Re: Only $1000!!!! by Ron Shook on Oct 24, 2005 at 3:58:35 am
Blub,
[Blub]"If 8meg or other P2 cards drop to half your assumed price it would still be mind blowing and unaffordable. All this talk of P2 cards dropping in price
Re: Only $1000!!!! by jiri vrozina on Oct 24, 2005 at 11:33:58 am
Well if people need workflow and they get PAID decent rates,then cost of Storage like P2,Flash MC,Iomega REV and others will be no problem.
Please do not forget you are saving money on camera recorder and deck.
If true HD cameras and the cost associated is too much,then maybe HDV
is an answer for other productions.
There is camera and format out there for everybody.
Cost of High End gear is way down.
[Ron Shook]"If the HGX-200 becomes my camera of choice, it isn't gonna be with P2 cards" Well Ron,do not waste money on Pana200 if You can afford to shoot DV only.
I make a bet with You in 2 years you will look back and think differently.
Regards-jiri
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Ron Shook on Oct 24, 2005 at 3:37:57 pm
Jiri,
[jiri vrozina]"Well if people need workflow and they get PAID decent rates,then cost of Storage like P2,Flash MC,Iomega REV and others will be no problem."
That's non-sensical. If I use use a cost of $500/ 8 GB memory card, it cost $2000 to equal the capacity of a $70 REV Pro cartridge or a $40 REV cartridge, i.e., solid state memory will be equal to 30-50 times the cost of this hard drive solution, i.e. again, REV is no problem, but P2 is a monster problem for a $6k camcorder.
[jiri vrozina]"I make a bet with You in 2 years you will look back and think differently."
Of course, in 2 or 3 years when solid state memory prices can approach the cost of hard drive storage, I'll feel differently, but it's no solution now, for me, and I very much doubt for you either.
The Firestore drive, if it proves to be self-contained, is a step in the right direction and a solution for some types of production with the HGX-200 or other P2 camcorders. Imagine, however, a Firestore that used REV hard drive Cartridges. I'm not sure if they would be fast enough, but it wouldn't have to be REV to use a hard drive cartridge system. The technology is here today to use 100 GB transportable drives in a caddie/cartridge system of a Firestore like on board storage device where the drives could be popped in and out of such a device like changing a tape, and those drive caddie/cartridges could be hooked to your NLE as external drives with a firewire cable and power supply, either for direct editing or ingest into the NLE. An Asian factory could churn these out for $150-200 a pop, and you'd have something to put into the hot little hands of your client if the workflow called for that.
Now, if the Firestore drive proves to have such a system, which I doubt, all of my workflow issues with P2 camcorders would dissolve in a wink.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Karl on Oct 24, 2005 at 5:10:06 pm
Ron,
I'm paraphrasing, but Jan stated on another forum that she didnt really trust Iomega or their products. All her Jazz and Zip drives she had bought have now broken down and I heard a bad review of the stability of the Rev drive too from a user. She wouldnt touch the Rev technology. Of course with Grass Valley involved with Iomega they may have come up with a very robust system for the Rev Pro drive - but don't expect Panasonic to be developing partners with Iomega anytime soon.
It's a debatable point but the reason P2 costs so much is because they want it to be flawless and to operate at speeds which are futureproof. The Rev can only sustain a Data rate of 100Mbits/s or thereabouts - which is fast enough for HD recording but not so good for offload or any future developments/improvements.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong, and Rev are so cheap you probably wouldn't need to offload in a hurry - but 100mbps is a real-time offload - so no quicker than a tape capture.....I'm just giving you the Pansonic logic. They dont want to use a technology that even has a slight change of failing during a shoot and they want to make sure it can cope with higher data rates as that's one of the main benefits of the time-saving solid state technology.
Also I think people forget that P2 isnt being designed for the HVX; it's going to be Panasonics new format for capture across the board; I assume the new Varicam and their high end broadcast cameras will be using it; so it has to be designed to be able to cope with the most demanding proffessional applications and maybe for an even higher data rate on a future varicam?!?
Personally I think the infinity camrea sounds awesome, but the whole unit is just out of my price range. I will probably go the HVX/firestore route too, at least until the capacity of P2 can store about an hour of HD.
If anything Panasonic are just a few years too early.....Its actually nice for once for a company to be ahead of the game, rather than some other manufacturers who seem to be content with delivering minor improvements each year. The HVX really is revolutionary and whether P2 takes off or not it's certainly going to change the way camcorders are made from now on; but there is a price or workaround to pay for pushing techniology to it's limit.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Ron Shook on Oct 24, 2005 at 8:00:22 pm
Karl,
First, let me say that you put the P2 rational very succinctly and clearly.
[Karl]"It's a debatable point but the reason P2 costs so much is because they want it to be flawless and to operate at speeds which are futureproof. The Rev can only sustain a Data rate of 100Mbits/s or thereabouts - which is fast enough for HD recording but not so good for offload or any future developments/improvements."
I think that P2 is a beautiful design and technological achievement and I'm very high on it several years down the road and if any camcorder I purchase today is able to use that technology several years down the road, all the better, assuming the camcorder is still viable several years down the road. However it is what works today that must be the guage for whatever camcorder I purchase today, and P2 just isn't working today (and misses by a very wide mark) from a cost standpoint for anyone who must shoot a lot of video under ever decreasing or at best stagnant budgets. Since tape transports for DVCPro50 & 100 are too complex and costly for under $10k camcorders, only hard drives of one stripe or another fit the bill, and for a lot of us, on camera hard disk recorders without some sort of cartridge system don't quite make it either because there is nothing for a client to walk away with.
BTW, the offload argument doesn't work one whit today, although that should change dramatically over the next year. As far as I know there isn't a single NLE in existence that can work directly with native DVCPro P2 MXF files. Only FCP comes close but that involves transcoding the files to QT, an extra time consuming step that can't be significantly faster than realtime. All other solutions at this time that I'm aware of involve capturing DVCPro in realtime from camera or deck via Firewire.
[Karl]"If anything Panasonic are just a few years too early.....Its actually nice for once for a company to be ahead of the game"
It's Panasonic's job to supply and sell products that put their clients ahead of the game, otherwise they won't sell many products and it won't matter how far ahead of the game they are.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Graeme Nattress on Oct 24, 2005 at 8:51:49 pm
MXF doesn't get transcodec to Quicktime. Both MXF and Quicktime are "wrappers' for the very same underlying DV/DV50/DV100 codec data, so any such conversion should be very rapid.
Graeme
- www.nattress.com - Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Ron Shook on Oct 24, 2005 at 9:02:47 pm
Graeme,
[Graeme Nattress]"MXF doesn't get transcodec to Quicktime. Both MXF and Quicktime are "wrappers' for the very same underlying DV/DV50/DV100 codec data, so any such conversion should be very rapid."
I understand the process. "Transcoded" was a bad choice of words. Would "rewrapped" be better? (g) Or converted? In FCP can this "rewrapping" happen on the fly when the P2 MXF files are ingested, or must they be ingested and then "rewrapped, i.e., is it a one or 2 stage process to make P2 MXF files usable in FCP?
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Luis Caffesse on Oct 24, 2005 at 8:56:05 pm
[Ron Shook]"BTW, the offload argument doesn't work one whit today, although that should change dramatically over the next year. As far as I know there isn't a single NLE in existence that can work directly with native DVCPro P2 MXF files. Only FCP comes close but that involves transcoding the files to QT, an extra time consuming step that can't be significantly faster than realtime. All other solutions at this time that I'm aware of involve capturing DVCPro in realtime from camera or deck via Firewire."
It was my understanding that Avid works directly with native DVCPro P2 MXF files.
And the FCP solution, while not a 'directy' path, is definitely faster than capturing in realtime.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by eLeventy on Oct 25, 2005 at 8:20:17 pm
It does. I've used P2 on Avid ( Newscutter & XpressProHD with SPX800). Each P2-card that is put into a slot is seen by Windows as a separate removable disk, and by Avid as a native Media Drive. You open the Avid media tool, and drop all the clips from one or more disk into a bin. After 1 second ( approx.) they 'arrive' in the bin, and you can start cutting from the cards, no ingest/transfer/transcode.
Only when you swap cards in the reader, or insert more cards, Avid has to rescan all drives( 'Mount All' command), and this takes some time( 20 to 60 seconds). Avid and/or Panasonic still have a bit of work to do: Ikegami HDD's take only a fraction of the time to mount. If you have to swap a lot of cards, this gets frustrating very quickly. Still, 20 seconds mounting is still a bit better then 20 minutes ingesting or transcoding.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by jiri vrozina on Oct 24, 2005 at 10:40:00 pm
[Ron Shook]"The Firestore drive, if it proves to be self-contained, is a step in the right direction and a solution for some types of production with the HGX-200 or other P2 camcorders"
Ron,
I would not shoot on anything conected to camera with "firewire cable".
It can easily come apart and be disconected.
I just like solid memory solutions.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by jiri vrozina on Oct 24, 2005 at 11:08:11 pm
20 years ago people spent $100 000 - $250 000 for post and $50000 for camera.
10 years people spent $50,000 - 100,000 for post and 50,000 for camera.
Today people spent $10,000 for post and $5,000 for camera.
People are discussing at forums Low end gear like Vegas(because it is cheap and it costs $400) and they are not talking and writing about far superior editing solutions
like smoke*.
We are talking about Z1 and Canon H1 instead discussing far superior video cameras.
Are we really going forward(as our fathers and grandfathers did),or are we following
Indians and Asians in the way we do business???
Is the "cheapest" way the best way?!
Is our living standard going down as well??
Sorry for this,but I like going forward,even if it costs the money.
I do no like to watch "amateur,family holiday" docos on TV shot by "anybody" on cheapest gear possible...It makes me tired.
Our industry is going down becasuse of that.
For Instance check all the forums here and see how many posts are at smoke* forum
and Vegas forum.
How many are at HDV forum and HD High End forum.
People think because they buy $5,000 camera they become cameramen and filmakers.
In this case I will buy some "knifes" and become a surgent...
I really moved away from P2 this time.
Bottom line is:if you want to do something properly,you will need proper tools
which will cost real money....
...and now lets talk about 14bit,6 megapixel Varicam on P2 which will shoot all the formats..........
p.s. I hope I did not offend anybody by my remarks.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Amadon amadon on Oct 29, 2005 at 1:47:46 pm
Kudos for your candor. But in my view, there is ONE advantage to the proliferation of junk -- especially junky VIDEOS and MOVIES everywhere you turn. Like you, some people get sick and tired of it. In the long run, that raises the value of the (now relatively rare) good stuff. For example, the other day, I tunred on the television, and got a MAJOR shock: I heard a GOOD guitar player! Incredible! I couldn't have been more pleased. I began to realize, a genuine craftsman like that will rise up from the mud once in a while. It DOES happen, despite the rabble.
As far as junky and cheap hardware products are concerned: I guess the money men are duty bound play to the market taste, where people want everything for nothing. Disgusting, perhaps, but pure business. I buy the best I can afford. Maybe others do the same. As long as people understand what they're getting --and what they're NOT getting--I guess its ok. Maybe your real complaint is that people just buy marketing hype, and are deluded as a result. Fool's gold, that. amadon
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Michael on Oct 24, 2005 at 9:01:26 pm
Ron-
I feel the same way that you do. I don't want to shoot on DV or HDV either, however, when I'm working on a long form project I'll have to consider until the price of P2 comes down. When I HAVE to shoot on HDV then I guess I'll use the JVC or the XL-H1 and hope nobody MOVES! Ha Ha :( Otherwise, it's going to cost "real HD money".
Perhaps something spectacular and inexpensive will happen with archiving/storage solutions in the next few months... although I think that realistically the best thing that going to happen to the HVX is a bit of TIME and less expensive P2. I just hope it's not too long.
Tape really hasn't been taken out of the equation with P2 (YET). For now, in most practical circumstances that come to mind, it appears as if P2 has just forced tape to the very end of the workflow.
Instead of utilizing tape in the beginning for aquistion, you're utilizing tape in the end, for archiving.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Ron Shook on Oct 24, 2005 at 9:26:34 pm
Michael,
[Michael]"Instead of utilizing tape in the beginning for aquistion, you're utilizing tape in the end, for archiving."
Tape is nearly at an end for archiving as well, and I think everyone needs to ask themselves if putting $25-80k into an HD tape deck makes any but short term sense anymore. Holographic Optical will make its commercial debute sometime in the next year, initially cheaper than tape and probably very inexpensive a year from its commercial introduction. Can we make do with hard drive archiving, perhaps doubling up for added safety, until then? I think so. The commodity IT revolution is nearly upon us for everything but camera heads, lenses and display devices, i.e., the opposite ends of the content creation chain. The rest is all computer hardware and software.
LTO, DLT, and other "computer tape backup systems" are what Panasonic is really pushing at the end of your workflow, or at the end of a shoot. I guess do an IT backup of all your .MXF raw footage onto LTO or DLT... then edit... then finish... then backup all of your project files, media files, etc. one more time to LTO or DLT.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Mike Schrengohst on Oct 25, 2005 at 3:16:44 pm
Couldn't you bring a laptop and a large firewire drive on location
and dump the footage from the cards? I know you would have to
then take the footage on the firewire drive and transfer to your
edit system drives. What is the difference with the 60 gig portable
firestore drives??
The Firestore drives will record directly from the camera WITHOUT the use of P2 cards and they will have a larger capacity... most likely either 60gb, 80gb or 100gb. You do not need a computer to "dump" the media to an external hard drive since it is recorded directly to the hard drive unit. It still remains to be seen if the drives in the Firestore unit will be hot swappable or not.
You could take a laptop on location and "dump" the P2 cards to an external hard drive if desired. Panasonic has made the argument that this may not be the best method because it is not fail-safe. From my understanding, they are suggesting to dump to their portable drive and then make copies on multiple sources: hard drive and data tape (LTO, DLT, etc), two hard drives, or other means. This is not feasible for many of us due to the costs and time restraints for data transferring.
Theoretically, you could dump directly Firewire hard drives and edit directly off of them without the need for another data transfer, but I don
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Brian FitzGerald on Oct 26, 2005 at 3:06:18 pm
[Steve Freebairn]"You can record it to a hard drive. Yes, 1 minute is 1 gig."
Fellas, I have been monitoring this group for months and I believe you may be getting a misimpression. The way I understand it - to date - you can offload data of any resolution from the p2 card(s) to a portable hard drive by firewire but you cannot do it while you are shooting. The data goes to the P2; you fill it up; then you off load it to the drive and then you clear the P2 and continue.
I think we all want the ability to record directly to drive but this has not been implemented as of yet - if ever.
For me, it is not a deal killer because for the value I will derive from this camera I can take the time to off load the video to a portable hard drive. I mostly shoot commercials.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Mike Schrengohst on Oct 26, 2005 at 3:11:28 pm
That was my original understanding. No big deal. The firestore drives are just that.
I think those drives are designed to off-load footage from the P2. I am not sure if you need to hook up the drive to a laptop or not. Some clarification from Panasonic would help.
Thanks
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Mike Schrengohst on Oct 26, 2005 at 3:14:39 pm
Here is the message from another thread:
John claims that you can shoot direct to the drives???
John Baisley, president of Panasonic Broadcast U.S. "We have selected the Focus FireStore Direct To Edit solution as a way of offering economical long-duration DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, or DVCPRO HD recording to the event production market. The FireStore solution, like our P2 card solid-state memory solution, speeds up the production workflow by eliminating time wasted digitizing footage."
"It is exciting to further expand our partnership with Panasonic and to extend our FireStore DTE platform to include a portable DVCPRO HD variant capable of 100Mbps video bit rate," said David O'Kelly, vice president of business development of Focus Enhancements. "Working closely with Panasonic, we plan to offer significant media cost savings to DVCPRO HD customers requiring long-duration HD acquisition."
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Steve Freebairn on Oct 26, 2005 at 5:45:06 pm
The camera can offload p2 to any firewire or usb drive, the reason why the Firestore is so much more, is because it lets you capture directly from the camera while recording.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Harry on Oct 26, 2005 at 11:36:40 pm
1. You CANNOT offload to a USB drive. There is no USB port on the camera. They changed it to firewire.
2. You CAN offload to a firewire drive -- the camera just sees the firewire drive as lots of little P2 storage cards.
3. You CANNOT shoot and record to a firewire (or USB) drive directly -- you will have to wait for the Firestore thing in March.
4. You CAN shoot and record directly to a computer using the firewire output from the camera if you use an NLE like FCP -- you just feed the camera's firewire output into your computer and hit "record" on your NLE.
This is information that I have, over the past couple of months, extracted directly from Jan at Panasonic.
And I am number 16 on the waiting list at Birns and Sawyer in Holywood, having plunked down a deposit.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Barry Green on Oct 27, 2005 at 8:24:27 am
[Harry]"There is no USB port on the camera. They changed it to firewire."
Harry, your post is spot-on except for this one bit. There is still a USB port on the camera. What changed is that originally they were going to implement P2-card-offloading to USB2 drives, but now instead they have implemented it through firewire. But the USB port remains, and still functions when connecting the camera to a computer.
-----------------
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Re: Only $1000!!!! by Barry Green on Oct 28, 2005 at 1:11:40 am
Not really, other than to just provide another alternative for connecting to the computer. Some laptops have USB only and don't have firewire, for example. Other than that, I don't know what the USB port is particularly used for...
-----------------
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available at http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/dvxbook/ and at Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/54u4a)
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Steve Freebairn on Oct 28, 2005 at 6:39:26 pm
If it is USB2.0 then it is faster than firewire in theory since USB 2.0 is 480mbps and firewire is only 400, but most tests reveal that firewire can still beat out usb 2.0
Re: Only $1000!!!! by matthew Romanis on Oct 29, 2005 at 4:21:36 am
I have recently gone through the steep learning curve of having to buy a PC laptop to work in conjunction with an FFV Mini DVR (another story!!).
A- It was not straight forward to obtain a PC laptop with a firewire port on it,
B- Firewire in the PC world is simply not as elegant as it is in the MAC environment.
My guess would be that keeping the USB 2 option allows the camera more freedom in the PC Laptop environment, as USB 2 seems to be the transfer protocol most used there.
I'm in the position of having used a solid state device for broadcast applications (ie, minicam in tape hazardous environments) the earlier talk in some threads of using CF cards or the like is the stuff of fairytales.
The CF cards for these applications are not reliable, develop dud sectors very quickly and constantly have format issues due to the high sustained data rates. The failure rate is too high to be acceptable for use with the HVX 200, and that is using San Disk Ultra II 4 gig cards x 2.
The very high spec of P2 merits the initial cost. End of argument.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by Kyle S on Oct 29, 2005 at 5:38:05 pm
"It was not straight forward to obtain a PC laptop with a firewire port on it"
sure it is, i can't remember the last time I saw a new one that didn't,
as long as your not trying to shop in the bargin basement
"Firewire in the PC world is simply not as elegant as it is in the MAC environment"
once again, sure it is, when you stop shopping at the $1000 best buy level,
Buy the tool for the job, It alwasy amazes me the people who spend 3 grand on a
Power Book and then try and compare the performance of a budget office PC, and say
see I told you they couldn't do it.
"The CF cards for these applications are not reliable, develop dud sectors very quickly and constantly have format issues due to the high sustained data rates. The failure rate is too high to be acceptable"
Not where I've been, never seen those kinds of problems with the cards.
but then again,you offered nothing but your word.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by matthew Romanis on Oct 29, 2005 at 10:07:20 pm
""It was not straight forward to obtain a PC laptop with a firewire port on it"
sure it is, i can't remember the last time I saw a new one that didn't,
as long as your not trying to shop in the bargain basement"
I spent $200 less than I did with my powerbook. In Australia this was not an easy exercise. It may be more common in the US and other placers but locally there was not a great deal of choice in the matter. Buying outside the country with large ticket items is a concern with warranty service. The local reps of known companies don't honour warranties when you cannot show a local receipt.
""Firewire in the PC world is simply not as elegant as it is in the MAC environment"
once again, sure it is, when you stop shopping at the $1000 best buy level,
Buy the tool for the job, It alwasy amazes me the people who spend 3 grand on a
Power Book and then try and compare the performance of a budget office PC, and say see I told you they couldn't do it."
Plug and play simply does not work as elegantly. Even colleagues who are PC nuts tell me this is the one thing that they envy with MAC's, though lately with OSX Tiger that's another story. CF card readers that aren't yet supported and the like.
""The CF cards for these applications are not reliable, develop dud sectors very quickly and constantly have format issues due to the high sustained data rates. The failure rate is too high to be acceptable"
Not where I've been, never seen those kinds of problems with the cards.
but then again,you offered nothing but your word."
What broadcast video applications have you seen CF cards working in? I'm only aware of FFV's products, are there more?
I'm questioning the robustness of using CF cards for video work from my own experience. I still use the CF recorder in areas where tape won't work ,such as high G acceleration and deceleration and small size environments, but the overall success rate is not what I would call reliable, and that's what my point was.
The reliability of the P2 card system has to 100%, no less. To guarantee that you have vision on the disks when you get back from a gruelling wilderness shoot is of utmost importance. The concept of paying high prices for P2 early in the life of this camera may be abhorrent to some, if so, wait.
Re: Only $1000!!!! by T Mathai on Nov 3, 2005 at 8:42:40 pm
>>>
Name: Blub
Date: Oct 23, 2005 at 7:27:00 pm
Subject: Only $1000!!!!
No, I will not add file transferring to the shooting methodology, there are enough technical details to focus on for good pix and sound, file transferring on set adds,,,, what production value to the shooting?<<<
If you plan to shoot with the HVX200 at all, I feel file transfer should be a must in the production workflow. Even a hard drive system can fail, so between setups, it can't hurt to just have data transferred to a backup drive.
