Panasonic AG-HVX200

The Panasonic AG HVX200 is a pro-sumer fixed lens HD camera released in December 2005 (NTSC) and April 2006 (PAL). By utilizing solid state P2 cards for high-bitrate recording instead of a MiniDV tape mechanism for DV recording, the HVX200 features variable frame rates (used for slow motion & fast motion cinematography) and a 4x higher bit rate (100 Mbit/s) than mini-DV. The $6000 USD camera is popular with independent filmmakers^{[citation needed]}.

The camera uses three 1/3" 960x540 pixel (0.5 mega-pixel) progressive scan CCD's to capture the image. HD resolution is achieved by both horizontal and vertical spatial offset (aka. pixel shift). The green CCD in the array is physically shifted 1/2 pixel biaxially to achieve up to 50% higher horizontal and vertical resolution. This would make the theoretical maximum resolution of the image, 1440x810 pixels, even though each CCD has only 960x540 photosites. Internally the camera uses 1920x1080.

The HVX200's resolution is recorded at 960x720 for 720P mode, and 1280x1080 for 1080i mode in 60Hz territories; in 50Hz (PAL) regions it is recorded at 1440x1080. The sensors employ variable scanning rates from 2Hz to 50Hz (NTSC version) or 60Hz (PAL version) and are always capturing progressive images. The images are always scanned from the chips at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Those images are then downsampled to a size appropriate for the recording format (for DVCPRO or DVCPRO that means 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL; for DVCPRO HD it means 960x720 for 720p or 1280x1080 for US/NTSC 1080i/p, or 1440x1080 for EU/PAL 1080i/p.

Features

The HVX200, successor to the Panasonic DVX100, supports:

• Variable frame rates and resolutions, including (in the NTSC version):
  • 1080: 60i, 30p, 24p
  • 720: 60p, 48p, 36p, 32p, 30p, 26p, 24p, 22p, 20p, 18p, 12p
  • 480: 60i, 30p, 24p
  • the camera also contains the following unsupported frame rates that can be reached with a hack ([1] [2]):
    • 720: 2,3,4,6,8,10,14,16,23,24.9,27,28,34,38,40,42,44,46,50,52,54,56,58 fps.
    • Beware, though: unsupported may mean that unexpected behaviour might occur when using the outlined procedures.
• Professional/Robust format (DVCPRO-HD)
• Tapeless recording (P2 memory cards) and Hardisk recording device has also been announced by a 3rd-party vendors (FS-100 Firestore, Shining Corp's Citidisk HD and Cineporter from Spec-Comm).
• Audio: 48 kHz 16-bit 4-channel PCM audio, 2xXLR

Competitors

In the field of semiprofessional HDTV cameras, the main competitors of the HVX200 (all of which use the tape-based HDV format) are (as of September 2006):

• Sony HVR-Z1
• Sony HVR-V1
• Canon XL H1
• JVC HD100

Digital Cinema and Videography

DVCPRO HD has a maximum bandwidth of 100Mbit/sec, that is four times the usual miniDV recorders and HDV recorders, that use the miniDV medium at 25Mbit/sec.

HDV and DVCPRO HD have two disparate uses in mind, however. HDV is targeted at the videography market with higher resolution, crisper images, and lower bandwidth with lower dynamic range, more artifacts from compression, and less color sampling. DVCPRO HD theses negative effects with higher bandwidth recording.

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