I must admit I'm amazed by the "bravery" of Panasonic's P2 tapeless move, and I'm thrilled by it. I think everyone sees tapeless as the future, but I know a lot of people are concerned by the cost of the P2 solution and it's workflow. Has anyone out there used a P2 camera and can give us some feedback of how it all works in practise?? That's something I'd be very keen to read about.
Re: Tape is dead by Jerry Hofmann on Mar 28, 2005 at 3:55:19 pm
I've not worked with it, but also agree that tapeless is the future... the next generation DVD's (blue laser or whatever) will make storage of archival media become a lot less expensive I think, so this last bit of tech might cause a watershed of folks abandoning tape. But it's not going to go away overnight don't think. Too much archival stuff shot on tape for the past 50 years... Also, the cost of those memory cards has to come down... I'd think that you wouldn't want to have to have a computer on the set just to store media as it gets shot, but also think this is going to become pretty much a standard thing going on. It sure is sexy.
Good to see a forum on this!
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: "Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4" Click here
Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D
Re: Tape is dead by Graeme Nattress on Mar 28, 2005 at 4:06:46 pm
Yes, excellent to see this forum. Thanks Ron and Kathlyn!
I've always liked opto-magnetic media for long term backup, and I do see the Blu-Ray formats very suitable for archiving media, and indeed, there will still be a place for tape in long term backup.
I guess the workflow element I'm most interested in, is the one that goes between the P2 card, and the edit suite back at the office. Do we dump the cards onto a hard drive, onto a laptop, etc? Obviously news crews will just take the P2 card back to the office, or upload it remotely onto a server, but what about film makers and producers of non-news TV. I guess it's solutions for this area that I'll be most interested in seeing at NAB, other than the new camera itself. Also, I'd be also very happy to hear to Panasonic are allowing 3rd party developers to produce P2 compatible hardware, and indeed cheaper generic memory cards. And I'd also like some assurances of how the P2 workflow will work with Apple based computers and Final Cut Pro.
Re: Tape is dead by Barry Green on Mar 28, 2005 at 11:46:17 pm
[Graeme Nattress]"I guess the workflow element I'm most interested in, is the one that goes between the P2 card, and the edit suite back at the office. Do we dump the cards onto a hard drive, onto a laptop, etc? " You have many options. The cards are able to be edited from directly, so you don't have to dump them to hard disk at all. You can plug one into any laptop's PCMCIA card slot, and it'll mount as an external removable hard disk. You can edit directly from it.
For a desktop, you can either get an inexpensive PCMCIA card slot adapter, or Panasonic makes a five-slot "deck" that will chain the cards together and give you access to all the contents at once.
Or, alternatively, you could leave the card plugged into the camera, and plug the camera into the computer (the SPX supports USB2, I'd assume the new camera would support that and firewire also). If you plug an SPX into a computer, it shows up as an external hard disk, the contents of which are whatever happens to be on the cards. So if you had recorded something that spans more than one card, leaving them in the camera and editing from the camera would let you access it all as one continuous clip.
Or, thirdly, you can dump the card's contents to hard disk. Panasonic has announced a small portable hard disk unit that has a P2 slot on it, so you can stick the card in the slot and it'll automatically quaff the contents of the card over. Then you edit from that external hard disk.
Just about any way you slice it, you'll have instantaneous non-linear access to your footage without any "capturing" process.
Re: Tape is dead by Luis Caffesse on Mar 29, 2005 at 12:01:24 am
[Barry Green]"Just about any way you slice it, you'll have instantaneous non-linear access to your footage without any "capturing" process"
Not only without 'capturing', but without a deck.
To put this in perspective, I believe the cheapest
DVCProHD deck is roughly $20,000 dollars at the moment.
Re: Tape is dead by Graeme Nattress on Mar 29, 2005 at 12:28:36 am
So what you save on the deck, you can spend on the cards....
Still I certainly see the workflow, but that little Panasonic hard drive with the card reader sounds like the missing link, but it's only 60GB, which is ludicrously small. Sounds like 3rd parties could come in and produce all kinds of P2 workflow enhancers though, from wireless links to portable RAIDs etc. If anyone has any hints about companies producing such goodies, I'd be very keen to look them up at NAB.
Re: Tape is dead by Luis Caffesse on Mar 29, 2005 at 4:32:12 am
[guy]"Sounds like it might support the new panasonic cam when it's announced... "
While it may support it for DVCPro mode, I doubt we'll see it for the DVCPro50 or DVCProHD modes. It wouldn't be able to handle the datarate required.
From the sounds of that press release, they are only supporting HDV formats, which makes sense seeing as the datarate is no higher than that of DV, which they are already supporting.
Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas
[guy]"The data rate of DVCProHD 720p @ 24fps is only 5.76 MB, I think it's very possible for a firewire drive to keep up with that."
Yes, in real world testing a good drive in a Firewire 400 or 800 enclosure can easily handle several times that datarate (writing & reading):
http://barefeats.com/fire40.html
Re: Tape is dead by Luis Caffesse on Mar 29, 2005 at 7:15:05 am
I suppose you are both right, obviously those datarates are nothing special seeing as both DVCPro50 and even DVCProHD can be recorded and edited off a single drive these days.
I only meant that the HDV formats they were adding to the FireStore seemed like a 'no brainer' as all that was required to support HDV was a codec. While supporting DVCProHD and 50 is by no means out of reach, it isn't as easy to add as support for HDV (which is the same datarate they were already supporting).
You're absolutely right though, 5-7 MB/s shouldn't be a problem for most external firewire drives, and hopefully we'll see that soon. For now though it seems they are only supporting HDV.
Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas
Re: Tape is dead by Guy Barwood on Mar 29, 2005 at 8:55:32 am
[Luis Caffesse]"You're absolutely right though, 5-7 MB/s shouldn't be a problem for most external firewire drives, and hopefully we'll see that soon. For now though it seems they are only supporting HDV."
Even the little 1.8" HDDs can sustain that (achieving about 10MBps).
Re: Tape is dead by Graeme Nattress on Mar 29, 2005 at 12:43:49 pm
They don't have to handle the data rate though.... Only the memory card does, then they just have to dump the card at their own pace. Alternatively, there's no reason why they can't put a RAID together for live recording. Still, nice idea and this is exactly the kind of product I want to see for the HDX P2 whateveritscalled.
Re: Tape is dead by Barry Green on Mar 30, 2005 at 9:50:31 pm
Assuming that the P2 card will only store the "active" frames, a 4gb P2 card would store somewhere around 13 minutes of 720/24p footage (depending on if there's any file system/card overhead, etc).
