P2 Store + P2 Cards: Sizing It Up

P

PaulC

Member
If they are going to make 8, 16, 32 and 64GB P2 cards, they should make the P2 Store 64GB instead of 60GB (or, for that matter, make it 128GB). The 60GB vs. 64GB difference is such an oversight, it makes me wonder if the higher data capacity cards won't even be compatible with the 60GB P2 Store anyway.

Also, those P2 Stores should be a lot less expensive if they want to drive P2 sales. Hey, I'd pay for a few high capcity cards (honestly 8GB is pretty small here...16GB and I'd start to think about it). Say you had 4 16GB cards and 2 128GB P2 Stores, that's 5 hours of 1080p video in the field, with swaps every 16 minutes of recording time. Not too bad. But, under the current setup, even with 8GB P2 cards, you can't get even close to that, and especially because of the 60GB (not 64GB) P2 Store.

Get a portable (eg. battery powered) 128GB P2 Store out at a reasonable price, and I'd consider using 2 in the field, for initial redundancy and parallel downloading, as well as total field capacity. Or, get a 64GB P2 Store out at an even better price and maybe I'll buy 3 or 4 of them. Then I'll maybe buy the camera and some 8GB cards. Even then, only if 16GB cards are announced and compatibility with the Stores is known.

60GB P2 Store isn't going to cut it folks, cause it turns your 8th recording onto an 8GB card into a 4GB card. Besides that, it's just not enough capacity.

I get the feeling that part of the "future P2 capacity" marketing push is simply there to get purchasers to wait, which plays against Sony sales.
 
p2 out

p2 out

Is it possible to fire wire out from the vx200 off the p2 card into the computer rather than using a p2 card reader.
 
PaulC said:
If they are going to make 8, 16, 32 and 64GB P2 cards, they should make the P2 Store 64GB instead of 60GB (or, for that matter, make it 128GB). The 60GB vs. 64GB difference is such an oversight, it makes me wonder if the higher data capacity cards won't even be compatible with the 60GB P2 Store anyway.
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That's up to the hard disk manufacturers. I believe the P2 Store is using a laptop drive, and 60gb was the size they chose. I don't think laptop drives are made in a 64gb size.

Also, those P2 Stores should be a lot less expensive if they want to drive P2 sales.
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I don't think the P2 Store is aimed at the cost-conscious consumer. I think they (which, by they I mean *we*) will just use the camera's built-in dubbing facility. The P2 Store seems to be aimed at a smaller segment of the market, those who just have to be able to record continuous takes longer than the capacity of both cards put together (and who wouldn't use a $599 laptop to do essentially the same job).
 
Phooey said:
better yet, straight a harddrive.
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Yes, you can dub to the hard drive, you could stream to a firestore or a laptop.

Whether it will be able to record directly to a hard disk is a question that appears to be still under development.
 
By mid next year

Sales: (in millions)

P2 Cards= 20.5
JVCHD100= 15.6
HVX200= 14.2
JVC Lenses= .5

What does this tell ya??

very, very, crafty.....marketing gurus - back-end sale genuises.
 
Bottom line Barry is this: If you can't go ou into the field, 100% portable, and shoot all day (let's say that's 4-5 hours of actual recording time) then this camera is going to not see it's full potential, by a LONG shot. Getting bigger /cheaper P2 store that fits the upgrade path of P2 cards (eg. 70 GB is much better than 60GB, if you think about it for 2 seconds) is one step, the second is getting cheaper, larger P2 cards. 8GB is just not enough for the 4-5 hour recording time requirement. You'd be swapping just too often. Need 70GB P2 store and at least 16GB P2 card to make this camera really work in the field for the day-long shooter, and that's a bare minimum.

And, if you don't have the day-long shooter taken care of, well, the camera just isn't doing even close to what it could in sales.
 
PaulC said:
And, if you don't have the day-long shooter taken care of, well, the camera just isn't doing even close to what it could in sales.
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You're preaching to the choir. I've been harping on this issue from day one, and I'm very hopeful that there will be provisions made that make it practical. Already I've been pleasantly surprised by the announcement that you can dub from a P2 card over to an off-the-shelf cheap hard disk -- that means you can have 40 minutes of 720/24P footage on the cards, and when you stop shooting, you can transfer that over to the drive in about 15 minutes, maybe faster depending on your drive.

Not quite the same as recording for three hours continuous, but much more practical than hauling around a laptop or spending $1800 for a P2 Store.

There are many ways that these cameras will be used. I think for dramatic/narrative/commercial production, or studio production, it's completely viable as-is. Now the question is for longform event shooters, and I'm hoping for some confirmation on an easily-implementable solution.

Of course, the question is -- how many jobs like that will you get in HD right now? Is it possible that SD/DV will tide you over until the 16gb card comes out next year? If so... maybe it won't be as impractical as we think. By the time producers start asking for HD event shooting, there may be cards, FireStores, and other solutions available. None of the network reality shows are HD yet, I doubt many weddings/events will be for a while... it may all work out.
 
If they made a *70* GB P2 Store **and** made the price comparable to the parts plus a very small mark-up (the $1800 price is **way** too high), then I think someone could roam for a day, take 3 or 4 P2 Stores with them and would do ok.
 
Although I agree with what everyone has said, in narrative filmmaking applications (as opposed to, for example, event videography), I will rarely shoot more than an hour of "footage" during an entire night's shoot. Shooting 720p @ 50mbits/sec. (is that math right?), the two 8GB P2 cards and a 60GB P2 Store will be adequate (certainly NOT ideal) for the workflow of a typical night's shooting on my personal projects. For location Steadicam work, B-roll, vehicle-mount shooting, etc., I'll need a direct-to-HDD solution, since the set-up and shooting environment will be more constrictive.

By the way, what is the datarate for shooting 720p DVCPRO-HD and the resulting capacity in minutes for a single 8GB P2 card shooting at that datarate?
 
NBCshooter said:
Although I agree with what everyone has said, in narrative filmmaking applications (as opposed to, for example, event videography), I will rarely shoot more than an hour of "footage" during an entire night's shoot.
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AGREED! On the last short film I did, we worked 14-hour days, and I kept conscious tabs of how much footage we shot. The very *most* we shot on any one day was one hour, one basically full tape. One day we shot 24 minutes of footage for the entire day. And we were moving pretty quick.

If I'd been able to delete garbage takes, I think the most we would have shot on an entire day would have been more like 40 minutes.

By the way, what is the datarate for shooting 720p DVCPRO-HD and the resulting capacity in minutes for a single 8GB P2 card shooting at that datarate?
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Data rate is 40mbits, one 8gb card would hold 20 minutes of that footage.
 
i only add that 720p is 40Mbps only when at 24Fps..
60Fps is 100Mbps so the fractional equivalent of 24Fps is 24/60=0.4 for 40Mbps... and so on....
 
Thanks, Barry, thisiswells . . . So I'll have a total of 40 minutes of record time at 720p24 using two 8GB cards, and 8 minutes of record time at 720p60 (for high-speed, slow-motion photography) on a single 8GB card for effects and stunt sequences. That's actually gonna be pretty darn workable! Now, the only problem is . . . can I hold onto my cash all the way until December for the HVX200, or will I get too anxious and blow it on a JVC HD100 this summer???
 
Barry_Green said:
Of course, the question is -- how many jobs like that will you get in HD right now? Is it possible that SD/DV will tide you over until the 16gb card comes out next year? If so... maybe it won't be as impractical as we think. By the time producers start asking for HD event shooting, there may be cards, FireStores, and other solutions available. None of the network reality shows are HD yet, I doubt many weddings/events will be for a while... it may all work out.
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The biggest problem here for me is that you can only do DV to tape. And DVCPRO (25 and 50) is in demand right now. Even for events. So we need a solution when the cam arrives.
 
DVCPRO 25 is the same thing as DV. and if you want DVCPRO50.. you could buy or rent a deck and hang it off the firewire port, and stick a tape in it. of course its not as portable as having the transport in the camra, but you get what you pay for.. and you dont get what you dont pay for. if the HVX came with a DVCPRO tape transport, youd have to pay at least an extra 7,000.00 for it. my solution would be to use a FW HDD solution and then stream from the FW drive (if its controlled) or from a laptop (if not controlled) to the deck for the tape to hand over at the end of the day if tape is needed.


realistically you could just give them an external HDD with the footage on it in whatever codec you used at the end of the day alot quicker. chances are that since youd be buying brand new external HDDs all the time they would be all be fine as far as reliability.

it all comes down to cost.. again its possible to go to tape with ANY codec, you just need to pay for it.. and when it comes down to it.. an HDD would be cheaper and likely just as reliable overall in the whole couple days till its transferred to their system . - no dropouts or lost frames and such + instant access as well.
 
Didn't say I wanted tape. :evil:
But a HDD solution would be nice. Wich Jan and Panasonic already confirmed so that's ok too.
But I understood that you can't shoot DVCPRO 25 to the DV tape. Wich would be normal, since they would heve to make new decks to read em.
Anyway, for my day to day I can use the DV. But being able to do some 50 mb/sec work for corporates and HD for commercials and music videos is what I would buy the cam for. And if you can record for long periods without interuption, it would suit me better. That way I can should events in HD, wich will give a better downscaled image than native SD. Right? Well DVCPRO 50 might be close.
And after a few years I can swap the HDD for a big rugged superreliable p2 card.
No probs here...
 
..downresing HD to SD wont really give a better image than just shooting in DVCPRO 50.

..your right though .. you cant lay down the DVCPRO 25 to tape, but i was just saying that DV and DVCPRO 25 are for all practical purposes the same thing.. so recording in DV to tape will give you the exact same image as DVCPRO 25 to tape.

but yeah.. there will be some sort of direct to HDD solution available wither it be a controlled firestore drive, or an off the shelf HDD it will be there.. and i like that option better as well. for me personally ill be shooting to P2 and dumping to external FW or usb2.0 HDDs between takes. i dont really need anything longer than 8 min of shot time. and if im shooting lower data rate formats .. ill have even more time.

this cam is going to be awsome isnt it! (salivates.. madly)
 
I get the feeling that part of the "future P2 capacity" marketing push is simply there to get purchasers to wait, which plays against Sony sales.[/QUOTE]

am without a doubt going to be purchasing the HVX200 when it becomes available and I'll say upfront I believe it to be a 'revolutionary' camera with Panasonic 'giving people what they want' as oppossed to Sony or Canon. I've owned Canon XL1,XL1s & XL2 + DVX100.

What amazes me is that in the case of P2 cards is that Panasonic have a 'roadmap' showing an doubling of size of the P2 cards over an equally incremental time frame.

I am cynical that this is classic marketing of pricing a product to what the market will absorb.
Example, we will shortly have 8GB P2 cards at the price of the old 4GB P2 cards on so forth. Also, how do the Panasonic R&D people know that the P2 cards could ever hold 128GB in the same physical case when they launched the product? When the recent 8GB announcement was made I heard no accompanying press release that Panasonic had made a technical breakthough allowing the doubling of capicity!

Ever noticed this scenarios with CD & DVD burners - Starts off at single speed, the 2,4,8,16,48, 52 etc. This happens all over the IT industry and obviously technology in general. Something I believ IBM started many years ago.

That said I believe the HVX and P2 in particular will easily still be justifiable and therin (when I think about) lies the answer.
 
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