Finally announced today, Panasonic dropped their bomb on the prosumer market. 1080i, 720p, 24p HD capability (finally), and solid state recording. This cam should pave the way for a whole new world of 24p HD cams that we will probably all be drooling over in the coming years.

While this thing is definitely groundbreaking, i am surprised that Panasonic, with a cam that definitely qualifies more as proffesional than prosumer, maintains the form factor of the DVX. Personally my biggest gripe as a DVX user is the lack of manual levers and dip switches for many options. Take a look at the panels of an XL2 to see what i mean. Any ideas why they keep doing this? Theres a reason pro cams have all of those levers, not lcd menu options...

But REGARDLESS, big deal, very big deal. We'll see what JVC is cooking up in the HDV department tommorow, they are offering a 24p variety too (this thing shoots DVCProHD, which has an incredibly high 100Mbps bit rate...hella good quality).

Link:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Panasonic-Announces-AG-HVX200-HD-Flash-Media-Camcorder-with.htm

yeah, what burns me is the stupid non-stop focus ring...THAT IS THE THING MOST PEOPLE WANT CHANGED, WHY DON'T THEY DO IT?

I curious about the P2 cards. The lack of time doesn't bother me (8 minutes, right?), it's the cost. Aren't they supposedly in the thousand dollar range? Admittedly, I'm not very well informed.

Yea they are...1700 for an 8 GB card. That will change, as they project 128 GB costing the same in 2 years as tech allows...its not practical for the the filmmaking community at present, but it is feasible that it *will* be soon. Like i said, this thing will probably be paving the way for the stuff we will lust over later. Theres a few pieces of cutting edge tech there, and, just like most that has come before, a few incarnations later and you have something truly ground breaking. From our perspective, this is step one.

Lets see if the JVC steps up the HDV game at all...

And Trespasser, the reason why is the same reason the stuff i want isnt on there...cost. plain and simple.

true, but even certain older analog cameras were able to have stops on the focus. just seems like they've taken a step back (in this sense).

UPDATE!

Apparently, this thing can also work with external HD's! Thats huge! Buy an 80GB 7200rpmlaptop drive, and as long as the drive can keep up with the data rate it will accept up to the full 100 Mbps signal! thats sweet. comes out to 80 minutes for 80 GB. And yes, there are definitely rechargeable external drive enclosures out there. Nice.

It looks like you need the firestorm drives (or equivalent) to keep up with the 100Mbps data rate. Not nearly the cheapest drives, but also not nearly as expensive as 1700 per 8 GB.

I asked this over at 2-pop also, but has anyone seen what the specifics are for the variable framerate when shooting 720p? All of panasonic's literature just says "variable framerate" and nothing more.

Edit:
The guys at 2-pop seem to think it's the same as the varricam: 4-60 FPS. That would be awesome. Frameblend it out 200% and you've got 120 FPS on a 24 FPS timeline. Not too bad!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: joren,

It says it records to DV too...is that for NTSC only?

The P2 format is WAY too expensive now.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

Yes it is, you can only record SD to the dv tape. Either P2 or an HD for everything else.

Joren, everythign is speculation at this point but supposedly, while a firestorm drive would be more reliable, a standard hard drive with a high rate will still work. Hopefully thats true. We'll have to see i guess.

it will be able to shoot 60fps in 720p. another thing that is really crazy is that it can shoot not just 1080i but 1080p! thats like attack of the clones $hit...by the time the P2s come down in price in the next 2-3 years they will probably have lots of hard drive options and maybe a new camera that can shoot slow motion in 1080p

maybe someone knows about this:

since televisions still work on NTSC standards, most cameras just use NTSC color resolution (4:1:1 ?) and still can only go up to 60 frames a second.

As all these new televisions/projectors are being developed that can do higher color resolutions and higher/lower/variable framerates, aren't these cameras just going to be old and not very useful in three to four years?

I think you may be mistaking viewing formats for recording formats. Yes, Standard Def TVs are NTSC. But HDTV are not NTSC. Technically, no DV camera is NTSC. But they all have NTSC outputs. NTSC is an analog format. 8mm, Hi8, Beta, and VHS are all NTSC formats.

As for the color space thing 4:1:1 is the expression of the sampling rate for the colors. So, obviously that's in the digital realm and wouldn't apply to NTSC. NTSC's color space is measured in the bandwidth it's signal is carried in. ...no idea what it is, but it ain't much.

And these cameras can already record and output to different formats that use different color space. Like, for example, the HVX200 can record from DVNTSC which is 4:1:1 to HDV which is 4:2:0 all the way up to DVCpro HD which is 4:2:2. So, until HD goes the way of 8-tracks and Beta MAX, this camera will hold up very well. Considering HDTV is only now just starting to go mainstream, it will be more than three or four years before it is obsolete (IMO) .

With all that said, I can't wait till HDV goes bye-bye. As camera manufactures deal with how to store large amounts of data on the fly, HDV will surely go away in favor of the better looking standards.

^^ agreed. HDV feels like a bastard child stepping stone to real HD. I'm really curious who is going to jump ship first, it seems like everyone is going HDV except Pana. Canon is too, which isnt overly surprising, but does suck a bit. I'd prefer an XL2-body styled offering than essentially this HD cam with a DVX wrapper. Hopefully we'll see some breakthroughs in the next year.

Well it said on that website that you could record it to a ipod, so if you had a 20gb ipod why wouldn't You just spend 300$ on a ipod and get 20 gigs of space, instead of spending thousands of dollars on those 8 gb P2 cards?