Suggestion for panasonic p2 store hard drive upgrade options

Can´t you just open the case and bolt an other drive in?
I did that with my firestore - was no problem.

Frank
 
Mee too!!

I have two laptops (apple) one for downloading the material from my AGHVX 200A a powerbook pro with the right entrance for the P2 cards (the earlier laptops before intel) and my new Laptop with intel, is there a way panasonic thinks in his clients for a little bit?

I really don't like to carry with me two laptops all the time while in production.

we need Panasonic to upgrade the systems, even the most expensive cameras have p2 cards

I just wish a new panasonic camera small enough like the Canon 5D with interchangeable lenses and a really interesting download system and quick one, also inexpensive like the Canon's, for the really independent market & filmmakers!

(I as a prosumer who likes panasonic a lot)

Before Canon overlooks the possibilities and starts a really interesting format wars with all the HD Prosumer market.
 
Replacing the drives would be an option but will the unit accept 32 and 64 gb cards ?
I am not sure, I think it only accepts 16GB, excuse me if I am wrong.
I do like the idea of Panasonic doing the upgrade on the units, at the moment they are great for offloading to,
would love if they could improve the offload speeds too.
I think this is fair ask of Panasonic
 
We Tried putting a 500gig drive in a P2 Store at my work, it only recognized it as a 60gig drive.:badputer:
 
Hey guys,
I have started threads begging Panasonic to do this before, so I'll once again add my voice to the chorus requesting an upgrade of the P2 Store.

I really like the P2 Store's simple, rugged design, and with my paltry little 16G cards, it still gives me some extra storage space. But yeah, I want a 250-500gig drive in there.

As far as modifying a 60G P2 Store with a bigger drive, this has been discussed before and noone's had any luck. The hard part is the firmware, which is written for a 60G drive. Someone would need to rework the firmware and drivers, and not just the portion of the code that allows it to recognize the extra storage space.

For example, if you press the CAPACITY button (once for a 4 gig card, three times for a 16G) the indicator lights tell you how many more cards can be offloaded. How those indicator lights would work with a bigger drive is one issue that would have to be sorted out.

If there's someone out there with embedded systems experience who wants to try this, I will PA your next shoot for free, keeping the sun out of your eyes with an 18x24 solid even when you're just grazing the craft services table.

Cheers!
And please, Panasonic, just WRITE US A FIRMWARE UPGRADE that allows us to swap in larger drives.
_Michael
 
Has anybody managed to get a response from Panasonic about the firmware upgrade to allow for larger drives and cards to be offloaded ?
It would be a nice gesture from Panasonic, seeing that Red and others are always looking after their early adopters.
 
That's because RED probably doesn't have many consumers past the "early adopter" stage yet. Their focus is still on potential new/long term customers.

Truthfully, Panasonic has a large following all ready. Like tillhavis said, I can see them pushing new product before they upgrade the firmware for P2 storage devices.
 
I have to observe that this is a horse that won't run.

I understand your concern, but this appears to be a firmware issue at the very least, and hardware issue in all probability.

I do not think this is a priority for the company
 
Echoing the desire for a simple firmware upgrade. Although, I have been in this business for a few years and I have never seen a technology company trash the value of their products the way that Panasonic did with their Varicam product line this year. Cutting the price to silly levels without having a replacement product just insults the intelligence of people who chose to purchase your products. Panny has all but declared that they don't care about feedback because they did it repeatedly- DESPITE THE PUBLIC OUTCRY FROM USERS. They ran half price specials on their most expensive 50k cameras 1 year after release, without having a better product to offer. Its just not smart behavior if you care about your customers. I have almost $100k into my 2700 package and haven't had a reasonable way to offload footage at a reasonable price, EVER. I had to carry two PC laptops after I experienced the unacknowledged "glitch" offloading to macs. Perhaps we will see some effort to preserve the integrity of the investment we have all made in their technology at NAB this year, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Even SONY has acknowledged that users demand an upgrade path with their SRW-9000- which is modularly upgradeable by sensor, codec, storage, viewfinder, etc.

I prefer panasonic for my art, but they are making it close to impossible to prefer their products for my business. A firmware upgrade to the P2 Store is possible, a lack of release will further confirm that they are only concerned with vacuuming money at any cost to defray their on financial difficulties.

Red is releasing firmware that gives users wireless access to image and metadata. A panasonic engineer told me they had this technology two years ago at a Varicam local 600 training session at Abel Cine. They have not released it yet?!?!?!?! Why? Why are we begging for basic upgrades from a massive public tech company while the tiny little start-up company red runs circles around them? Its beginning to look like we have a david/goliath role reversal plot unfolding.

Panny touted the idea that they were using a standard PCMCIA slot for their media, but then pretended devices that use that slot could only be made at astromical cost. The worst part of panasonic video is managing your footage after the shoot. It is what kept me from getting many varicam jobs, the inability to deliver footage with the convenience of tape. Panny decided to maintain the difficulty by crippling options for hard drive interfaces and keeping them prohibitively expensive.

Waiting (only a little bit longer) for good news....
 
Ethan,

Given the investment you have in P2, it seems like the HPG20 would solve your workflow issue and add new features at a, relative to your investment, modest price. Downloads to external drives, no CPU required. After the burn, hand the HDD to the editor. It is a card reader on super steroids. It might not be what you want to hear, investing in another box, but it would reduce your hassle factor.

I can't address your other concerns about wireless.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=hpg-20&N=0&InitialSearch=yes

Best Regards,
Grant
 
ethansigmanproductions said:
Echoing the desire for a simple firmware upgrade. Although, I have been in this business for a few years and I have never seen a technology company trash the value of their products the way that Panasonic did with their Varicam product line this year. Cutting the price to silly levels without having a replacement product just insults the intelligence of people who chose to purchase your products. Panny has all but declared that they don't care about feedback because they did it repeatedly- DESPITE THE PUBLIC OUTCRY FROM USERS. They ran half price specials on their most expensive 50k cameras 1 year after release, without having a better product to offer. Its just not smart behavior if you care about your customers. I have almost $100k into my 2700 package and haven't had a reasonable way to offload footage at a reasonable price, EVER. I had to carry two PC laptops after I experienced the unacknowledged "glitch" offloading to macs. Perhaps we will see some effort to preserve the integrity of the investment we have all made in their technology at NAB this year, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Even SONY has acknowledged that users demand an upgrade path with their SRW-9000- which is modularly upgradeable by sensor, codec, storage, viewfinder, etc.

I prefer panasonic for my art, but they are making it close to impossible to prefer their products for my business. A firmware upgrade to the P2 Store is possible, a lack of release will further confirm that they are only concerned with vacuuming money at any cost to defray their on financial difficulties.

Red is releasing firmware that gives users wireless access to image and metadata. A panasonic engineer told me they had this technology two years ago at a Varicam local 600 training session at Abel Cine. They have not released it yet?!?!?!?! Why? Why are we begging for basic upgrades from a massive public tech company while the tiny little start-up company red runs circles around them? Its beginning to look like we have a david/goliath role reversal plot unfolding.

Panny touted the idea that they were using a standard PCMCIA slot for their media, but then pretended devices that use that slot could only be made at astromical cost. The worst part of panasonic video is managing your footage after the shoot. It is what kept me from getting many varicam jobs, the inability to deliver footage with the convenience of tape. Panny decided to maintain the difficulty by crippling options for hard drive interfaces and keeping them prohibitively expensive.

Waiting (only a little bit longer) for good news....
Click to expand...


I disagree with your posting, especially the competitive products you list. The P2 Store was a great product for its day, but, it just was not manufactured for upgrade. It was manufactured to support a 60GB hard drive. This product came out 5 years ago at around $2k to address a specific problem – making it easy to offload 15 4GB P2 cards to a safe storage device. Many customers still use it, but, it is important to note we have since introduced many new workflow products. Not everything is upgradeable via firmware. For example, our family bought a Dell PC 4 years ago online for about $1k. While it still works and is useful, though it is much slower and underperforms the laptop we bought last year for ½ the cost. I think we all get it that IT products quickly develop and upgrades are not always practicable or possible.

However, it is important to note that Panasonic has offered free firmware upgrades with new features for many years now on its cameras and recorders. An example of this includes the new QuickTime to AVC-Intra encoder plug-in for Apple Compressor. It writes a FCP time-line to either an AVC-Intra QuickTime or as an AVC-Intra P2 file. This should make P2 workflow easier for FCP users, as they'll now be able to write back to P2 with AVC-Intra files and share this content with others (including new metadata).

I’m confused by your comments, “I had to carry two PC laptops after I experienced the unacknowledged "glitch" offloading to macs…” and “Panny decided to maintain the difficulty by crippling options for hard drive interfaces and keeping them prohibitively expensive.” Panasonic has workflow tools which work with Macs and PCs. Panasonic invented solid-state, and obviously others have followed. You know the common theme with solid-state comcorders? None of them have built-in tape drives (*except for the HVX200 with a DV slot). Therefore, solid-state workflows, like P2 require workflow tools. If you need to get video content on tape, guess what – we still make VTR’S, too. And we make P2 products with video I/O’s, such as the P2 Mobile and P2 Portable, so if you need a video tape, you can play the content baseband and record it on one for our vvtr’s.

This thread is unfortunately pounding on a small product that’s 5 years, but we also have invented other workflow tools besides the P2 Store. For example, last year we began shipping the AJ-HRW10 Rapid Writer, which allows for automated offload to two internal disk drives (RAID or JBOD). http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=356994&catGroupId=34402&surfModel=AJ-HRW10

Besides the above, Panasonic introduced other P2 workflow products at NAB, including the
AG-MSU10 P2 Media Storage Unit. This allows for easy, reliable back-up of P2 Content to an internal tray with an SSD, which includes USB and e-Sata.
http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?storeId=11301&catalogId=13251&itemId=406586&modelNo=Content04082010125924351&surfModel=Content04082010125924351

We also just introduced the new AJ-PCD2 Single-Slot P2 Drive. This is USB enabled for data and bus power (two cables). The cool thing is that you can easily use this in the field with MAC’s or PC’s without OS compatibility issues.
http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?storeId=11301&catalogId=13251&itemId=406587&modelNo=Content04082010010326062&surfModel=Content04082010010326062


Where I really disagree with you is your competitive analogies. Your SRW-9000 analogy is not applicable. You know why? Because this is a $100k+ tape-based camcorder introduced in 2009. I can’t speak for them, but, I assume if you introduce a $100k+ tape camera in 2009, you probably need to sell it with an upgrade.

Do you still believe in Santa Clause? The reason I ask is because you believe in the fallacy of a “tiny little start-up company red…” Generally speaking, tiny start-up companies are run by entrepreneurs (sometimes from their garages on 2nd mortgages, borrowing money from family, etc). Usually companies owned by a billionaire cannot be considered a “tiny little start-up.”

Panasonic has a large line-up of many workflow products. Panasonic continually offers free firmware upgrade, where it is possible to upgrade a product. Panasonic offers occasional firmware upgrades to fix problems, but, generally speaking, when Panasonic ships a camera or recorder or workflow tool, it works from Day 1 and doesn’t take dozens of firmware upgrades to make it reliable.
 
Just a thought, apart for the obvious need to make the maximum profit
why couldn't panasonic offer these features on the AG-HMR10, charge a little more
and sell a lot more units. It seems that the larger companies are stuck in rigid
product segmentation and don't realize that with Red and Alexia the game has changed.
It makes sense to have just one device for sdi recording and playback of AVC Intra and DVCProHD to flash cards or SSD.
plus an excellent backup system for P2 cards to a removable solid state drive.
I am aware that Panasonic offer the AG-HPG20 but like so many devices it is too
rigidly segmented and does not offer hdmi output for viewing on a monitor, esata, or recording to removable
sd cards or ssd.
Click to expand...

I agree 100% sounds like a great idea. Offer customers a rebate/trade in on old P2 stores and these units would fly out the door.
After purchasing the P2 store I would be reluctant to purchase the AG-MSU-10 because of its lack of SDI/HDMI and features the AG-HMR10 offers.
In the current economic climate I really need the best value for money and versatility possible. I would however be willing to consider
a unit that combined these features at a somewhat higher price than the AG-MSU-10
 
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thank you till and ray. you guys get it, maybe all three of us can hammer it home. Steve, the msu10 is a somewhat reasonable answer. but drives are cheap enough that there should be more options between 60gigs and 10,000 dollars. i don't think it is such a leap to understand that computers are less than ideal in the field in many cases. If the 60g device was made for 4 gig cards, it would stand to reason that when card size had grown 16X, people might be looking for a device to offload to that is portable and reasonably priced. msu-10 appears to be close that but still lacks sdi-hdmi. ki pro and nano-flash both have these features, and were out a year ago in response to market demand along the lines i am describing. Panasonic has so much raid technology built into p2, why is there no raid support built into a device like the msu-10? convergent released firmware that allows raided hd-sdi recording to cf cards on a tiny box that has hdmi playback capabilities and triggers from the camera rec button. why hasn't panasonic figured out that any smart shooter unloads raided p2 content to another raided solution. Sonnet f2 can bus power a raid drive from firewire power and we don't get bus power out of any usb ports on panny products that i know of. where do you guys think this stuff goes in the field? why not a raid box with 2 sata ssds that records to separate disks or plays out of them, has hd-sdi, hdmi playout, voice memo, and esata offload and runs on anton bauer mount power or 4 pin xlr. sonnet, aja, and convergent-design have started breaking down the segmentation as well. These are basic features that we should not be begging for.
Any which way you slice it, red caught all the big guys sleeping. Don't own it, don't like it, don't need it, but i can see why i lose business to those guys. They are a new company, compared to panasonic, they haven't hit puberty. Panasonic makes computers and Red has wireless meta data before panny? im sorry, feels like david eating goliaths lunch to me. i don't like it, im trying to carry the torch for panasonic but red, sony, aaton, arri, and canon seem more responsive to what people ask for. Look at the financial incentives red offers to people who bought the first digital film red when they want to upgrade and look at the financial treatment we get for investing in panasonic- half price a year later and nothing better to trade up to (in my case). Early red cameras have held their value for that reason. These are are the facts, they are undisputed. Help me help you.
 
I was one of the first early adoptors of the P2 System here in the UK and tried to engage Panasonic in updating the P2 Store Capacity. Didn't even get an acknowledgement of the email. So I guess it'll never happen. Shame really as the workflow was bombproof.

Dropped a lot of cash on 3x P2 Stores, guess what though, I've sold off all the P2 Gear and have jumped ship.

In your face Panasonic.........
 
If Panasonic relaxes their market segmentation while integrating all their accessories, I believe they will be on to a winner. Modular systems are the way of the future. Just look at the RED Epic and Scarlet Set-Up.
All Panasonic cameras should use the same power supply, chargers, battery's, connectors, Viewfinder Systems etc... Panasonic can still have their different models P2, P2+AVC-Intra recording, eventually 2/4K + P2+AVC-Intra recording etc but all their accessories including handheld recorders eg... AG-MSU-10AG, decks, monitors, should be interchangeable and be able to record / handle all their formats in the one device.

The Broadcast/ Digital Cinema Market has changed; if a company offers more features and better quality than their competitors chances are they will stay in business and grow.

For me the obvious place to start is a combination device based on the AG-HMR10 and containing those features available on the AG-MSU-10 such as P2 Offload and removable SSD, USB and esata card/offload to a computer.
If Panasonic can offer their customers more features in a modular system then upgrading to higher Spec Cameras becomes more attractive. It also means they become more attractive than their immediate competitors such as Sony.
Click to expand...

No arguments here ! One extra thing, Panasonic should also be adopters and innovators, like they were with the HVX. Instead of settling for UBS 2 why not offer USB 3 or Light Peak, Light Peak is going to become the transfer standard for the future I have no doubt about it. With Intel, Apple and Sony behind it why not lead the way.
In the mean time USB 3 is backward compatible and would have no risk involved in implementing it today.
 
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