P2 8Gb vs Compact Flash 8GB

[vidled]

If anyone thinks they can make a card cheaper, the world will beat a path to your doorstep.

I would just like to remind those that want to ***** and moan about prices, that just 10 years ago, I paid $2500 for a 9gb, yes NINE gig hard drive, that was the size of a house brick.

Funny you guys should write that!!
We are working on a 128GB P2 card (we call P2advanced). Should hit the market in June 2007. Estimated cost is $120.00.

Here's a pic of the prototype (we still have a tiny issue with sizing & functionality that we need to figure out):

 

[Barry_Green]

Hey, looks like yours will work with ExpressCard slots too -- that should make people happy! You go, VIDLED!

 

[vidled]

Hahaha, NOTHING gets past you, Barry!
:beer:


(it's actually the Duel Adapter Beta thingy)

 

[ozduc]

Vidled, you a such the innovator! That's funny, however it will not work for me as the cable is too short!

 

[hvx_germanboy]

I do agree that Panasonic wants to make their profit too,
i totally understand, but it still makes a customer angry when you take a look throught the door and see that things could be different.

I doubt that the distributors ar makin 3/4 of the profit, thats ridicilous...i guess its mostly Panasonic setting the price, and they were just rught on the fence to take the price down to 550€ (ex. VAT) for a 8GB card here in europe.(well actually they did, i know from a dealer in Paris and one in Germany who received cards from Panasonic for this price...).

And if this is only for 1 or 2 weeks, and you base you decissions on this(yes, i sold quite all of my 4GB cards to get the 8GB cards i need for documentary work..) it just makes you feel angry.

This event shows that it would be possible to sell the cards for that price, i am not saying that i want them for 120€ or whatever, but i want a reasonable price, i dont think that 1260 € is such a price right now.

I do believe in P2 technology, i still believe in the HVX, but it makes my working life difficult when a company like Panasonic is jsut rolling back from such a decission, just to get more money out of the customers.
I did pay 7000 € for my HVX only(yes friends in the US, try to translate this to Dollar...!), they should at least come to the promised price of 550€...i heard a Panasonic rep. from Europe, Marc Irving, on the panasonic-broadcast.com page saying that prices would come down soon..i would like to see this in reality...!

 

[harddrive]

Thank you both HD and Jan, for this interesting debate...

My pleasure - and hopefully Jans too!

I think this debate is now starting to get away from the original topic - P2 vs CF.

Almost by definition, this is looking into the future, and speculating about equipment not yet available, maybe not yet even designed. It's trying to start a debate about where the future of recording in cameras should be heading. It shouldn't be hijacked to turn into a "they're ripping us off" complaint, but equally the genuine issues raised shouldn't be dismissed on spurious grounds by interested parties anxious to protect their own position. In many ways the HVX200 is irrelevant to the topic - as Jan says, it's here and now if you want P2, fairly uniquely. That's fine, but this debate is about what should come next and why, and people should see it as a chance to influence the shape of things to come.

I read quite a bit into Jan wanting to put off the CF/P2 debate as applied to Pana/Infinity, and still not giving firm reasons for going with P2 in this context. I also find it revealing that noone else has so far risen to the challenge. I'll let everyone draw their own conclusions. I'm pretty convinced that the long term future for solid state is rosy, but not solid state=P2.

 

[MarkS22]

I think a viable alternative would be building the expensive RAID architecture into the camera, as opposed to every single media card. What we have now is almost like building a tape mechanism around a miniDV tape and selling them for hundreds of dollars more. (Yes, a bit of an exaggeration, but still.)

I propose an HD camera like the HVX200 with 6 compact flash slots in a RAID 0 (striped) array. Panasonic (or the manufacturer) could even certify standard Compact Flash cards for their use. Six 8GB CFs will set you back about $700. And that would be for a 48GB RAID array. It could have a theoretical transfer rate of over 100MB per second or 800 megabits per second. That’s (again theoretically) 200Mbps faster than P2 cards. Think about that: 48GB. Faster than P2. $400 less than an 8GB P2.

Concerned about reliability? This setup allows for switching the camera to "mirror mode" and using three of the slots in a RAID 0 array and have the second three acting as a RAID 1 mirror (essentially a common RAID 0+1 setup). For that same $700, you have 24GB of storage at 54MB/sec or 432Mb/sec PLUS an identical backup 24GB.

Sure, it would add maybe $500 to the initial camera cost, but think about the freedom of media and reduced costs over the long run. Everyone talks about the P2 card having "lots of sophisticated electronics and RAID controllers." I completely agree... they're fantastic technology. However, it makes more sense to the consumer to move that to the camera so we pay for it once.

 

[TimurCivan]

Again, the horsebeating stick is in full effect, but its not about the SD flash media. it about finding and testing "perfect" SD flash media. Imagine panasonic had relesed it in that configuration. the firstme you lost and entire clip because a bad SD card failed, ( and i have a bad one so it does happen) i bet alot of folk s would be compalaining "why doesnt panasonic make a more reliable method of raided cards...." Its the format they chose. If youre not happy, Canon has a nice camera they would love to sell to you.

 

[SPZ]

Now I do have a certain doubt: Are P2 cards compatible with the "new" high capacity SD cards? Because, if I remember correctly, the "new"sd cards- 4gb and above, are not compatible with the old machinery that used regular sd cards... Since the HVX was developed before the appearance of high capacity sd cards, can there be an issue here? Can this be an indicator that we'll have higher capacity P2, but not compatible with our HVX?

 

[MarkS22]

I could see Panasonic (or other vendors) offering a package of tested CFs. Again, just moving the complicated RAID to the camera itself. While CF cards may fail, the mirroring option I proposed is arguably more reliable than the P2 card itself. You would need to have two different CF cards in a pair fail at the same time to lose data.

Obviously, this is all just hypothetical and I'm happy with the camera. Nothing wrong with an open discussion improving the recording media... In fact, I just bought an HVX last week.

 

[THoff]

The original non-SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) version of SD used 32-bit integers to address each byte of the media individually. That limited it to 4GB. SDHC adds block addressing, so that the 32-bit integer can address a range of bytes (typically a 512-byte sector).

P2 media uses a four-way RAID0 setup so that you can still manage 16GB using SD memory. For anything above 16GB, Panasonic would have to switch to SDHC or use more than four-way interleaving.

 

[Barry_Green]

I read quite a bit into Jan wanting to put off the CF/P2 debate as applied to Pana/Infinity, and still not giving firm reasons for going with P2 in this context.

The reasons I read into it is that Infinity is extremely overdue and there have been plenty of rumors that they'll *never* introduce it. Why waste breath debating a product that may never see the light of day?

I also find it revealing that noone else has so far risen to the challenge. I'll let everyone draw their own conclusions. I'm pretty convinced that the long term future for solid state is rosy, but not solid state=P2.

Risen to what challenge? This same P2 vs. CF debate that you've been running with for the last six months or so? We've debated this over and over. What new is there to say?

Look, here's the deal: CF could work for a low bitrate recording system, but it will never work for the context that P2 was designed for. You're approaching the whole process entirely wrong, and until you recognize that and open your eyes, you're not going to "get it."

P2 is not meant to be a record-to-it-and-then-offload-it media. That's what we have to do now, yes, but that's not what it's about. Have you ever wondered why Panasonic makes a five-slot card reader, and not a one-slot? It's because this media is meant to be a shoot-to-it, edit-from-it media. The media can support six streams of DVCPRO-HD 1080 in real time. You can't do that with a hard disk. You can't do that with a five-disk RAID. Even a top-of-the-line G-RAID system will only guarantee three streams! P2 can easily handle six. Of 1080. If you want to talk about 720/24pN, it can probably handle 15 streams of that, simultaneously. The computer CPU will choke long before the media does.

So you shoot to the cards, and edit off the cards. Finish your project. Then, when you're done, you back up overnight to a cheap storage medium, whether LTO or blu-ray or hard disk or whatever.

People who think that the workflow is supposed to be shoot-to-the-cards, transfer-to-hard-disk, work-with-footage have it all backwards as to how this media is designed. Yes it's the compromise that we have to make right now, when the recording media is small, but that's not where it's headed.

When you have 128GB cards, you're going to have 10 HOURS of footage on two cards in-camera. Why on earth would you want to transfer that to a slow, pokey, pig-slow hard disk to edit? Why not leave the footage on the cards and get instantaneous access, no moving parts, no dropouts, no dropped frames, no seek times, etc. Panasonic's about to stand the whole editing world on its head, as soon as the cards get large enough. When they have 32GB cards, with 80 minutes of footage each, and 2.5 hours between two, I think that time will arrive. Until then, they have multi-slot readers to give the same benefit but spread across multiple cards.

So you want to believe that DVCPRO-HD is 100 megabits, and some CompactFlash cards can write 10 megabytes per second and soon may be able to handle 20, and think that's enough? That's nowhere near enough for the workflow to be realized. That's tunnel vision. Short-sightedness. That's enough to do temporary storage, but that's not what the media is for, that's not what it's about, and that's not where its power comes from. That's not where the workflow revolution is going to come into play. That's just a cheap stopgap measure.

People who are using FCP, or offloading to hard disks, haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what this whole P2 concept means. Those of us using EDIUS "get it", and we're chomping at the bit for large-enough cards to come out so we can fully explore this new workflow. I personally don't think 8's or 16's are enough, but I think 32's probably are. 64's definitely are. When 128's arrive, you could do an ENTIRE FEATURE FILM in-camera! 90 minutes at a 6:1 ratio, in-camera all at once. Have every clip you ever shot, instantly accessible, instant playback, instant shot comparison, instant rough cuts, instant everything. Tape and optical disk can never compare to that.

Now, let's take it in another direction, a direction where your CF argument does apply: AVC-HD. AVC-HD could work from CF or SD. SD cards are 1/4 the data rate of P2 cards, and SD data is 1/4 the data rate of DVCPRO-HD. So that works. You can get comparable workflow benefits, assuming that someday the CPUs and GPUs will be powerful enough to handle multiple streams of AVC-HD in realtime.

It's not that you're wrong, because you are on to something. But it's that you're not understanding the full scope and meaning of the system. You're not going to see 100 megabit DVCPRO-HD stored on a 110-megabit CF card. That workflow is nearly pointless. You probably won't see AVC-Intra on that CF card either. But you'll see AVC-HD on memory cards, probably SD cards for now but maybe CF cards in the future, because the bandwidth-to-card-speed ratio makes sense in context of a complete workflow solution. For 100-megabit data, P2's 640 megabits is what's required for a full professional solution. They're not trying to "skate by" on the lowest-possible data rate, they're designing and implementing a complete professional workflow that is going to obsolete tape and optical disk. It's a tall order, it's a visionary task, and I believe they've got the pieces in place to make it happen. I also think they haven't done a great job of getting that vision out to the users; it took a few weeks of playing with EDIUS Broadcast to see what's truly possible.

As long as people continue to use FCP, and as long as FCP continues to refuse to put MXF files directly to the timeline, those people will never participate in this workflow revolution. I can't say it highly enough -- everyone should nag FCP to get with the program and get native MXF file support. And if they won't do it, ditch FCP and go with EDIUS. Or Vegas with Raylight. Or even Avid. Or Premiere Pro with either Axio, or the new forthcoming Raylight. Because every other major editing program "gets it", only FCP stubbornly refuses to take the steps necessary to let their users participate in this brave new world of editing power.

 

[Barry_Green]

Now I do have a certain doubt: Are P2 cards compatible with the "new" high capacity SD cards? Because, if I remember correctly, the "new"sd cards- 4gb and above, are not compatible with the old machinery that used regular sd cards... Since the HVX was developed before the appearance of high capacity sd cards, can there be an issue here? Can this be an indicator that we'll have higher capacity P2, but not compatible with our HVX?

If I were to speculate, I'd say that perhaps this is why the 16GB cards haven't come out yet. 16GB cards would require using SDHC. So they probably had to update a few things.

But definitely, unquestionably we'll be able to use the bigger cards. You guys have to understand, one of the big four networks in the USA just signed an *exclusive* deal to be supplied with P2 only! The entire continent of Australia uses their ABC, and that ABC just bought exclusively P2. India is the second-most-populous country in the world, and one of their biggest broadcasters is using HVXs with P2. P2 is big business. It's here to stay. And it will continue to be compatible.

 

[SPZ]

If I were to speculate, I'd say that perhaps this is why the 16GB cards haven't come out yet. 16GB cards would require using SDHC. So they probably had to update a few things.

But definitely, unquestionably we'll be able to use the bigger cards. You guys have to understand, one of the big four networks in the USA just signed an *exclusive* deal to be supplied with P2 only! The entire continent of Australia uses their ABC, and that ABC just bought exclusively P2. India is the second-most-populous country in the world, and one of their biggest broadcasters is using HVXs with P2. P2 is big business. It's here to stay. And it will continue to be compatible.

But, Barry, are these networks buying HVX's? Or the Avcintra compatible new P2 cameras? Maybe we could use these new cards... But not on the HVX... Only speculation, but I would certainly like Jan to give us some light here...

 

[Barry_Green]

They're P2 cards. That's the whole point. AVC-Intra records on P2 cards. Any codec they ever come up with will record on the same cards. Doesn't matter if the networks by SPX800s or SPC700s or HPX2000s or HPX500s or HVX200s, the cards are all the same. The cards are totally codec-agnostic, which is why they can store DV and DVCPRO and DVCPRO50 and DVCPRO-HD and AVC-Intra and AVC-HD all on the same cards.

And NDTV and Raycom both bought scads of HVXs.

 

[THoff]

If I were to speculate, I'd say that perhaps this is why the 16GB cards haven't come out yet. 16GB cards would require using SDHC. So they probably had to update a few things.

Nope, technically it's possible. 4GB is the maximum for SD, so four 4GB modules in RAID0 configuration would get you to 16GB.

 

[SPZ]

Nope, technically it's possible. 4GB is the maximum for SD, so four 4GB modules in RAID0 configuration would get you to 16GB.

But the maximum size of sd cards on the market (non-sdhc) is 2 gb. Why is that?

Barry, yes, but the new SD cards (the sdhc) are also called SD cards, but are not compatible with old SD models. My doubt is: is there a possibility these new P2 would be similar? Like P2hc?

EDIT- Sd cards could also store jpegs, raw files, gifs, etc. They are codec agnostic for Photo cameras. That didn't prevent older cameras to not being able to use the high capacity sd cards... I don't know if you get my line of tought here...

 

[THoff]

The media is format-agnostic, but SD and SDHC are incompatible.

It used to be that all of the storage locations on SD cards had to be addressed one byte at a time, using a 32-bit integer. That meant that they could not manage more than 4GB of storage space.

With SDHC, there is a way to address blocks of bytes (typically 512-byte sectors). Because the new block addressing scheme didn't exist when the SD still cameras came out, the old cameras have no support for the block addressing used by SDHC, and are therefore incompatible.

P2 cards can hide the differences between the underlying flash memory technologies and how to address the storage they provide. The P2 cards contain their own RAID0 controller, and it doesn't matter to the camera what hoops the controller has to jump through to transfer the data, and whether the data is read/written one byte at a time or one sector at a time.

The 16GB P2 cards may still contain SD memory, but frankly, I doubt it. I'm fairly certain that the delay in getting 16GB cards out probably has more to do with redesigning the P2 cards and controller to use SDHC memory than anything else. From 16GB up, they HAVE to use SDHC (or go to more than four-way RAID0), so they might as well lay the groundwork now.

There have been several breakthroughs in flash memory technology over the last few months, which is why there is speculation that not only will we finally see 16GB cards soon, but we may in fact see P2 cards with as much as 64GB capacity by the end of 2007.

Flash memory module capacities are going up, speeds are going up, and prices are going down. Hybrid hard drives incorporating flash memory, and entirely solid-state hard drives will become commonplace this year.

These flash memory advances will give the tapeless workflow a major boost.

 

[SPZ]

So, it is possible for the HVX to use these new 16gigs or 64gig P2 cards, and this sdhc vs sd is a non-issue since what the P2 "tells"the camera is not influenced by which format or structure the sd cards have, am I correct? Basically that's what the cineporter is trying to do, changing the sd cards to harddrives, and making the P2 connection recognize the P2 input, right?

So technically it should also be possible for a cineporter like concept with memory sticks, regular sdhc cards in a raid enclosure, or even cf in a raid configuration...

 

[THoff]

Yes, the HVX will be able to use 16GB and higher capacity cards. Whether the underlying flash memory technology changes from SD to SDHC or something else doesn't matter to the camera, it talks the P2 card using its storage protocol, and not directly to the SD or SDHC cards inside.

I think the Cineporter was conceived when 4GB P2 cards where the norm and 8GB were 2000+ dollars. At that time, offering people 160GB for about the same amount of money as one 8GB card was a very attractive offer.

With flash memory capacities going up and prices coming down, the Cineporter loses some of its attractiveness, but it still has a number of unique and appealing features. Being able to give a client a relatively inexpensive lstandard aptop hard drive when the shoot is done is very convenient, and it will be a long time before P2 cards will match hard drives when it comes to the price/capacity ratio. Hard drive storage can cost $0.50/GB or less, and you won't find a 64GB P2 card for $32 anytime soon.