HD For Indies

HD For Indies Labs Report: Mike (Starts To) Get Hands On with HVX200

OK, here's my first day's thoughts as I've just started working with the HVX200. I'll hopefully type up something more formal later, but below are my raw notes.

First off, MANY THANKS to David Fry and Allan Barnwell of Omega Broadcast Group for the generous loan of a stock HVX200 with a total of four 4GB P2 cards and two extra batteries for several days this week.

I'm not as up on the capabilities of this camera as I'd like to be before I started messing with it, and it quickly became apparent. This camera has DEPTH, there is a lot to it, you'll spend HOURS just doodling with the shooting modes and figuring out what frame sizes and frame rates you can shoot and what are the limitations under each, how to work with variable frame rate shooting modes (720p only), etc.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

-LOTS of options
-people are going to be confused and shoot stuff that they regret they shot that way later
-there will be a market for help on this stuff
-so far in my LIMITED understanding Final Cut Pro support is good but not awe inspiring, unless I need to learn more about metadata support (was this shot P or I? for instance)
-getting it into FCP is cake - hook it up, set the mode correctly and plug it in
-DRIVERS ARE NECESSARY to get it to show up on Mac
-lots of little specific details to get right
-for the money, it's awfully nice
-image quality, especially low light performance - it's not replacing a Varicam anytime soon, but FOR THE MONEY it is a helluva deal
-as with most 1/3" HD camcorders, cramming a ton of pixel sensors onto a small area doesn't create the best low light performance. My completely non-scientific, haven't seen'em side by side gut vibe says that the Sony is likely to have better low light performance - shooting some stuff in my moderate to poorly lit house (time to change the halogens!), the shadows had a loooooot of grain...but I need to spend more time with camera before drawing any serious conclusions.

Many/most of the comments/observations are from Luis, if it is in quotes, it is something he said. Luis shoots with a DVX100A for local stuff, he's a one-man-band type of operation shooting DV and working with Final Cut Pro. He's quite familiar with the DVX100A from both a shooting and editing/posting perspective, and I asked him to come over and mess with it to get his opinion on it. I'll have other DoPs working with it over the next few days, and if I have time I'll write an overall review/summary of it. In classic "I ain't got no time to pretty it up" HD4NDs fashion, here are my raw notes. I mean, ahem, I prefer to get information out there as quickly as possible and sacrifice polish for immediacy.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE ARE MY INITIAL IMPRESSIONS, AS I TOOK THE CAMERA OUT OF THE BOX AND STARTED WORKING WITH IT with an experienced DVX100A shooter. I think it is valid to share/publish these thoughts and notes, since I figure it is similar to what other first time users will experience.

I'm sure I'll either add to this or have more to say as the week goes by, but here's what I've got for now.

I hope to hear back from Luis with his additional notes soon, too, I'll post those as well.

SETUP NOTES:

This was done using my Quad G5 with a BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme connected for viewing HD content via DVI on my Apple 23" monitor (mostly because I could).

RAW NOTES EXACTLY AS I TOOK'EM:
-------------------------------------

-surprising that the audio controls are buried in the menus (same as they are on the DVX)

-they've now added more options

-in general very much like the DVX - menu structure is exactly the same with added options to some menus

-"I've never seen this camera before and I feel like I know where everything is already"

-audio setups on the side are the same, the new buttons are the same

-some basics on the camera just holding it and checking it out:

-incredibly well balanced, definitely heftier than the DVX

-nice that the LCD viewer can bend out more than 90 degrees

-nice that the LCD flips around 180 degrees

-focus assist CAN be used while shooting, press the well located button and it runs for 10 seconds

-focus assist magnifies whatever is in the middle of the screen

-this sucker is going to be TOUGH for newbies (and experienced folk) to figure out. For GOD'S SAKE be sure you are shooting the mode you want! We wanted to shoot 60fps for 24fps playback (slomo) of me scaring Girl Kitty (Hey, all in the name of science, right?), but instead we shot 24fps playback for 60fps playback (I think), so we'll see what it get. Instead of slomo, we'll have speedup. Undercrank vs. overcrank.

Based on that kind of stuff, this is probably the most complicated (or feature rich, depending on your view) camera under $10K.

For instance -

you've got Scene File to set overall

-you can only set the frame rate when in Film Cam Mode: you can only over/undercrank when in Film Cam Mode.

-can't over/undercrank in 1080p (variable frame rates only available in 720p mode)

-IN ORDER TO RECORD OVER/UNDERCRANK - you need to

"Using the Record Format (P2) function, on the Recording Setup screen, select 720/30PN or 720/24PN as the recording format." ...to shoot variable frame rates (p.35 of the manual - the variable framerate section starts on P.34)

-WTF does the N stands for? N denotes Native?

-can't change frame rates while recording, thus no ramping like the Varicam does

-Cineporter connects via P2, so it is a virtual P2 card (in theory), as opposed to the Focus Enhancements product, which connects via FireWire (and gets 3:2 pulldown or flagged frames added). So in theory, the Cineporter will be the way to go

-in the VCR mode, you have to use the side to side buttons to nav the clips, can't use up and down - kinda annoying.

-I was going to copy and paste snippets of text, but the PDF is password protected to prevent copying and pasting

WHEN CAPTURING:

-connect camera to Mac AFTER Mac is on
-camera may not be recognized after sleep

-"It's as if the tape transport doesn't even exist when you're in P2 mode" - Luis

-"People are really gonna....mess this up." (insert appropriate word in that pause)

-"It's gonna be a nightmare for a lot of post houses." just in terms of complexity, much the same way the Varicam works.

-when powered down (or in VCR mode, basically when not in camera mode), it makes the same thunky clicky sound as the DVX100A - this is the image stabilization doohickey flopping around inside - THIS IS NORMAL, freak not.

-you have to power the camera OFF in order to switch between P2 and camera - baiscally rebooting the camera between modes

-this camera is DEEP - you thought your regular, 29.97 DV camera had options? This goes waaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond that. If you want to do anything more than the point & shoot DV basics, you'll need to plan some serious time with the camera to figure it out and get at the features you want. Without commenting on the efficacy of the camera, the large variety of options available is daunting, and there are multiple components to Getting It Right when trying to do something specific.

-the FORMAT handles 4 channels of audio, but there are two XLR and two Line In inputs, but I don't know if they can all be hot

-dubbing function (from HD to SD on DV) "is NOT intuitive." can't dub 1080 footage to DV, only 720

-"I'm surprised at how needed the manual is" -this from an experienced DVX100A user

-low light performance - noisier in low light - "shouldn't be a surprise, I was just hoping it was a lot cleaner. Keeping in mind it's a $6000 camera, it is leaps and bounds ahead of anything we've seen up to this point...as a $6000 camera it is impressive, it is more realistically a $7000-$10,000 to be a usable"

-don't hotswap the FireWire - you gotta shut it down to get it in camera mode

-file importing - File-Import-P2 works just fine, you even get little preview icons - nice!

-2GB reported it would take about 4 minutes to import over FireWire, I didn't stopwatch it or anything

-it appears that Macs are to use FireWire400 and Windows to use USB 2.0, I don't know how rigid that is

things to try I haven't yet:

-record live out the analog to DVCPRO HD at same time as camera does (just to see the difference, uncompressed would be good but I don't have the fibre channel RAID here)
-live out the FireWire while shooting?
-try to connect directly to a drive - p. 84 in the manual


------------------

end of notes

I'm sure I'll have more to add (and Luis too), just wanted to start with this. More coming, don't worry, it'll just take some time to doodle with it and get more info out there.

There's a bunch of stuff we doodled with that I didn't take notes on, but not-as-impressive-as-we'd-hoped low light performance was one of the biggies - for the documentary crowd that is intending to deliver SD assets, that alone might knock this camera out of contention (aside from the high cost of P2 cards at this time, of course).

-mike