Just obtained a HV30
Hi, stumbled across the forum, my ebay purchase of a HV30 arrived today, must say I am mighty impressed so far with the quality and build, coming from a Panansonic 3CCD HDC-HS9, I was disapointed with the Panasonic, consdiering it was 3CCD, but I guess it was an early AVHCD machine, the quality from the HV30 seems much more natural, and sharper, no manual or Digital Software diks, but got an extra Canon higher capacity battery, by the way paid £240.00 for what seems an excellent camera
Congrats - you got a good camera, and congrats for finding this forum!
Jesus. Only 240GBP? I guess it was used but nevertheless. I was searching one for myself, to have a second camera (to shoot a short movie) but all I managed to found on internet are models that are selling on ebay - and 95% of them being NTSC...
The manual is available on the web. Software? The supplied software disk was just some filler material in the box.
Questions? We are armed and ready to answer.
"It is dark the other side. Very dark!" - "Oh, shut up and eat your toast!"
First usage
Yes, after 6 hours of ownership, and a PDF of the guide, got my first shots done, and really impressed, overcome the SD card problem by choosing card and PC connect, and got the pics taken on to the PC, ok, its only 3.2, but as we have a 2 gb mini card, made sense to use it, for stills pics its only a backup for a Canon Sx30 bridge camera ( I chose these cameras coz of holiday/travel footage I'll be doing), we are off to Portugal in June, so that will be a good time to grab footage, I did think of the Canon DSLR route, but the cost of camera and lenses was prohibitive. Really impressed by the options offered by the P mode, and the cine mode, played back some footage onto a HDMI connection on a PC monitor and was well chuffed, on a tape found some non HD taken with a panny 3CCD, and the difference is staggering, just one big question, whats the cheapest form of basic editing, I mostly edit in camera when possible, but thinking potentially of effects, I really love the dark and gloomy film noir look, but without the grain of low light, when the firewire cable arrives I'll start to transfer footage, thinks I'll need another disk, and yes it was £240.00 GBP, with extra battery and cheap bag, HV40's are about £400.00 on ebayOriginally Posted by cgbier
In case you haven't seen it, jollyrogerxp's hack allows HV20s and 30s to be "region switched" from NTSC to PAL and vice versa.
I read through mine a couple of times and can honestly say you don't really need it. At this point, there's enough solution here to fill a database. If anything is missing, you can always ask.
Wow! You were right. I haven't seen it! Those are excellent "news"!! Thank you. :-)
For editing you need a drive with at least 7200RPM. It is advised to have your media and editing files on a disk separate from the system drive.
Editing software: Sony Vegas starts at $50 or so. There are several tastes. Lightworks, a professional editor, is for free.
Have fun with your cam
"It is dark the other side. Very dark!" - "Oh, shut up and eat your toast!"
Try to get out of editing in cam,compared to avchd HDV is a breeze to edit,firewire real time capture can be a pain but at least you can watch exactly whats been filmed.Good filming
when you transfer footage from the camcorder to computer using firewire, insure you power off both camera and computer before either connecting or disconnecting the cable. There are many incidents of "fried" firewire ports in the camcorder that resulted from connecting cable with power on.
If anyone tells you this is not necessary simply do a search on this site for "fried port" to read several "tales of woe".
Bruce Foreman
I am a reforming videomaking addict
I'd say it's even more important NOT to connect the camera's AC power brick UNTIL all other connections are made.
That sgood advice, I'll power off before connecting, I usually do the cam but not PC, the firewire wire arrived, and Vista 64 bit saw the cam no problem, used Movie Maker for test transfer, and all was well, tehre is about 250 gb free and 1.4TB on the NAS server, so space is not an issue, I did find using the remote less fiddly than the LCD controls, and more convenient, I have some tapes left over from a previous non-HD camera, which I will archive down to a Panny DVD recorder, which has firewire for easy synce, I''ll wipe the tapes for re-use, the most important I will edit, I like edit in camera, gets rid of all the duff shots!!, thnaks for the good advice on editing I think I'll try a few and then decide, I have a couple of quick i5 based processors which should be up to it, thanks again for alla dvice, PS - anyway one want to buy a AVHDC Panny camera
I hope your NAS is not connected via WiFi. That'd be a pretty pain in the neck when editing HD.
Don't reuse your tapes.
"It is dark the other side. Very dark!" - "Oh, shut up and eat your toast!"
Its a WHS2011 HP box which has a gigabit connection to the router, and its transfer speed is ok, as its RAID on the data drives, I can store with confidence, the most important family tapes, I'll archive and backup
The storing is not so much the problem. It is the streaming if you have multi track projects.
"It is dark the other side. Very dark!" - "Oh, shut up and eat your toast!"
I would only store stuff on the Home Server, once all of the work had been done on the projects, to be honest I am never going to be doing much editing, more like assembly of clips, with a few transtions, and titles, as it will be holidays, family events I'll be using the camera for
Oh, ok, that sounds reasonable then.
"It is dark the other side. Very dark!" - "Oh, shut up and eat your toast!"
Hi, got the 4 pin to 4 pin 1394 cable ok, connected via DV to our panasonic DMR-EX75, (observing the usual power up precautions), plays back standard DV ok, but it throws a wobbly when playing back HD DV, HDMI out put from camera to HD TV is fine, and HD DV capture is fine through the PC, any ideas or is the Panny getting on a bit?
Tony, if you connect the cam with the AV cable, you don't get HD.
"It is dark the other side. Very dark!" - "Oh, shut up and eat your toast!"
But I connected via the 1394/Firewire to the DV in on the Panny, works fine in standard DV, but no HD. Connection to the PC via 1394 gets HD, nicely impressed with the result, even if it was Windows MovieMaker. I have asked Panasonic UK Tech Support the question, I can only guess that as the Panny is quite old it simply will not support HD DV, as its deffo not the Camera or the lead
Appears from a Google search that the Panasonic isn't HD.
Yes, that concurs with my thoughts, thanks for that, well at least I know all is good with the second user HV30. I think I'll archive all my standard DV stuff, and edit HD on the PC, still impressed with the quality, lots better than the 3CCD HDC-HS9, the HS9 seems so harsh, the HV30 is sharper, but much smoother, I would ahve thought the 3CCD in the panny would have given it an edge, but I suspect the AVHCD technology was not mature enough, I paid £190.00 for the HS9, which included two extra panasonic batteries, so hopefully I will recoup most of that
In low-light performance, maybe, but for sharpness, believe it or not, the lowly HV20 out-resolves Panasonic's HVX-200 when pointed at a test chart. I'm fairly certain it will even beat the HPX2700 Varicam on measured resolution. And its single CMOS sensor shows much less chromatic aberration/color fringing than most 3-chip designs. Bypass the lossy HDV tape compression with one of the many outboard HDMI recording solutions now available from BlackMagic, KiPro, Convergent Design, Sound Devices, Atomos, etc. and it gets even better.
yes, thats it exactly,aberration, its like a kind of fringing around the sharp edges, I'll do some more back to back tests
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