Can I ask Why the hvx200?

I use Vegas with Raylight with a Core 2 Duo laptop, and it makes the DVCPro Footage basically drag and drop. I've been very happy with it.

Thanks busterkeaton!

So I install Raylight and it will allow Vegas to "understand" the mfx files? No conversion of any kind is necessary? (I think I'll opt to Raylight since it seems its cheaper option.)

-edit- Im looking into hvx200 especially since it seems to be the closest there is to get film look without actually shooting film.

Sami

It's a quite nice 16:9 SD camera, a tad overpriced for a SD camera though.

Bob.

Bob,

Let's be nice here. This camera's native resolution is 20% better than SD PAL.

And it uprezzes very, very nicely to 720x1280.

Ive been googling the vhx200 for days now and the only thing Im worried about is the depth of field (the less the better).

Does anyone know how fast you can transfer a full 8GB P2 card to a laptop via PCMCIA slot? Or can you transfer from the cameras P2 memory straight to external usb drive?

I'm hoping I can go to a store to test the camera in a few days. This is already a bit off-topic for sony. Hope thats cool.

Sami

Last I heard it's around 8 minutes to transfer, limited by the PCMCIA interface. The SXS cards on the soon to be released XDCAM EX will be way faster and way cheaper, the ExpressCard interface is on most new laptops, PCMCIA is dead although you can get adaptors for it. I guess it's worth a mention that unless Sony manage a screwup of monumental proportions the EX footage will just drop straight into Vegas and the SXS cards will be cheap enough to actually edit off the card although like P2 I'b be making backups pronto if the shoot was expensive.

Then again and to be fair, no one has used the EX as yet, or those that have can't say anything. The portents are very good and the hype minimal, usually a good omen.

Bob.

We just finished our second feature film with an HVX and three 8GB P2 cards. From what I remember, it was a bit longer than 10 minutes to transfer over 1 card, although we were using P2 Genie set to backup twice, to two separate drives for redundancy. I highly recommend the HVX and the combination of P2 Genie and Panasonic's P2 Viewer software. We used a Vaio laptop on set and locations with a PCMCIA card slot, recording a total of about 95 cards for almost a terabyte of storage (2 terabytes with the backup). We also had a great DP and camera crew who knew how to light to compensate for the deep depth of field. Feel free to email me directly for more info if you need it...

Bob said: "It's a quite nice 16:9 SD camera, a tad overpriced for a SD camera though."

Coursedesign said: "Let's be nice here. This camera's native resolution is 20% better than SD PAL. And it uprezzes very, very nicely to 720x1280."

To set the record straight, the HVX200 is an HD camera (capable of SD, of course). Its native imaging resolution is 1920 x 1080. When recorded in camera to DVCPro HD (1080), it is converted to 1280 x 1080. When recorded in camera to DVCPro HD (720), it is converted to 960 x 720. There is NO "uprez" to 720 or 1080. The images are natively captured at 1080p, and converted as appropriate for the recording format.

Some people mistake the individual CCD pixel count as being the "native resolution" of the camera. There are 3 CCD chips, each 960 x 540, with one of them offset. These are analog devices, and a full 1920 x 1080 digital image is captured off the chips. There is absolutely no "uprezzing" going on here. (There is only "downrezzing", when recording to a format lower than 1080.)

I think we are all familiar with pixel offsets and how nearly all cameras use that nowadays (because it makes sense).

CCDs are "analog" in the sense that an analog voltage charge (proportional to the light hitting it) is read out of each pixel. The readout of each pixel is done by passing the charge in a bucket brigade fashion to the next pixel and so on until it reaches the decoding circuitry at the edge of the sensor.

Even Panasonic has never claimed that the HVX200 is native 1080p.

Panny has a $50K camera, the (HPX3000?) that they claim is the "only native 1920x1080 camera in some segment."

DSPs can do a bit better than native nowadays with processing power allowing for very intelligent interpolation.

In the end, the HVX200 is known for its lovely film-like images and its relatively low resolution (which is often OK for drama, film wasn't always so hot either).

This low resolution doesn't come from the Leitz ( often referred to as "Leica" even though that is short for "Leitz camera") glass, it's from the limited resolution of the CCDs.

It was a conscious design decision. If they had picked higher resolution, the individual pixels would have had to be smaller (because the sensor size was given), and then light sensitivity would have suffered and the imaging wouldn't have been as lush. It is also likely that the "4:2:2" sampling couldn't have kept up with more pixels in a relatively inexpensive DSP.

So I salute their choice, and take my hat off to all buyers who make informed choices.

Its native imaging resolution is 1920 x 1080.

You've checked this with res charts?

Some people mistake the individual CCD pixel count as being the "native resolution" of the camera.

In terms of chroma resolution that's no mistake. DVCPro HD is 4:2:2, there's no way one can get 1080p 4:2:2 from that CCD design, if there was we'd all be very happy and bit richer.

There is absolutely no "uprezzing" going on here.

Really?

Going from 1920x1080 to 1280x1080 and then back up to 1920x1080 when DVCPro HD travels down HD SDI sounds like a lot of lossy downscaling and upscaling to me.
If the CCDs really are producing a 1920x1080 4:2:2 image then even in the camera going to DVCPro HD it is being downscaled and then it's most likely going to get upscaled again. Of course reality is thath the imagers aren't producing anything like that res and probably the optics aren't up to it either, so it doesn't matter much anyways. Well it does in some respects. You're gobbling up P2 card storage space with useless data.
Where the camera does make quite a lot of sense is recording DVCPro 50.

Bob.

Coursedesign said: "Even Panasonic has never claimed that the HVX200 is native 1080p."

Quite the contrary. I suggest you read their own promotional and technical material. It's available on their website.

To set the record straight, the HVX200 is an HD camera (capable of SD, of course). Its native imaging resolution is 1920 x 1080. When recorded in camera to DVCPro HD (1080), it is converted to 1280 x 1080. When recorded in camera to DVCPro HD (720), it is converted to 960 x 720. There is NO "uprez" to 720 or 1080. The images are natively captured at 1080p, and converted as appropriate for the recording format.

This is incorrect.
The frame size of the codec is 960 x 720, which is derived by interpolating 960 x 540 pixels. The frame content is expanded in the editing stage (not entirely different than how 1440 x 1080 becomes 1920 x 1080. However, the individual chip resolution is indeed how this value must be compared. Ironically, I was on a panel with an Panasonic rep only this morning, during which this was discussed, given that the Panasonic rep was using image sensor size as part of his discourse in opposition to HDV camcorders.
The camera starts with smaller resolution imagers, then offsets the red from blue and green. Nothing wrong with that, other than its signal being interpolated both horizontally and vertically. This is a unique way of doing things, maybe it suits your fancy, maybe it doesn't.
Regardless...it indeed is interpolated/upsampled, and then interpolated again on output.
Additionally, to suggest this is really a 4:2:2 camera by comparisons to other 4:2:2 products isn't accurate, IMO. True, there are more samples from the stream, but given the lack of information in the stream, it's not as filled as its higher end brothers or competitive relatives. Compositing with this camcorder immediately bears out this single aspect.
All of the HDV camcorders pixel shift or interpolate somehow except the JVC 720p HDV camcorders. They use a full-raster sample of 1280 x 720.
Sony has varied imager sizes of 960 x 1080 or 1440 x 1080, and with the V1, it's a non-interpolated proprietary address if 1920 x 1080 from a smaller imager, reusing offset pixel information.
Canon offers 1920 x 1080 imagers and 1440 x 1080 imagers.
Of all the low-cost HDV camcorders, the HVX200 uses the smallest imagers by far, and if actual data is compared, has the least information in the stream of any of its low cost competitors.
Additionally, although the marketing hype claims the camera is DVCPro100, the end result of 720p24 is 40Mbps. Given that DVCpro is half the efficiency of MPEG2, this places the bitrate comparison around 20Mbps, or less than 1080i/p from the Sony/Canon products, and on par with the 720p JVC products. It was interesting to hear the Panny rep on the panel today talking about AVCHD being twice as efficient as MPEG2, but when the same discussion was turned to DVCPro vs MPEG2, he became quite flustered with an audience member.
At the end of the day, this has no bearing on whether it's a good camcorder for you or not. Your eyes and workflow should determine whether you appreciate it or not.
FWIW, I own an HVX, at least one of each of the Sony camcorders, three of the various Canon camcorders, and one JVC 110u.

I have.
I've also read most of the tests and the work done by one very knowledgeable gent on dvxuser.com who predicted the actual CCD resolution to within 1% based on real world tests. Only then did Panasonic release the actual figures.

Very, very few camera can achieve that kind of resolution, that's from in front of the lens to recorded image. What the resolution of the recoding codec is is simply meaningless. All HDV cameras and XDCAM cameras record 1440x1080 pixels, there's one hell of a difference though between what's in those pixels, that's what counts.
If your happy with what the HVX records into those pixels then fine but if you're thinking it can resolve anything like that kind of resolution you're being seriously misled. Nothing at under 10 times the price of the HVX comes close. Most film cameras and emulsions would probably have a hard time of it too. Come to think of it a lot of display device have a very hard time of even displaying a full 1080p image properly.

Bob.

Here is one thread on DVXUSER that explains it:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=96274

There is no *interpolation* going on. The green chip is offset 1/2 pixel by 1/2 pixel from the red and blue chips. As Jan Crittenden Livingston, the product manager for the HVX200, says: "The red and blue cover the same space which is over the registers (non-photo-sensitive areas) of the green."

While the camera internally records only as high as 1280 x 1080, the full 1920 x 1080 image can be output live (and thus recorded in "full resolution" another way).

And let's not confuse image pixel count with lines of resolution (the text chart one of the earlier posts alluded to). The number of pixels in an image does not determine how many lines can be resolved. A number of factors, including the lens, will cause a system to fall short of the theoretical maximum.

I am not at all arguing that the HVX is in any way superior to any other HD camera. I am fully aware that each has advantages and disadvantages. But I do have to counter the erroneous statements being made about the specs of the HVX.