proposed P2/hdd work flow

[dop16mm]

As a narrative filmmaker with 16mm shooting experience I do not have a problem with 10 minute run times on the card, that would be no different than a roll of film. Offloading a memory card to a hard drive then erasing it is nothing new, I do that with my digital still camera all the time. As for costs, the price per Gb of standard 3.5" IDE hard drives, comparable if not cheaper than camera original tape both mini dv and certainly dvcpro-hd.

Take a generic 5.25" firewire/usb-2 case and put a 3.5" hot swap chassis in it. Buy Hard drive in the needed quantity for a given shoot as you would raw tape stock including the required hot swap trays (cheap). Back up to drive using whichever method you prefer, direct from camera, laptop, portable card reader drive. But treat this drive as camera original tape. view the footage once or twice at your capture workstation as you would have to work with tape then dump your selects to your work drives. Put your masters back on the shelf like you would with tape.

The up side is that your dvc-pro-hd "deck" costs less than $100, your tape is totally non-linear, and you can always edit directly from this drive if you choose.

For double redundency at 10 cents a Gb its hard to beat dvd in data format, yeah it takes time, but how much time and effort do you have tied up in aquiring the footage in the first place.

As for the all day wedding/event type shoots, that is what the mini-dv tape is for. I don't know what these jobs pay in your area, but in mine they hardly justify decent dv let alone a full blown hd workfolw :thumbsup:

[Jaime Valles]

As for the all day wedding/event type shoots, that is what the mini-dv tape is for. I don't know what these jobs pay in your area, but in mine they hardly justify decent dv let alone a full blown hd workfolw :thumbsup:

Yeah, I still chuckle whenever I hear someone say "but how am I supposed to record a wedding in 1080HD with only 16 minutes between 2 cards?!".

1080 wedding. I love it.

[Phooey]

I've been thinking the same thing. I'd imagine you could charge quite a bit to go up to HD. What the cost of 2 4GB P2 cards and a laptop? Not to mention what are you going to deliver it on?

[Editor321]

going to bed.

[alpi69]

hey, if someone wants their wedding in 1080p then for the extrcost you can easily buy two new P2 cards......

[nullphonic]

Here's a thread that has some information regarding this...
http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=22522

[Haakon]

1080 wedding. I love it.
It will take a little while for HD to become a widespread standard, but when it does, I can't imagine that anyone is going to want anything to be shot in SD anymore... weddings or otherwise.

[Sumfun]

People who do news, documentary, reality, or other run and gun type work really need more than 10-20 minutes of capture capability. Sometimes there's only 1 cameraman out there, and you can't stop to download video.

I can see the P2 store HDD coming in handy here because you can just plug in a full P2 card and it takes care of the download. I guess it's like changing tapes. It's a pain to change tapes every 8 minutes (8GB card, 1080i), but I guess I can live with it. Still, it would be better to record directly to disk.

[Haakon]

I can see the P2 store HDD coming in handy here because you can just plug in a full P2 card and it takes care of the download.
It's definitely handy, just way overpriced. As several people have already pointed out on the forums, you can buy a laptop with a bigger hard drive and a PCMCIA slot for the same price (and obviously get a whole heck of a lot more for your money). The form factor of the P2 Store is pretty cool... but I have a portable 60GB hard drive I bought for my digital camera about a year ago that has CF, MS, and SD slots on the front (and does exactly the same thing as the Store does with P2 cards) and it cost me under $200. Perhaps something needs to be more robust to handle the transfer rate of the P2 cards or something, but I can't see how it could be $1400+ more robust.

[fiercecurry]

Which portable drive is that, that has all these slots on it? Sounds really good.

[Wiyum]

It will take a little while for HD to become a widespread standard, but when it does, I can't imagine that anyone is going to want anything to be shot in SD anymore... weddings or otherwise.

And by that time? I imagine P2 prices will come down quite a bit.

Keep in mind, current prices are driven up by how few P2 cards Panasonic makes, because the format, in its infancy, doesn't have too many buyers. As they sell more P2 cameras, they sell more cards, and they make them in bulk and prices come down, *in addition to* prices of flash based memory falling. By the time wedding customers are demanding HD, you'll be glad you can buy 32GB P2 cards for $800... DVC Pro HD tapes (the price of tape, remember, stays pretty constant) run $79 for every 46 minutes... and aren't reusable. After 12 jobs or so, you've saved money by going with P2. Anything that pays for itself in 12 jobs is, I think, great. Especially when tape is one of the few expenses a wedding videographer has *every job.*

That said, if you've got customers demanding HD now, charge them what you are justified charging for HD, by the camera, and shoot in HDV by all means.

For narrative work, P2 is great now. I'm sorry if the format doesn't share the love with the event crowd yet, but it will...

Will