better for sound recording) and consumes less power. So then I asked if the hard drive would be able to draw power from the camera and he didn't know.

-brian w


also, attached photo shows prototype firestore hard drive attached to the camera as well as the monitor they are pushing with it (see bottom left). 720 24p looked a little funky on that monitor...


John August (yeah, that one) wrote in:

Hi Mike,

I just got back from downtown. The Expo was fine. It didn't seem as busy/overwhelming as last year, but that may have been because I went early, and I know a helluva lot more this time. (That is, I could safely ignore about 80% of the systems.)

I really wanted to see the HVX-200, and there it was, right inside the door. They had four of them on the floor that you could touch, one of which was over at the Focus/Firestore booth.

I'm not a shooter, but I certainly didn't find anything objectionable about the camera. I always find those staged, lit setups with models a little ridiculous, because most cameras are going to look pretty good under those optimum conditions.

I asked the Panasonic guy about the FS-100 they had mounted on one of the cameras (on top, where you'd put a light). Specifically, I wanted to know if the FS was getting exactly what the P2 got, or something different. He said the FS didn't get all the meta-data, but couldn't really elaborate. (He wasn't the main dude, so I didn't press him.)

I asked the guy at the Focus/Firestore booth, who said it did in fact get all the metadata, in the same wrapper as the P2. It didn't, however, have the handy thumbnails in the viewer when working this way. He said the FS-100 would ship at the end of March, available through Panasonic. The way he said it, it sounded like Focus was building them for Panasonic, more than just a casual partnership.

Then at the Panasonic presentation, the woman (the same rep I saw a few months ago) said specifically that the FS-100 would generate thumbnails by the time it ships. Which seems challenging, based on what I saw, because the unit just hooks into the FireWire port. (The camera would need to know a lot about the external device.) Maybe the thumbnail stuff is really stored on the P2 card and refers out to the stuff on the FS-100.

I don't expect we'll really know until March.

The rep talked about availability, saying that while some of the preorders might be filled in Dec/Jan, it would be February before it was in a lot of people's hands. The 8G P2 cards are scarce. One guy asked if it would make sense to buy the 4G version to get it faster, and she nodded.

Nothing else all that exciting, though I did like the Fig Rig, which is a hand-holding unit that looks like a steering wheel, with the camera mounted in the middle.

Hope you're well,

--John


I'm good, John, but not as well as you - congrats on the Grammy nomination!

Best company name (Screaming Poodle Productions) had this to say:

Hi I went last night and oddly, Sony was no where to be seen. They did have a few vegas boxes around but no camera booth at all. Have they surrendered? Are they admitting that their HDV camera is not the shit? Seems strange.

Mark Weatherbe
Screaming Poodle Entertainment


other tidbits from around the world:
- HVX200 1080p comes in as 1080i with Advanced Pulldown applied on a 1080i datastream (that's how your 1080i DVCPRO HD codec will handle it)
-PhotoJPEG QuickTime codec set to EXACTLY 75% is lossless 4:2:2 codec, above and beyond that it does 4:4:4 (but 76% is compressed, etc.)
-looks like Jim Jannard of Oakley might be behind the RED camera stuff - the website info leads back to Oakley as the commenters on my prior article pointed out, and over on the CML 2K 4:4:4 list some folks are pointing specific fingers at Jannard. It has been pointed out on CML that if you look at Jim Jannard's personal website, he's clearly into photography and cameras, and the fonts (typefaces) look similar to red.com's as well.
UPDATED/NEW MATERIAL FRIDAY:

More info on the P2 based Panasonic HVX200:
-the Mac PCMCIA slots will now read the P2 cards with drivers that Panasonic will ship with the camera.
-the current version of FCP does not support Panasonic P2 import from the camera, even though it is a menu option. However, when the camera is released, Apple will release an update to FCP (5.0.4) and THAT will support P2 import. We got the footage, but were unable to import it into our systems, and the Rep said "you need the latest version of FCP 5." We had that. 5.0.3. "Oh, we have 5.0.4...oh...it is a beta. OK..."

Another report on the HVX200, this one not so optimistic:

Hi Mike,

Long time reader of the blog, just wanted to chime in briefly about the HVX.

Let me just say, it's a neat camera, but I'm disturbed that it has more obvious compression artifacts than is being disclosed. I was able to shoot just a few clips from the camera in both 720p 24 and 1080 60i and record them off of a P2 card, and burned to CD from a powerbook. The images were of typical expo traffic (CU's of attendees faces, unflattering, dim lighting of course, but what can you do there?) near a booth. If you look at these native DVCPRO HD clips (exported from FCP via "make movie self-contained" export i.e.: no recompression) you can see that the compression is rather atrocious. Look at HVX720-2.mov and notice the blockiness and mush in the girls hair. To my eyes, it's rather extreme.

The clips were shot with Odb gain. Not sure what all the other settings were, but I'm pretty sure it was a default preset. Non cine-gamma I think.

It'll be interesting to see more native footage from the early adopters. I think it's not nearly as clean as the H1. Man, now that made a beautiful image. Very Cinealta-like in 24F mode. Poor man's F900 for sure, but damn! A very good imitation.

Thanks,

Barlow


The Two Minute Drill MP3 thingy I listen to every day has coverage on the HVX200 and the packages it'll be bundled with

Little Frog in HiDef went to the expo and saw the HVX200 and also got all joyous about the HDV output capability of the Kona LHe, and got excited that he could output his 720p23.98 over HD-SDI to 720p59.94:

It will take my 720p24 DVCPRO HD timeline running at 23.98 and output that as 10-bit uncompressed 59.94...in realtime...through the card. Realtime hardware upconvert. No need for dropping into a 10-bit timeline and rendering...it just does it.

This is NOT news, or unique - the Kona 2, as well as numerous BlackMagic DeckLink HD projects, can do this as well. He says the Kona2 can't do this - again not true, I've done it myself on ours. This is NOT "upconverting" - be careful what terms you use.

he then goes on about using the analog inputs to capture 720p24 footage as 720p60 via the component analog inputs, and capture it as DVCPRO HD. THIS IS COOL. Unfortunately, it gives you no way to extract your 24p frames that I'm aware of, and even AJA calls it best for offline work, not online work - this is HDV retranscoded to DVCPRO HD after suffering a digital to analog to digital conversion. While it functionally works, and is better than nothing, not optimal. Offline this way, yes, but online recapture uncompressed. THEN somewhere in there figure out how to extract your 24p from your 60p signal if you want a 24p master for non-broadcast usage.



-mike