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MillimeterMark In
Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM
DP Doug Underdahl—shown here work-ing with director Mike Shapiro, Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show, and Kristin Wiig from Saturday Night Live on the comedy short Global Warming—upgraded the firmware of his Panasonic AG-HVX200 camcorder via a download from the Panasonic website.
Adding new capabilities to camcorders via innovative software and leveraging the Internet looks to be a growing trend that will affect producers over the coming year.
It seems inevitable that manufacturers will adapt their products to be more compatible with ubiquitous computer and Internet technology. One small company, Silicon Imaging, married a computer to a camera from the beginning by integrating an Intel CPU and Windows operating system into its SI-2K digital cinema camcorder, which debuted in 2007. Working via a touchscreen interface, its SiliconDVR app allows the camera operator to access an array of utilities that can analyze the incoming camera raw data and to access information such as per-channel histograms, an exposure-based zone system display, spot meters, and an onscreen 4X loupe.
The Thomson Grass Valley Infinity DMC 1000 camcorder, meanwhile, emphasizes flexible approaches to storage and I/O. The camcorder — claimed as the first to offer both integrated (removable) storage disks and solid-state memory out of the box — has its own IP address, so it can also be networked via Gigabit Ethernet. That capability enables remote video control, metadata embedding, and file transfers.
This IT-enabled camcorder can use the Thomson Grass Valley LCP400 control panel, a software app that runs wirelessly via a PDA or smart phone. With this Windows Mobile-enabled interface, operators can not only access controls such as zoom, focus, gain, and other functions, but they can also manipulate metadata via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connections.
Here's one way that access to metadata brings advanced capabilities: A news department's assignment editor can create an .xml file with information about a story's requirements, then email it to the crew's PDA or smart phone that is running the LCP400 app. That descriptive metadata can then be sent to the camcorder and integrated with the .mxf file created during the actual shoot. This speeds up the edit because the relevant metadata already exists alongside the footage.
Do-it-yourself upgrading of a camcorder's firmware is another recent capability delivered by more-capable onboard electronics.
Doug Underdahl, a DP and equipment designer, used a download from the Panasonic website to upgrade his AG-HVX200 camcorder. (Earlier models of the HVX200 needed a firmware change in order to work with 16GB-and-larger P2 cards.) “I was a little hesitant at first about upgrading a camcorder on my own,” says Underdahl, who has designed and fabricated camera gear for James Cameron's Titanic documentary Ghosts of the Abyss (see www.longvalleyequip.com). “But it was very straightforward to do, and saved me from losing time if I had to ship my camcorder.” After downloading the file to his laptop and then transferring it to a P2 card, Underdahl popped it into the camcorder. A new upgrade option appeared in the camcorder menu, which he accessed to load the file, and then rebooted. Upgrade complete.
There can be perils, however. In a posting last November on cinematography.net, DP Geoff Boyle — shooting a feature with two early models of the Red Digital Cinema Red One camera — said that a recent upgrade to the firmware caused the cameras to crash on the first shot of the day.
Boyle said that when it was explained that the software would need to be reinstalled if any further problems recurred, he said, “[If] I'd known that before I started shooting, they wouldn't have come near the set.”
