The last few episodes of "The Innovators" have been shot on HDV. This has created nothing but problems from acquisition to editing. The first episode had an entire tape of content go bad as the format didn't quite stick as it should. I lost all my b-roll and was forced to stay on a basic head shot for almost the entire interview. In addition, HDV has a considerable amount of noise in the picture. Since HDV is already compressed using a distribution CODEC, MPEG 2, I have to deal with a lot more artifacting and problems in the raw source. Compressing already compressed material just makes everything look worse than it should. Once we got the content into our NLE it took a very long time to actually edit, since the raw footage is heavily compressed, forcing the CPU to work a lot harder. This increased the editing time almost 4x what it should have been. I have said this before and I'll say it again, MPEG 2 (what HDV uses) is a distribution format and should not be used for acquisition or editing. It's just a bad idea.

Ok, so HDV is out, what does that leave? What can we use to capture HD without spending $100,000 on a camera and format? The answer is in the form of Panasonic's new HVX200 camera. For a review of this camera you can click here, but the short version is that it's got the features of a $80,000 system for a mere $6,000. While this is more than a general consumer is willing to spend, any prosumer or professional should take a good hard look at what the HVX200 has to offer. I will say that this camera is not for everyone, it does not have a removable lens, the focus and iris are servo driven, and the viewfinder leaves a lot to be desired. That being said, I would pit this camera against the $15,000 Sony XDCam systems on the market today. Why is this camera so great? The entire system records DVCPRO HD directly to P2 cards or hard drives. No more messy tape, no more long-GOP MPEG 2, it's an all i-frame professional format that allows us to edit multiple streams in real-time without the worry of MPEG2 compression problems. This is the only camera I have found for under $15,000 that offers the type of features that it does. Needless to say, this is by far the hottest HD camera on the market today, and it's near impossible to actually get your hands on one.

The Panasonic HVX200 takes care of the video, but what about audio? Anyone who hangs around me knows my favorite saying, "video is 80% audio" and it's very, very true. One can have the best looking video in the world, but if your audio sucks, no one will stick around to watch. Conversely, if you have bad looking video but great audio, they may just stick it out as long as the viewer is interested in the content. My point is, spend all your money on audio first, then whatever you have left over use on video. For our needs we're looking at the Audio Technica AT892 headset mics. These mics will allow us to move around, wave our hands, pound on our chests, be in very loud rooms and still sound great. While boom mics are nice, they have a wide pickup range (even the narrow patterns are still wider than we want), they require an operator, and they still need work in post-production to make them sound nice. These mics will be fairly tech looking (we're going to do black, but they make a flesh colored version), and the mics will be close enough to the mouth that we don't need to worry about audio. Sweet! We're also looking at Sennheiser EW 112 G2 ENG wireless microphone systems which will allow us to remain mobile with our nifty mics. In addition to the headset mics, we'll also grab a couple of handheld mics, as well as XLR wireless transmitters so we can patch into audio systems and wirelessly transmit the house audio to the camera. This allows us the most flexibility in as many scenarios as I can think of.

The part of the equation that is still in question is lighting. What I want and what I can have are two different things. I want lights that generate little to no heat, are extremely portable while taking a beating, accept batteries as the power source, and will not blind our interviewee while still giving off enough light to evenly light our talent. So uh... yeah. I've not found a solution I'm in love with. If I had to purchase tomorrow I would buy an Arri light kit, but I think I want LED panels... I simply don't know yet. Fortunately I'm not buying today, so I have a bit of time to noodle this one a bit. If anyone has any good suggestions, I'm all ears.

And that leaves the small items that everyone always forgets. Cases, cables, adapters, batteries, etc. It would be silly to buy a $6,000 camera without any way to transport it, or no media to record on to. A camera that runs for 30 minutes on battery power is almost useless, so higher-capacity batteries are required as well.

And the final item we have on our list... Boxes and boxes of gaffers tape. By the time it's all said and done, one could get a full HD setup for about $15,000 with everything they need. In the grand scheme of HD, that's not a lot of money at all. More than one would want to spend on a personal camera, but any prosumer or professional should be able to eat that with ease. While one can get into HDV for a lot less money, the risk of lost media should scare just about any pro away.