Why can't SD cards replace p2?

B

Bucknfl

Well-known member
Why can't SD cards replace p2? I've read where sd cards are not as fast as p2 cards but weren't the early p2 cards simply 4 sd cards with a microprocessor? What if panasonic designed a camera that had the microprocessor in the camera instead of the P2 card and you just swapped out sd cards?

What if you had a p2 card that when full, you opened a latch on the card and replaced the sd cards? I love the sd card workflow on the 150. Why not make a 2/3 chip sd card camera?
 
A P2 card is 4 SD cards with an internal raid controller. That is the only way to handle the bandwidth of DVCProHD and now AVC-Intra. There area a whole host of other things going on in there as well, but I'm not an engineer. I read somewhere else where Jan specifically addressed your point and said having the raid controler in the camera isn't really possible. And a standalone SDHC card can't handle the date rate for DVCProHD and AVC-Intra

The new SDXC cards may go a ways towards that in the future, as in theory the maximum bitrate is much higher than the 100Mb/s of AVC-Intra 100 and DVCProHD. But that would be years down the road, and years more until costs come down enough to make it worth it. Right now though, P2 is simply the fastest thing out there
 
Panasonic has their money in the P2 card format.
They want the high end to be P2 workflow as they also have other product built around that line. Panasonic could make a SD card camera, and they have with the HMC150, but for high end,
P2 is more expensive, faster, and has more profit for panasonic to retain that as their high end line.

It's like asking why chevy has a V8 in the corvette, why not a supercharged 4 cylinder
It could be done, but it does not make much sense to do it.

If you want the best Panasonic has to offer, you will be working in P2, if you want entry line, then yeah, they will make a "me-too" sd card camera.
 
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i would love to see hmc150 get a firmware update with athe bitrate cranked up to max optimum transfer rate
 
I'd think that neither would really stand up to anything remotely close to abuse. I think the SD cards do and have held up to anything that's been thrown at them... and all for a fraction of the price. For one 16 gig P2 card, I could buy 60x8 gig cards.. and each one would give me the same run time as the one 16 gig card in 720 and more than triple it in 1080.


That being said.. maybe the connections and port would hold up better for repeated uses over a long period of time... but when they are 1/60th of the price I am glad that I'm passing them up these days.
 
Having shot with p2 cards for 3 years before the 150, I'd hardly say that shooting with the 150 is in anyway slumming it. If P2 is the best... then I'm happy to be in the under-appreciated slums of SD media... and conveniently the world is going the way of the open source.. and less in terms of proprietary media.



here's an analogy that is quite fitting. I bought a Microboards printfactory mass CD/DVD printer.. the first generation. Was a great printer because it used HP off the shelf ink that I could buy anywhere. Well they figured that they were loosing tons of money by not having a proprietary microboards ink so on the 2nd generation they made one using microboards ink... It was a dismal failure in sales and customer satisfaction.. so much so that the older first version is still saught after, and in a lot of ways is worth more even though it has less features... . The ink was twice as much and terrible in comparission...


So sometimes it's better to be happy and underappreciated, than getting the fluff and pomp and marketing all the same....
 
SDHC cards are too low bitrate (48Mbps max) for replacing P2 cards. Anyone who has set up a hard disk raid system will understand why it is not practical to have a raid system built into the camera. The P2 system is much neater and foolproof.

SDXC cards on the other hand, these would make an excellent replacement to P2. If USB 3 was available as well the transfer to computer would also be greatly speeded up.

I don't buy the argument about the P2 cards being more robust. It's a case of the larger they are the harder they fall.
 
there was something floating around aboutthose SDXC cards... Might be interesting development. What are the dimensions on those cards or are they still in development and or vaporware?


One thing for sure is that SDHC and SD cards have proven themselves to be so reliable and dependable.. atleast to me. I've been using them for 3 years now and compact Flash for 5 years. One of them even went through the washer and it still worked... just like Jan mentioned with the P2.


Either way... it's good to have options and I can make more money with the 150 than I could with the 170 or 200.. simply due to being able to run and gun without an assistant.. and also without having to rent P2 cards...
 
P2 cards are designed to be the most reliable, indestructible, high-performance memory recording media that Panasonic could make.

SD cards are designed to be cheap.

According to Panasonic, P2 cards are made of multiple core memory cards, the premium highest-grade memory in the world, stuff you cannot buy because it's not even sold. Then that's combined with a die-cast chassis, a raid controller, a microprocessor and firmware. P2 cards are their own little computers. When you write data to a P2 card, it'll write it into the memory slot and then read it back out, compare it and verify it and make sure that the data got written properly. And if it didn't, the P2 card will try again and again up to six times, before marking that sector bad and moving on to the next sector.

P2 cards are designed to hold up to the worst that can be thrown at them. They're designed to be the ultimately most reliable media possible. And they're way overengineered for the tasks asked of them; they currently record at a maximum of 100 megabits but are capable of data transfer at 800 megabits per second.

A P2 card is engineered to be a solid and reliable editing medium. You can get six streams of HD video off a P2 card simultaneously. You can't do that with hard disks, not even off a SATA RAID! Because there's no moving parts (and hence no "head seek time") the P2 card can sustain six streams (or, with the new "A" series, up to 8 streams!) of HD video in real time. Probably even more, if some of those streams are pN mode.

The speed advantage also translates into quick offloading; an "A" series card is capable of sustained transfer at over 6GB/minute; a 64GB card could be fully offloaded in just over 10 minutes.

SD cards (well, we should just go with SDHC cards) are also a solid-state recording media, but they're not engineered anywhere near to the standards of a P2 card. They're small and cheap. And if all you need is what they offer, they offer an unbeatable price-to-performance ratio. But they're not the same.

Panasonic is claiming that they've sold over 100,000 P2 cameras worldwide. They'll probably sell 100,000 SDHC cameras this year. If you include the consumer lineup, they might sell a million SDHC cameras this year. SDHC is for the mass market and I'd say most of the users of this board would be plenty satisfied with the SDHC option. The 150 produces beautiful gorgeous footage that rivals what its brother the 170 does on P2. If all you need is 60i, the HMC70 makes some fantastic-looking 1080/60i footage. But for those who need what P2 does, it's a complete no-brainer and P2 gets the win for those customers. The BBC, the australian ABC, NBC, Telemundo, CNBC, Fox, the Weather Channel, Raycom, many american ABC stations... heck, in America alone there are 330+ TV stations that have chosen P2, taking about 75% of the market. 85% of the European broadcast market has chosen P2. These are picky, picky customers with the highest standards. They are who P2 was designed for -- broadcasters and top-end production facilities. And none of them, as far as I know, has settled for straight SDHC recording.

Stringers, freelancers, documentarians, independents, small production companies, wedding/event shooters, those are the folks who SDHC recording is aimed at.

P2 is a Brinks armored car. SDHC is a Hyundai. Either one could be used to drive across country, but obviously SDHC is the more cost-effective way to do that. And either one could be used to transport $10 million in diamonds, but obviously the Brinks truck is the safer vehicle for that task. They're different products engineered for different markets.
 
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Barry.... always the voice of reason and sense. I can't say anything bad about P2.. it was rock-solid for years and years.. and I was like you, shooting tons of stuff with the 4 gig cards..

It just came down to the costs I was incurring through renting and shooting. Having 5 P2 cameras rolling on a 2 hour concert is so much wrangling and expense.. that it just wasn't prudent anymore... and I've been so happy with the 150... largely in part due to your review.


I also know that this economy makes us vent. I've lost more sure thing long-standing clients these past 5 months that it is enough to make me cry and scream. Clients that I've been working with since 1993 and now can't afford my services. Just sucks that this happens when we are in our major earning years. Being 37 and doing this for 18 years and having to take a few steps back not from my own doing is just SUCKY.
 
Hi Barry,

It's worth noting that SDXC also has a data rate of 800Mbps.

SDHC cards have a life typically of 1000,000 write cycles

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4258

According to Jan, P2 life = 100,000 write cycles

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=146421&highlight=64gb&page=9

Obviously, either would be more than enough for our application, but it doesn't seem to show P2 to be more reliable.

Are there any statistics to backup your assertion that P2 memory is more reliable than good quality SDHC cards. I'm not saying you're wrong, but some of the things you said sounded like marketing speak TBH "premium highest-grade memory in the world, stuff you cannot buy because it's not even sold" etc.

I'm sure that P2 cards are much better in performance than current SDHC cards, but I have not seen any evidence that SD cards are prone to failure when used for video recording.

The OP was asking why there are no high end SD card based cameras, I think the Red has CF cards which is the exception. I think the answer is performance, so a SDXC card would provide an answer to that problem and be a realistic alternative to P2 etc.

Of course, the cost of P2 cards is less of an issue when you are paying £X0000 for a high end broadcast camera.

One last thing, you mentioned that various broadcasters do not use SDHC, I would expect that this would be due to:

1. Limited choice of cameras in this format
2. The cameras that do exist are very new
3. They want to have a consistent system for all/most of their cameras
4. They want an Intra Frame based codec
5. Inertia

This does not in any way prove that SDHC cards are unreliable etc.

Just my 2p.

Regards

Stuart
 
I recently wrapped a series of shoots with 3 hmc 150 cameras shooting interviews and corporate meetings using over 80 sdhc 8gig cards at $12 each. We save alot of money on media and crew since their were no digital asisstants. In the end we'll get the same quality if it had been done with a 170 or a 200a.

Now if Panasonic would make that 2/3 HMC 1500 .....
 
Panasonic goes out of the way to get the Creme` de la Creme` of SD memory.

A standard SD card can ( and has) lost footage/photos on me.

Now if they would use Compact Flash.... now were talking.....
 
studio1972 said:
The OP was asking why there are no high end SD card based cameras, I think the Red has CF cards which is the exception.
Click to expand...

Aside from the limited recording options with 8 gig cards, the only cards that work uniformly across all data rates and formats with RED are cards manufactured for them, and you cannot buy them anywhere else. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I think it comes down to either pony up and pay the price for media you know has a very very very low chance of failing on you, or spend a lot less and live with a little more risk.

I don't understand this mentality of "I cannot afford the media so make cameras that record to something I can afford!" 5 years ago recording full raster 1080p onto SDHC cards was a dream and now Panasonic has brought that to us with professional controls for under $3,500. WHY can't people just be happy and make movies/docs/wedding vids/tape their kids in the backyard? I think if the collective amount of time spent complaining about P2 prices/capacity and why SDHC is "just as good" was spent on making films, we would have some pretty outstanding media arond here...

My $0.02 and not directed at anyone in this thread specifically.
 
I'm curious, and I don't mean this as a slight or anything against anyone, but the folks saying that SDHC should replace P2... have any of you ever actually worked in broadcast television?

Just seeing some of the miserable conditions the photogs at work have to go out in and situations they have to deal with, I would trust a P2 card for ENG type work way before an SDHC (or SDXC) card. As Barry pointed out, they're designed for two different markets. The P2 market is for the folks for whom the HPX500 is a cheap camera. And P2 cards are built like a tank. It just so happened that it trickled down to the $5k camera range.

It truly is the equivalent of asking "Why shoot news/sports on BetaSP when you can shoot miniDV? The picture is just as good." Because I wouldn't trust a miniDV tape to take the abuse a BetaSP tape can. SDHC is the new miniDV. The cameras using it take great footage... but I wouldn't trust it the way I could trust a P2 card. A SDHC card is going to be damaged and physically break well before a P2 card will.
 
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