New info on the HDX!

But I'm pretty sure they'll be much happier to receive the hard disk instead of tapes![/QUOTE]
One thing to remember is that once it is on the P2 card it becomes data. Data can be stored on anything-Hard drive, DVD, CDR, Digital tape.
 
The whole hard drive as a deliverable is a much better solution, In fact I started doing it about a year ago with SD material. There is a small Apple-PC compatibility NTFS problem that usually happens until you understand it but after that it works pretty good. With our editors we actually have SATA drive caddies that slide in to the systems and are just a little larger than 3.5" drivces and just as fast.. no cables or anything to lug around. For random post production clients/associates we use micro sized laptop External drives that are powered by the USB port... sure they are slow but you can get them upto 100gb and as a data only deliverable they work well.

As barry said when HD tape is so expensive. Even for shooting.. we shot a HD feature in November on the sony 900s that we ended up buying 35 tapes for.. this cost us just under $3200.. about the price of a DVX. Sure its great to have backups of these tapes on the shelf.. but they take a crapload of space, and will most likely never be touched again, I would much rather have 2 or 3 small external drives sitting there. I havn't used DVD-R's much as a backup tool.. just because I dont trust them yet, but I am sure my opiion on that will change in the future.

Im excited to see a crop of new P2 decks come out, perhaps with dedicated hd storage themselves. Damn tapes. Good riddance.
 
As this stuff gets more mature you will see a whole market appear with accessories. Look at all of the available accessories for the DVX100. I sold the first P2 camera and deck to a TV station in Canada, they took delivery last fall and are still working on streamlining the workflow. Since then Avid, Apple,Pinnacle, Thomson and others have jumped on board the P2 wagon. One of the positive things to come out of this is the effect it will have on future technology. We won't have to worry so much about tape formats, it will come down to compression codecs, frame rates, image quality, etc etc.
 
yes.. its pretty amazing how P2 has taken off.. and Panasonic has done a pretty good job getting it out there. . Last year at NAB I was given this little P2 keychain and stood in the booth looking up sratching my head at the insane P2 Marketing extravaganza and wondering why they where making such a big deal about it.. now I know :)

nab2004
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I'm not an event videographer, so my investment will be purely for movies. Of course everyone wants liquid gold for the price of PBR, but that'a a consumer for ya.

I am glad Panasonic is taking this plunge, it was totally unexpected and innevitable. I have no doubts the camera will rock.
 
yes. we are gonna be one step closer to perfection. Im sure everyone agrees in 10 years tape will be pretty much be gone, and 35mm film will follow some time after that.
 
Jarred Land said:
yes. we are gonna be one step closer to perfection.
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Wait a minute.... "perfection" is a strong word. In a perfect world, there would be a "Press here for kick ass movie" button.
 
ha ha.. yes perfection was a bad word.. I just mean some day we will all agree on a resolution/format/range that we will agree is good enough.. Kinda like we hit with analog phone lines and 48k sound. wait.. ignore the sound part.
 
What is happening is that we are getting to affordable HD, that is affordable Movie Theather standard (not as good as 35, but certainly acceptable).

Then, the market will have to evolve, because that would turn the high end manufacturers bankrupt, so basically, movie standard will evolve to 2K and 4K, and TV to HD, so basically our DVCPro100 Cameras would turn again into mere DVX equivalents.

From this, we have two options: One is buying one of those cameras right away, be the first kid to try them on a feature and have a chance of a BIG break, while HD is still hot.

OR

The people won't buy 4K, and people will watch DVCPro100 and will not think (Jeez, why can't it look like Spiderman). In fact, they do that today: How many people left the movies in Collateral because it didn't look like spiderman?
 
Since television is becoming more like film what's the incentive for people to go to the theatre? More and more I'm catching stuff on DVD where I don't have to deal with obnoxious teenagers, babies crying, Jewish grandmothers, and five dollar popcorn.

Not to mention that depending on the quality of your neighborhood theatre you may be watching a dirty print of a film with poor sound quality.Once we get HD-DVD's I wonder how many people will quit going to movie theatres because of the huge expense and lack of quality. A lot of films are making more money in DVD than in the theatrical run.

So I guess I'll shoot my film on the HDX, sell a bunch of DVDs to Jewish grandmas, stream my premiere on DVXuser, wash, rinse, repeat.
 
....Hey Isaac...I can definately relate to the obnoxious teens, and crying babies....but what's with the Jewish Grandmothers? Can you explain that one. I'm not too familar with that *term*. I quit going to the theater a LONG time ago just for those facts you mentioned. I understand the concessions being pricey, theaters don't make alot of money on the films themselves due to reel rental fees and such....as least that's always been my understanding!! I maybe goto 1 or 2 movies per year. I *WILL* go see "Sin City", and that will be it for a long time. When Blu-ray / HD-DVD is out.....I'll probably NEVER go again!! ~reservoir~
 
Man, you gotta get out, see people, mingle, c'mon, party! Stop going to the movies because of jewish grandmas? that's the exact reason why I leave my place so often... :)
 
Now I'm picturing Ron Jeremy hitting on Jewish grandmas at the theatre..

the horror... (insert Brando apocalypse now smiley face)
 
Barry_Green said:
And, also keep in mind that your ACTUAL storage time might be a lot higher than 20 minutes of tape, given that you can easily manage the clips while you're shooting, and delete any garbage clips instantly. On tape I usually find that an hour-long tape yields somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes of usable footage (for a dramatic/narrative/commercial type production). The rest of it is takes I'll never use, etc. With the P2 card you can instantly delete that stuff and only keep the good stuff. So your actual, in-the-field usage may, under certain circumstances, be a lot more generous than it sounds currently.
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Sure I agree with the ratio of "useabe" to "unusable" tape/footage you're talking about BUT...

1) Making decisions about what material to dump or not to dump in the midst of a busy shoot. It would be another thing to take focus off the main goal: to get good coverage. I wouldn't like being forced to do it. And I would be forced if I was stuck for more storage.
2) Editors have often used my out take (sometimes even my "garbage take") as their prefered takes. Why? The content of my out take (talent delivery, a quirky camera movement that worked better for the editors cut, a technical problem I didn't see in my preferred take, etc.) was more important for the picture than my camera work - the main thing that I am able to assess in the field.

Except for obvious disasters (hopefully a relatively small proportion of the shoot) the decisions of what takes to use or not are best left to the editor not the cameraman or the director (while he is in the field).

I'm still looking forward to what the camera has to offer but hope that it will have cheap storage options for HD.
 
Barry_Green said:
If you don't have any business need for the camera, it'd be silly to spend $6000 to $10,000 on it now, regardless of what cards cost. But if you do have a business need for it, the cost of the card stopping you from buying (and the idea of turning down business because you're waiting for a card price to drop) doesn't add up.

I wouldn't advise anyone to make an investment like this and then go fishing for work, I think that's a recipe for bankruptcy. But if you've already got work, and can see how this camera could bring you more, I don't really see any downside.
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I can see this would be the case for someone in your shoes and able to pay the card in a day or two of shooting, but it's not necessarily for many others who may be eyeing this camera.

For example: I expect to be doing little paying work with the camera when I buy it. However, I do want to collect High Def material for a film idea I'm about to flog and hopefully get financing for. I won't have bucks coming back from my investment for several months maybe even a year or two. So, since I don't have an immediate business payback for it, I *will* need cheap, ample and convenient storage while I'm in the field in a shooting session.

I am counting on my dream making economic sense - even though the payback will be way down the road. I just hope the storage features on this camera will allow me to do it.
 
Barry Green Quote(don't know how to do the fancy blue box thing yet) "On tape I usually find that an hour-long tape yields somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes of usable footage (for a dramatic/narrative/commercial type production). The rest of it is takes I'll never use, etc. With the P2 card you can instantly delete that stuff and only keep the good stuff. So your actual, in-the-field usage may, under certain circumstances, be a lot more generous than it sounds currently."

ARRIGUY just said this, and I have to agree. As a filmmaker, and editor, there is no way that I want any single piece of footage that is shot deleted or thrown out until the film or tv show or whatever it is is completed. The edit suite is where the stitching happens, and sometimes the strangest stuff is what works.....a look, a couple of frames of interesting camera movement, cross-cutting of takes, anyway you get the point. What happens if you make a mistake and delete all of it? The wrong take? So I have to respectfully disagree with you Barry, that deleting unwanted takes is a proper course of action. I think it's a serious error to do this in the filmmaking process, regardless of what you are shooting.

The well-founded concern with the whole P2 thing is the lack of storage space. If you are out shooting a documentary, which I will be shortly, you can't set time aside during shooting to download footage to a computer. First, to assume that the time will be at hand is to assume that you have control of the situation. This is not the case in true documentary filmmaking. You are only documenting the situation, and examining it later. Therefore, if I have to make the time to download footage, I may miss something important. Also, to lug along a laptop, or portable hard drives, requires either more people or bigger shoulders. Either way it slows you down. In addition to this, laptops and portable hard drives are not designed to be carried around on a run-and-gun documentary style shoot, which may involve a variety of places, temperatures, and potential lack of power sources. In order to download these P2 drives, you have to have that much more gear together and prepared in advance, at least in my case.
My other concern, although that has been somewhat addressed, is the backup. The great thing about shooting to tape and then diging the footage into the computer is that you still have a backup on tape when the computer or drives crash, as they often do. Fair enough, you can backup to DVD, although again this takes time, requires proper formating etc. Bit more of a pain in the arse....also, my experience has been that burning to DVD is a bit of a finicky science, especially when regarding different OS's, editing systems etc. But it could be okay.

I for one do not feel that the P2 card situation as it stands alleviates my concerns. I am excited to see what the new Panasonic will be capable of, and am looking forward to the future evolution of the ability of smaller cameras and hard disk recording, but I don't see how a P2 card capable of holding 20 minutes of footage is going to do any good for anyone shooting doc style stuff. It's time-consuming to download, requires extra gear, and isn't exactly cheap(at least the projected prices aren't). I am optimistic that much greater capacity cards will be available at reasonable prices sooner than later.....say a 3 hour card for $500. Not unreasonable, and most probably already built in the lab, but then there's the corporate factor........slowing the release of technology to maximize profit at every turn at our unwitting behest.

Having said all this....i await the arrival of this camera!!!!!
 
I second Evolve's worries about shooting docs with this cam. My fears exactly but I would love to have them allayed.
 
I love this place! THIS is fun!

I must say that thinking in the possibility of an external drive attached to the camera and if it´s able to record dvcproHD will be a in-between time solution (i´m a lexical bad surfer...) The moment P2 can storage one hour or two (lets dream) i will jump for sure on them. The portability, no cables to hard disk, the little cute size; everything is an advantage. P2 will be the mastercard of news gathering (accepted everywhere... (at least it´s what it says here in Sp.)) and edditing.

We are just critic animals, and it´s true that by now, the only problem to be ressolve is the storage time. Once it´s done P2 will be a near to perfect technology. And in conjuction with the HDX it´s going to be awesome.

I just like to party!
 
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