XDCAM vs. P2

S

Steve55

Active member
I'm compiling data for an article entitled "XDCAM vs. P2" for a magazine.

I am carrying out a survey for a magazine feature and would like unbiased opinions from both camps of Sony's XDCAM disc based system and Panasonic's P2 card based system.

So if there are any P2 users here who are familiar (even vaguely) with Sony's XDCAM disc based system, how about pointing out the things that are better about P2 over XDCAM.

I'm gathering information from various places to put together a head-to-head contest between the two recording systems and as I need it to be accurate I'm getting information from 4 web sites in total.

Thanks guys and girls.
 
I'm working on a returning series that will now be shot entirely on XDCam starting June 5th.

My company makes extensive use of the HVX200, so I'd be willing to add some observations on one system versus another by mid-June if that isn't already too late.

e
 
Stefan Janssen (memberID: Eleventy) went through this whole issue when his company was deciding between XDCAM or P2. Send a PM or write to him at his website at www.eleventy.org and he should be able to give you some good feedback.
 
Overland,

I'd be very interested in hearing what you learn also. I've now got a pair of HVXs, but for some of our work we're looking for a way to get the narrow depth of field look without the light loss of a 35mm adaptor, and are considering the XDcams. The biggest problem seems to be workflow to get HVX or better quality out of this camera -- looks like one either needs to invest in a $15k Sony deck (which converts to Firewire) or capture somehow via SDI. The choices aren't clear...

Thanks,

Stephen
 
dvxStephen said:
Overland,

I'd be very interested in hearing what you learn also. I've now got a pair of HVXs, but for some of our work we're looking for a way to get the narrow depth of field look without the light loss of a 35mm adaptor, and are considering the XDcams.
Thanks,
Click to expand...

I know this may sound incredibly dumb but have you guys tried simply zooming the lense all the way in a throwing on an ND filter (probably won't want the ND though if you need more light). Even though I'm more of a deep focus guy, I was playing with focus pulling the other day (basically training my eye to get the focus as sharp as possible) and was impressed with the shallow DOF that was possible.
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Other then the Ford/Chevy debate, there IS another often overlooked factor.
Recording Media!
With all the new "disk" formats emerging...
if Sony moves to higher storage media, you are stuck with the older media "deck". This will not only plumit the value of your entire camera but make recording media harder and harder to find.

With P2, if Panasonic or another vendor makes higher storage cards, it's only a plus!

Then there's the pro's and cons of the cameras. I'll leave that to the rest of you. Except to say I love my Swiss Army tool. :)
 
TedRR said:
With P2, if Panasonic or another vendor makes higher storage cards, it's only a plus!
Click to expand...

Interesting and I'm not into starting a debate here, But! P2 is not new, it's been around for a while now. 3 years ago at NAB panasonic announced that each year P2 cards would double in capacity and half in price. Back then they had a 4 GB P2 card that cost £500. Which is exactly where they are today, 3 years later. Evan Panasonic admit (internally) that they might never reach 32GB, not even 10 years from now.

Of course there will always be arguments from every angle. Nothing is future proof, but P2 does look a little shaky IMO.
 
DavidBeier said:
I know this may sound incredibly dumb but have you guys tried simply zooming the lense all the way in a throwing on an ND filter (probably won't want the ND though if you need more light).
Click to expand...
Not that simple always, since zooming in will give a differential focus effect as you say, but will mean that only a small amount (in terms of angle of view) of the background may be seen - and that assumes you can get far enough back from your subject to fill the frame whilst zoomed in. Filming a person in a room, being wide enough to see a significant part of the room, AND being able to achieve differential focus will inevitably mean larger format sensors will always enjoy an advantage over small format as far as differential focus is concerned.

As regards the main topic, P2 may be seen as more elegant than XDCAM and doesn't require a dedicated deck. But for many users, the biggest problem with P2 is that a cameraman can't just give away his rushes and forget about them in the same way as he can with a tape or disc.

That's why many people are watching so closely to see how the GV Infinity shapes up. In theory at least it gives the advantages of solid state whilst not giving up the benefits of "give away" media.
 
Steve55 said:
3 years ago at NAB panasonic announced that each year P2 cards would double in capacity and half in price. Back then they had a 4 GB P2 card that cost £500. Which is exactly where they are today, 3 years later.
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Not sure where you're getting your facts. P2 was launched with a 2GB card. Three years ago the 4GB card didn't exist at all, and certainly didn't cost £500!

The first P2 product was the SPX800, and that was introduced at NAB 2004. Not three years ago, two years ago.

The 4GB card was introduced at around $2000. As of last November it was $900. Last December it dropped to $650. Last month it dropped to $550. So it's 1/4 the price it was two years ago -- sounds about right on schedule.

The 8GB card was announced at $2750. As of last November it was $2200. As of a couple of months ago it dropped $1400. So it's half the price it was announced at, in less than a year. Sounds about right on schedule.

16GBs should be introduced at the end of this year.

As for "never reaching 32gb", I don't know why you're saying such things, but it's just preposterous. Samsung's already announced a NAND breakthrough that has them predicting they'll have 32GB SD cards on the market by the end of this year. That could put the 128GB card here about three years ahead of schedule.
 
Barry_Green said:
Samsung's already announced a NAND breakthrough that has them predicting they'll have 32GB SD cards on the market by the end of this year.
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Which rather gets me wondering why then bother with P2 in the future? Why not just use SD cards in a future camera (or CF), especially if combined with a next generation codec such as JPEG2000 or I-frame only AVC, as intended for use in the forthcoming 2/3" P2 HD camera?
 
Because compactflash is slow. The RAID is what gives P2 its flexibility. It's not just about the capture rate, it's about the offload/transfer rate too.

AVC-Intra will double the recording times, which helps obviously. I'm hoping Panasonic would also include the option of AVC-HD, which could extend recording times by five times as much. Granted you'd be subject to long-GOP issues, but with double the efficiency of MPEG-2, it should exhibit robustness on par with XDCAM-HD.

They will be making AVC-HD cameras that record straight to an SD card, where the speed isn't such an issue. A pipe dream would be an HVX300 that includes AVC-HD recording to the SD card and to the P2 card, that would rock.
 
Steve55 said:
Interesting and I'm not into starting a debate here, But! P2 is not new, it's been around for a while now. 3 years ago at NAB panasonic announced that each year P2 cards would double in capacity and half in price. Back then they had a 4 GB P2 card that cost £500. Which is exactly where they are today, 3 years later. Evan Panasonic admit (internally) that they might never reach 32GB, not even 10 years from now.

Of course there will always be arguments from every angle. Nothing is future proof, but P2 does look a little shaky IMO.
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I have a copy of TV Technology from September 17, 2003, starting on page 12.

Last April's NAB saw Panasonic introduce a professional DVCPRO 25/50 cancorder concept so secret that it wasn't mentioned publicly until the day before the exhibition began. What made the camcorder so revolutionary was its recording media: solid state memory. The credit card sized PCMCIA memory cards package four consumer SD memory chips ganged in an array. Such a card utilizing the soon to be introduced 1 GB SD chips will hold nearly 20 minutes of DVCPRO video material. ...
Click to expand...


In reading the article, no price was given for the 4 GB card and the author didn't know what the price would be. Today, we know the price was very high when the 4GB came out, but over time it dropped in price from around $2,000 (back then) to under $600 (today).

In under 3 years, the 8GB card came out and also started droppeing in price. The 4GB chips required for the 16GB card are being made, so I can safely say that BEFORE NAB 2007, users will be working with the 16GB P2 cards. About what we would expect from Moore's Law, the size doubles every 1.5 to 2 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_Law


There is a limit to Moore's Law, but not until around 2018:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5112061.html


Even Dr. Moore thinks we have around 10 to 20 years before we reach a limit and that statement was made in early 2005.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4446285.stm

To suggest that we might never reach 32GB (4 x 8GB) does NOT fit the facts. Even if we assume worst case conditions, we will see 32GB P2 cards before NAB 2009.

Maybe if this year was 2016, you might have a point, BUT we have 10 years to go before we reach that date. What proof do you have that it's unlikely to happen?



Bob Diaz
 
T-Minus four days til I have my hands on the XDCam packages for the Charleston series. I'll get you whatever information I can.

e
 
Barry_Green said:
Because compactflash is slow. The RAID is what gives P2 its flexibility. It's not just about the capture rate, it's about the offload/transfer rate too.
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All true in principle, but....... In practice, my experiences with P2 were that DV25 material would download in about 4-5x real time to the edit laptop, slower than I expected, and I believe the bottleneck was within the computer - the possible speed of P2 wasn't capable of being exploited. I believe these figures are similar to those experienced by many others. (Anyone experienced anything widely different?)

Which begs the question of why pay the "P2 premium" over CF if the hardware it will be interfaced to is incapable of exploiting the potential speed you are paying so much for?

If we accept that an 8GB P2 card will record 8 minutes of DVCProHD, then a 4GB SD or CF card will also record 8 minutes of AVC I frame 50 Mb video (or JPEG2000). Any guesses as to relative cost of the two cards!? I'd expect that current actual download speeds would be comparable for each (limited by computer/hard drive etc before media) anyway. And the cost differential between the two to be so large that so many more CF cards could be bought for the same money that the imperative to download in a hurry is greatly reduced anyway!

For such as news etc use, CF speeds are well more than fast enough to allow for editing without download - plug card into slot and edit straightaway, and a multi reader will allow for more than one card to be accessed by the NLE at a time.

I won't dispute that P2 may well remain more suitable for some high end users. For most I'd maintain the advantages of CF/SD far outweigh the disadvantages. I can't help feeling that P2 was a solution engineered to overcome speed problems that existed 4-5 years ago during it's development. Problems that don't now exist with the rapid advances in memory technology, with single SD cards now outperforming early P2 cards.
 
I said it on another forum but this is a CODEC, not a media debate. IMHO if the XDCAM or even HVX recorded DVCproHD to BR disc, P2 would be in trouble. I dont like the expensive and destructive nature of P2 but I dont like acquiring in MPEG2. Right now there are techinical issues with recording DVCproHD straight to BR but if they could figure that out, it would be a homerun. I used to be very iffy about BR discs for acquistion but after messing with them, they are very robust and IMHO are viable for archiving.

I suspect that by the end of the year or at least by the middle of next year, most HVX users will be archiving their P2 cards onto burnable BR discs... ironic huh? Too bad we can just SHOOT to thos discs...




ash =o)
 
AshG said:
I said it on another forum but this is a CODEC, not a media debate.
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Not sure I agree, and for the last year or so P2 and XDCAM have mainly meant SD at 25 and 50 Mbs. Same codec in the first instance, and very comparable in the second - DVCPro50 v IMX. Much of the world may not go HD for news for another generation of technology, so for most people P2 v XDCAM is firmly a media debate.

I only wonder why the debate is only P2 v XDCAM. With the GV Infinity announced, the above comments about Compact Flash are far from academic.
 
Barry_Green said:
[...] As for "never reaching 32gb", I don't know why you're saying such things, but it's just preposterous. Samsung's already announced a NAND breakthrough that has them predicting they'll have 32GB SD cards on the market by the end of this year. That could put the 128GB card here about three years ahead of schedule. [...]
Click to expand...
Right on the mark! Here's one of Panasonic's roadmap for SD cards: http://panasonic.com.au/content/library/files/F001562.pdf and P2 cards, of course, trail right behind this trend because each P2 cards are made of 4 high-performance SD cards, (the best ones, so yields are lower and cost higher), but there is no reason not to believe this roadmap is credible in terms of what to expect, things are pretty much on schedule as Barry suggests, yes, we'll hit a brick wall at some point in terms of memory chip density, but credible sources say we've got a few more generations to go. The memory keeps getting denser and you only need a CardBus slot to read the thing, cool as far as I'm concerned.
 
Let me put it this way harddrive... if you could by an HVX with either a blueray OR P2 option, I bet BR outsells the P2 10 to 1.



ash =o)
 
Steve55 said:
Of course there will always be arguments from every angle. Nothing is future proof, but P2 does look a little shaky IMO.
Click to expand...

Steve, If you are writing a magazine feature and you go into it with this bias, do you really believe you will be able to offer an article that will be informative about both systems? Your bias, shown above might show through, not good. There are pluses on both camps, and negatives, I happen to feel that the pluses in P2 weigh out over XDCAM as once the image is data the customer's cost of doing business is now turned over to an industry that has repeatedly shown their ability to make technological advances at a pace that far exceed the speed in the video industry and the costs go down.

As an example when we first announced the HVX200 the Lacie Terabyte drive was $995, today it is $750 and now they have a 2T drive at $1695. The 4 GB P2 card was $1700 ,today it is $550, DLT tapes that hold 300GB are $129, that equates to 300 minutes of DVCPRO HD, I frame only, and can be searched and loaded up by the MXF, see the Quantum 600 drive. If we take this last example and do the math the archive comes in at about 43 cents a minute for the archive and while that is cheap in comparison to other media, next year the price will be even less. Moore's Law influences the data side of the universe and that is just about the slickest part of this.


Best,

Jan
 
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