POLL: Closed Loop or Deliver Footage?

David S. said:
P2 workflow is "still woefully lacking" in what regard?

We looked hard at tapeless acquisition and workflow before buying about three years ago.

We would never go back to tape.

What are you complaints and what are you lacking in workflow?
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Tapeless acquisition has its advantages and disadvantages - if it works for you - great. I have never argued for, or even want, to go "back to tape" - I wasn't the one who brought tape up.

I have to quickly and securely get my clients footage to them immediately after i shoot it. With tape - it's simple, with P2, it isn't.

I want it to be simple on P2.

I don't want to constantly have to dick with drivers, updating software and incompatibility issues - especially while i am in the middle of a shoot.

It is in Panasonics interest to make P2's workflow simple and easy for someone like me - I work for people who make decisions on acquisition based on their experiences in the field.

Like DaFilms - I am usually part of a two or three person crew - including the producer/client. I have to find little holes in my day to manage cards, computers and cables (oh yeah - and also shoot too).

I need a solution I can set up and walk away from - knowing that I can hand over a drive at the end of the day, without having to keep my client waiting (ie downloading that last card shouldn't take longer than wrapping the rest of the gear)

Last week I had to keep a client waiting for over an hour on one 32gb card to transfer because we had to go through many tries at downloading while it was crashing one computer, or incompatible with the drivers of another.

To the client it didn't matter whether it was Panny's, Apples', Duels or even my fault - all he knows is that he had to wait - and that will affect his decision to acquire on P2 in the future.

I know he'll hire me again - its whether he wants to use P2 that Panasonic should be worried about

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Heres my notes on specific solutions I have tried.

Using the camera to transfer footage is slow and I can't shoot while I offload.:Drogar-Mark-07(DBG)

The P2 Store is an $1800 boat anchor that works ok as a single card reader but is also slow, uses either one of your batteries or your power supply, and is relatively large for the purposes of being 'lean and mean' and for doing one card at a time.:Drogar-Mark-04(DBG)

The P2 Gear costs $3,500 - How many laptops with PCIMIA slots and hi res screens can you buy for that price? - and YOU still have to provide the drive. Did i mention it costs f#$king $3,500?!?:Drogar-Mark-07(DBG)

The five card reader is essentially like the P2 store, but with five slots - it certainly doesn't let you download five cards in the time of one - it just holds them in line for you. Also - since I already spent $1800 on the single card P2 Store - why spend another $1700 on the multicard reader?:Drogar-Mark-07(DBG)

The Duel Adapter, paired with my MacBook Pro, using P2CMS for confidence (NOT TRANSFERRING), hooked up to my clients FW800 drive was the way to go - I could download a 8gb card in about 5 minutes - until it stopped working :((and judging from other threads, I am not alone in this).

And after dealing with unhelpful customer service from Duel, and being largely ignored in my personal requests to Panasonics' reps for a product such as the adapter several times over the last two years - I am left wondering why Panasonic is leaving it up to 3rd parties to come up with *critical* solutions for Panasonics' products.
 
I can understand the ease of shooting and editing with P2. But what about archiving? The ease of tape has always been that it was cheap and easy to store so you could go back to it down the road.

With P2 you have to look at storing your raw footage to external hard drives. Which in itself can be costly. Plus you have the worry of a drive failing, losing all your footage. Especially a drive that may sit a year or more before you try to access the footage. I've almost never lost footage that has been saved to tape.

I still worry about losing footage/files that has been shot to P2 then transferred to a drive before loading into your computer to edit. Once you delete the footage from your P2 it is gone forever.

I love the tape less work flow, but there are things to consider before making the jump to P2.
 
I have never trusted external drives as a long term back up solution. All it took was one drive to fail on me. I have actually had a number of them fail over the years, there is no feeling like plugging in the drive and having it be empty. So we started backing up to DVD. When we moved to the HVX we began using BluRay. Yes they are a bit expensive, and...they are very reliable as a back-up solution. Since we began archiving to DVD-R or BD-R over 7 years ago we have never had a problem retrieving footage. If you have Toast it will span a large project folder over multiple discs.

We have used Verbatim discs for years without any issues. Currently the Verbatim BD-R write once are about 9-10 dollars, and will hold 25GB, pretty nice and one disc can handle most SD projects, so while it may cost you $50 - $100 to archive a large HD project, I think its worth it. When it comes to any large HD project I always include archiving costs in the budget.
 
I have been waiting for the tapeless workflow for years and now it's here I love it. I went for the P2 system because I preferred DVCPRO HD over HDV.

The editing problems of HDV have now been almost totally overcome so it does look like a better format than it used to - but it is still tape.

The next big thing I am looking forward to is cheap BluRay. When that comes along, delivering footage to clients and archiving will be a breeze.

At the moment BluRay, even when discs are purchased in bulk is still too expensive. Also, because it adds another time consuming process into the equation, XDCAM would be a better bet. (Sorry, don't shoot me).

Cheap BluRay can't be that far off and when it arrives no-one will be able to call the P2 system and workflow lacking in any way at all.

Roll on cheap BluRay.

Weenie
 
I assume that all the people who are so excited about the tapeless work flow have never had a hard drive die on them or they have never lost footage due to a corrupt file?

With tape you have the very rare occasion when it could break, but that was about it.

I'm looking forward to the tape less work flow. But a little bit afraid of it as well. I shoot many things that if lost can not be re-shot.

Has anyone lost files from their P2 card following a shoot?
 
i use an old powerbook g4 for offload in the field and its not failed me once in over a year.
 
I have had a few drives die on me resulting in total loss of the data they contained. I know the risks involved when working with hard drives.

But now, drives are cheap and so I always work with two drives. Once I've offloaded the footage into FCP I immediately copy the footage to a second drive and leave it there. This is a process that you can start and leave it to transfer. It may take a while to copy 100 or so gigabytes of data but you can be doing something else while it's transferring.

I use Lacie drives but other makes are as good and possibly cheaper. I bought my first Lacie 500GB Big Disk a few years ago and it cost me £560.00 and 3 months after that I got another and the cost had dropped to £300.00. Now you can get a Lacie 1TB big disk for £200.00.

I have never had a speed issue with the drives even when editing DVCPRO-HD 1080 50i.

Out in the field you could use a powerbook or PC laptop to offload cards and transfer (on-location) to a Lacie Little Big Disk which is USB powered.

The solutions are there, or maybe just round the corner. These issues are teething problems and are only minor inconveniences compared to the massive bonuses of working with P2 tapeless and the amazing image quality of DVCPRO-HD. P2, when using an HVX200 is very affordable, coming in at not much more than the cost of a PD170.

Weenie.

P.S. I recorded a project to tape recently and when the footage was transfered it was unusable due to big blocky artifacts. I put it down to a bad batch of tapes but the camera was also checked out and modifications made. I never got to the bottom of the problem but I posted in a few forums to get advice. The response I got showed that other people have, for one reason or another, lost footage that was recorded to tape. It does happen, and probably more frequently than people would imagine.
 
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