Panasonic's HVX: pro-level HD digital video camera under $6000

The HVX uses Panasonic's P2 solid-state flash media card, designed for professional A/V usage. Each P2 card basically comprises four 2GB SD cards, striped as a RAID 0 array, giving the P2 card four times the capacity and four times the data transfer speed of a single SD card. The P2's lack of moving parts makes it virtually impervious to temperature, vibration or shock, and it stands up to over 100,000 rewrites without loss of data quality.

While P2 cards are very expensive, and 8GB will only hold around 20 minutes of hi-def 720/24p footage, the flash memory recording system opens up some amazing features:

- True random access media means no more forward and backward searching for takes on a tape. P2 is spoken of as a film editing revolution, allowing producers to tag great shots as they happen in the field and making for a super-fast editing process. While a DV tape sits in a machine for an hour transferring data before it can be edited, a P2 card can be used immediately.

- Automatic pre-caching - the camera automatically begins recording to blank spots on the P2 card as soon as it's switched on, effectively meaning you have access to footage up to 7 seconds before you hit the record button in standard-def mode. So if something unexpected and amazing happens, you don't miss the start of it as you're scrambling to get recording.

The HVX also has a built-in DV tape drive for longer shots at standard definition.

Audio

The HVX has unrivalled professional-level audio capabilities in its price range, featuring four channels of non-compressed 48khz/16-bit PCM audio, recorded as two stereo streams. Two XLR-3 audio jacks with 48v phantom power let you connect quality boom microphones, and additional sound sources can be added using RCA, composite and S-video connections.

Zacuto Professional Accessories

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