"Shoot and Ship" with P2

[David Saraceno]

Panasonic charges $900 for a 16GB card which is made up of four 4GB SD cards. I can buy 4GB SanDisk Ultra 2 cards at Costco for about $60-$70 each. That's under $300 for 16GB. I'd love to see what Panasonic's marginal costs are for their 16GB P2 cards. My guess would be around $100.

Great argument that ignores one very small, but determinative, item.

If this were the margin, then some company could step in and sell a bunch of 16GB cards for $200.00 and make a killing because you can't find any.

So, logic indicates that your argument is pretty specious.

 

[Barry_Green]

Especially with the success Panasonic's had in placing this stuff in large broadcast networks, and the global shortage that's on right now. The opportunity for a competing company to swoop in with a much lower profit margin is better than it's ever been. Yet, here we are with no swooping? Hmm.

Doesn't mean there's not some decent profit margin in there, but clearly it's not enough that some other company hasn't been tempted to grab a slice of that pie. Hoodman's supposed to, someday, but no action yet.

Regarding depositions: yes that's a perfect example of where tape's better. In fact, would the NCRA even accept tapeless footage? You can't embed the timecode in the data stream over the picture, so I think you'd be stuck with tape anyway.

Before you start jeering at depos, keep in mind that 1) it pays well, 2) I always work in air conditioned offices, 3) I work M-F with few nights and no weekends and 4) it's recession-proof.

Anyone jeering at deposition work would be fairly foolish -- as you said it's just about the easiest way to make decent money with a camcorder, and there's *no editing*. Far superior lifestyle choice over shooting weddings -- much less effort, comfortable surroundings, no hand-held work, weekends free, etc. As long as you're NCRA-certified then shooting legal depositions might be the very easiest way to make a living from video equipment (although probably the least creatively-satisfying, you'd probably admit).

For that type of work I'd expect that tape would be the preferred method, and I'd keep an eye on what the NCRA recommends as for what future formats would be acceptable.

 

[Mike Parker]

Not if Panasonic has the P2 card firmware patented, and I'll bet you they do. This would prevent or severely limit the possibility of third-party supplies of Panasonic P2 HD cards or whatever they want to call them.

Please note my posting where I referred to the huge markup of Sony BVW-75 BetacamSP VCR's during their heyday. In addition to their profit from the razors (the P2 card cameras), Panasonic is surely making a bundle off the blades (P2 cards) and to believe otherwise doesn't make sense.

 

[Barry_Green]

Japanese patents only last 18 months. P2's been out for four years. Any patent's already expired.

And the razor/blades argument doesn't work, since most buyers will never buy more than maybe 2 cards ever. Maybe 3 at the max. It's not like the old razor 'n' blades argument (or, for that matter, the tape argument, where someone buys the camera once and then forever buys tape and tape and tape). Doesn't work that way with P2.

 

[Mike Parker]

Very interesting about the Japanese patent law. My first reaction is this would seem to stifle R&D as the return on investment would have to occur quickly, but this doesn't appear to be the case. Perhaps there are licensing laws which go beyond the 18-month patent protection.

As far as my razor-blade analogy goes, while most buyers --- you obviously know more about this angle than I --- might buy only a couple of P2 cards, news operations would undoubtedly buy more.

One of my other ways of making a living is to help launch TV stations around the world. I helped launch CNN-Türk in Turkey, Aaj Tak in India and Dawn TV in Pakistan, among others. I have recently pushed for buying HVX200's for news, shooting 16:9 SD for now and HD at some point in the future, using DV tapes for SD the P2 cards for HD. This would be for a couple of projects in Africa.

We figure we'll need a minimum of a half-dozen 32GB P2 cards per camera, and with 20 cameras that comes out to 120 P2 cards for the news operation. Why so many? A cameraman might cover a half-dozen stories in a day and each story might be edited by a different editor. The logistics are much easier to deal with if each story, whether it's a 20-second VO or a minute-thirty package, is shot on its' own P2 card, just as we've done with film and tape over the years. This way an editor doesn't have to wait while another editor is dumping the card to their workstation hard drive or (in my dreams) a server. In addition, each camera would probably have to be used by two, maybe three cameramen. (There's little luxury of assigned gear in the Third World.) Just trying to keep up with the P2 card inventory is going to be an issue where the cameramen are making maybe $200 a month. In that situation $1,000 P2 cards are likely to become "lost" on a regular basis. They are, I'm sure, familiar with eBay.

If anyone has any suggestions about using HVX200's and P2 cards in a newsroom environment, I'm all ears, especially when it comes to inventory management.

Mike

 

[Indywannabe]

Now you're talking Mike.

 

[hotchkiss]

Barry ---

"I have no interest in that workflow," says the owner. "First, I'm not going to pay you for a hard drive that we'll use once. Second, I make a lot of money when we capture video from tape. I charge $100 an hour to capture and log video and pay my assistant editors $20 an hour, so I'm making $80 an hour profit. I'd have to be crazy to pass that up."

...And, as he pointed out, all of the video has to be viewed and logged anyway, so there really aren't any time-savings using the P2/hard drive workflow.

Hmmmm...

Mike,

The first part of this clients response is a hard one to get around- he is making money off of the inefficiency of a tape workflow. I don't have an answer for that one.

As for the second part, I got this same answer from my partner who handles the editing and sometime producing. Truth is, P2 is still a faster workflow, as there is only file transfer time versus digitizing. As we are becoming more accustomed to the P2 workflow, it is only getting more effiicient and faster. He is able to recoup some of the lost revenue from digitizing through increased mark-up on my services, which are higher with the HVX. That being said, I'm not using the (HVX in HD) as much for ENG work as I had with the DVX in SD. For closed loop commercial work, it's a no-brainer P2 baby!

I'm in a similar situation as you, and the P2 element poses challenges for the ENG shooter. With local clients it's not so much of an issue because I can get the drives back easily, so I don't charge for them. I have three OWC drives that are numbered and have my phone number on them, I just hand the producer the drive and then get them back at a later time. As of now, I haven't shot anything in P2 for an out of town ENG client.

How about this? You hand the drive over with a self addressed , postage/shipping included padded envelope? You won't have to mark-up for the drive. I'd imagine that a few may never return, but you could account for that in your rate. Just an idea...

As for picking a HDV camera, I'm on a crew of a syndicated show that uses the Z1U and I've been shooting it for more than a year. It's a major PITA to use for ENG/reality show stuff. I'm just not a fan. It's a very counter-intuitve camera, to say the least. I'd suggest going with the Canon if feasible for your client base. I'd just like to save anyone else from the experience of using this camera. ;-).

Eventually P2 type aqquisition will be the dominate format, but for now the issues you've raised are the most common reasons I've encountered for resisting P2. I think some of the issues are surmountable, but others may have to wait until the collective client base becomes a bit more "enlightened" and accepts a new way of working.