Before I start, I'd like to reply to the guy above me. YES, the footage from the Canon dSLR cameras looks nice.
BUT the recorded footage is heavily compressed .h264 (or was it mp4?) which originally is a "end of the line" format/codec. You lose a lot of color information, and may get some compression artifacts. It will crush the blacks (which means, little or no information - solid black aeras...) and clip the whites.
OK, it looks nice with the DOF and all, but heck, I know I personally would rather have good quality footage in regards of bit rates, resolution and options for crazy post production work than JUST the DOF. But then again, I'm not you guys. And I'm not a dictator, I can't tell you what to do or not.
Just trying to be honest and real with you.
I'll answer them in the same order as you asked them.
1. I'd say you could rather take a look at HPX171. It has a much lighter weight. The viewfinder and LCD display is nice too. However, the downside is the rather pricey P2 memory cards. For the price of one 16GB P2 card, you could get about 15 (fifteen) 16GB SDHC memory cards with the same amount of $$$, and they record 1 hour full HD each... The new JVC camcorders use SDHC memory cards. The camcorder itself is a bit more pricey though. It's kind of a balance thing. Being flexible and "never" run out of memory cards for a nice price or run back and forth between the camera and a computer to transfer the files.
Another advantage of the JVC cameras are you can just drag-and-drop onto the computer and use them right away, but the Panasonic material needs to be converted first. One 16GB (one hour full HD) takes about 10-15 minutes to transfer - NO CONVERSIONS NEEDED!
The recording format is XDCAM HD @ 35mbit, just like the Sony EX.
Also, if you for any reason don't have enough memory cards, you can just drop by any electro store to get a new card.. ! Vs. the P2 cards are very special and needs to be ordered from a retailer or from a special pro video store.
I haven't tested the JVC GY-HM 100 myself though. I've tested the 700. It ROCKS!
Here's some
info on the JVC GY-HM100, and some
info for the JVC GY-HM700.
And here's some info on the Panasonic HPX 1712. You should let us know more about your computer specs than just the graphics card. It doesn't tell us anything. Give us the info for the CPU and RAM at least, and we can help you a lot more in regards if you should upgrade or not.
About HD capture cards - no - you don't
need one. If you however should choose to go with a camera with SDI (or component for that matter) you could
really benefit a lot with a capture card. The two major brands are AJA with their Kona cards, and Black Magic Design with their Decklink cards. I myself have a Decklink HD Extreme, two years old, still going strong. I can record and monitor up to 2K via SDI, record and monitor up to 1080p via component and SDI, and NTSC/PAL through composite, component and SDI.. LOADS of options here.
I've used the card on a few gigs now, for instance, last week, we were recording a musical performance by the seniors at the local school. We had four cameras, all shooting on tape and memory cards in full HD, the signal was downscaled on the fly in every camera to 16:9 PAL through SDI to a video mixer, and the final mix was sent via SDI to my Mac Pro and recorded in ProRes 422 HQ 10-bit. It's absolutely STUNNING quality. (see image attached for the control room)
So video capture cards are very handy at things like that. For instance, in a studio situation where you COULD just dump the recordings on hard drive right away, and during a lunch break or something, the editor could take a quick look at it and have a rough edit done in no time.
Monitoring is also a very important aspect of this. You can output to two SDI monitors and one analog monitor through component or composite at the same time. This can then give the light operators something to look at, maybe some sound guy and the DOP or director. But it's also handy for those times when you need precise results for color grading. A good monitor is a must though, but you'll get true 10-bit (or more) video output instead of a chunky, compressed DVI signal on a consumer computer monitor.
Gosh, I'm talking too much....
And I could go on and on and on.. Just let me know if you want more info on this matter.
3.What cards? Capture cards? Computer graphics cards? No is the answer anyway.
As for HD cams and miniDV tapes, it depends on what camera you end up using and what format you really wanna shoot.
There's "HD" and there's "HDV". HDV is mainly a miniDV format. It uses regular miniDV tapes with the same bit rate for video as NTSC/PAL does. It's not ugly, but it's not really pretty either. You'll have artifacts which looks a lot like JPEG compression artifacts. And the color space is incredibly bad. You'll have a lot less to deal with when you get into the color grading phase, and you can do very little work with colors, contrasts etc. before you see the footage is degraded.
The HVX200 as you mentioned for instance, can shoot DVCProHD on tape, because that's Panasonics format. Other than that, HDV is a format JVC, Sony and Canon use for their tape based HD camcorders. But I'd advice you to step into the world of memory cards instead.
4.There's no problem what so ever to downscale from HD to SD. I do it all the time myself. And it will look GOOD. Ever tried to take a high res photo and downscaling it? It will look sharper and better, right? Same idea with video. More pixels, more information, packed into less space - sure you'll lose loads of details, but the images will appear crisp and clear like any SD camera wouldn't even be remotely close to achieve, just because you had that extra resolution to play with to start with.
Colors on Canon are a blast to fine tune. I didn't like the Panasonic HPX171 that much. But in the end, it all comes down to how you process it in the post production. I've had clips looking dull, brown/grey-ish and really not good at all, and magically made them into a colorful, hot summer day.. Regardless of cameras, you can do that over and over again, as long as there's enough color information - so stay clear of the HDV camcorders!
However, the Canon camcorders work very much like the Canon Digital SLRs. You can adjust the white balance very detailed on Kelvin (my favorite!) and you have loads of custom stuff to fine tune presets and make it look good from the recordings and possibly save some time in post, if you have little or no time.
Good luck! And as I said earlier, if you have any more questions I can answer, hit me!
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