Don't really understand Red's relevance here, but... Proxy files, what is this 1993?No wonder why it is so expensive
64GB P2 Card announcment
- Thread starter Spec-Comm
- Start date
Jarek Zabczynski
Veteran
Barry_Green
Moderator
Does anybody remember why the CinePorter was canceled? It was that it was too expensive and the prices on P2 fell too quickly! Hah!
shorelinedigital
Active member
If you have a gig that "needs" this card it should be paid for by the end of the day. Otherwise continue using the smaller cards until you have a client that "needs" you to have it.
If you wanna blow your days redesigning a camera so you can cheap out on the storage good luck having it be a reliable long-term solution....I'd rather gripe about the high cost of HMI's and bad on-camera talent.
Matt Gottshalk
Resident Preditor
Well said.
the price is so high on the 64gb card because panasonic knows that its aimed at professionals who make money off their equipment.. so panasonic would also like to make some money off their equiompment 
..
im not saying there is something wrong with that.. just a shame the 32 and 16 cards didnt go down in price..
.. im not saying there is something wrong with that.. just a shame the 32 and 16 cards didnt go down in price..
Your whole day of work and money stored on P2 cards I would consider it fully insured and would pay premium to save it. The price of the card is looks high but the look at the size of the card. 64GB of high speed reliable storage there is nothing close to it in the market place which is flexible and reliable.
Steve Smull
Active member
RED has the intelligent modular design that our rapidly changing camera technology begs for. I hope Panasonic goes that route eventually as well. If our media input source was itself a module, we could replace it with a module that uses the media du jour. Low budget indie types could work around the large P2 media cost issue addressed in this thread entirely.
Of course that would introduce the issues you get when you open a closed system such as codec incompatibilities and all sorts of general flakiness, which is one of the reasons P2 is still the best option today. So here's what i'd REALLY like to see from Panasonic:
Keep P2. It's great. Add a bay which bare miniature 1.8" or 2.5" SSD drives can slot into directly. Add functionality whereby the camera can make a copy of the P2 card(s) directly to the SSD drive. It would be somewhat like having a P2 Store built into the camera.
No compatibility issues because it's just offloading your cards for you, making verified copies of data in camera. No need for a laptop, and you have redundancy from the moment you press the "COPY P2 CARDS" button on the side of the camera. You could then hand the bare hard drive off and still have the original data on your P2 cards, or slip the bare drive into a bay in your home computer and it's off to the races.
I'd pay a lot extra for that because it would be a much better and safer work flow to have redundancy for our digital files built into the camera. Almost like having a built in level one RAID, except that the copying functionality would probably need to be manually implemented to compensate for the variety of drives. Or Panasonic could require a specific drive proven to work and charge accordingly. That would still cost less than a P2 card, and would offer the user an option to buy more of those and less P2 cards to get through the day at an overall lower cost with no need for an offloading device in the field for modest sized jobs.
The best would be TWO slots for SSD drives. Then the camera would copy redundantly to both of those at the same time in a true level one RAID fashion. This would give you two copies, one you could hand off and one you could keep. Wouldn't you feel a lot more comfortable erasing your P2 cards after you have two copies in your pocket. Additionally a two drive setup would offer the ability to stagger the copies as another option, for maximum flexibility in how you copy the data and the ability to always have at least one of the SSD drives in the camera while shooting when you would might prefer that functionality. That would also work better because it would work around the obvious issues of the SSD drive not being able to keep up with the P2 cards while shooting and/or handing it off. Two P2 slots, two SSD slots. My Christmas dream....
Wouldn't it be great to be able to hand off relatively inexpensive SSD drives with redundant data on them, rather than your P2 cards with the original data.
Of course that would introduce the issues you get when you open a closed system such as codec incompatibilities and all sorts of general flakiness, which is one of the reasons P2 is still the best option today. So here's what i'd REALLY like to see from Panasonic:
Keep P2. It's great. Add a bay which bare miniature 1.8" or 2.5" SSD drives can slot into directly. Add functionality whereby the camera can make a copy of the P2 card(s) directly to the SSD drive. It would be somewhat like having a P2 Store built into the camera.
No compatibility issues because it's just offloading your cards for you, making verified copies of data in camera. No need for a laptop, and you have redundancy from the moment you press the "COPY P2 CARDS" button on the side of the camera. You could then hand the bare hard drive off and still have the original data on your P2 cards, or slip the bare drive into a bay in your home computer and it's off to the races.
I'd pay a lot extra for that because it would be a much better and safer work flow to have redundancy for our digital files built into the camera. Almost like having a built in level one RAID, except that the copying functionality would probably need to be manually implemented to compensate for the variety of drives. Or Panasonic could require a specific drive proven to work and charge accordingly. That would still cost less than a P2 card, and would offer the user an option to buy more of those and less P2 cards to get through the day at an overall lower cost with no need for an offloading device in the field for modest sized jobs.
The best would be TWO slots for SSD drives. Then the camera would copy redundantly to both of those at the same time in a true level one RAID fashion. This would give you two copies, one you could hand off and one you could keep. Wouldn't you feel a lot more comfortable erasing your P2 cards after you have two copies in your pocket. Additionally a two drive setup would offer the ability to stagger the copies as another option, for maximum flexibility in how you copy the data and the ability to always have at least one of the SSD drives in the camera while shooting when you would might prefer that functionality. That would also work better because it would work around the obvious issues of the SSD drive not being able to keep up with the P2 cards while shooting and/or handing it off. Two P2 slots, two SSD slots. My Christmas dream....
Wouldn't it be great to be able to hand off relatively inexpensive SSD drives with redundant data on them, rather than your P2 cards with the original data.
Last edited:
Barry_Green
Moderator
Steve Smull
Active member
Thanks for the response Barry, as always you are the Man. All the methods you describe are accurate and cool to have... I'd just like to see slots built into the actual camera as an option not requiring connectivity or an additional device. There are certainly valid reasons one would be better than the other for various applications and I would LOVE to own a P2 Gear! but my guess is it would be a lot less expensive to add the functionality and two slots to the camera than to purchase a P2 Gear, since some of the functionality is redundant. Of course it would be best to have both and the P2 Gear looks awesome. The techniques you described are all good solutions available today... I just love the idea of the capability to do it ALL in camera for the times when that would be handy, especially for the times when you have to do it all yourself in the field and the less junk you have to carry the better. For example, being up in the mountains with just the camera where it would be great to produce redundant copies with the camera itself.
More direct, more P2-like; just a cartridge to pop in and out.
The firewire port solution is pretty good, but it involves a cable and an external device... an actual slot just seems cleaner. One less cable to fail or misplace, one less external enclosure to fail or misplace. I come from an IT background and I have developed a healthy mistrust of cables, dongles and external housings; they can and will eventually fail so I like to remove them from the equation wherever possible. And I like to have redundant copies of data available... redundantly. In other words the more ways we have at our disposal to make copies, the better.
i think the solutions Panasonic has today are really REALLY good! And I love my HPX170, purchased largely due to a discussion I had with you at NAB (you remember me, that guy who asked you some questions at NAB...) Thanks for all that you do!
(I want EVERYthing...)
More direct, more P2-like; just a cartridge to pop in and out.
The firewire port solution is pretty good, but it involves a cable and an external device... an actual slot just seems cleaner. One less cable to fail or misplace, one less external enclosure to fail or misplace. I come from an IT background and I have developed a healthy mistrust of cables, dongles and external housings; they can and will eventually fail so I like to remove them from the equation wherever possible. And I like to have redundant copies of data available... redundantly. In other words the more ways we have at our disposal to make copies, the better.
i think the solutions Panasonic has today are really REALLY good! And I love my HPX170, purchased largely due to a discussion I had with you at NAB (you remember me, that guy who asked you some questions at NAB...) Thanks for all that you do!
(I want EVERYthing...)
Last edited:
TwistedLincoln
Veteran
I really like the idea of a built-in SSD slot, though Barry has a point that similar functionality is already possible. Honestly, though, I've never once been able to get ANY of my various HVX-200s or my 200a to offload to a firewire drive.
They all give me the "cannot access target" message. Having tried a half dozen different hard drives and three different enclosures and cables, I've lost all faith in that workflow as being useful.
P2 cards haven't failed me yet, so even if it isn't quick, I'll stick with offloading via USB to my notebook until they release P2 drivers for Linux.
They all give me the "cannot access target" message. Having tried a half dozen different hard drives and three different enclosures and cables, I've lost all faith in that workflow as being useful.
P2 cards haven't failed me yet, so even if it isn't quick, I'll stick with offloading via USB to my notebook until they release P2 drivers for Linux.
And you can have this handy little gem of an offloader for a mere $3700.
I'm with Twisted Lincoln here. A faster SDHC interface that will offload a p2 card would be fantastic. Copying to a SDHC seems more economical in camera than offloading to HDD. Also solid state.
great idea.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Readily available for around $500, the Windows laptop... :thumbsup: PCMCIA slot and SD card slot, direct offloading, just not all that compact... (unless you're talking about something like the micro-sized Fujitsu LifeBook, that thing is tiny...)
I've done the firewire offloading thing a few dozen times. It's always worked, so I don't know what problems TL is running into. But I don't find it all that useful as it ties the camera up, plus the issue of hunting down a battery-powered firewire enclosure (finally solved with the Nexto 2525).
Blackout
Veteran
$2400 for a 64g P2 card is INSANE and let's stop the crap about "let your gig pay for it," because that's a bunch of baloney. Sure my gig can pay for it but I work for my gig to pay me - not to lose money to ridiculously over priced technologies that at this time are no longer new and should therefore no longer be expensive which means 'OVERPRICED'.
I don't care if Panasonic is spending more than they are charging - they are doing something WRONG id the prices are still this high at this point. It's YEARS down the line and this just shouldn't be the cost for ANY type of storage I don't care WHAT fancy shmancy proprietary crap they have going to make 4 $10 cards into 1 $2400 card. Take it out... rethink it. Something's wrong. These prices DO NOT COMPUTE. DANGER WILL ROBINSON.
I don't care if Panasonic is spending more than they are charging - they are doing something WRONG id the prices are still this high at this point. It's YEARS down the line and this just shouldn't be the cost for ANY type of storage I don't care WHAT fancy shmancy proprietary crap they have going to make 4 $10 cards into 1 $2400 card. Take it out... rethink it. Something's wrong. These prices DO NOT COMPUTE. DANGER WILL ROBINSON.
Well said and I agree even though many people don't see it this way,..... but instead of singing the "overpriced" song over and over again (as I was before).... I'm just not going to buy it. Prices will eventually come down,.... just like everything else. The big question in mind..... is fuji also going to offer the same price?
Barry_Green
Moderator
Then you're in the wrong market. Complaining about the price of the product in saying that it's too high just means that you're not the target market. But to say that an extremely functional, workable strategy employed by successful businesspeople worldwide is "insane" and "crap" and "baloney" is just silly.
There are people out there who think $5,000 for a tripod is "insane." And there are plenty of people who gladly pay that because that's what a quality tripod is worth to them. Others think they don't need anything more advanced than a Bogen 501. And there are those of us who would NEVER show up to a professional job with a Bogen 501!
There are people out there who will buy a $44,000 Hasselblad DSLR, because that's what they need and that's what it's worth to them. And then there are those who think a D90 represents the pinnacle of photographic excellence and are happy with its $900 price tag.
There are people who shoot weddings for $300. There are other people who charge $10,000 to shoot a wedding. If your average gig price is $500 to $2,000 then obviously a 64GB P2 card is not aimed at you. But for those of us who charge $20,000 to $100,000 per job, a 64GB P2 card is NO BIG DEAL. You just buy what you need, charge it back to the client, and move on.
Angelcyk's got it right - if it's too expensive for you, don't buy it. But badmouthing those who are successful in business, who buy $2600 products and charge their clients an additional $2600 and then have that $2600 product to use for the rest of its useful life FOR FREE, is really a curious strategy.
Last edited:
Steve Smull
Active member
The Nexto 2525 looks kinda interesting, curious about experiences with it? Reliability would have to be well tested by someone other than me!
http://www.mobile-save.com/product_detail.php?id=6
The where-to-buy-it link directs you to their retail outlets, all located in Indonesia.
Firestore, external drives, Cineporter-vaporware, they all have in common a weak-link personality which could be circumvented by an in camera solution.
A modular solution made by Panasonic which could be an add on device might be my favorite implementation of this concept because you could drop the weight when it isn't needed and it wouldn't add to the original cost of the camera. Like a Firestore that you don't record to, but which is a cartridge based backup solution made by Panasonic with intelligent offloading capabilities directed by camera menus and buttons.
It could clip onto the bottom of the camera and have a tripod mount under it to keep the center of gravity low, like other solutions we've seen for Firestore mounting. The cartridges would feed in from the back and it could have a direct interface to the camera if it was made by Panasonic (better than a cable!) It could be (*COULD be) provided at a much lower cost by Panasonic than a P2 Gear or even P2 Store, because of all the functionality the camera would provide to the modular device. The camera being the brain of the essentially pretty simple cartridge device, which would make it more or less like a drive bay in your computer. It could incorporate a battery, which it would probably need. And if the camera had the interface and a bay under it, the possibilities for OTHER devices to fit in that bay get really interesting. Disc burner... bays that fit 3.5" drives... microwave for in-camera craft services...
You'd still record to P2 and retain the benefits thereof (or even to a Firestore if you prefer). This device would be an additional option for data storage and redundancy. I'd still rather have slots in the camera to do the job but it's an interesting variation which is more RED-like...
Panasonic would still sell plenty of large P2 cards to those who can afford/need them. That's still the most elegant solution- a fist full of 64 Gb P2 cards and a P2 Gear. This would be a solution for the rest of us and Panasonic could profit from the device as well as their own "recommended" media for it.
Last edited:
This thread can now retire..... better perspective than what I had originally in mind.....
Nexis
Well-known member
Many respondents on this subject seem at some point to have developed an expectation that the prices for P2 cards would drop and that Moore's law would apply as if the P2 card were just another piece of computer equipment. Well, it isn't.
It is clear to me that those who made the decision to purchase a P2 camera based on such an expectation have themselves, and not Panasonic, to blame quite simply because Panasonic never made any such promises.
If, however, they purchased a P2 camera without that expectation, then they still have nothing to gripe about, since their decision was presumably based on the suitability of the camera for their needs. To the extent that decision was wrong for someone, it again is not Panasonic's fault.
I have a number of issues with Panasonic, but the prices for the P2 cards is not one of them. Sure I wish they were lower. That's obvious. But the fact is they aren't and for the foreseeable future they won't be. Instead of complaining people should take responsibility for their own decisions.
Just my $0.02.
It is clear to me that those who made the decision to purchase a P2 camera based on such an expectation have themselves, and not Panasonic, to blame quite simply because Panasonic never made any such promises.
If, however, they purchased a P2 camera without that expectation, then they still have nothing to gripe about, since their decision was presumably based on the suitability of the camera for their needs. To the extent that decision was wrong for someone, it again is not Panasonic's fault.
I have a number of issues with Panasonic, but the prices for the P2 cards is not one of them. Sure I wish they were lower. That's obvious. But the fact is they aren't and for the foreseeable future they won't be. Instead of complaining people should take responsibility for their own decisions.
Just my $0.02.