P2 or Firestore

P

planetearth

Well-known member
Hi there,

Okay, I know this debate has been going on for some time and have read the many posts about it, but now that many of you have had a lot of experience with the P2's and Firestores - what are your thoughts and which direction would you suggest I go, as I'm finally about to take the HVX plunge.

Would you have made the same choice with what you know now (P2 or Firestore)?

For my puposes - about to shoot a series and then some docs.

Thanks for any info,
Dale
 
I was one of the first to get the HVX/P2/Firestore setup. I really love the P2 cards but the expense of them is just way out of sight when trying to equate recording length to the cost of a Firestore. The P2s have much fewer problems
and are quite handy to store and use. The Firestore, after many growing pains, has gotten most of it's issues resolved, but their tech support is horrible at best. They force you to leave messages with the broken promises of having them returned. But, the device works well. It does have some revelant issues like the firewire cable attachment on the camera side being flimsly at best and it does not like to be handled roughly. I also find it difficult to teach to assistants where as the P2s are a snap, but again much too expensive. Hoping the CinePorter gets it's act together resonably soon.

Hope this helps a bit,

Don Wilson
AmericanaMediaInc.com
 
I'd consider using the Firestore for location shooting when a Laptop is undesirable (Like the inbreeding in Waterworld). If shooting on a set or a controlled environment, I'd think a laptop (and hardrive space) would suffice.
 
It's hard to say which one would be better. They both have major pros and cons, and there certainly is no clear winner.

First off, with P2, if you are shooting in HD, then you are only going to get about 11 or 12 minutes (I can't remember off hand), using the 720pN mode, with a 4GB P2 card (and obviously 22 or 24 min. on an 8GB). You will also need some kind of device to dump your footage to, either a P2 store, or laptop with an external harddrive. If you plan on shooting documentaries, you will need someone to help you copy footage into the harddrive, and format the card to be used again. If you are shooting this mainly by yourself, then it would be impossible to go out and capture continuous footage, which is usually required for documentaries.

As far as FireStores go, they will capture about 1.5 hours of footage before they fill up. You will still need some kind of device to dump the FireStore into, it just won't be as often as with the P2 cards. There are a few downsides to the Firestore. You cannot shoot in all of the modes, like with the P2 cards. You would have to shoot in 24pA (Advanced), instead of 24pN (Native). I'm unsure of what the battery life of the FireStore is, but it has been discussed as an issue before.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you shoot for the full hour and a half with the firestore, and something happens with the file transfer, or the files get corrupted for some reason, that would be a major loss. Now, if you shot with a P2 card, either the 4GB or the 8GB, and the same thing happened, you would only have lost either 12 or 22 minutes, as opposed to 90 minutes. (This happened on a recent project. We lost majority of the days footage, which put us about a day behind in shooting :crybaby: )

As you can see, they are alot harder to compare than, say, a DVX to an HVX, because they have so many good and bad trade-offs. So I guess it would be up to the filmmaker to decide which one would be better for his/her situation. Neither is better than the other, so figure out which one you will benefit from.

Hope this helps.

[Edit] If anything is inaccurate, please point out, thanks
 
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