P2 Shenanigans

I don't know what the licensing requirements are, and I doubt Jan does either. You'd have to talk to Panasonic's licensing department. Jan is the product line manager for the camera, not the P2 products.

For the record, about 700 companies make SD cards or products that are compatible with SD cards. And Fuji and Maxell both make DVCPRO tape. So obviously they found the licensing to be reasonable enough for them to a) accept, b) make product, and c) still turn a profit even though their product, after licensing fees, still retails for less than the Panasonic-branded product.
 
PaulC said:
Jubal: I think once we get the P2 price breakdown that Ryan suggested, you'd see that the requests are not that crazy. My suspicion is with Ryan on this: The P2 price is too high considering production costs and some reasonable profit. I'd like to see the breakdown.
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Without knowing production costs, that's sheer speculation, and probably not a little wishful thinking.
 
Anyone questioning the purported list prices of 8GB P2 media ought to do a price search for
"2GB 60X Secure Digital Card" They're selling for $349 each at OfficeMax. So, $349x4=$1400.00

Now, try a search for a RAID 0 controller that is the size of a nickel. Who makes them? I can't find one.
 
Well, it's a guess based on the costs of the inputs.

Call it what you will, but I do believe that in the long run, P2 is going to get competition from optical. Hence, the earlier Panasonic is at getting people on their side of the P2/optical race, the better off they are. Now, some pros are into P2, but getting 5000-10000 times the number of people into it would be a real competitive advantage. For people who *aren't* into P2 by the time optical comes out, I don't think the extra benefit of P2 over optical will be worth enough to make up for P2 cost/storage volume, at the current projected level of prices and sizes.

The killer point for optical will be simple: You're backing your P2-acquired footage onto optical disks anyway. The only disadvantage of optical will be the (presumed) disability to delete known bad takes (although, who knows, maybe they do this to a small degree using memory). Hence, high P2 costs will push a lot of people toward optical. Hence, lower P2 costs *now* so people get invested into the technology now.
 
Of course with optical you're limited to the size of the disc the was designed for and the tech. used to write to that disc. With solid state, your record capacity can continutally increase with larger solid state cards developed in time. That isn't exactly possible with optical cameras, I assume you mean XDcam. You could increase capacity and that would mean purchasing a different camera. Long term archive would likely be DL tape or LTO drives for many people. HDD's aren't a really good choice for archiving, as you know.
 
Wells: I would believe that OfficeMax isn't selling at cost. Some people (like myself and apparently Ryan) would like to see the breakdown so that we could know what we're paying for (nor, not).
 
PaulC said:
The only disadvantage of optical will be the (presumed) disability to delete known bad takes (although, who knows, maybe they do this to a small degree using memory).
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And the continued cost of media and the possibility of breakdown of moving parts and dust and grime and taking a knock in the middle of a take and the worry of not having blank media with you and . . .
 
What Panasonic is leveraging here is that data is data. Doesn't matter where it comes from and to use an archaic system that requires a specialised equipment to access that data decades from now doesn't make any sense. If you had a system that used IT-industry standard data back and archive systems, you could easily port your data to the next newest thing (100TB Microdrive in 2020, for example) much easier than if your data was on something specialised like tape, optical disc, etc. So--long term what they're doing makes sense. If I wanted to view any of my VHS-C tapes from the early 90's I would have to have a VHS player and I don't have VHS player anymore. If it were data it would be much easier to access and long term the cost of archiving I believe--and Panasonic obviously believes--that it makes more sense to treat data as data for long terms sake and it would be much cheaper and less hassle to pull up this information a long time from now from a data archive that it would be from an archaic, proprietary tape or disc. The idea of solid state (as I'm sure you're aware and prefer a different choice, that's ok) is a temporary storage that is lightweight, low in power consumption, small and fits great inside of a camera. What I do with that data after it's recorded is entirely up to me. And, it makes sense to me because I would like to access my complete life's work even if video formats are continually changing. It would be nice to port every data I have from one system to another as IT makes bigger, faster, cheaper data systems. That's the idea behind solid state, in case anyone hasn't read the preceeding hundred pages of data.
 
Wells: First off, optical will have enough storage capacity to shoot for almost one hour. The only disadvantage might be the difficulty of doing hot swapping, but again even that could be solved using memory buffers.

As far as increasing capacity goes, from what I remember reading, there aren't any plans to go higher than 32GB in P2, so optical will already trump that. But, there is nothing to say that the disks themselves won't increase in capacity without changing the laser/burning technology. Hence, even higher capacity is possible. Finally, there is nothing to say that P2 won't *also* require an upgrade of the camera to upgrade into higher sized cards.

If I can get close to one hour of footage on a blu-ray disk, and especially if I can hot-swap using a memory buffer, and if P2 prices don't come down dramatically, then I'd stick with the 54GB blu-ray disk-based system.

The only issue, I believe, might be the transfer rate attainable on blu-ray, but I believe they are closing in on a 70Mbps specification. One step after that they'll be over 100Mbps. I'm not a technie, so I'm not sure this is a limitation, but if it is, I suspect it will be very short-lived. That's the challenge for P2...get a lot of people into the P2 fold before optical prices it out.

As far as the "bumps and shocks" go, given the limited storage size of P2, I don't think anyone is taking the P2 camera into the jungle. It's on a set, standing on a tripod, with a laptop close by. That's the thing that kills me about this argument. I mean, even by the time the much great capacity optical systems are launced, P2 will still be way, way more expensive unless Panny flinches. Finally, depending on the chances of a shock impact on recording (maybe it's much lower than you think!). people will make that trade-off, and price and size will be very strong motivators, especially if all people can get on P2 is 8GB for $1700. I really don't think the "bump" issue will be a big one, otherwise I don't think you'd see so many people discussing Firestore in place of P2.

And, I don't think the moving parts on an optical-based system will be the constraint on time to failure.
 
Barry_Green said:
Considering that you'll probably only ever need to buy two of them in your life?
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That's a good and a bad thing.........
Great, you only have to buy two.....
Really really bad, Everybody knows the reason prices come down on everything is by selling huge quantities to make up for the R&D... If every HVX owner only buys 2 P2 cards......sells will be minimal therefore cost will take a long time to drop.

Example: Why buy a 32Gig or 64Gig P2 card (when they are available) when I already have 2 8Gig cards and can just keep reusing them?

I love the camera but I will not be purchasing one until I can shoot 60 continuous minutes of HD for under $10k
 
Haha-yeah. But, they'll keep selling new cameras, which fuels more P2 card purchases.
The HVX200 is neither the first or last P2 camera we'll be seeing from Panasonic.
 
Sirius: And, it's not just the size of the P2 cards, also the ability to off-load that matters too. The way I look at it, I don't buy the camera untill I can shoot for a day (roughly 3-4 hours of footage), fully portable, below $10k. Unless P2 really moves along, optical is going to come out soon enough that this will easily be accomplished, with virtually the same quality of acquistion. We'll see....
 
thisiswells said:
they'll keep selling new cameras, which fuels more P2 card purchases.
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yeh, two for each camera.....
thisiswells said:
The HVX200 is neither the first or last P2 camera we'll be seeing from Panasonic.
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No doubt... Just not gonna work for my kind of business at the moment. I'm not an indie film-maker that shoots 30sec clips at a time. I do sit down extended interviews and such that requires extended recording. Maybe not the best example because I know in a situation like that I'll be able to stream to a laptop or harddrive. I also do lots of shooting on the move....where that would not be possible. Maybe the Firestore device will be the answer... If so, I'm game....
What's the camera going for with no P2cards? $6900
Firestore type device with 100Gig capacity - $2500??
Total= $9,400! IM ALL OVER THAT!
 
PaulC said:
from what I remember reading, there aren't any plans to go higher than 32GB in P2, so optical will already trump that.
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SDcard.com notes plans to make a 32GB SD card. That will fuel 128GB P2 card. So, a camera like the HVX200 with two P2 slots could handle 256GB in solid state memory. A camera like the SPX800 or SPC700 with five P2 slots could handle 640GB of solid state memory.
But, there is nothing to say that the disks themselves won't increase in capacity without changing the laser/burning technology. Hence, even higher capacity is possible. Finally, there is nothing to say that P2 won't *also* require an upgrade of the camera to upgrade into higher sized cards.
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It's theoretical and I don't know enough about it, either. I know there has never been an optical format (CD-R, DVD-R, DVD-RW) that could just "work" with a larger capacity disc without a completely different drive. Digital still cameras always work with larger capacity cards in my observation.

The only issue, I believe, might be the transfer rate attainable on blu-ray, but I believe they are closing in on a 70Mbps specification. One step after that they'll be over 100Mbps.
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Right. Currently, P2 cards are 640Mbps or 80MBps. That's fast enough to handle uncompressed D5-SD at 235Mbps or 5:1 compressed 10Bit D5-HD if they wanted to implement it in a different camera... Actually it's fast enough to transfer 235Mbps data to a computer at 2x real time, as long as HDD's were fast enough to receive it, which they aren't yet. Maybe all this speed isn't valuable to me today, but in the future you betcha it is.

brian wells
 
Certainly good points Brian, but, if the P2-based system with 16GB of storage costs $10k and the blu-ray based system costs $7k with 540GB of storage (10 disks, certainly posisble), and if there is little chance of error in the optical-based system (I strongly suspect the quality will be excellent) then for the extra $3k you'll definitely see people take the optical route. After all, they already buy much, much more expensive cameras that use tape, which is probably much more fallible than optical.

As far as the hypothetical 128GB P2 card goes, first off, Panny doesn't have plans to go that high (from what I've seen) and second, I'd doubt that they fit in the current camera. Third...if 8GB costs $1700, well...it all comes down to cost versus quality. Optical will be damn well good enough for that cost difference.
 
thisiswells said:
I know there has never been an optical format (CD-R, DVD-R, DVD-RW) that could just "work" with a larger capacity disc without a completely different drive.
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When CD-r's were first introduced didn't they have a max capacity of 650Megs and now they are 700?????
 
Paul, solid-state has an inherent advantage over any mechanical recording process. And you're speculating on a device which doesn't even exist yet.
 
PaulC said:
Certainly good points Brian, but, if the P2-based system with 16GB of storage costs $10k and the blu-ray based system costs $7k with 540GB of storage....
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Paul,
I haven't kept up on Blu-Ray as much as others have because my initial understanding of the system were more expensive cameras and nailed-in-stone capacity. Are they planning to put multiple discs inside of one camera? I wonder how that would work. Will it be like a CD changer where you have to wait a few seconds for it to mechanically switch discs or could there be multiple lasers? You've introduced several interesting questions. Thanks. I'll definitely look into it because right now, I'm a little underinformed about what they're doing.

brian wells
 
Jubal: The "mechanical" portion of any optical based system will be *so* minor, that it **will not be the limiting factor in time to failure**, not even close.

I'm not speculating. The system is already coming. My sense is that (again) unless P2 prices fall and storage sizes (that can be used with this camera) increase dramatically by the time the camera is sold, then a few weeks before the launch, or maybe even before, Sony will announce an optical system that will blow this camera away from a cost/quality perspective.
 
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