Jon Allen

"The examples were really good looking." Can we have a link, please?

The only justification I can give for that is when you're shooting, you usually need one set of rods, one mattebox, one focus puller per camera. Lenses though, are quite a different story, you might have 10+ sitting around for each rig. I think the idea was that you're not going to want to strip down your other camera just to get the mattebox, yet it's perfectly feasable to exchange a lens once in a while. Other than that, I have no clue. Your guess is as good as mine.

I would recommend shooting both sides then just matting out one side in post. The original "Parent Trap" (Haley Mills) had this a lot. The compression on the DV footage would kill any chance of a "realistic" key anyway. So I think you're better off cropping sides of an image even if the camera is static. Remember to watch the lighting!

Whether what they're doing makes sense or not, this was still not my point. The drake is being sold as a SYSTEM, not as a COMPONENT. Which is why I said it more resembles a Z1U as far as a marketing ploy goes. You get everything, not just the camera body.

Ouch. I think the biggest difference between the f900 and the drake camera the fact that you can buy 5+ drakes for the price of one 900. The drake cam is a "system solution", that's all I'm saying. Same way the Z1U is, though not necessarily exactly, obviosly. And yes, I agree, for established shooters it would be a boon if you didn't have to buy all the stuff with the camera. But I think the point of the drake system is that for 20grand you've got yourself full HD and you don't have to buy anything else, that's pretty nice for someone just starting to head to HD.

On the contrary, my point was that they're selling a complete solution for HD. It's like asking sony to take the LCD off the Z1U. Regardless of how many they sell, I'm pretty impressed well from what I see, especially for the price. If it's proven a little more, I can see a lot more indie producers going this route in the near future.

I think what you already have for gear is retrospective of your *true* intrests. Like myself, I don't have a portable HD monitor, but I have a couple huge hard drives sitting around unused (for now)- so for me it would be better if they chopped the price of their own harddrive and gave me the option to use my own. What it looks like they're trying to do is present an all-in-one HD solution- not a "build your own" system which just offers the bare parts- which is probably the wiser marketing strategies for a no-name HD manufacturer.

Thanks for the clarification. *sigh* ...but wouldn't it be nice?

Alright, I've been curious about this for quite a while. Is it feasable to consider bumping up the bandwidth of miniDV tapes and thus, reducing the compression? From what I understand right now, miniDV runs at a CBR of 25Mb/s. There are in-camera goings-on that can increase the tape speed to reduce dropouts- specific camera codecs are DVCAM and DVCpro. Since what these specialized DV codecs did was increase the amount of tape used by basically 50%, why not use this extra tape for something else? Mathematically speaking, if one could get 37.5Mb/s onto miniDV (25Mb/s*1.5)... and possibly more since DVCpro wites at 1.8 instead of 1.5 like DVcam. Since the mechanisms are already in place to write to this tape speed, is it plausible to modify the in-camera hardware to possibly write 4:2:2 data onto miniDV @ 37.5Mb/s? Or would this just be a poor-man's DVCpro50?

Oh Jan, where are you???!!!!

Are we talking 720p? What would the data rate of this be? I thought the codec was 100mb/s (which equals 12MB/s or 720MB/minute, 8000MB/720=11.11111111...)

You mean 4 minutes, right? Not 40. I'd LOVE to be able to shoot 40 minutes of HD without swapping a card! I think there's a reason us video people are freaking out- we're not used to reloading a magazine after 5 or 10 minutes. But such is the nature of video. Chances are with video is that you're working with a strictly limited budget and not a lot of time & manpower- which makes carrying a laptop, card reader, and swapping cards every 5 minutes a ludicrous idea.

LOL!!!!! I love the Brandy Rich stuff when she's talking! "...I call my producer, usually on the phone."

You know, you've got a lot of decent material, but it seems like there's no real "system" to how it's organized on the reel. It's just a shot of people, then a logo, then more people, etc. What I like to see is highlights from each project, put those together, then put your projects back to back. I feel liked the reel kind of repeated itself about 3 times, I saw the same pieces over and over again. Also, I think it was a strange choice of music, one was green day, and the other was Beethoven. Overall, good job, good luck with school!

Which camera? Either the HVX200 or the SPX800. Even though you're able to dump the cards quickly, that seems like a lot of extra work while you're shooting. Especially since this is supposed to be the more durable format; who's going to bring along a laptop/card adapter/HD bank in a situation where "superior resistance to impact, vibration and temperature change" is needed? (See HVX Brochure, page 5)

What's to stop you from getting your own beta deck, then? Even if you only charged your clients half of that (even a quarter) you'd still be ahead. That's assuming you build the copying and distribution into your contracts.

Per a brainstorm sparked by a conversation with a co-worker, how can a P2 card be a practicality when dealing with HD footage? Their sheer expense aside, how could one justify using them for any sort of HD application? From what I understand, HD footage is 100Mb/sec, which translates to approx. 12.5MB/s. And that means 750MB for ONE minute of HD. I guess my question is what makes Panasonic think they can get away with only offering up to 8GB P2 cards? Even on their largest card one could only get 10 1/2 minutes of video! Correct me if I'm wrong, but offering this camera as truly an option for HD shooters, they'll either have to come out with 50+GB cards, or offer some external recording drive.

The toys we get are never quite enough without all the accessories we can buy later!

Why aren't firestores a reasonable option? Is it simply the bandwidth from the camera? Firewire/USB = 400+ Mb/sec. I don't get it.

Since the firm I work at doesn't have any Beta gear, we're slowly teaching the local stations to accept digital file formats. Thank God we don't have HD to send to them yet "how long will that upload take on my dial up?" We normally just ftp a file to their server. For SD production, all they *SHOULD* need is a common .mov with uncompressed audio and an animation codec running at 29.97fps. aaaaand 640x480 screen size is preferred.

We know he still cares about our age group because he's totally committed to our blissful TV experience. Woohoo! Look for Gore '08!!!

he was barely around to see the martini shot

I've heard that the compression of HDV a post house nightmare. Apparently JVC's got something coming out during NAB that's pretty awesome, there's a quite a few posts about it, I'm sure you can find them. Does anyone have any hi res samples of blue/green screen mattes done with HDV? I guess I'm curious how well it turns out myself.

Its hard to tell on a 200 pix image. I can run anything through a set of filters and shrink it down so that no one can tell. Remember this about your video though, grainy video and film grain are two VERY different things.

Sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean "our" to mean I had any association (nor want to have any) in Current. I meant the general "we" who might be starting a network- but not necissarily myself. I was hoping that my sarcasm would shine through more than it did. I pray for a day when media can reach consumers without using "Apple" methods of introducing products & services. Thought pattern of a kid with a camera who got $250 for his piece airing on current: "Wow, I got $250! Sweet! It only cost me a $1500 camera, sixteen $4 tapes, $300 in gas money, and a dozen big mac meals while I was on the road. But I was on TV! Yes!!!"