Panasonic announced the expansion of its P2 DVCPRO HD line with products that can record in 720p, 1080i or 480i formats. These products offer HD with full bandwidth and intraframe coding, 4:2:2 color sampling, and lower compression. The company claims that in this way the content is easier and faster to edit as well as more prone to support image composition, compared to MPEG-2 systems of long GOP.
New members of the P2 DVCPRO HD family include, but are not limited to, the AJ-HPC2000 shoulder camcorder, AJ-HPS1500 studio recorder, AJ-PCS20 mobile recording and playout drive. These are in addition to the revolutionary AG-HVX200 camcorder, now available, which offers professionals a powerful and versatile – yet affordable – handheld camcorder with HD capability.
The AJ-HPC2000 camcorder comes with three 2/3" CCDs and 14-bit A/D processing, providing exceptional dynamic range and low-light recording in 720p, 1080i or 480i SD formats. It brings five P2 slots that are hot-swappable (they can be hot removed while the camera is running) to connect to a PC or a P2 recorder. It also brings an additional slot for various accessories, for example, a proxy video encoder. Another attached slot for SD memory allows you to record and replicate configuration information, useful in productions with multiple cameras.
The AJ-HPC2000 brings numerous connectivity and control options. The product includes HD-SDI standard, genlock, time-code, composite video, IEEE 1394 (AVC) and USB 2.0. Four channels of uncompressed audio are supported by XLRs, stereo front microphone and Unislot connections for wireless microphones.
Moreover, the AJ-HPS1500 is a solid-state recorder and player with five P2 slots. In addition, it has two removable hard drive slots that can be used for archiving, real-time data transfer, play-list creation, or various editing functions.
The AJ-HPS1500 serves as a bridge between high definition and standard definition thanks to its optional ability to function as a downconverter or upconverter between materials recorded in SD or HD. With its Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (AVC) ports, as well as its SD-SDI and HD-SDI inputs/outputs, it is a very versatile device that can be used as an ingest station on a channel or a production house.
The AJ-HPM100 recorder is a portable recording and playback device with a 9" LCD monitor, a six-slot P2 drive and an SD slot. This device, which records in DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO, can play as a downconverter or upconverter between formats of different resolution.
Finally, the AJ-PCD20 is an internal and external drive designed to transfer DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO files to non-linear editing systems or servers. The user can mount five 8 Gb P2 cards (up to 160 minutes of DVCPRO recording, 80 minutes in DVCPRO50 and 40 minutes in DVCPRO HD) and have access to the contents of the five cards for editing sequential clips. With this device, the scanning process is eliminated and the material can be accessed almost instantaneously.
This device can be installed as an internal drive in a 5.25" bay of any PC or connected via USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394b to a computer – and through it, to the studio LAN--. The drive is compatible with Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP.
The new P2 DVCPRO HD products record in Panasonic's P2 solid-state memory system without the moving parts of other tape, hard drive or optical disc systems. This ensures greater reliability, especially in difficult conditions such as extreme temperatures, shocks and vibration. P2 products offer a significant reduction in maintenance costs, longer service life and immediate access to metadata and recorded video, without the need to scan, ingest or create proxy files.
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