Cheapest 32GB P2 Card?

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Hi, is this a simple DIY mod to the firestore or do you modify them, and is the firmware the same as the firestore.
Lastly, is it any more stable in performance than the Firestore, i've heard reports from users that the Firestore can be not reliable to use, and others swear by them.
I have a Nnovia HDD with V-mount that is very Reliable , but is limited to DV resolution.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
Tom 4 said:
CW-35 does your 64 transfer any faster than a 32 gig, or is that just sales spin.
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Well, I can testify that the 64 gig card is way faster. I was at a client's today who had a Mac Pro tower hooked up with a 3-drive RAID of 750GB drives. I watched them copy a chock-full 64GB card in 10 minutes and 38 seconds.

That's about 6 GB per minute!

I tried it in my laptop and got about 32GB offloaded in 15:25 before my internal drive was full, so I couldn't time a full card, but obviously the difference is the speed of the RAID that they were offloading to.

So I then had them try an 8GB card. They offloaded a full-to-the-brim 8GB card in 2:08. That's almost 4GB per minute.

On my laptop, a 4GB card takes about 2:10, so clearly, again, my system is the limiting factor; if you have something fast fast fast to copy to, then it can copy quickly.

And the 64GB card was WARM when we pulled it out, after yanking 64GB off of it in barely over 10 minutes.

So -- I can definitively say that it ain't "marketing spin", the 64 is most definitely faster than the 8GB. I didn't try a 16 or a 32, but as compared to the 8GB the 64GB is about 50% faster. And offload to a RAID - these transfer times were somewhat astonishing, but I saw 'em firsthand.

It's changed my idea of what's possible with P2; I know people are used to saying "a gig a minute" but I've seen six gigabytes per minute, and offloading 3 hours of footage in 10 minutes was pretty darn cool.
 
Hi Barry,

Can you tell us what card reader was used on the Macpro tower, was it the Pana 5 card reader, (connected USB / Firewire) or something else.
Were the Drives internally mounted or externals, Raid O ?.
What is the firmware version of the 64 gig card.

My 32 gig cards will download into my Intel Macpro to two Raid-0 internal drives in 18mins via my single slot Amtron card reader, only thing faster for me is my trusty Nnovia , it dumps in at Ten times realtime.

So if these new 64 gig cards can dump at much faster speeds, does that mean that the earlier 4-8-16-32gigs are inferior, and if that is the case why are they not discounted in their price point .
Do you think they may be getting close to transfer speeds of that of, between internal HDD's.
Barry thanks for the test n post, many out here are interested in justifying the cost of the 64gig, if it means using Pana's 5 card reader then we know what were up for to achieve faster downloads.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
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Barry_Green said:
So -- I can definitively say that it ain't "marketing spin", the 64 is most definitely faster than the 8GB. I didn't try a 16 or a 32, but as compared to the 8GB the 64GB is about 50% faster. And offload to a RAID - these transfer times were somewhat astonishing, but I saw 'em firsthand.
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Well, I can definitively say that the 64 GB card is slower than my 16 GB card on my Macbook Pro when transferring via the duel card adapter to an empty 1 TB FW 800 drive.

Also, I doubt I would ever be in the field with a MacPro with a raid to do transfers.

If it is not a "marketing spin" it is apparently a marketing omission as to what advanced gear is needed to actually tap into the additional speed of the 64 GB card.

The only other conclusion that I can make is that perhaps my 16 GB card is in fact as fast as the 64 GB card.

When I get a chance I am going to do a similar test with an older 16 GB card and hope that it is indeed slower.
 
It was a five-slot reader, I assume it was connected via FW800. The raid was internal, raid 0.

64GB in 10 minutes and 38 seconds. Whether that amounts to faster copies to an internal single laptop drive I can't say, but it is unquestionably faster than the 8GB card. Way faster.
 
Barry_Green said:
Whether that amounts to faster copies to an internal single laptop drive I can't say, but it is unquestionably faster than the 8GB card. Way faster.
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Unquestionably faster when accessed through a $2k P2 card reader.

Unfortunately, I didn't plan on having to spend an additional $2k on top of the $2300 I spent for the "faster" P2 card ( and that hardware requirement is not stated in any literature regarding the 64 GB card's speed. )

But, it really comes as no surprise.

Also, I did not attempt to copy to an internal laptop harddrive in my testing.

I think I will out of curiosity try transferring the cards through old Powerbook that actually has a PCMCIA slot to a FW drive. I would be curious to see what that transfer time would be.
 
It'll probably be slow as a pig. Your transfer speed will only be as fast as the slowest element in the chain. Firewire 400 has a maximum theoretical speed of 400 megabits, and in practicality you'll probably see somewhere around 20 to 30 megabytes per second. But the G4 Powerbook itself is probably going to be the bottleneck.

What I'm saying is: the card IS faster. It just is. So if you want to take advantage of that extra speed, you have to put it in an environment where that speed will come into play. You can't say "I drove my Maserati and my Hyundai down a 25mph street, and the Hyundai was just as fast". That makes no sense. Put 'em in play where the additional capabilities come to fruition and you'll see what happens.

Most people that use G4 Powerbooks report about 1GB/minute for transfer speed. My old Dell laptop was the same. On my Thinkpad I get about 2GB/minute. Using that same card on a desktop system (which eliminates slow laptops from the equation) going to an internal SATA drive (which eliminates slow firewire or USB connections) going to a three-drive RAID (which eliminates slow hard disks from the equation) will bring the speed of the card into play to the point where the card itself might be the slowest link in the chain.

Testing on lesser equipment is really of not much value because as long as the card is faster than the slowest link in your chain, then no matter how much faster they make the cards you wouldn't see a difference in your particular circumstances.
 
Hi Barry & CW-35,

Yes we all make TV adds wer'e we have to say "Conditions apply", maybe that would be something that Pana should mention when saying these newest 64gig cards are faster, just a thought.
I as many can't justify in this current business climate spending $3600 AUD on a 64gig and $2995 AUD on the 5 card reader (AJ-PCD20).

thankyou both for reporting your test results.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
Okay, work with me on this though - why should they have to say that? They say specifically that the new card is capable of 800mbps. And the old cards were capable of a theoretical max of 640mbps. It's faster. They said it was.

I guess my question is: why would anyone expect the new card to transfer faster than the old card, when going through a 400mbps firewire connection? Lowest common denominator and all that...
 
Download speeds are dependent on multiple factors: the reader, the computer and the drive being written to. I get 8 minute offloads via USB 2 through my macbook with a P2 gear to a OWC OTG drive connected with FW 400.

If I switch drives I can see that speed go up a little depending on the drive , or go down a lot, also depending on the drive. Typically though the speed is 1.8 GB / a min . I used to have a PCD 20 which when connected to my mac pro and writing to a raid 0 seemed a little faster with a 16 gb card but, not enough to knock your socks off.
 
Barry_Green said:
I guess my question is: why would anyone expect the new card to transfer faster than the old card, when going through a 400mbps firewire connection? Lowest common denominator and all that...
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I don't think anyone on this thread has reported or suggested going through a 400mbps firewire connection. you keep throwing that out there but I am not sure what/who you are referring to???

My test example transfer was through an ExpressCard/34 slot (which can support sustained write and read data transfer speeds of 131 and 133 MB/sec ) to a FW 800 drive which has a theoretical transfer speed of 800mbps.

So, this seems like it is on par with the maximum purported speed of the 64GB card.
 
Tom 4 said:
Yes we all make TV adds wer'e we have to say "Conditions apply", maybe that would be something that Pana should mention when saying these newest 64gig cards are faster, just a thought.
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I am certainly of the opinion that Panasonic has taken some great marketing liberties with its claims in regards to the 170 ranging from clearly stating the exterior of the camera is completely made out of metal to the PAL upgrade being available in early October...

To answer your question, yes I agree. If they claim it's faster, they need to be real specific as to under what conditions that applies or it is simply misleading. They specifically & vaguely have stated "for faster transfer and offload of P2 content."

I didn't realize I would have to spend another $2k on top of the price of the 64 GB card to see that faster transfer speed.
 
Hi Barry & CW,

Here in OZ we have very stringent laws regarding truth in advertising, you cannot misrepresent or mislead when advertising a product or a service. maybe it's different in other countries or on the net ?. please correct me if i'm wrong.
OK Barry can I change "Conditions Apply" to "When used in conjunction with Panasonic P2 gear or Panasonic AJ-PCD20" connected to very fast drives.

Cheers
Tom K
olinevideo.com.au
 
Tom 4 said:
Hi Barry & CW,

Here in OZ we have very stringent laws regarding truth in advertising, you cannot misrepresent or mislead when advertising a product or a service. maybe it's different in other countries or on the net ?. please correct me if i'm wrong.
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This is a really good question and I have been searching for the exact answer to it in terms of laws here in the States. My biggest issue with Panasonic and the 170 with its "advertising" surrounding the camera is the fact that the date for the PAL upgrade for the camera keeps on slipping, slipping away.

I bought the camera in late September with the understanding (in writing from Panasonic) that the PAL upgrade would be available in early October. It's now approaching mid-December and I cannot even get responses to my inquiries regarding it from Panasonic as to when it will be available now. In this last 6 weeks I have spent almost $2k in PAL camera rentals (EX1) and I truly expected to have gotten that use from my 170 instead.

In terms of laws, I can't imagine that a consumer such as myself who was on the fence about buying the EX1 which is PAL/NTSC switchable, being convinced that such a feature was days away from being available with the 170, choosing the 170 over the competitor's product based on Panasonic's claims and then that feature not being available. I can't really define this in any other term other than fraudulent.

I can't tell you how disappointed I am in Panasonic and its internet minions.
 
Tom 4 said:
Here in OZ we have very stringent laws regarding truth in advertising, you cannot misrepresent or mislead when advertising a product or a service. maybe it's different in other countries or on the net ?. please correct me if i'm wrong.
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You're not wrong at all. We in the US definitely have comparable laws.

OK Barry can I change "Conditions Apply" to "When used in conjunction with Panasonic P2 gear or Panasonic AJ-PCD20" connected to very fast drives.
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Sure, but - WHY?

It's like if I said "hey guys, I connected my HPX3000 to my standard-def TV and guess what - it's NO SHARPER than my old SDX900 was! All this talk of "HD" is a lie, it's marketing "spin"! I even burned a DVD and I couldn't tell which was which, so the HPX3000 is all a lie!" and then when someone points out that "duh, you have to watch HD on an HDTV, and if you want to see it high-def on a disc you'd have to use an HD blu-ray disc", then someone else saying "well, there's truth-in-advertising laws so they should have to say 'warning, you require all sorts of additional equipment in order to actually take advantage of the additional sharpness.' "

Surely the vast majority of us would recognize that that's just silly?

Or, to use a car analogy again, you drive 10 miles a day for your commute in downtown New York City. It takes you two hours. So you decide "hey, that BMW M5 says it's zero to sixty in 4 seconds, I'll buy that and cut my commute time in half!" Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Take it to the track and actually go from zero to sixty and yeah, it'll take 4 seconds. But to complain about "false advertising" because someone didn't understand what's involved? Sorry, that's simply unreasonable.

CW, if you found the transfer time marginally slower, I'd attribute it to probably something like hard disk fragmentation. Format your external drive, copy your 16, and time it. Then format that drive again, copy your 64, and time it. The 64 will probably end up either faster or, in the worst case, the same -- and if it's the same, it's because you're copying to a slower drive.

As far as slowest element in the chain - if you're copying to a single drive, that's the slowest element. You cannot copy data off the card any faster than your drive will accept it, that's just the simple truth. That's why the card's way faster when copying to a faster device (like a 3-drive RAID). And sticking a faster interface on that drive doesn't make the drive faster. If you took a 10MBps drive and connected it through IDE, USB2, FW400, FW800, or SATA it's all going to be the exact same speed, even though SATA is potentially so much faster than IDE or FW400. It's the speed of the drive that counts, until that drive is faster than the interface. At that point, it becomes the speed of the interface that counts. But even then, it's going to have to do with the fragmentation state of the drive, a raw freshly formatted drive is always going to be significantly faster than a chock-full highly-fragmented drive.

Look, at some point you've just got to have rational realistic expectations. You can't expect to see HD on a standard-def TV, it doesn't work that way. And if you want to see the card performing faster, you have to copy to a device that's faster than the card. It's just common sense.
 
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I have to agree with Barry. Truth in advertising laws say you have to tell the truth and not be intentionally misleading. It doesn't have to say that you have to qualify everything you say with an explaination designed to spell every detail of every possible misconception.

I understand being frustrated by Panasonic changing their plans or going back on what they said they'd so (release the upgrade by October). But unless you have a written contract saying that you are purchasing a camera on the condition of their releasing an upgrade, you knew going in that there were no guarantees. But you bought anyway. I totally understand being annoyed, but that's a far cry from fraud.
 
TwistedLincoln said:
I understand being frustrated by Panasonic changing their plans or going back on what they said they'd so (release the upgrade by October). But unless you have a written contract saying that you are purchasing a camera on the condition of their releasing an upgrade, you knew going in that there were no guarantees. But you bought anyway. I totally understand being annoyed, but that's a far cry from fraud.
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we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Yes, I bought the camera under the understanding that it would be PAL/NTSC switchable the first week in October based on information specifically given to me by Panasonic.

So, I didn't "buy it anyway" and I couldn't have possibly imagined that almost 3 months later it still wouldn't be available. It's costing me money every time a PAL shoot comes up right now as the camera I thought & bought would have the PAL feature no later than October, does not. It's not a case of me not doing my research and I discussed it with three separate entities at Panasonic. They should not have strung me along like this. It is a bad business practice and I have a measurable financial cost as a result. I don't care if you agree or not.

I should have bought the EX1 plain & simple, for a variety of reasons.

If Panasonic wants to attempt to put their 170 on par with the EX1 with having this feature, then that feature's availability can't be tossed around haphazardly if people are making large financial decisions based on this info.

The irony is that the 171 is PAL/NTSC out of the box, very much like the printed literature for the 170 back in the summer stated it would be as well...

And I get it, no one else is really interested in having this feature, despite the overwhelming results of the poll that was taken. So, I seem to be alone on this issue. But I am a global shooter & I have global clients.

Anyway, fortunately my wife works at a law firm and I am going to have a chat with some of the partners next week and see what they say.
 
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Barry_Green said:
It's like if I said "hey guys, I connected my HPX3000 to my standard-def TV and guess what - it's NO SHARPER than my old SDX900 was!
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This is comparing apples to oranges. Sharpness is a subjective qualitative argument. Transfer speed is measurable.


Barry_Green said:
CW, if you found the transfer time marginally slower, I'd attribute it to probably something like hard disk fragmentation. Format your external drive, copy your 16, and time it. Then format that drive again, copy your 64, and time it. The 64 will probably end up either faster or, in the worst case, the same -- and if it's the same, it's because you're copying to a slower drive..
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Drive was cleanly formatted and empty before the copying was done. Disk fragmentation not a variable.

Honestly, I don't care for your explaining this away or your car analogies. I wouldn't expect you to do anything different given your relationship with Panasonic.

BAsically, I'm not dropping another $2k to access the purported faster speed of the card. This hardware requirement should be part of the literature for the card for the speed claim of "faster transfer and offload of P2 content."

We can certainly agree to disagree on this one but I am the one who has actually shelled out the full retail money for this card.
 
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I agree with Barry, Panasonic is legitimate with the speed claim if the card is capable of attaining the speed advertised. No matter that it has a stringent hardware requirement to reach its maximum. The positive aspect is that in the future, less expensive hardware will probably catch up to the card. It's just a bit over the top to hold Panasonic's feet to the fire because some of our peripheral hardware can't keep up with the theoretical potential of the device. I do wish they'd be specific in their marketing, but it isn't fraud. I'd not mind having a theoretically faster card that can't keep up with my current hardware on the basis that next year it might.
 
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