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Sony F900 vs. Panasonic Varicam


Guest Pete Wright

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Guest Pete Wright

Is it worth using Varicam? I did some calling around and was actually able to get a better rental rate on the Sony camera.

 

I checked the pricing and found out that the Varicam is $40K less expensive and Panasonic studio VTR is $10K less expensive. With Varicam you need to use $21K frame rate converter. So the price advantage is $29K. If you bulid a complete system, the total is around $350K, so the price advantage on the Varicam system is about 8%.

 

I've seen deinterlaced footage off of F950, which was 60p and it looked better than Varicam 60p footage converted to 1080p. You can slow down the 60p with software. That takes care of the Varicam advantage.

 

Am I missing something here? Does the Varicam have better picture? What is its advantage?

 

Any input would be appreciated.

 

Pete

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"Better" is a subjective term. The Varicam is a 720P image, versus 1080P as with the Sony. But the Varicam allows multiple progressive scan frame rates in capturing. You'd probably be shooting it at 24P. It records everything as 60P by adding excess frames.

 

The Varicam has a much lower data rate, especially when you consider the amount of data per frame. DVCPRO-HD is 4:2:2, so the color is better than HDCAM at 3:1:1, but the compression is equally high. DVCPRO-HD is the same thing as DVCPRO-100, i.e. 100 Mb/sec for 60 frames. HDCAM is 150 Mb/sec for 60 fields, slightly less for 24 frames (I think)

 

So with the Varicam, you get less resolution, better color, variable frame rate capture option. With the Sony you get more resolution but slightly worse color and limited variable frame rate options. You get a lot of compression with either. And as you said, the Panasonic HD system is cheaper overall.

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