Re: HVX200a or HPX170

Hey Nathaniel,

Sorry for the delayed response.

I don't think that 8gig P2 cards are even available anymore, at least not new. If you're shooting 720, you have the advantage of shooting in 720/24PN. Assuming you want to shoot in 24P, then this setting will yield you the most recording times for your cards, while maintaining high quality. Basically, PN is truly progressive whereas the 24P modes use pulldown and therefore do use fields which take up space. As a result of using PN modes, you will get about 60% more recording time. But this is ONLY in 720.

If you use a 16gig card, the smallest card available new, you will get roughly 40 minutes in PN and in all other HD frame rate modes, the general rule is 1gig of storage per 1 minute of footage. Yes, DVCProHD is monstrous compared to consumer codecs but you will see the advantages.

Really, I've never seen a downside to shooting in the PN modes, and particularly 720 which is generally all I shoot in. I've had a lot of success converting to 1080 with Cineform software (which I can't recommend highly enough), and especially with these cameras, they don't have native 1080 sensors so you don't really gain resolution by shooting in 1080 anyway.

Also, yes, you will need 2 cards, AT LEAST! You don't need that to record but especially if you're shooting docs, you need to be able to run and gun. What happens if your card is full? And that these storage ratios it doesn't take much... Then you need to find a computer, dump your card, PROPERLY, clear it, format it, and get it back in the camera and ready to go. It will be a huge waste of time. In the old days, a miniDV tape was cheap and you just bought a 3 pack and popped in a new one after 60 minutes was up. Not so anymore. When shooting in the 720 PN mode, it is much easier to match the type of shooting times you had with a tape per day of shooting, so I would try to replicate that. You can do that with one 64gig card but as I've said, I think you would be better with two or three 32gig cards.

It sounds like you're on the right track. Bottom line is, 1gig of storage per minute of footage, unless in PN mode, multiple cards of however much you're comfortable paying for, be that 16, 32, or 64 gig cards. Stay away from the 8s and they will be used.

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17", 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 LE with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary