By Wayne Cole, May 20, 2006
Reading through the owner’s manual, it’s easy to see that Panasonic’s AG-HVX200 has been loaded with features that professionals will love. The real question for most of us will be if all those features and functions are wasted on three 1/3-inch, 16:9 format CCDs. In other words, does the HVX200’s picture quality live up to the hype?
The unit looks a lot like a bloated AG-DVX100. It’s wider to accommodate a larger lens, longer to accommodate the larger battery and P2 card slots, and slightly taller. DVX100 users will find many of the same controls, but some of them are in different places on the HVX200.
One big difference is that the DVX100’s oft-criticized menu and playback joystick has been replaced by top-side rubberized buttons. The speaker has been moved to the left side of the HVX200’s viewfinder post.
The iris control wheel and auto/manual mode button are located near the auto/manual focus and ND filter controls. Three user-programmable buttons are located below the flip-out LCD viewer, with User 2 sporting a raised nub that can be found easily by touch alone.
Audio level controls are on the back of the HVX200 below the viewfinder and P2 card bay, next to the scene selection wheel and viewfinder detail enhancement button. The audio controls are also recessed, which means that in order to turn them, you have to push your finger straight into the recess and turn--a maneuver you won’t be likely to accomplish when shooting handheld and using the viewfinder.
The stock battery--the same type of battery used in the DVX100--is a 5400 milliamp-hour lithium ion battery rated to provide 140 minutes of continuous shooting, but it takes nearly five and a half hours to charge. You’ll probably want to invest in a few extra batteries for extended EFP shoots, or you can get an adapter from Dolgin Engineering that allows 12V-14V batteries and belts to be used in place of the 7.9V Panasonic batteries.
The right side of the HVX200 is dominated by the Mini DV tape mechanism, two XLR audio inputs and the hand strap. As with the DVX100 family, when you place your right hand through the strap, the top-side zoom rocker switch and rear-facing record stop/start button fall comfortably under your fingers and thumb.
Panasonic engineers have located the abundant I/O connections behind contoured rubber covers on the camcorder’s right side. On the right rear above the battery bay, three covers open to reveal the SD memory card slot, FireWire and headphone jacks, and a USB 2 mini-port. Two rubber covers ahead of the tape mechanism door and above the XLR connectors protect composite, S-Video and RCA audio I/O connectors, as well as what looks like a miniature Centronics connector.
Via the included cable, the connector adapts to provide a triple RCA pin component output. Panasonic even supplies RCA-to-BNC adapters for the cable so that the HVX200 can deliver analog component to either type of input connector on an external device. And yes, the connector supplies both SD and HD analog component output, depending on the camcorder’s operating mode.
An external microphone holder mounts on the right side of the handle just aft of the built-in stereo mic. Engineers placed a shoe mount at the same point on top of the handle. The handle-mounted zoom control and start/stop record button are provided to make low-angle shooting easier. At the rear of the handle, Panasonic placed a threaded hole that can accommodate a number of third-party brackets for accessories such as wireless mic receivers and hard disk recording units.
Decisions, Decisions
Panasonic has loaded the HVX200 with lots of choices to allow shooters to personalize the camcorder to their shooting style and unique shooting circumstances. You can control 17 different parameters, from the obscure (detail coring) to the more popular (gamma and frame rate). In addition to the six built-in scene file slots, additional scene files can be stored on optional SD memory cards, which makes it easy for shooters who have to use a shared pool of HVX200s to quickly configure an individual camcorder to their liking before a shoot.
In addition to the three user buttons, the white balance, gain and auto mode switch provide opportunities to tune the HVX200 to your needs. Opening the 3.5-inch flip-out LCD viewer reveals the controls for shutter speed, audio input options (including phantom power for external mics), timecode counter control, zebra display and optical image stabilization. Menu items control the zebra indication level for two distinct zebra patterns independently.
Video Formats and Frame Rates
DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO and DV can be shot on P2 media or delivered live via FireWire to external recorder. DV can be recorded to Mini DV tape as well.
There are two 720p recording modes: standard and native. The standard mode, called 720p over 60p mode, works like a VariCam, recording 60 progressive frames per second, regardless of the capture frame rate. This means that, depending on the capture frame rate, duplicate frames may be recorded. For example, when shooting 30p, it records every frame twice. In 24p mode, it records 60 frames by applying a 2:3 pull-down. The recording time is the same as in 1080i or 720p mode, but the unit can output a DVCPRO HD stream from the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connector as it records. By doing so, you can create a backup copy of your video using a connected external hard disk recorder such as the Panasonic AJ-HD1200A DVCPRO HD recorder or the Focus Enhancements FireStore FS-100. (HVX200 users may also record directly to a FireStore FS-100, which is expected to ship soon. The FS-100 will record 90-100 minutes of HD content in 720p or 1080i mode. It will record 200 minutes in DVCPRO50 and 400 minutes in DV or DVCPRO.)
The 720p native format, on the other hand, records only the captured frames, with no duplication. If you are shooting 24p in 720 native format, for example, only 24fps are recorded. These files are directly compatible with a 720p 24-frame timeline and require only 40 percent of the storage capacity of 720p 60fps or 1080i HD recording.
The 1080 and 480 progressive recording systems convert recordings to 60i in 24p, 30p or 24pA (Advance) mode. The 24p Advance mode uses 2:3:3:2 pull-down and performs 60i/24p conversion with minimum image degradation when recording data is captured via an IEEE 1394 interface to a compatible nonlinear editing system.
In DVCPRO HD 720 mode, Panasonic has opted to implement some of the frame rates previously available only on high-end VariCam units. The standard 720p video frame rates are 60p, 30p and 24p. Two additional Film Cam rates--30p native and 24p native--provide the base recording formats from which over- and undercrank speeds between 12fps to 60fps can be selected. (The native designation indicates that the camera actually records in progressive 30fps or 24fps instead of 30i with pull-down.) In 1080 and 480 modes, the frame rate can be set only to 24p and 30p.
P2 Recording
Panasonic currently sells P2 cards in three capacities: 2GB, 4GB ($650) and 8GB ($1,400). Recording times vary by recording mode. DVCPRO is about 4 minutes per gigabyte, DVCPRO50 is 2 minutes per gigabyte, and DVCPRO HD 720p and DVCPRO HD 1080i are 1 minute per gigabyte.
Using the 720p native capture mode, only flagged frames are recorded, so the running time will depend on the frame rate (just like film). A rule of thumb in this mode would be to treat 1GB as 100 feet of 16mm film or 250 feet of 35mm film. For example, running an 8GB card at 24p in this mode will give you about 20 minutes per card of 24p HD footage. Or, more simply, if shooting 720/24p, you would get two and a half minutes per gigabyte.
P2 media’s random access and high-speed interface allows shooting features including time-lapse interval recording, one-shot recording, pre-record, loop record, and two-slot (hot swap) continuous recording. Pre-record allows the camera, while in standby mode, to store images of whatever the lens is pointing at in its cache, so when you press the record button, the camera commits that buffered recording to memory and continues recording from there. Available pre-record cache is about three seconds for HD recordings and approximately seven seconds for 480i recordings.
Using two P2 cards (the camera has two P2 card slots) and setting the camera for consecutive overwriting, loop recording allows you to repeatedly re-record during a session, always maintaining a recording of the most recent events.
Beyond Auto Mode
The big question for me was how well the HVX200 would perform, especially in HD. For this subjective evaluation, I initially shot in full auto mode (auto focus, iris, white balance and gain control) using the factory default normal Scene File 1 at 1080i. All test shots were viewed on a 23-inch widescreen 1920x1200 LCD and a 42-inch HDTV plasma monitor using the analog HD component output from the HVX200.
The Leica Dicomar 13x zoom lens (F1.6) has a 35mm equivalent zoom of 32.5-423mm. Combined with 1/3-inch CCDs, low-light performance will not win any awards
. (Minimum illumination is specified as 3 lux with 12dB gain and 1/24 shutter speed.) With available light indoors at night, the HVX200 produced slight visible noise in all but the brightest highlights. Noise was also visible in interior shots illuminated by daylight streaming in through large windows and in shadows or dark colors in full daylight exterior shots. However, the noise is so slight that it’s not really visible at normal viewing distances--just in the studio, where your face might be less than three feet from the HD monitor.
At full wide, the lens showed noticeable barrel distortion (bending of vertical lines into shapes similar to parentheses) that didn’t disappear until I zoomed in by about 20 percent. There is no macro mode for the HVX200, but it can focus right to the lens hood. I suspect a bug shoot for Animal Planet in HD would be no problem for the HVX200 without any lens adapters at all.
Panoramic long shots or landscapes were a little soft from full wide to full telephoto. The HVX200 did its best work in close- to medium-distance shooting, where it produced sharp, well resolved pictures.
Color reproduction was generally true in all the lighting conditions I tried. Natural greens, traditionally tough for video, were reproduced with such accuracy that some non-expert viewers even commented on the fidelity of the subtle gradations captured in scenes containing a variety of vegetation. Bright colors were well saturated without being exaggerated and without the washed out look that you often get with video.
For my taste, the auto exposure produces a picture that is about one-half to one stop overexposed. To fix this, I switched out of auto mode and used the iris button to make an automatic setting. Then I pressed it again to go manual and used the iris wheel to drop the exposure slightly. The approach produced rich, saturated colors with no lost detail in highlights. It was close to a film look without having to go into the menus to change the gamma setting. If there were a menu setting that allowed a constant offset to the auto iris setting, I would probably shoot most of the time with auto exposure set to -1/2 stop.
Auto focus is another matter. Even at F11, the depth of field is somewhat narrow. On very slow pushes or pulls, the auto focus, at times, went into a slight oscillating seek for the proper focal distance. In general, however, especially in well lit situations, auto focus was responsive enough and changed smoothly enough that it worked fine for most of my run-and-gun simulations.
That said, I still prefer manual focus, using the push auto button to get a starting point from which I could easily follow the subject for the rest of the clip. I found the focus assist button an absolute necessity for manual focusing in HD. This button magnifies the central portion of the frame, allowing you make critical focus adjustments not possible from normal LCD viewfinder displays (even while recording). I only wish it also worked in SD mode.
Auto tracking white balance is another function that you may want to use only in emergencies. When I shot in lighting that required F2.8 or lower, the camera had a tendency to represent the scene noticeably cooler that it appeared to my eye. Yet, with plenty of light, auto tracking white balance did a good job, even in some mixed lighting conditions, of producing scenes that were acceptable.
To activate variable frame rate recording, you must make changes to one of the six resident scene files selected with the Scene File dial. When you select Film Cam as the Operation Type in the Scene File menu, the frame rate menu item allows you to choose one of 11 different frame rates (from 12fps to 60fps). If you exit the menu without saving the modified scene file, the Film Cam mode will remain active until you power the HVX200 down or change the settings manually.
Shooting at rates lower than the native frame rate produces fast-motion shots, while overcranking results in slow-motion shots when played at the selected native frame rate. Variable frame rate recording produced very smooth motion effects that might be difficult to obtain in an NLE. The only drawback to shooting at non-default native frame rates is that no audio will be recorded.
SD Capabilities
When shooting to tape, you have a choice of shooting 480/30i, 30p, 24p and 24p advanced mode in 25Mb/s DV with 4:1:1 sampling. When recoding SD to P2, however, you also have the choice of recording in DVCPRO50 with its superior 4:2:2 sampling structure. In either case, you must also decide whether to record in 16:9, 4:3 with anamorphic squeeze or in normal 4:3 aspect ratio. When normal is selected for SD recording in the Camera Setup menu, the action-safe zone markers in the viewfinder change accordingly.
When shooting SD, the shallow depth of field was still evident, as was the limited low-light performance, but auto-focus seemed to struggle less with dark colored or neutral gray objects than it did in HD mode. The barrel distortion at full-wide zoom was less noticeable in SD shots, and SD picture quality appeared more crisp than what my AG-DVX100 produces. By underexposing one-half to one stop, I was able to obtain the same rich, deep colors I saw in HD without noticeable detail loss in the shadow areas.
While not strictly a shooting mode, the HVX200 can dub content of P2 cards to a Mini DV tape mounted in the unit. HD video is automatically downconverted to standard 480/30i, and the selected SD recording aspect ratio (letterbox, anamorphic or standard 4:3) is enforced during the dub. Variable frame rate HD will appear as slow- or fast-motion SD video.
The dubbing process provides excellent quality video and makes it easy to create clean copies of HD video for those who have no way to view HD video on location or at home. By dubbing with anamorphic squeeze, then viewing the Mini DV tape on a widescreen monitor set to full-screen display, you get high quality, undistorted 16:9 SD views of your HD scenes.
What’s Not to Like?
Critics will likely level two of the same complaints made at the introduction of the DVX100: the unmarked, infinitely rotating manual focus ring and the lack of interchangeable lens support. New to the HVX200 will likely be ongoing discussions of P2 cost versus recording times. But support for external hard drives that record DVCPRO HD should provide viable alternatives until decreasing prices and increasing capacities of P2 cards improve their recording time to cost ratio.
I did experience some minor ergonomic issues. The auto/manual iris toggle button felt too far away from the nice, broad iris control thumbwheel. It was also set much lower than the surface of the thumbwheel, making it difficult to find the toggle button by feel alone.
The dual-purpose deck control and menu operation buttons are too small for their identifying indentations to be discernable by feel, and they are difficult to see in low light or shadow. Shooters may want to fill the indentations in these buttons with fluorescent paint to make them more visible. I would also like the center (stop/enter) button to have a more prominent tactile feature so you can find it with certainty by feel alone.
The audio channel and phantom power selectors are slide switches revealed by opening the flip-out LCD display. The channel 1 source selection button is the only three-position slider in the bunch, but its middle dent was so light that it was tough not to overshoot it.
Audio level control is important for external mic users because the HVX200 offers mic levels of only -60dB and -50dB. My wired shotgun mic and wireless mic both tended to overdrive these inputs so that I had to set the level controls to 20 percent of full scale to avoid clipping. I think a -40dB setting would provide better control for many of the mics that videographers will likely use with this unit.
Despite the minor drawbacks, the HVX200 is more than an evolutionary step from the DVX100 DV production to affordable HD production. (The unit lists for $5,995.) Panasonic stuck with the longstanding definition of an I-frame only, 100Mb/s HD DV format that Sony never supported and JVC recently abandoned.
DVCPRO HD is the direct HD descendent of DV rather than the tangent along the path to low-cost, high-quality HD production that is HDV. Panasonic has set the new standard for low-cost HD production very high by bringing DVCPRO HD and VariCam functions within reach of a DV shooter’s budget.
The productivity gains that the HVX200 makes possible also can’t be overlooked. With P2 recording, HD capture for editing is an unnecessary step. As soon as footage is shot, it is ready to be edited. Or it can be moved from P2 to a server by file transfers that are faster than real time. And because DVCPRO HD has no Long GOPs to unravel and rebuild, it takes much less system horsepower to edit than native HDV--and it produces higher quality pictures.
Features: The HVX200 offers multiple HD and SD recording formats, including 1080/24p DVCPRO HD, and variable frame rate recording. The camcorder records to Panasonic P2 memory cards, Mini DV tape and external hard drive via FireWire. The camera will be available in the fourth quarter of this year.
MSRP: $5,995
Web Site: www.panasonic.com/broadcast
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