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Products: Panasonic

Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer

New frame rate, new name

Panasonic recently announced that the AJ-HPX2000, a shoulder-mount P2 HD camcorder with 2/3in. CCDs, is getting 24p capabilities, which should broaden its appeal from an ENG base into the world of independent film. (This is the same camcorder that was introduced at NAB 2006 as the AJ-HPC2000 and won a millimeter Pick Hit award at the show.)

With five P2 slots hosting the solid-state cards that currently max out at 8GB, the HPX2000 records about 40 minutes of DVCPRO HD continuously. But, potentially doubling that capacity, the camera also shoots (as an option) the AVC-Intra codec. AVC-Intra is an MPEG-4 intra-frame compression scheme that allows 1080-line recording at 50Mbps. One compromise is 4:2:0 color sampling vs. the 4:2:2 of DVCPRO HD. Panasonic claims that the lack of compression across frames means that color and motion within AVC-Intra footage will hold up better in post. The HPX2000 has an MSRP of $27,000 and is set to ship in January.
www.panasonic.com/broadcast

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