Where to buy P2 at bargain?

I

Icarus2005

Well-known member
Anyone know where P2 cards can be bought at bargain prices, even for 2 or 4 gig?

I should be getting my HVX next month if delivery is as scheduled, but the 4 grand figure of 8gig cards is scaring me, and the firestore won't be out.

so what should I do? I need to shoot HD.

to me it seems more resonable to by a $3,000 high end 120gig laptop and USB right into it from the camera.

I mean really, how can they charge 2 grand for an 8 gig card when you can buy an awsome 100gig laptop for that price?

And look at the 60gig P2 store unit for another 2 grand and it won't even store much. Again, makes more sense to buy a 100 gig laptop and use it as your store.

Isn't that like saying I'll sell you this one car tire for the same price as buying a whole Ferarri?


am I missing something in my logic?

Hey Jan, can you answer this for me? Please?
 
You cannot USB straight into a laptop from the camera. You can firewire into it, but not USB into it. The streaming video signal is carried via firewire, not USB.

You can hook the camera up to a laptop via USB and use that to have the camera show up as an external hard disk, for purposes of copying P2 card contents onto the laptop. But you cannot stream directly to it.

Hey, if you can live with the restriction of having the cable there, the laptop solution is, frankly, one of the best. Assuming we get Serious Magic HD Rack soon, that would be a fantastic solution and a great workflow. I recorded 80% of a DVX feature using DV Rack and it was no hassle at all, so I am very anxiously awaiting any news from SM about getting HD Rack operational.
 
So there's no quality loss going through firewire?

Stupid question: is there anywhere I can get a 50 or 100 foot firewires?

From my shooting experience, it seems the only real hassle would be during things like running steadicam shots.
 
Barry_Green said:
You cannot USB straight into a laptop from the camera. You can firewire into it, but not USB into it. The streaming video signal is carried via firewire, not USB.
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Knowing that, don't discount USB *hard drives*. If you have a laptop to use, you can capture to the laptop via the camera's firewire port, but capture that data, in realtime, to an external USB hard drive via the laptop. The laptop basically acts as the processor between the camera and hard drive, which means you can use any kind of storage mechanism connected to the laptop that you like. You could probably even record straight to a USB 2.0 key device if you wanted... but it would obviously fill up very quickly.

Also, for the original poster, P2 prices have already begun to drop. The street price for the 8GB P2 cards was under $1,900 a couple of months ago, and with SD prices continuing to fall, they could significantly less by the time the camera ships. 4GB cards should prove to be less than half the cost of the 8GB cards, which means that as long as you don't mind swapping them out, you can get a good amount of storage for a reasonable price out the gate. Of course being tethered to a laptop has its limitations, but if you're on a budget, like Barry said, that is one of the best solutions that exists.
 
Icarus2005 said:
So there's no quality loss going through firewire?
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That is correct.

Stupid question: is there anywhere I can get a 50 or 100 foot firewires?
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Yes, but I don't know whether they'll work or not. I've used a 30' with great success, but that was for DV25. I don't know if long length + 100-megabit data streams will both play nicely together. Remember that the IEEE spec for firewire limits cable length to 14.5 feet total, so any longer than that is already outside the spec. Perhaps with some hardware repeaters you could easily attain 100', but until we get the camera and try it, I don't know that I would make any concrete plans based on anything longer than IEEE-spec 14.5 feet.

From my shooting experience, it seems the only real hassle would be during things like running steadicam shots.
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That was pretty much our experience as well. We always had a monitor, and we always had an audio cable running to the mixer, so the firewire was just one more cable, no hassle at all. The laptop stayed on the mobile cart next to the monitor the whole time. It was an incredibly efficient workflow.
 
I guess what I really want to know is where can I find the Taiwan and Chinese 4gig P2 cards for 1/2 the cost?

anyone have a link?
 
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