P2 Future ?

Can I just clarify. I (and am pretty sure same for Tom), didnt say we dislike P2 or the workflow etc.

My point was that Pana in some respects, in the Australian market where Sony has pretty much had control for many years, and is again gaining the most favour with the major networks, held its p2 prices too high here for it to be a competitive option.
 
Beacuse the 35mb codec is more compressed .. more tightly packed. It takes the computer more work to unpack the data to the raw video to work with.

- Mikko
 
If you want to test that theory try editing AVCHD or HDV files and then work with DVCPro100. Don't know the technical reasons, but I can pull many gigs of P2 clips from my hard drive into a Sony Vegas bin and then into my timeline and never have a problem. Super fast and relliable. Switch to AVCHD, MPEG2, or HDV and you'll be ready to jump off a bridge. The difference is that if you are editing your five year old's birthday party you'll only have but a few clips. But in a professional video, even one just a few minutes long,you'll have many clips and cuts that using a consumer format will tie up memory so fast your work will slow to a crawl on most systems.

Maybe one of the tech guru's can explain why, but that has been my experience. I will never take someone else's consumer footage to mix with a DVCProHD project. I've paid the price in lost time and also having to go re-shoot things with my own camera when I've been promised professional HD footage from a client.

Of course your question was regarding XDCam. I would think the MXF files would be no different to edit than DVCProHD as far as workflow. Any one out there editied both?
 
Promised pro HD footage and comes back with some crap shot a Z1u (hate that camera soo much, no offense to any one who has one)

Been there done that.
 
Ducatimark said:
Of course your question was regarding XDCam. I would think the MXF files would be no different to edit than DVCProHD as far as workflow. Any one out there editied both?
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Yes, and DVCProHD is faster to work with.

Mikko, was my understanding that the difference in editing performance came from the fact that the DVCProHD codec is all I frame, the NLE simply and quickly renders each frame vs GOP with 1 I frame the NLE has to interpret the other frames and then render?

Anyway on and up.
 
Noel,

you are correct. My answer was very simplistic. A big part of the compression to get down to 35mbs is the use of inter-frame recording .. which as you state means you have to process an entire group of frames to to anything.

- mikko
 
Hi Noel,
Spot on your comments , good viewpoints here on the P2 v XDcam on the "world arena", some places are P2 heavy , some as here downunder are Sony Heavy, Maybe it all comes down to the the decisions of the "Bean Counters" ?.

Cheers
Tom k
olinevideo.com.au
 
hantanbl said:
Expresscard is the future......Hard fact for some in this forum to accept but with JVC endorsing expresscard, the future is quite clear
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well to be more specific, tapeless recording is the future. all footage ends up on hard drives. nobody is archiving footage on s+s cards or p2 cards. so since the data is immediately dumped to a drive and the card is reused, who cares about the type of card itself? p2, express card, cf, sd, whatever.

personally i would never buy a camera based on what card it uses. it's about the image, not the storage.
 
i had asked a few poats back about such a adopter into which goes in a SxS card ... will a P2 have a SxS inside it work for my HPX's !
 
Andrew McMillan said:
Well I read some where that Panasonic bought the XDcam license from sony:huh:
kinda like what jvc is doing with the SxS..
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This is totaly false. And just for the record, over the liftetime of the camera, you will spend less money on storing your data from P2 than you will spend on XDCAM discs. Just a simple fact.

And the future for P2 continues to glow bright with more adoptions every week. There are some countries that are more Sony centric, so the story may seem different there but I can assure you all that there are a lot more P2 cameras out there than thewre are XDCamS.

Best,

Jan
 
Noel Evans said:
Tom Id argue that Australia has and always will be a bit Sonycentric.

Still, here in Australia Panasonic had the gate open, when ABC switched, people noticed, but Pana have insisted on holding the prices (especially here in Aus).

Its a bummer really. At the current rate of progress here, the future seems to be shooting mostly on a Sony.

Be interested to here Rob Myer's opinion on all this.
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Didn't help the fact that all the P2 cameras that the ABC bought (in Brisbane at least) are still packed in the boxes. Now they are all useless as they are the old SD models.
IMHO Panasonic had a winner on their hands but lost it with the cost of the cards. It is a shame as I like my P2 but looks like I may have to go to the 700 next year.
 
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cheezweezl said:
it's about the image, not the storage.
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Well said Gavvo, for my (the) money the Hpx500 has both best functions and probably most important, best image. By 'best image' I mean It has borderline high enough resolution of shadow detail (especially noticable in low light) that fools the brain into thinking the image is 'real'. Anything else (EX) just won't do.

I also agree with Jan in that given that these cards are bulletproof, used a lot over years the cost will be less (More green? Anyone care, no, ok, cheaper yay!)
 
I'm a small independent documentary filmmaker, so costs are important to me. I have shot literally hundreds of documentaries, many of them in super16. If you think P2 cards are expensive, try shooting film...

I invested in five P2 cards a year and a half ago (4 came with the 500).. I have more than covered the cost of those cards with what I've saved in tape and/or film costs - even considering the hard drives I've accumulated. They have been completely reliable, and I can sleep at night.

This cost argument seems very amateurish to me.

Another thing, which I admit is subjective, is the large disk drives on those Sonys make for a butt-ugly camera. They look (and handle) like those old top-heavy cameras from the 1980's...
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
And just for the record, over the liftetime of the camera, you will spend less money on storing your data from P2 than you will spend on XDCAM discs. Just a simple fact...

Best,

Jan
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I appreciate your position, but how can such a blanket statement be made when you are comparing 1 hour @ $50 to 1 hour @ $1500-$3000?

Camera life, work/pay situations and usage are unknown quantities as well.

P2 has its limits of affordability for longer form work, where the XDCAM is cheap enough to buy as many as you need...


BTW Jan, Why can't or why hasn't Panasonic come out with an SDI external recording device using DVCProHD or AVC-I for longer recording times?

There are a people who are willing to pay $3,500 - $5,000 for the Convergent Designs box. Seems like a way to keep people in the Panasonic family and address a shortfall of the P2 system.

Any thoughts?
 
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i have now started feeling P2 is losing the game. i have shoot events, tons of shoot from multicam setup. i now if i ever buy a P2 thn will have to keep a load track of cards for 3 camera tne geting them offloaded on field HDDs thru a laptop. GOSH i hate panny for such a cumbersome setup. if the prices were made out by any sensible guy then it should have been vvvv cheap. they are forcing us to shoot on small duration multi cards then have the extreme headache of offloading on field. i have to take too much cate for transportation of HDDs.

On the other hand,,,, Look what SONY have to gift us ... SIMPLE XDCAM BD Disks shoot as much as your want on cheap media.resue them later on other wise keep the data archieve on it for long as you want.

Where as poooooor Panny wants to shoot P2 & then USE A SONY PRODUCT Called BD Disks to burn back archival data ... panasonic still have to beg technoilogy form Sony to keep panny caned shoot safe for future. SOme "Jan" must be reading thru all this...
 
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