Hard Drive vs. P2

D

dylantoombs

Member
Hi,

I'm upgrading from the DVX100 B to the HVX200 A. I'm looking at a used one on ebay, it does not come with p2 cards but the owner says he shoots onto the firestorm drive.

Can someone explain the difference to me, do you loose quality shooting onto a HD vs the P2?

Also would you 150hrs logged as alot for a used camera?

Thanks
 
use the search. There are tons of threads dealing with this. solid state vs hard drive is just one difference. No quality loss. I'd do a lot of research before you decide to upgrade. You need to learn a lot about p2. The expenses can catch a lot of people off guard.



150 hours is not a lot for a camera. Always question ebay auctions for cameras.
 
What type of expenses?

Say I just shoot to the firestorm HD and upload to Final Cut. Wont I be saving money by not buying DV Tapes?
 
1.) the firestore is on sale at b&h for $1000. A 60 minute panasonic mini dv tape sells for $2.59. You would need to shoot a lot of dv tapes to save money on that. 2. you can't shoot HD on tape so the only way to shoot HD would be the firestore or P2. A 16GB p2 card can hold 16 minutes of 1080 60i video. If you want to shoot long format events you have to either dump the cards in the field, buy p2 cards...which although the E series is cheaper, are still expensive...or use a firestore. A firestore will give you lots of record time but it's another thing you have to carry around. It has a battery. And your footage depends on a firewire cable to get from the camera to the hard drive. The firestore is the cheaper option for longer format HD shoots but if you want reliability and security I'd go with P2. Another expense is hard drives to back up p2 data.
 
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Is it the Firestore or FS-100.

It will record DVCProHD from the cam so long as it streams out firewire.

Some people use them without incident and others have some serious issues. You are tethered to a device that is larger than a hard drive and uses a menuing system that isn't the most intuitive.

HDDs can fail, and there were issues with the Firestore. The company recently was in bankruptcy, but has emerged

But this is your call, and you might want to start by doing a search here to learn about the device rather than having people type responses.
 
i have owned two firestore devices both the fs4 (for my old xl2) and the fs100 (for my old hvx200) i never had a single problem with either one.

really, the two major issues with firestores are:
1. they are a spinning drive, so they will be sensitive to extreme temperatures and vibration
2. they are tethered to the camera by a firewire cable. so if youre shooting in a crowded or hectic situation, there is a decent chance that cable might get yanked out.

as i say, i never had any problem with mine. but i only used them in situations suited for them.
if you shoot action sports or live rock shows or any serious run and gun situations P2 would be the best option.

and like folks said above. the hvx200/200a doesnt shoot HD to tape so thats not a factor.
unless you have need to shoot more than say 90min of 1080 without stopping id suggest that 2, 32gig P2 cards would be worth the extra money over a single firestore
 
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