P2 Card Short Lifespan?

[DVG Big Cheese]

Wow what a bummer! I guess someone better call Raycom and Media General (each or which own 20+ TV stations) and have been running P2 daily for their news for over a year now and tell them that the cards they are using every day don't work.

We sold 39 of the 700 P2 cameras to a 3 station group and they have been using them for months now with no issue. I can only assume two things 1) the person that made the origional post is a complete idiot or 2) his e-mail address is no.one.is.buying.xdcam@sony.com !

 

[Mike Poindexter]

"P2 life span is listed by Panasonic as "insert and remove tests show its connector will last for a minimum of 30,000 insertion and removal cycles and the P2 card can be rewritten a minimum of 100,000 times without performance degradation". That's four times to use the card once (pull out of camera, insert in computer, pull out of computer, plug back into camera). At 8 minutes a run you insert and remove 4 times or 64 times an hour. Or 512 times a day for 8 hours of shooting. 2560 a week. 10240 a month. In a little under three months you have gone beyond the life expectancy of a P2 card. Whoops! Tape still is more reliable. I use it once and store it and don't have to spend more money trying to find a reliable way of storing P2 data after I have pushed and pulled all day to the point that I have pee-two tunnel syndrome. Or said another way performance will give you 10 months or reliable recording before the cards possibly start going south. "

It seems to me a cycle would be in insertion and ejection, so you can double the length of each scenerio right there.

At 8 minutes per run, you have 7.5 cards per hour, or 15 cycles, not 64 so 8 hours of shooting would be 120 cycles, not 512! Weekly totals would be 840, not 2560. Using 4 weeks for a month you would have 3360 per month vs. the claimed 10,240.

A simpler way to look at it is this:

30,000 cycles with 2 cycles required per "load" would give 15,000 * capacity of the card.

An 8GB card shooting 1080p or 1080i would hit that load after 120,000 minutes of footage - 2,000 hours or 83.3 days of 24/7 continuous recording. If you shoot 720p24N, that number jumps to 208.3 days or non-stop footage. Considering one would realistically have to have 3 cards to do such an operation, you would likely not run into a problem until 250 days have passed recording 1080p 24/7! And if you have that much footage shot in 8 months you will have a much larger problem than losing 3 8GB P2 cards (and people will be using 16 GB cards by then anyway) but I can imagine you will burn through several NLE systems and have quite a revolt from the editing crew.

If you run the cameras 42 hours per week, you can quadruple all of those numbers and by the time you wear out your 8GB cards, you will replace them with 64GB cards.

Does anybody really care if their 8MB compact flash cards are about to wear out now? It isn't like they are in embedded systems.

 

[ESTEBEVERDE]

SalaTar[/LEFT]]"P2 life span is listed by Panasonic as "insert and remove tests show its connector will last for a minimum of 30,000 insertion and removal cycles and the P2 card can be rewritten a minimum of 100,000 times without performance degradation". That's four times to use the card once (pull out of camera, insert in computer, pull out of computer, plug back into camera). At 8 minutes a run you insert and remove 4 times or 64 times an hour. Or 512 times a day for 8 hours of shooting. 2560 a week. 10240 a month. In a little under three months you have gone beyond the life expectancy of a P2 card. Whoops! Tape still is more reliable. I use it once and store it and don't have to spend more money trying to find a reliable way of storing P2 data after I have pushed and pulled all day to the point that I have pee-two tunnel syndrome. Or said another way performance will give you 10 months or reliable recording before the cards possibly start going south. "

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can't be serious.

 

[Justyn]

I think its so funny that wedding videographers are poo-pooing the HVX... lol. I feel for those people forced to do that work and consider that the anti-pointer to what's really going on. So, if they say it sucks... we are all on the right path. Man, I did that in the very very beginning 15 years ago and got out as soon as I can. I'd rather work on reality TV than do a wedding.. and tha'ts really saying something....


Aunt Ethel is ready for her close-up mr. wedding videographer man!!!

 

[EShy]

I think it's wrong to calculate this numbers based on the panasonic minimum cycles number where probably a machine ran tests and that number was where it stopped so they can test it again with another card/slot. it's just the number they decided on, I don't think it broke on 31,000, they just sopped before. it's how tests are done.

I do have a little problem with the archiving solutions when working with P2 or hard drives, haven't seen a good one yet

 

[mccainds]

Walter Graff is responsible for coming up with this nonsense. I read his post about this a while ago. I wish panasonic or someone would sue him for all his venemous FUD over the past months about the HVX200.

Dont take that guy seriously!

 

[Jan_Crittenden]

Hi,

Can we kill this stupid thread. This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. We have stations still using their original cards they bought 2 years ago and yes they go out everyday and use them.

I mean I still have my first SD Card and use it all the time. I have no idea how many times I have inserted it nor do I care, it just works. I have had it since 2000 and use it all the time for transferring files, taking pictures, you name it. Memory is memory and it records.

As far as archive, I think I would go to something like DVDs if using 4 GB cards, and then thinking about LTO or other data tape technology like DLTs for larger. Still cheaper than HD tape, not HDV tape but certainly DVCPRO HD tape, and I don't have to digitize. The Blu-ray looks interesting but I am still waiting for it to show up. ;-) I am sure it will but when. Feeling impatient here.

Best,

Jan