64GB P2 Cards

hatchmo

Active member
At a San Francisco HD event this week, Panasonic representatives indicated that 32GB cards would likely be skipped because development of 64GB ones was moving at such a fast pace. In the new cards, Panasonic has managed to strip the encapsulated memory cards of their capsules. They are just bare memory chips now. The rep said, "Expect 16GB cards in June, and 64GB cards for Christmas."
 
At the rate of flash memory development it wouldn't surprise me at all. Panasonic has a huge stake in the success of P2 and skipping to 64 GB from 16 would be a huge boost for them. We're going to see a flood of solid state hard drives in 2008 and Pansonic can't afford to be positioned with low capacity high-priced cards. However, I'd expect them in the first half of 2008.
 
Panasonic should have released 16GB cards 6 months ago. They were originally supposed to be available at the end of last summer (that's what the word was last year at NAB). No reason for 16GB cards to not be available now. Panasonic is positioned in the market with overpriced, low-capacity cards right now. By the end of this year, if the best they have to offer is 16GB, then well, that's just sad and wrong.

I can believe that 64GB cards will be available at the end of 2007 or first part of 2008. But I don't believe that they will skip 32GB capacities. Or more directly, I believe there is no reason we don't see 16GB, 32GB and 64GB cards within the next 12 months or so. But I'm not real confident that it will happen.

If Panasonic can deliver 32GB or larger cards by the end of this year, I might just be compelled to keep my HVX200 even when I get my RED One. ...Maybe. I get along fine now with my 2 8GB and 2 4GB cards, but if I could stick 2 64GB cards in the HVX, that would really be nice.
 
From my time in the tech field with the development of new technologies at large global corporations I have learned that consumers rarely have a strong grasp of the various pressues that prevent or force a company from executing on what seems the "obvious" business strategy and tactics.

Product testing is a huge hit for new technologies even if the technology "spec" is rock solid. No large business can risk releasing a product that potentially would have to be recalled as it not only leads to loss of product, but huge support costs, loss of channel partners and delayed development of future products. The sony battery recall is example of the kind of problem that makes it worthwhile to wait / test the product longer.

The manufacturing process is a wholly different issue and changes to the process can force testing to be restarted. And every team at every corporation has a finite # of bodies in seats so decisions start being made based on what is likely to succeed, not what is ideal.

My view on panasonic is that they know P2 is critical, they are planning on 16 GB play this year and then I am guessing that they will try to be swift to market with ONE other card that they can maximize profit margin on. 16 G and 64 G make a lot of sense from an engineering perspective. And it would not surprise me if there are some fast followers out there who are planning on providing a 16 GB or 32 GB card in order to steal market share. Panasonic's best play to avoid this is to drive to 64 G as soon as possible, even if to just minimize the market opportunity for a competitor.

Alternatively, they could have f'd up the 16G design or manufacturing and will not be able to reach 32 or 64 any time and are just spreading this "fast develpment of 64 G" to drive fear, uncertainty and doubt in the numerous other companies out there that could reverse engineer P2 cards and undercut the significant profit margin.

So my view is that Barry has read the future right and Panasonic is driving to a major jump in capacity that will priced very competitively because of the major advancements in the memory space that will appear in the next 18 months.

2 64 GB cards would provide exactly what I need for concert footage but if they are $1000 each, I would still try to figure out how to record to laptop just from a price relative to value tradeoff.
 
Id pay $1500 to $1750 in a heartbeat for 64Gs. Thats a great price. Never buy a tape or be teathered to a laptop or rec drive again, and with intra-AVCHD integration, think of how many minutes that would afford you.
 
Sunstream said:
Id pay $1500 to $1750 in a heartbeat for 64Gs. Thats a great price. Never buy a tape or be teathered to a laptop or rec drive again, and with intra-AVCHD integration, think of how many minutes that would afford you.

Laptop with 160G 5400 RPM HD is at most $1000. 2-3X as much storage space, 2/3rds the price, and no transfer to laptop or tapes. Tethering is worth it for the savings and monitoring that is available. (software runs $300-$500 though...)

An okay price for the 64G is $800 in my opinion. Cost of a TB of external HD space. 8GB for $1100 is gouging, in my opinion, if you record HD.

Bottom line for me is I already have a laptop why not use it for recording.
 
laptops stink for real harsh location stuff.. Like where I was this past week... at a beach, then at a construction site, and then at Daytona. Bringing a laptop is just not possible for every kind of shoot. I can't wait for the large cards and I think we should push for the 64 gig cards asap.. That would completely void the whole short run time option for the cam... Even in 1080, that's over 2 hours of recording without switching.... AMAZING... and like 5 hours in 720.
 
This Just In. Panasonic Blasts Moore's Law......Probably not. Promising 64 GB is pretty unlikely from a company that promised 16GB 6 months ago.
 
How on earth do you back-up a 64GB card in the field? Cant do it with a P2 Store and you are talking what, almost an hour to dump it? I would rather have two 32GB cards, that will get you thru most anything and still let you back up with P2 Genie and some battery powered externals.

I assume part of the reason in the delay is not physical manufacturing but in technical implementation. The bigger the cards, the more partitioning, the less stability, etc. If you are going to have 32GB+ cards they better be ROCK SOLID. It is one thing to lose some data from a 4 min card, it is another to lose and entire days work.



ash =o)
 
I'd definitely take 2 64GB cards for my HVX if the price was right...

And that's better than trying to record directly to a notebook any day. Especially if your workflow has you shooting in 24p most of the time. The largest notebook HDD is 200GB right now. If you're shooting 24pn then that's 40Mbps. 128GB on camera would give you over 430 minutes of capacity! Since you can't record 24pn over firewire - only 24 over 60p @ 100Mbps, you would only get about 270 minutes of record time to a battery powered external 200GB. So you would need a notebook that could hold two hard drives or a full 3.5" desktop hard drive (think much larger notebook and bigger heavier batteries) to make it work out for you.

Now if you're almost always shooting 720p60, then that's a different story and the 200GB hard drive would give you 35% more record time. So that may be worth it if you're in a situation where you can lug the notebook around and make it work.

Of course, if you're going to record via streaming to firewire, the FireStore makes more sense. If Panasonic can get 64GB cards on the market by the end of this year for $1600 or less, then that would render upcoming products like the CinePorter nearly obsolete. I would rather spend the extra money and have 4 or 5 P2 cards @ 64GB at my disposal in the field and not have to worry about backup or dumping the cards until I'm done shooting for the day.
 
Hope it's true. I'm booking sporting events now in SD at 2-3 hours each and hate SD tape capture. To stay ahead of my competition I would love to go HD 720p 60fps or 1080i now and when HD-DVD burners and Blue ray burner are cheaper, sell them SD DVD's for $20 each and HD/Blueray DVD's for $30 each. It's getting close and people want it, and I don't want to go to HDV for sports. (college and High School). I hope the info will pan out. I think 64g cards at $1,000 is a bargan compared to 8 gigs today plus a P2 store for another $1,500
 
Panasonic will let each upgrade run for as long as they can. Once they release the 16GB, people will run out and get them cuz they're better than the 8GB. When the 32GB arrives, everyone will run out and get them because they're better than the 16GB. And so on and so on.

Once the 64GB cards hit, I predict there will be a huge slow down in card purchsing. One or two of those cards will replace the practicalty of tape fairly easily. People won't have to buy stacks of cards like they do now.

I think the 64GB cards are still kinda far down the road. But competition will dictate how quickly Panasonic decides to push the new product out there.
 
Actually it's more like 2 hours and 49 minutes..

Real world capacity of a 64GB card is going to be roughly 63,569MB which is 508,552Mbits. + that by 50Mbps for DVCPRO50 and you get 10,171 seconds or 169.5 minutes or 2.82 hours.

That also equates to 3.5 hours of 720pn24 or 1.4 hours of DVCPROHD100 (720p60/1080i).
 
I buy it but with the standard delay... meaning 6 months after x-mas
but I can't get myself to really buy it, just to rationalize that it is possible
and that as pointed out they really need to do something like this to get
themselves (P2 only) out of the semi-bad spot where they got into with
hollywood pros where they love it but they hate the price and the size
 
Back
Top