PR

Panasonic is today launching the HC-X1000, its first prosumer camcorder capable of recording 4K 60p/50p video images on an SD card. Featuring a LEICA Dicomar Lens alongside a new BSI Sensor, and Crystal Engine Pro 4K, the HC-X1000 produces stunning, lifelike images in Ultra HD 4K resolution. In addition, the camcorder packs a wide variety of professional features and functions and a 20x optical zoom lens into an extremely compact body, enabling the most nimble and mobile shooting as the scene unfolds.

With versatile file formats – including AVCHD, MOV and MP4 – and high bit rates, the HC-X1000 is ideal for a wide range of shooting applications. In addition, features and functions such as three manual rings, 2-Channel XLR Audio Input Terminals, ND Filters, and Dual SD Card Slots demonstrate how the HC-X1000 is designed to meet and exceed professional requirements.

Mobile, Ultra HD video in 4K

Ideal for shooting high quality documentaries and events, the HC-X1000 records in QFHD resolution (3840 x 2160) and Cinema 4K (4096 x 2160) formats which produce smooth flowing 60p/50p images.

The HC-X1000’s 1/2.3” BSI Sensor offers increased readout speed which makes it possible to handle large-volume 4K data at 60 fps/50 fps, suppressing the rolling shutter distortion that often occurs when shooting moving subjects.

In addition, the high speed Crystal Engine Pro 4K processes the massive volume of data required for 4K shooting quickly and accurately, while a new noise reduction system achieves clear images with minimal noise even when shooting in extreme low-light situations.

Featuring a high-performance lens, which has passed all of LEICA’s stringent inspection standards in areas such as resolution and contrast, the HC-X1000 is able to render sharp, crisp images and produce the distinctive nuances and subtle shading that LEICA lenses are renowned for. Three ND filters (1/4, 1/16, 1/64) are built into the lens to suppress the amount of incident light in different shooting environments. This allows you to shoot at a slow shutter speed in bright daylight for example, or fully open the lens to attain high resolution and a shallow depth of field.

Versatile and high bit rate recording

Featuring versatile recording formats, bit rates and editing options, the HC-X1000 is ideal for a wide variety of prosumers and professionals. AVCHD format is available alongside MOV and MP4 for quick and easy editing, and Full HD recording employs ALL-Intra compression for a maximum bit rate of 200 Mbps, bringing outstanding quality to the image production.

The HC-X1000 has also been designed with cinematographers in mind – its 4K video supports not only QFHD resolution (3840 x 2160) for TV broadcasting, but also Cinema 4K (4096 x 2160) for movie production.

The superb 4K recording capabilities offered by the HC-X1000 also provides a lot more flexibility in the editing suite. 4K allows you to crop your composition and choose the perfect frame, as well as zoom 200 percent while maintaining HD quality; turn stationary footage into panning shots; tilt and level the footage; or easily stabilise your film.

Ergonomic design with professional features and functions

The HC-X1000 boasts an ergonomic design, with covers to prevent operating errors while shooting, and a button layout that’s designed for easy operation wherever you’re filming.

In spite of the HC-X1000′s compact body, it features a wide variety of manual controls to enable fast and intuitive camera work, including a focus ring, iris ring, a zoom ring on the lens barrel, and an illuminating LED ring to easily verify that recording is in progress.

The HC-X1000’s versatile 3.5” Slide-Retractable Touch LCD serves as a high definition, 1,152,000-dot monitor and menu-setting touch panel. When not in use, it slides into the front handle for extra mobility and safety. It also rotates 270 degrees vertically for easy high-angle, low-angle and self-interview shooting.

In addition, the HC-X1000’s two built-in SD card slots provide extra flexibility and peace of mind. Using two slots enables you to record the same data onto both SD cards at the same time, meaning you can easily swap between them and never have to worry about losing the data. Additionally with Auto-Switch Recording, when the first card reaches full capacity the system automatically and seamlessly switches to the second card. Furthermore, with Background Recording[1], you can set the SD card in Slot 2 to record continuously from the moment a recording event starts, and record only necessary scenes onto the SD card in Slot 1 by turning REC on and off. This eliminates the worry of not recording important scenes that take place while the REC switch is turned off.

The HC-X1000 also sports a 2-channel XLR audio input terminal for external microphones or line recording with a +48 V phantom power supply, enabling the use of professional-spec, high-performance sound recording equipment.

Now we know all config of upcoming consumer camcorders. :-)

Added press release

My Overview (I didn't have long with the X1000 but will be doing full testing very soon).

The HC-X1000 is Panasonic’s brand new prosumer camcorder offering some spectacular new features that compete with similar professional camcorder devices costing two or three times as much.

Notably the key attraction is 4K and one that has an amazing 150Mbps 60 fps (NTSC) and 50 fps (PAL) modes at Ultra HD television (UHD) 3840x2160 pixels.

Not only that, like the Panasonic GH4 m43 4k camera, the X1000 sports full cinema like 4K at 4096x2160 pixels at 24fps plus UHDTV 4K 25p and 30p modes at 3840x2160 pixels.

If you just want to shoot HDTV you also have – again like the GH4 – 200Mbps All Intra modes at 1080p. I’m a big fan of Intra only which completes all compression in each frame resulting in prediction accuracy, minimal residual data from prediction subtracted from the original input image, stable images that are unaffected by adjacent frames, which are great for fast-action sports, music shows, or events that contain electronic displays, lasers and fast moving objects. Finally, All-I (Intra is quicker to edit in the NLE and doesn’t require the longer processing times to manipulate. At 200Mbps 1080p All-Intra looks great.

Body & Software:

A four-position in built optical neutral density filter featuring switchable (OFF, 1/4 ND, 1/16 ND, 1/64 ND) to reduce the amount of light entering the lens.

A 3-position Gain selector, with L, M and H settings

Dual Card slots: You can hot-swap SD cards for continuous non-stop recording, Loop Record if you don’t know when the recording is going to start and Pre Record whilst in Standby mode a few seconds to ensure you make your shot in time!

You can review / quick playback of your last scene recording.

The supplied battery gives you roughly 4 and 3 quarter hours of maximum continuous recordable time and actual recording times of around 3 hours across most of the MOV/MP4 AVCHD modes using just the viewfinder. Cinema 4K mode will actually give you roughly an extra hour of Maximum continuous and actual record times when using the viewfinder.

Overall you’ll lose 10-30 odd mins when using the LCD whilst recording in all the record modes.

Charging the battery takes around 6 hours for a full charge.

The unit has full computer mode compatibility with USB 3 Host or Device configurations set on the menu. Device Mode acts as an external device to upload to your NLE system. Host Mode so you can attach an external hard drive so that you can copy over data to and from the internal cards or view thumbnails of stored clips on the hard disk.

There are two professional XLR connections offering you 48K audio (inc phantom power) and a headphone terminal.

It’s a remarkably feature rich camcorder with a plethora of additions to help you shoot great looking 4K and HDTV footage. Two changeable Zebra detection setups with defaults set at 80% for Skin tones and 100% for overall picture. ‘Detail levels’ so you can turn off all the camera’s processing of sharpness – and typically used to tune detail until no smearing is apparent between light and dark areas of the picture. The function typically enhances the contours or edges in an image. Detail level handles horizontal levels.

The ‘V Detail’ will enable you to adjust the vertical detail.

Its important to remember that the more you add in the detail level adjustments – ie the higher the number – the more detail enhancement is applied to the luminance signal. The lower the detail levels the softer your image will look. I advise not to go overboard on this as once an image is recorded there’s no going back!

‘Detail Coring’ adjusts the noise level in the detail control.

‘Chroma Level’ the adjustment in the saturation of the colour level. Into the plus levels and the saturation is higher and lower values colour saturation levels are decreased.

‘Chroma phase’ is another meaning for colour hue. The more you increase it the more it leans towards purple and magenta hues. The more decreased the level the more the image shifts towards yellow and greener hues. There’s two setups for ‘Colour Temperature’ for instant recall in your scene setups – A/B for setting towards a more warmer / cooler light correction.

‘Master Pedestal’ for black level reference. The control lifts the black level and affects the brightness balance in the image. The more you adjust to the lower end of the setting the more contrast in the image and will become sharper by decreasing further. The greater you increase the level the more hazy the look.

'DRS' either Off or 1,2 or 3. This adjusts the dynamic range stretcher ie the stretching of the luminance range. The X1000 automatically estimates and adjusts the gamma curve and knee slope in response to the signal level of each pixel in real-time. Subsequently, DRS function automatically suppresses blocked shadows and blown highlights. That is saturated blacks and overexposure can be minimised using DRS in low and high intensive areas of the same scene. Subsequently hue compression is also minimised. Turn it OFF and blocked shadows and blown out highlights exist in the same scene. Turn it on (from a level of 1 to 3) to adjust the gradation expression of the low intensity areas, and the overexposure and decrease in colour level can be minimised in high intensity areas of the image. Again be careful, as too high a value in DRS may introduce noise in the low intensity areas.

A number of gamma curves are available including:-

HD Norm/HD Low, SD Norm and SD Low. Cine V - prioritizes contrast - for emphasising a higher contrast level gamma curve in the video level.

Cine D - prioritizes dynamic range - gamma curve for more movie-like flater picture video level – perfect for grading – and a wider dynamic range is emphasised. Cinelike D is particularly useful for maintaining the gradations from low light to a high light level with priority given to dynamic range.

B-Press – the video signal in the low intensity area is compressed more creating a sharp and strong contrasting picture in low contrast scenes.

A ‘Knee function’ (with settings for Auto, Low, Mid and High) is used to allow for higher video levels within the dynamic range of the circuit compressing the signal beyond a certain level point. You set a point at which you want compression to kick in – for example in high intensity areas such as clouds in a blue sky without changing the gradation expression at the knee point and below.

The 'Matrix' function allows you to select one of the colour matrix tables used to mix or compensate the primary colours RGB to produce the many hues in the visible spectrum. NORM1 is for NTSC colours, NORM2 for PAL which is slightly richer than NORM1, FLUO which is ideal for shooting under fluorescent lamps, and CINE-LIKE for a more cinema like look and used in conjunction with gamma curves Cine Like V and D.

'Skin Tone Detail' allows you to improve facial skin colour detail smoothing out any skin irregularities.

‘Flash Band Compensation’ for reducing light band interference like flash photography.

The X1000 allows you to quickly setup focus assist with Area Focusing and Area Iris modes; focus peaking with expanded focus screen functionality. You can change the colour of focus assist between different colours accordingly.

When you’re in Focus in Red mode the display changes to show you a red border: this allows you to speedily get focus as the subject glows brilliant red when in focus. ‘Both’ mode means expanded focus and focus in Red (or one of the colours) is working.

You also get three focus points transition - points for changing the point of focus smoothly between subjects: you can set and store for the scene you are filming either directly or at time interval points.

An Auto Level display feature as seen on the Gh range your camera is level when it turns green.

Instant Freeze Frame allows the capture of a frame from the video recording.

Its got a decent reaction to rolling shutter.

Works well at 4K 100Mbps even on decent SDXC 1 cards.

Altogether a nice little package for shooting 4K at a variety of frame rates and one that fits the perfect accompaniment to your GH4 for any shoot.

Basically traded sensor size for all those features. It's the same size sensor as their HX-A500 POV Cam!

Panasonic is good about adding next gen features to last gen codec's and sensors.

Like everything except the sensor size.

In my opinion, Sony PXW-X70 it's a more versatile, cheaper and in terms of codec quality and sensor size, very superior to Panasonic HC-X1000

Deep DOF that means, everything at focus. It's ok for news and run and gun shots. For 'cinematic language' it's preferable short DOF (IMHO)

Deep DOF at 4k can be great for many reasons.

Small sensor at 4k means low light performance is probably on the weak side. Interesting camera and a good price.

Everyone has their personal view, but who can say "cinematic language," or the ability to communicate through moving images, only works in one way? That's like saying food is only good if it tastes salty. Give me bitter and sweet and salty and sour and savory, please; not this ancient DOF flame. And frites. Salty frites ;)

Smaller sensor = less rolling shutter? If so, that is important for 4K.

Looks very very nice. This + one or two GH4s would be a fantastic setup for shooting events.