wish I were going this year

Hey, what's it run to go? - general idea not including travel and loding that is

Dave

mind you given the choice, I think I'd still go with 1080i Just don't have a lot of love for Progressive (unless it were 60p), and not a lot of love for 720 (in terms of my preference, a Z-1 is almost everthing I want in a camera - 1080 res, and interlaced (yea, that's right, I want interlaced). only wish it were a lesser amount of compression in the recording format (course then it wouldn't have the luxury of miniDV, so I'll be content with it the way it is).

Dave

Funny this subject...talk about brand empathy...(Sorry, I work in advertising). OK, so here are my empathic brands in the "digital" realm...

1) Vegas (NLE)
2) Panasonic (DVX)
3) Canon (that's an old love from way back when for Eos photographic cams) for the digital reflex cams and lenses
4) Pixelan
5) La Cie (dunno, just is...)
6) Pioneer (well they ARE my client...)
7) a number of websites...
9) DSE...(sorry to shove a person into brand category, but hey! that's what modern marketing is all about...well done Spot!- and you most probably achieved this unaware too!)

and not in any particular order....
and the good news is that all merit is due to people i've interacted with....or at least empathised with...funny that...how people still influence one's perceptions despite uniimited access to info in today's age...

anyway....

so yea, will Vegas cope with DVCPRO HD????????

Dave, I certainly try to respect everyone's opinion here, and I do respect yours please don't get me wrong, but I think you are the first person I've ever heard say he prefers interlaced to progressive. I'm sure it's the refreshing 60 times a second thing that you find useful. It sounds like the new Panasonic will have that in 60p which would be even better for your purposes, but of course it's anyone's guess right now.
Personally, I can't stand interlacing and all the problems it creates. I realize that it had a purpose at one time, but that was 50 years ago, and I would love to see it phased out. I read an interesting DV Magazine article about the different HD formats and apparently there's some kind of formula that measures the apparent resolution to the human eye b/t progressive and interlaced formats. Apparently 720p was developed according to this formula to match the then prominent 1035i format. So, 720p is not nearly as far behind 1080i as we would at first think. Also, a 4:2:2 color space, I never thought I'd see the day. Still haven't though.
Okay, I've probably said too much already and I don't want this to become some sort of silly debate over formats that we had here before. I'm no expert, but I would think the DVC Pro HD would be a more robust and versatile format than HDV. That is why I'm excited about the camera and what I think would be a strength it could claim against HDV. A weakness might be the possibility that the cam will betapeless. There's talk of p2 cards and hope for hard drive solutions. This kind of tapeless solution could turn out to be a huge boon or an absolute deal breaker. Time will tell.

I don't love all aspects of interlacing, but I do like some. However if I got my hands on a a 60P I'd be happy with that. but running a 1080 60P would be absurd at current. Maybe when I'm "there" (if I ever get "there") I'll be using a 1080/60P. And, I have nothing against 30P really, I just like the higher refreshing.

BTW - I have a certain affection for 24P in action sequences (I know, I know, I'm really kinda wierd) because I like the feel it gives when they're makeing these High speed kicks etc... and the frame rates really start to not be enough (for some reason it really emphasizes the action of the sequences in my mind).

Well, this wierdo is still not rich enough for either solution, but give me a DVX design and HD capability, and I'd be happy - so if they do it, I'd be happy to get it. Until then, I'll still salivate over a Z-1.

=)

Dave

<<<<but I would think the DVC Pro HD would be a more robust and versatile format than HDV.>>>>>>
In theory, you might be right. We won't know until we see images. I was adamantly opposed to HDV a year ago, and remained so until about September when I saw what was coming down the pike. JVC messed it up for everyone. But, until we see video/film from this cam that we're hearing all sorts of buzz about....it's all speculation. I'm not a sports nut, so I'll take 1080i over 720p, thanks. But there are advantages and disadvantages to both.

I think peope confuse a lot of things about p vs i and get it all mixed up with frames rates and shutter speeds. The 'film look' is WAY more than just 24 fps. And what gets very easily overlooked is how much drama the film guys have because of that frame rate. As you push the frame rate up you can do more, limitations starts to disappear. At around 60 fps which is the true limit of human perception you can shoot pretty well how you like withour worrying about motion oddities.
However I agree, lets ditch this interlace silliness, 60p sounds wonderful, 1808p @ 60 fps wow, finally the audience can see it on the screen like they were there not like it was some dream in bad slow motion. While we're at it lets ditch this other silliness from days gone by, YUV. RGB RULES OK!

Bob.

I'm with you, Bob!
or as someone in the UK might say "Bob's yer Uncle" or something like that.
RGB makes so much more sense these days. So does 60p. But fact of the matter is...we'll lose this argument, because the bandwidth isn't there. Yet.

Spot, you confused me when you said,
" I'm not a sports nut, so I'll take 1080i over 720p, thanks."
I would have thought progressive frame rates would lend itself more towards film-like applications, not sports events. For slow motion in sports I would think the first thing you'd want is as much refreshing the image per second as possible. For most of us that means 60i. But having 60p would do the same thing but at twice the resolution. Is this what you mean?
Seems to me that with perceived resolution b/t 720p and 1080i nearly the same that lines of resolution alone wouldn't be much of a selling point one way or the other. But, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean.

Hey, what's it (NAB) run to go?

Dave, admission to the trade show floor is free with an NAB Registration Pass Code. I know that the SoCalVegasUsers group had an offer a while ago (I'm a member) but I'll let Jay or Liam decide if they they want to share the pass code info here.
Also, if you're going, make sure to register for and attend the NAB party on Tuesday night.

Mike

I'll share the passcode, since it's not unique to any vendor or group, it's a multi-vendor code. "JT18" will get you registered.
Looking forward to meeting so many of you at the Vegas Users Party. Be sure to register, or you'll miss out on some opportunities even if you're a walk-in.

Ok - but what I want to know is how you would get the P2 recorded HD/DVCPro material into Vegas. That is the issue I am slighty confused by. From what I can see the camera will record to mini-dv tape in the dv25 mode but going to DVCPro mode or HD mode you have to use the P2 cards. If recording in DVCPro 50 only will amount to 8 minutes per 4 gig card what is the HD stuff going to do? And what is the real point at that time? Being able to only record a minute of HD material per card? And once you have it I am not sure what the workflow is in reguards to Vegas. looking over the P2 deck spec it seem that the 1394 port is optional so would that put us into the whole Decklink-HD card discussion again? Or, as the topic of the thread points out - will Vegas handle DVC Pro HD? But I am putting the slant on it of will vegas be able to "capture" the stuff? How will it interface with the P2 decks for any sort of PTT?

And than - a cryptic comment from Jan was that if you need the HDV thing now you should rent the sony and deal with its limitations or buy the DVX100 because it will still have *resale* value in a year if you want to get the new HD cam - which is seemingly dubbed a DVX200 in some circles. Yeah it is all somewhat speculation but Jan is pretty open about some things that she can be open about - and putting it all together is seems like this new cam will do what the DVX100 does, but in HD.

..."JT18" will get you registered.

Thanks for that Spot. In that case Dave (and anyone else interested), go here to register for a free trade show pass.
See you in Las Vegas :-)

Mike

<<how you would get the P2 recorded HD/DVCPro material into Vegas>>
The P2 cards act like hard drives. You can plug a P2 card right into a laptop's PCMCIA/PC Card slot, and it'll appear to the computer as if it's an external hard disk. You can copy the files right off the card, or you can edit directly from the card. I guess you can get PCMCIA card adapters for a desktop as well.

Also, they've announced a hard disk P2 reader device as well, sort of like a FireStore but instead of being cabled to the camera, you just pull the P2 card out of the cam, plug it into this hard disk reader thing, and it'll copy the P2 contents onto the hard disk. You could then plug that hard disk into your editor.

Also, desktop firewire editing already exists with DVCPRO-HD. The Panasonic AJ-1200? deck supports firewire transfer, and Avid Express HD and FCP-HD are already configured to ingest footage from it over firewire, just like we do in DV. I'm certain such functionality could be added to Vegas as well.

Finally, on the SPX800 (the first P2 camera) you can actually plug the camera into the computer, and the entire camera (with all its P2 cards available) appears to the computer as an external hard disk.

So basically, there are lots of ways to get the info over to a computer for editing, and most of them don't involve having to buy a deck!

<<If recording in DVCPro 50 only will amount to 8 minutes per 4 gig card what is the HD stuff going to do? >>
DVCPRO-HD, when running at full capacity (1080/60i or 720/60p) takes up 100 megabits per second. If shooting 24p, the actual data rate that gets stored on the card could be as low as 40 megabits per second. So you'd get about 4 minutes of 60p, or 10 minutes of 24p recording time on a 4gb card, which is as much time as you get out of a 1,000-ft load of 35mm film. And of course you can offload the card to hard disk in about 4 minutes flat, and start shooting again (and with multiple card slots, you can do so un-interrupted).

<<But I am putting the slant on it of will vegas be able to "capture" the stuff?>>

As far as whether it can capture over firewire, that's the question. But Avid and FCP-HD already can, so it certainly should be possible for Vegas.

The question is, WILL they support it? I really, really, really, really hope they do! As DSE pointed out, Vegas has far and away the best support for the DVX, so hopefully they will continue to service formats without regards to brand politics.

<<putting it all together is seems like this new cam will do what the DVX100 does, but in HD. >>
I'd bet on it. Jan's been actively participating in an extensive wish list over at DVXUser.com, and it is specifically Jan's job to tell corporate headquarters in Japan what features we want in the new camera. And she's gotten the message loud and clear: take nothing away from the DVX, but add to it. Now, she can't control what Japan does, she's just the product line manager for the US division, but her word carries a lot of weight (she's also the product line manager over the DVCPRO-50 line)...

Anyway, to come full circle on this topic: PLEASE, Vegas, support both DVCPRO-50 and DVCPRO-HD natively, at least as well as your two main competitors (FCP-HD and Avid Express HD) already do!

Well, after my experience buying a $50.00 Panasonic cordless phone, I doubt that I will ever buy another item from that company. (In past years, I've bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of Panasonic products, and have been responisble for sales of over a hundred-thousand dollars worth of Panasonic Sales over the past several decades.)

The phone died almost 30-days to the date after purchase. After spending about 20 minutes at Circuit City while the salesperson spent trying to find the right phone number, I was informed that only Panasonic could provide warranty service. I was given a phone number, which I then called after returning to my office. I spent an hour-and-ten minutes on the phone (no exaggeration), on hold (music was distorted), where I was finally sent to a recording, which told me that I needed to ship the phone to a Texas address (About $15.00 to ship.) I would then receive a rebuilt phone free after approximately 60 days. I bought a Northwestern Bell phone for $35.00 which works much better than the Panasonic unit ever did when it was working. I'm trying to figure out what to do with the dead Panasonic phone.

I realize I'm dealing with a different division of Panasonic, but if this is how the company treats customers, It really leaves a bad impression.

Travis

Maybe I'm worng here but I'd have though that if you're draging the footage in off a P2 card or for that matter off a BluRay disc then it's only a matter of having the appropriate codec installed and that's never been an issue with Vegas. The great thing with both of these technologies is we no longer need to worry about that other anacronism from the past, deck control.
This assumes of course that Panasonic and Sony didn't decide to make these 'disks' illegible to Windoz.
Bob.

>>>I realize I'm dealing with a different division of Panasonic, but if this is how the company treats customers, It really leaves a bad impression.<<<

I feel that way about Sony. Being put on hold is bad but I think I have you beat - on September 11, 2001 somethg horrible happened in NY. Nearly oblivious to it all, without missing a beat, Sony Professional in NY had people sending off marketing deals about "Make it a New day" and when they got calls or emails about possible donations/loaning of equipment their response they did not have time to deal with it because "It takes away from paying cutomers who really need help". ????? Sony made something like 50 billion in 2000 and they thought they were such hot **** that they gave a few million to the 9-11 funds, but only after they got pinned about their crappy attitude. I will NEVER forgive Sony for their attitude that it was more important to push deals to "paying customers" and to ignore what was going on outside their window for fear it would take away from those who "really" needed help - all about making money in Sony land. Matter of fact as I type this I seriously feel the bile rising. (Want an irony? Tape Resources donated tape stock - guess what brand? Sony)

Keep in mind if the guys from Madison weren't around and still involved with Vegas - like Dave for example - I would have been out of here long ago.

I want to add my voice to the request for DVCPRO-HD support in Vegas. I bought Vegas on a lark 2 years ago (encouraged by a special, dirt cheap sales price) because of the included AC-3 encoder in the DVD Architect bundle. At the time, nothing even near that price range offered AC-3 encoding, crucial for cramming long-form video projects onto DVD without crippling the video data rates.

One session with Vegas and my realtime Canopus Storm/Premiere combo immediately became obsolete. Screw realtime, full-res preview of all effects. The time (and headaches) I saved editing with such a superbly intuitive, stable, powerful NLE more than made up for draft preview of effects and transitions.

I love the program and never, EVER want to have to give it up. And I doubt I will if Sony will support DVCPro-HD.

If they do not support it, I may have to leave it for another love. That's because, as a proud owner of a DVX-100a (who prefers its progressive pictures and beautiful gamma curves to the 60i images produced even by a Canon 18x IF lens on the half inch CCDs of a Sony DSR-300), I'm reasonably certain that I'll be selling the Sony and applying its proceeds towards the new HVX-200 sometime next year. The HVX looks to be a DVX after years of weight training and HD steroids.:-)

I hope it doesn't come down to a choice between Vegas and the HVX. I'd much prefer to be in a menage a trois with them both.:-)

Of course I will also want to be able to edit DVCPRO50 in Vegas, since that aspect of the HVX will probably be of at least as much value to me in the next couple of years as HD, perhaps even more. I've read somewhat conflicting -- or at least confusing -- things about the present ability of Vegas to edit DVCPRO50. But I'd like to sound a request for native support of that codec as well.