> then there was more demand and Fuji started to supply

Oh isn't it curious that you mention Fuji! Fuji is making what seems to be a 40GB PC-card hard disk, of the kind that might be able to work in a P2 slot. Need I mention that it's cheaper than solid state, at a little over $1k?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=145689&is=REG

Note: at the time of this post it seems to be mislabeled at B&H as a 40MB drive. At that price of course it is impossible.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ignacio Rodriguez : > then there was more demand and Fuji started to supply

Oh isn't it curious that you mention Fuji! Fuji is making what seems to be a 40GB PC-card hard disk, of the kind that might be able to work in a P2 slot. Need I mention that it's cheaper than solid state, at a little over $1k?-->>>

You need to be careful in making assumptions that because it has a PCMCIA card connector that it will work. There has to be a dialog that happens iwth the camera. And since you do not know what is cheaper than P2 or more expensive, it is really conjecture. Tons of ideas out there and it will soon all become very clear.

Best,

Jan

Also Ignacio, I went searching for your card (see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=Fujifilm+HG-40+PC+card) and it appears that it is not mislabeled; it is a 40 megabyte card which was a memory option for the (now very old) 1.4 megapixel Fuji DS-300 and DS-330; see http://www.fujifilmsupport.com/spec_htm/dx_mx_ds/ds330/spec.html. It seems that B&H is still showing the original price for this item from when it was first introduced. No wonder it's not in stock! Hope this helps,

Thank You Jan. Yes, I will be very happy when it all clears up, becasue then I will be able to decide whether I prefer a camera with a P2 slot or will prefer to deal with MPEG2 compression and tape from you-know-who.

Thank You Chris, you are right, it seems to be a very old 40MB card. What a pity.

Note though that I did not say hard disk was cheaper than P2, I said it was cheaper than solid state. As far as the market and it's current offerings are concerned, I think there is not a single case in which solid state is less expensive than hard disk storage, which is why I tend to think --and have advocated-- that standard PC-card storage should be allowed to work in the P2 slots. I can't visualize a normal use scenario where a hard disk's reliabilty and speed were not good enough and cheaper than solid state storage. Can anybody?

Uhmmm... sorry if I'm getting too carried away with this... I sure hope I am not starting to sound like... well somebody else, no need to mention his name.

I really just want the best technical solution and I have yet to be convinced that solid state is better than hard disk.

"I can't visualize a normal use scenario where a hard disk's reliabilty and speed were not good enough and cheaper than solid state storage. Can anybody?"

The reason I prefer solid state to hard disk is the reliability.
Hard disks are fragile, and while they are fine for dumping footage onto in the edit room, or even in the field if you have to copy your P2 cards to a laptop, I would rather be shooting to a solid state medium on the camera.

Hard drives can't take the abuse that solid state can.
On many shoots, my camera has to take quite a bit of bumping around, and I just don't think I could feel 100% confident with hard drives taking that kind of abuse.

So, while you are right that a hard disk is fast enough (and it actually may be cheaper), it may not actually be better.

Also, keep in mind, as you mentioned, we are only talking about today.
It is safe to assume that the HDX-100 won't be available for months. Meanwhile the cost of solid state memory will continue to drop. By the time any of us is actually making the decision to purchase, the cost issues may not be as relevant as they seem today.

> Meanwhile the cost of solid state memory will continue to drop.

And so will the cost of 1.8" hard drives.

I can see that for some battlefield-style work it might be preferrable to use a solid state, yes... but for everyday use? I mean not even the fastests tilts and pans would subject the camera to more movement than a portable hard-disk can withstand. And disk is by far more reliable than tape... otherwise why would anyone use the FireStores...

While you may be right, I don't think there is any way to say that hard drives are equally as reliable as solid state.

They may be more than "good enough" for most work, but moving parts will eventually wear out, they always do. Moving parts simply means more potential for problems.

For example, just about two weeks ago I had a hard drive fail on my Avid (a drive that just sat in the edit room, and was never moved around as it would be on a shoot). It was a physical failure on the drive, not a software issue. The drive was about a year old. Granted, this is a rare case, and purely anecdotal, and I realize it is not the norm. My point is that the potential is there for physical failures with hard drives. The potential risk is drastically lowered when dealing with solid state.

As you said, hard drives are more reliable than tape.
I think it's safe to say that solid state is more reliable that hard drives are.

Hard drive shooting is a bit more expensive than tape shooting (up front). Solid state may be a bit more expensive than hard drive shooting (up front).

In the end, I suppose it's just a question of how much reliability you are comfortable with.

I could be comfortable with a hard drive, but I would prefer solid state, and would be willing to pay the added cost (if there is any) to be able to use it. We may just agree to disagree on this one, I really think it just comes down to personal preference and comfort level.

Well, there's also the power consideration. Solid state recording requires significantly less power than hard disk recording.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of both. I was, and still am, a strong advocate for the FireStore.

My experience over 4 years of digital still photography as follows:

1GB CF compatible microdrives owned: 2
1GB microdrives failed: 2
period of field use: 1year, and 7months, respectively.

number of regular CF cards owned: 7
failures: 0
oldest card: 4 years.
much heavier usage than the drives ever got.
Also, the drives were handled very carefully, as I was afraid of them from the git go.

This is simply my experience.

Of course reliability is always improving, and most of the normal sized drives I have had experience with, have been reliable. My bad experiences have been with teeny drives. From what I understand, things like FireStore have performed very well,
but I have no personal experience on that.

The idea of recording on a little drive in the P2 slot kinda scares me. Recording to a flash card doesn't, as has proved repeatedly to me. Dumping or recording my footage to a drive in the field, so i can keep shooting the same card, falls somewhere in between.
I believe it has slipped that the camera definetly has firewire port, so maybe FireStore will be the way to go, as soon as they can support it. Others thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

Keep in mind that my clients are my living, and so paranoia regarding the safety of footage is both reasonable and prudent.

Im looking forward to the new camera, and I personally believe that it will all work out, I just wish I knew a little more about how.

For example, as Im not the biggest computer geek out there.
The P2 literature states only windows compatibility, so how does that apply to FCP HD, and Macs? Im ready to get into FCP, but theres that little nagging voice thats saying " You don't know for sure about how its gonna work with the P2 cards."

Macs can read Windows file systems and can usually write to them as well, so reading a P2 card in a Mac will probably work straight out of the box.

We also must consider that P2 is a bridge, albeit a sturdy one, between capture and dumping to drives. And, no matter how reliable P2 is, there comes a time when our original media is dependant on hard drives so that we might free up our cards for shooting. Unless there is something obvious I'm missing - or P2 cards are shipped in boxes of cereal and we archive on those. Or we store our finished project back to P2 type memory?
However, It all sounds awesome.
I look forward to using the DVCPROHD P2.

I think you have it right. The P2 cards are not media, they are not a direct replacement for tape, etc. I think of them more like magazines for a film camera. If you were shooting a project on film, and planning on using 100 rolls of film, you wouldn't go out and buy 100 magazines for your camera. You'd have maybe three magazines total, one loaded and on the camera shooting, one loaded with fresh raw film (essentially "empty") and one in the changing bag, having the old film being unloaded and fresh film being loaded.

With the P2 camera, I see it that people will buy maybe three P2 cards EVER. Treat 'em like film magazines. When one's full, edit off it, dump it to hard disk, whatever, then erase it and keep shooting (just like re-loading a film magazine). But you won't be buying new cards for new projects, you'll buy two or three with the camera and that's it. When a new capacity comes out that you really need, you'll sell one of your old cards on ebay and put that money towards buying the new one.

The data that you record will instead live in other media. Hard disk storage is actually cheaper than HD tape -- an hour of HD on hard disk may cost about $29, vs. about $45 to $75 for DVCPRO-HD or HDCAM tape. Or you could archive a 4gb card onto a DVD-R for under $1. Or when blu-ray or HD-DVD writers hit the market, you can archive your footage on there at the rate of about 20-25gb for about $30 per disc (or whatever the actual target cost is). And then there's always tape, you can always output your footage to DVCPRO-HD tape (or, one of the mass-storage computer tape formats like SAIT).

As I read last year in a DV magazine, a P2 card costs somewhere in the $4,000.
How low will they go until we can have several of them? Also, what makes me really nervous about the system is the fact that it can get lost or stolen very very easy due to its small size and compact design. I understand the analogy with the film tape, but... hey, this is thin and small!
Is Panasonic limiting the market only to filmakers and commercial production with this camera? What about live events?

-EDWIN HERNANDEZ

"As I read last year in a DV magazine, a P2 card costs somewhere in the $4,000."

The key part of that sentence is last year

That was the price of the 4GB P2 card a year ago.

A few months ago it was down to $2000.
Now it is down to $1700.

And keep in mind that this is with only one P2 camera on the market. And that camera is aimed at a rather small market.

The HVX200 will open the P2 market, and prices will come down. New pricing is expected to be announced at NAB.

Also, keep in mind this camera won't be out for months.
As I mentioned, the price has already dropped $300 in just a few months. With the release of more P2 cameras, and an increase in P2 users, I think we can expect to see large price drops by the end of this year.

i imagine there will be a swarm of knockoff p2 cards on ebay once this cam arrives...

oem stuff is always pricey, its made to spec but its gonna cost you...i buy non oem batteries, memory cards, and have not had any regrets

lets not panic just yet...

the benifits of recording to a solid state media card out weigh any pricing concerns...i a devoted tape lover, have been converted, solid state can't get here fast enough...

Simply look at what standard SD cards currently cost. At least here in germany it's currently about 100EUR for a very fast (20MB/s r&w) 1GB card. The slower cards only cost around 70EUR... however with 2-6MB/s they wouldn't be fast enough for DVCHD data rates. (though when combined somehow raid like this wouldn't be a problem I guess)
So I think prices should be dropping quickly... I mean what's the point if the raw SD media for a 4 gig P2 is at 280-400EUR in total that the P2 itself should cost you over 1k USD or something. And prices are dropping further... there are already some 2GB SD cards available... (currently 8GB with 4x2GB SD cards would cost you around 800EUR)

So to me it sort of looks really promising... and even if Panasonic won't drastically lower their P2 prices... I guess there will be people finding a way to build their own P2 using available SD/MMC media :-)

Presumably this camera is not intended for live events. If you want to shoot HD, each P2 card holds 1 minute of footage per gigabyte. It takes 1 minute per gigabyte to back up this footage onto a hard drive: "Expanding its P2 product line, Panasonic will also debut the AJ-PCS060, a portable hard disk that can transfer the contents of a 4 GB P2 card in about four minutes." Add to this the time to take the card out of the camera, fit it in the drive, back it up, take it out, put it back in the camera.

In other words, the back up speed is slower than shooting speed, and eventually you will find you have not finished backing up a card, before it is needed again.

I think you could get up to 24 minutes out of 3 P2 cards.
The only way of shooting indefinitely would be to have 2 hard drives, so that you could back up 8Gb in about 5 minutes

In practice, of course, the idea of trying to shoot and hot swap discs every 4 minutes is a non-starter for any single person operator.

Either we have to wait for 16 or 32Gb P2 cards, or, there has to be a hard drive solution, which does not involve hot swapping.

Patrick

"If you want to shoot HD, each P2 card holds 1 minute of footage per gigabyte. It takes 1 minute per gigabyte to back up this footage onto a hard drive: "

At the full 100mb/s a 4gb P2 cards should be able to hold 5 minutes of footage, not 4.

Also, don't forget that 720P24 only has a 40mb/s datarate.
So on a 4gb card you could fit up to 13 minutes.

720P30 would have a datarate of 50mb/s I assume.
So on a 4gb card you could fit up to 10 minutes.

Either scenario you look at, your transfer time is faster than real time when dumping the cards onto a hard drive.
So you shouldn't find yourself in a situation where a card is needed before it's done being backup up.

But I wonder whether you can really hot swap a P2 card when you're actually filming, without jerking the camera.
Patrick

"But I wonder whether you can really hot swap a P2 card when you're actually filming, without jerking the camera."

Probably not a good idea.
I suppose if you're steady as a surgeon.

We'll just have to wait and see.

<<<But I wonder whether you can really hot swap a P2 card when you're actually filming, without jerking the camera.
Patrick -->>>

Alfred Hitchcock figured out a way to hot swap film mags during the filming of "Rope"...just have someone walk in front of the camera.

Actually I'd be less worried about that and more worried about how I'm going to afford more than one of the blamed things in the first place.

Barry

"I think you have it right. The P2 cards are not media, they are not a direct replacement for tape, etc. I think of them more like magazines for a film camera. If you were shooting a project on film, and planning on using 100 rolls of film, you wouldn't go out and buy 100 magazines for your camera. You'd have maybe three magazines total, one loaded and on the camera shooting, one loaded with fresh raw film (essentially "empty") and one in the changing bag, having the old film being unloaded and fresh film being loaded."

I still have a problem with this whole concept. If you shoot DV, you have hard copy, and at a great price. If you shoot film, you still have hard copy, albeit, not as cheap. But using these P2 cards, you have no hard copy. Who has never had a hard drive go bad? And if you say "Me!", you are either lying, or veeeeery lucky.

Now, if these cards were as cheap as say, zip disks, you could in theory, have them stacked up like DV tapes. My other problem with them, is live events don't pause every 13 or so minutes, allowing you to dump or swap.

On a side note, in this months DV magazine, Adam Wilt does a hands on test. I just haven't had a chance to read through it yet.

Keith, well said. I don't have enough experience to offer real solutions, or understanding of how this is going to work in the real world. But I guess we have 3 scenarios right?


1) Filmmaking - Here, Jan proposes we work like film, and offload to hard disk after swapping in another card. So this means we could get by with 2, or maybe 3 cards and a big drive on a laptop. I could live with this, even though it's a pain.

2) News gathering. Now I don't really know how much your average cameraman grabs on an item, but it seems that it is not a huge amount, especially between "down time" where you could, again, offload. For me, when I go out and grab stuff, I shoot heaps of footage. I have the time, and also tape is cheap. Maybe I just have to choose my shots more carefully with p2 - I guess discipline isn't that bad ;)

3) Long form events - This is where p2 seems like it would fail miserably. The events I have done, require my full attention, so I can't swap cards, and start offloading one as I continue to shoot in case I miss something. I could try, but it's risky. Also, as mentioned by others, how can you swap without moving the camera. So for this one you'd need something like a Firestore, or Panasonic could release some single card adapter, that goes out into an HD. Or maybe an array of P2 cards externally; then, moving the little adapter box wouldn't move the camera...hopefully.

So it seems for me 1 and 2 are not too much to worry about, especially for me, but 3 is a little dodgy because you're using that hard drive all the time to record to. If it was just for offloading, then you could have 2 drives and make a backup.

Aaron

And as it has been mentioned, all the extra goodies needed to download your footage- laptop, P2 cards- are going to run you a few grand. And this is above the original $10,000 for the camera itself. For all the added expense, and short filming duration, the footage had better look better than film. But then, I'm just a poor average Joe.