I've been using DVCPRO since August 1997. This was a time when rumor was rife about which way the television news industry was going: analogue systems would 
become obsolete in no time at all and those of us holding on to our BetacamSP equipment would find ourselves out of work. But which system was I to choose, Sony's BetaSX or Panasonic's DVCPRO? - none of the broadcasters would commit to either. If I could invest in the right gear and get myself up to speed with it before anyone else I would be in a very strong position for gaining employment!
Then ITN went for DVCPRO. That was the green light to go for that system. All those in the know claimed Sony had rushed the development of SX and it would fall by the wayside. Panasonic had already fallen foul of poor development with their M2 system seven years before: great quality, but the machinery just wasn't built for the job and was continually breaking down. Few broadcasters invested in it. I traded in my much used, abused and loved Sony 400a for an Ikegami HL-V73 DVCPRO camera and three months later added the Panasonic AJ-LT75 laptop edit pack to my collection. It is now two and a half years on and I've used camera and laptop extensively for both news and corporate work all over Europe and on several occasions in tropical Africa. I love it! Clients include ITN, CNN, BBC, APTN and various European networks.
A lot of VT editors were (and still are) critical of the laptop edit pack making a natural comparison with BetacamSP. I feel they missed the point. This is a digital system designed for newsgathering and it knocks the socks of BetacamSP in that department. You pick it up, go anywhere and turn out finished packages in a fraction of the time that it used to take and with a minimum of hassle.
Without doubt, when all the gear is set up and in place it is "easier" and "sweeter" to edit on SP, but when you take everything into account the DVCPRO system is simply better. Those dinky little tapes with over one hour recording time make shooting news and archiving a lot easier than SP and its compatibility with all the DV formats is proving increasingly useful.
The digital format puts SP's analogue format where it belongs: in the Stone Age. Let's face it, these days with video we do tend to "slightly" overshoot on many occasions - it's a luxury that video allows. Yes, it's a pain in the butt when you have hours of footage to wade through, but with a digital system it is much less of a problem. With analogue, especially with regard to sound quality, clip reeling or bouncing footage back and forward was strictly limited as the quality soon suffered, but with digital that problem no longer exists. Very often on a news shoot, in particular those political epics that drag on all day, I'll have the edit pack set up on a table or even the floor. During a lull (it need only be a few minutes) I'll clip reel some sequences and sound bites - when the time comes for the edit itself most of the work is already done! What amazes me is that I know of several broadcasters who have invested in this system, but who have failed to grasp the whole point of it: the edit pack gets wired into their studios back at base and never sees the light of day!
A lot of grief is put on the rather annoying signal delay between the player and the recorder, but it is basically no more than that - annoying. It has no effect whatsoever on the actual act of editing as you can only watch one screen at a time! The sound monitoring, or rather the lack of it, is unquestionably in my view the weakest feature and if Panasonic could address this, as Sony have done, it would go a long way to silencing the critics. It is just something you have to live with. I pick my "in" point for a sound bite by watching the lip movements or by hitting the edit point "on the fly" and then trimming. It certainly slows the edit process down somewhat, which is not the nicest thing in a news environment!
The DVCPRO edit pack is slimmer and neater than the SX, but it requires mains power which potentially could be a problem. But I must honestly say that in the two years and more that I've been using it I have never yet encountered any difficulty. In that time I've used it in Eritrea, the middle of the jungle in the Congo (500 miles north of Kinshasa), Kosovo and so on - there has always been somewhere to plug it in!
The inevitable comparisons are made between DVCPRO and SX. I have used SX. The SonySX cameras are, as one would expect, superb. The laptop is very different from the Panasonic. It is much more versatile: it has four sound channels, it is compatible with SP and it is switch able between Pal and NTSC, but I hated those fiddly little switches and the fact that I had to delve into the menu before, during and after an edit. With the Panasonic edit pack you just switch it on and do your edit: no fuss, no mystery. Of course I am used to the Panasonic edit pack and undoubtedly that colors my opinion so I'll hold my hand up and confess that I am not well placed to pass an objective judgment! Many of my colleagues use SX and swear by it, and of course they likewise pour scorn on DVCPRO!
I am duty bound to make a special mention of the reliability of the edit pack. I have yet to encounter even the slightest problem in any respect. It has always worked and has always delivered pictures and sound of the highest quality and I have yet to have it serviced! It is rugged and takes the knocks. From the hot and humid tropics to dry and dusty deserts to cold and wet Irish winters it has always worked.......always! It does the job, no fuss, no drama.
Don't ask me today what system to invest in. With hindsight I admit I would have held on to my Sony 400a and bought an SX edit pack......I would have saved $30,000 and probably have got more work as even today most broadcasters still use SP! For the prospective first time buyer it' a difficult call to make....
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