Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

so you record 12 min on your card, stop everything and unload it to your laptop. Then you record 12 more minutes and stop again to unload to your laptop. (I hope you have a lot of room on your harddrive). Let's hope your computer doesn't crash!!
This sounds like a fun toy for some people but unless the price is under $5,000 and these P2 cards are cheap and can store at least 30 mins on them it won't be a big sell.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

First of all, you'd only stop everything if you only had one slot. The camera will likely have more than one (the SPX800 has five). That means you could potentially record *perpetually*, as opposed to the current situation where you record for 60 minutes, stop, change tape.

As for record time and cost, that remains to be seen, we don't know anything about capacity and cost yet.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

Don't get me wrong I like the idea of no tapes but if the tapes are high, the camera is 8,000 or 9,000 grand it will be out of my budget. Not to mention computer upgrades, etc.

I wonder if you will be able to leave the card in the Hd-P2 to transfer to a computer or you will have to take the card out and put in a card reader?
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

I was just thinking you can shoot DV on those cards right? So if the cards are not to high and the camera is in my budget I could still just shoot DV and HD later after I can improve my computer. (My iMac is getting kind of old).

I guess we will all just have to see what Panasonic is going to do!!
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

I have a concern about P2 workflow for events. Okay, I know, P2 is mostly for filmmakers in mind. However, there comes a time when you need to record for prolonged periods of time, and/or your camera needs to be locked down; so swapping P2 cards will be a disaster if the cam moves ever so slightly for that shoot.

This is why I believe an external hard drive will surely come in handy.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

..really the p2 cards are aimed at everyone. especially ENG wher their ruggedness and cool prerecording and other features are very cool. realistically within an few years the capacity will be there for a couple cards to record quite long enough even for event videographers. but i suspect well be able to go directly to hard disk soon enough anyway if its not already possible with their new feild P2 reader. i do like that panasonic is thinking ahead with expansion and the way of the future.. the way of the future.. the way of the future.. the way of the future.. the way of the future.. aaaaaaghhhhhhhhh the way of the future.. the way of te future .. in mind. solid state is where its at.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

[quote author=Zim link=board=HDV;num=1109162171;start=15#22 date=02/25/05 at 08:31:06]I wonder if you will be able to leave the card in the Hd-P2 to transfer to a computer or you will have to take the card out and put in a card reader?[/quote]
That is how it works with the SPX800 -- you can either pull the cards and insert them into a laptop or P2 Store or some other reader, or... you can plug the camera into the computer, and read all the cards through the camera (the camera appears to your computer as if it's an external hard disk).

Whether the HDX will be able to do that remains to be seen, but the SPX can.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

[quote author=Zim link=board=HDV;num=1109162171;start=15#23 date=02/25/05 at 08:38:48]I was just thinking you can shoot DV on those cards right? So if the cards are not to high and the camera is in my budget I could still just shoot DV and HD later after I can improve my computer. (My iMac is getting kind of old).

I guess we will all just have to see what Panasonic is going to do!![/quote]
I don't know what's been confirmed or not, but it would certainly seem reasonable to expect that you could record DV to the cards... I mean, we know it'll record DV, Jan's said so. So that means it'll either have a DV tape drive, or it'll be able to record DV to the cards -- it just stands to reason.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

[quote author=Fred_Segard link=board=HDV;num=1109162171;start=15#24 date=02/25/05 at 09:30:04]I have a concern about P2 workflow for events.  Okay, I know, P2 is mostly for filmmakers in mind.  However, there comes a time when you need to record for prolonged periods of time, and/or your camera needs to be locked down; so swapping P2 cards will be a disaster if the cam moves ever so slightly for that shoot.

This is why I believe an external hard drive will surely come in handy.[/quote]
Oooh... excellent point! Yeah, the lockdown nature is something to consider. Well, that's a good reason to vote for having a FireStore (or other type of hard disk recording, whether through firewire or an integrated hard disk or something like that!)
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

[quote author=Fred_Segard link=board=HDV;num=1109162171;start=15#24 date=02/25/05 at 09:30:04]I have a concern about P2 workflow for events. Okay, I know, P2 is mostly for filmmakers in mind. However, there comes a time when you need to record for prolonged periods of time, and/or your camera needs to be locked down; so swapping P2 cards will be a disaster if the cam moves ever so slightly for that shoot.[/quote]

I think you're right about this. I've read a lot of people complaining about event videography with P2, and even if Panasonic comes out with their 8 GB cards alongside the HDX100, the camera will not be perfectly suited to that shooting style. If you truly need long amounts of video on lockdown for longer than about an hour (2 slots of 8GB each = 50 minutes of 720p24), the HDX100 may not yet be the camera for you.

But what's genius about P2 is that it hitches itself to the right star. Whereas digital tape has changed very little in the last decade, flash memory has increased capacity many times while prices have plummeted. According to Panasonic's roadmap, we'll have something like this (please excuse the formatting):

YearMax. Card SizeMax Record Time (2 slots/24p)Max Record Time (2 slots/60p)
200616GB1hr. 40min.43 min.
200732GB3hr. 20min.1hr. 25 min.
200864GB6hr. 40min.2hr. 51 min.
2009128GB13hr. 20min. 5hr. 41 min.

Within two years, almost any event you would want to cover will be possible with two P2 cards. Within three years, you can cover almost any event in 60p. So while we might need a hard drive recorder solution in the very near term, I don't think we'll need one in the long term.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

I shoot with a p2 a work it, takes 5 cards, 4 gigs a peace price $1000.00 a card.
it gives me about 80 mins recording at dvcpro 25, i get 40 min recording at dvcpro50
it is a very nice cam it records at 60i/30i/24p with a 2/3 chip editing is so simple you stick the cards in to any lap top and avid or what ever program you are using to edit, finds it. no capture, because it is a hard drive.
I got some pic's i will post soon
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

I promise when I have more time, maybe Friday night, this has been a very busy week for me, I will come back and respond to this workflow question.  But I have to say, many of you are showing me that you do get it, and you don't have to give away the ease of archive, but I'll come back to it tomorrow.  Sorry I have been so busy.

Best,

Jan
Click to expand...

Jan, if you're still reading this thread, we'd really like to hear what you have to say about the HDX work flow.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

[quote author=Sumfun link=board=HDV;num=1109162171;start=30#31 date=03/01/05 at 07:23:35]

Jan, if you're still reading this thread, we'd really like to hear what you have to say about the HDX work flow.[/quote]

I am still reading but I thought you guys were doing quite nicely. But since you ask I am going back to evinsky's first post.

My basic understanding is that the P2 is a PCMCIA card. I don't know the exact difference but it's fair to assume it's faster/larger than a standard PCMCIA. It seems likely there are SD card guts inside.
Click to expand...

No, it is not larger than a PCMCIA card, it is the same size. There are 4 SD cards in an array. It is the nature of the array that gets us the transfer speed on the PCMCIA card, 640Mbs.


I feel pretty confident in the assumption that the HDX will have only one P2 card slot. Maybe two but it seems unlikely given it's (Assumed) DVX form factor.
Click to expand...

No comment.

So that means in addition to the camera I'd need:
2x P2 cards
Click to expand...

My feeling is that whether the camera had one or two slots, you would want two. But in justifying the price think about the fact that you would never need to buy tape for Acquisition again. That if you decided to use tape as your archive you would end up using less tape, just because as you build the archive tapes, you don't save the garbage, the messed up lines , the microphone boom in the shot, the badly framed, the out of focus, you know what I mean.

1x Battery powered 60gb Hard drive w/P2 reader and Firewire(800?)
Click to expand...

The device we have on the table the P2 store does file tranfer over USB. It is a pretty niftly device that you simply insert the P2 card and it sucks the data off the card at about 4X. But you could also do this with your laptop computer.

2x Firewire P2 readers for desktop and Laptop
Click to expand...

Now I am wondering why you are referring to the firewire. If you have an older MAC that only has the slow USB 1.1 I can understand. And why 2X, do they not have PCMCIA slots?

1x HD card for my G5 (DV deck will no loger work for HD playback)
Click to expand...

If you choose to work in anything but 25Mbs, then yes you will need to upgrade, but you could do this over time. But the camera and work at the level you currently are and the progress as more jobs come it.

Run & Gun
(Documentary/reality TV and advertising research)
Camera> Full P2> Offload to portable HD while shooting on card 2.
Portable HD offloads to main bucket (1TB raid) for editing. OR...
If time sensitive edited directly from drive.
Click to expand...

When you put the drive into the computer it mounts as a drive. This is the beauty of it, you can edit from the drive, so things can be done quicly, but if the program is long form, then it is a quickl and easy to slide the data to your hard drive and go onto the next drive.

Production
(Episodic TV, Commercials, Narritive films)
Camera> Full P2> Offload directly to Laptop/Bucket via firewire reader
while shooting on card 2.
Click to expand...

This is absolutely viable.

BTW a usefull accessory would be a P2 reader/deck capable of playing back DVCPRO/50/HD through firewire. I think Pany makes a very expensive Pro model but one more like the DV2500 would be ideal.
Click to expand...

Yes the AJ-HD1200 is pretty expensive, but my thought was many of the projects that you are working on will have some other deliverable requirements than tape. If film, then a hard drive to take to the film out facility. If DVD, there's that, as the HD capable dissk come to play, there is that. So let's say that 1/3 of what you do will need to roll back to tape. You rent the tape machine for the jobs that need it, and if you are going back to tape for your archive, at the same time roll off the archive footage, so that you can free up the hard drives.

Of course, taking the archive back to tape is not the best asyou lose a lot of the benefit. If you ever used the footage again you would have to digitize it back in, which is time, and you would lose the meta data, which today you may not have interest in but in three years you may.

At any rate, because you are now working in HD, the likely hood is that you will find the right job to come through that will help you pay for the HD machine. Its like the number of guys that rented the SDX900 before they bought it. Some got to the 4th rental and bam! the next job had just the right amount of cash in it to make the camera theirs, and now the camera is a line item in the production, and that money goes into their pocket, not the rental facility.

Hope that adds something,

Jan
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

Thanks for the play by play Jan...
Here in my follow up.
I just finished shooting a TV show for CMT, a few hours ago in fact.
Shot on the Varicam. In two days we shot 56 32min Tapes for a single one hour TV show. (3 camera shoot)
This show will air in SD but the producers wanted to protect for HD later plus give a better look than the DVX which is what we've been shoothing on before, plus some SDX. So how could I handle the sheer amout of data here with only two cards per camera? I suppose I could get a third but these things are expensive. If there is a portable drive capable of downloading in the field great, but then what? How do I deal with the footage in such quantity? Lay off Tape? Tomorrow were moving on to Kansas City to continue on another show. So the tapes are going back to LA to be imported. This would be roughly 90 8GB P2 cards or 720 GB total. I suppose these could be dumped to a 1TB Drive like the Lacie and carried back, but to maintain a fast paced shooting schedule would require a dedicated file dumper person and at least two powerbooks.

Am I making sense?

Lastly part of the draw of the HDX and the DVX is economy. The show I started working on would not pay enough for me to rent or own an SDX.
But it paid for my DVX easily. This current show would definately not be able to make me back an investment in a 25K deck. I do plan on upgrading to the HDX but I'm sure my 100A will still get over 250 hours a year on it's heads.
Again, thanks Jan...
E.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

[quote author=evinsky link=board=HDV;num=1109162171;start=30#34 date=03/03/05 at 01:10:11]In two days we shot 56 32min Tapes for a single one hour TV show. (So how could I handle the sheer amout of data here with only two cards per camera? I suppose I could get a third but these things are expensive. If there is a portable drive capable of downloading in the field great, but then what? How do I deal with the footage in such quantity? [/quote]

Okay, so your tape cost is 52 X $60 = $3120.00 and that equals approximately 30 hours of footage. It will take a similar amount of time to digitize this into your system. So far there is time and money involved and you can gain more control over time and money by going with P2.


How about this? Instead of delivering $3000+ worth of tape, why not deliver to the producer the footage on Hard Drives. It is already digitized. Just edit. Over on PC Mall I see a 250GB drive for $250. This X8 gets you more than enough room in DVCPORHD 100Mbs for 30 hours of storage and has a net cost of $2000. Or that Lacie TeraByte Drive is under $1000, this may be even more viable. Either of these costs less than the tape, and saves time in the edit room. I know of one of our Digital Filmmaker Grant Grand Prize Award winners spent a week and a half of the Computer grant time just digitizing footage. In this solution, the digitizing is done. Import into the time line, you know which clips; they are shot marked. So we have saved money over tape acquisition, and time.

Before you get excited, this is temporary storage. But the beauty of it is that it costs you and the producer less than DVCPROHD tape. I mean you did bill him for the tape right? or at least somebody had to pay for the tape.

Lay off Tape?
Click to expand...

Tape is boring. :) You could go back to an archive on tape, and that is a viable choice, but there is a better way to archive; it is better on a nonlinear storage like the Hologragphic Blue Laser Disk at 200GB or DLT or SAIT. From a digital archive as data, you get to keep the immediacy of the footage, i.e., you never have to digitize this fooage, it is just available for import into the timeline. You don't give up the meta data, and you have developed what you have shot into a Smart Archive.

You don't have to save everything, although you could, you could just save that which is viable, not the out of focus, mic boom in the shot, or the blooper shots. And even this saves money if you go back to tape for the archive. You need fewer tapes. Point is in tape acuisition, there is time at the front end loading tapes. This is done while you are under pressure to get the job done. The Smart Archive can be done after you have sent the invoice.

I suppose these could be dumped to a 1TB Drive like the Lacie and carried back, but to maintain a fast paced shooting schedule would require a dedicated file dumper person and at least two powerbooks.
Click to expand...

The P2 cards can transfer very fast and as I see it you could do it with just one laptop and the drive. In general I think you could expect an 8G card to transfer in under 4 minutes.

If you did the Lacie Drive, then you are saving $2000 on the tape and that could be your P2 Loader position. You probably would not need to spend that much on a daily rate but certainly for a week or so, that wouldn't be bad. And you still have all the other benefits.

Am I making sense?
Click to expand...

Sure, but you make it sound like the tape is free, it is not. The time you spend digitizing it into the system is not free either. You can Shot Mark the good takes before you transfer so the editor will know which one is your best take. You can do a voice memo to the editor as well(this is a P2 feature) and all of this shows up on the laptop in LA by just mounting your drives.

If they want to archive, the producer can either roll off the good takes to tape or go to deep archive of some nature. And if the LA producer does enough HD he owns an HD machine. So he can do his achive however he wants to.

Lastly part of the draw of the HDX and the DVX is economy. The show I started working on would not pay enough for me to rent or own an SDX.
Click to expand...

And the P2HD camera will be cost effective.

However, I thought you were using a Varicam? Did you switch shows on me? I made all of these calculations on the expendables for DVCPROHD production, not the cost of the camera. I was calculating the amount of storage needed by the number gigs used for HD recording. I thought you were using DVCPROHD tape, if not, the rework against DV tape is similar and comes out as more of a dollar to dollar match but with the added ease of no digitizing.

But it paid for my DVX easily. This current show would definately not be able to make me back an investment in a 25K deck.
Click to expand...

Maybe not this show, and since you didn't have to deliver a tape, why would you buy an AJ-HD1200A. I wouldn't. In fact, I would rent one if I had to deliver tape. I would only need it for the afternoon of the final play out.

And like many of the SDX900 and Varicam owners, they rented an SDX900 or a Varicam about 4 times before they ended up with the job that would help them buy it. Its not that you have to buy the 1200 to produce in HD. Absolutely not. You only need that if you are required to deliver a tape.

I do plan on upgrading to the HDX but I'm sure my 100A will still get over 250 hours a year on it's heads.
Click to expand...

I am sure it will. SD is not dead, it is still vital and kicking, and if you have to deliver an economical DV tape the DVX, comes to the task in strides.

Hope this helps,

Jan
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

Really don't want to be a nag, and I apologize in advance for it, but here goes:

Seems to me that P2 in this particular case, simply acts as a middle man; albeit much faster and reliable then tape, but it can quickly become an issue.

Indeed for shots that are planned and organized, P2 will be the ultimate solution.  But let's say, for example, you are shooting an event, or a very busy show with multiple cameras; swapping out P2 cards onto the hard drive loader and back to the cameras, may cause some undue stress to the camera-person.  Meaning that you must always keep in mind that the P2 card only lasts for a few minutes in HD.  Sure you can have an assistant go back and forth to each camera, and swap out the cards and dump them on the loader.  But that's another salary you have to account for; not to mention the potential for errors.  ("Did I transfer that P2, or Not?"  "Damn, where's that P2 that had the most important scene?"  "Oups, my boss is going to fire me for having lost a single $2000 P2 card!")  You see where I'm going with this?  A Firestore type device directly connected to the HDX will indeed be more efficient for such a task.

The P2 HD loader is nice, but redundant and somewhat useless in such situations.  There are simply too many transactions, too many steps… and too many things can go wrong.

So that’s my fear of P2!  That, and lock-down mode!  Any thoughts?
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

Hi Jan,

Thanks for your posts.  I think you made some really good points about the cost and time savings of using P2 over tape.  But I was wondering if Panasonic would be willing to go one step further and output the HD video over firewire so that it can be captured to a DTE device or to a laptop.  This feature may not be viable for some run and gun applications, but I think the majority of the shooters here will find it very useful.  It will save us some money for P2 cards, but maybe more importantly save time and reduce the distractions of uploading the P2 cards to a hard drive.

Firewire can support up to 400Mbps, which is certainly more than DVCPROHD's 100Mbps.  And Maxtor's external drives (for example) can support a sustained transfer rate of 41MB/sec, or 328Mbps.  So I think that much of the hardware is already in place to be able to support HD over firewire.
 
Re: Ok, lets talk P2 and workflow...

[quote author=Fred_Segard link=board=HDV;num=1109162171;start=30#36 date=03/03/05 at 12:02:50]
But let's say, for example, you are shooting an event, or a very busy show with multiple cameras;
So that’s my fear of P2! That, and lock-down mode! Any thoughts?
[/quote]


Here would likely require a different solution. As an example, if I was going to do this with the SPX800, I would hang a firewire drive off of it and be a happy camper. Events by their continuous nature are better served with this sort of solution, even if you have a tape drive in the camera because, wouldn't you know it, the ceremony ceremony just ran 72 minutes or the guys lecture just ran 90, or ... well you get the picture.


Hope that helps,

Jan
 
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