64GB flash drive under $1000 by end of the year.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

using one cf card will always require paying for 20 mbps write speed, but with p2 you can use the slowest sd cards on the market, which will save some $$ over that single cf card.
........so it's pretty funny to be calling the p2 design an "anachronism", when the potential is there to save you money over cf.

An interesting point, and I confess it's one I wondered about. Just why should one fast card cost so much less than four slower ones of 1/4 the capacity packaged together? I can't give the answer, but will say that I'm less interested in "potential" than the actual state of the market. Whilst the price differential between P2 and SD/CF cards of the same capacity is so huge, "potential" seems irrelevant, and I'd tend to agree with Kevins use of the word anachronism.

One point that a colleague brought up that hasn't been covered here is the relative desirability of many small cheap cards versus one big expensive card - same total memory. For a small or one man operation, if the cost/GB is the same between the two options, there may be little in it, but for a large organisation the "many cheap" option potentially has big attractions.

Regarding transfer speeds, a little searching has thrown up this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67007 , and posts 3 and 4 may be of interest in this context. In the former Barry Green states that: "If you plug straight into a USB 2 port you should get transfer speeds of around 1GB per minute." and in the latter David Tames gives some practical comparisons, with a P2 store here taking no less than 6min 24sec to transfer a full 4GB card!!! (A full 4GB card only appears to be about 3.51GB?)

I'm interested what kind of system Jeff Kilgroe is using if he is consistently achieving far faster times than this, especially if he is achieving 4x?

[Dan Euritt]

Originally Posted by David Heath

in the latter David Tames gives some practical comparisons, with a P2 store here taking no less than 6min 24sec to transfer a full 4GB card!!! (A full 4GB card only appears to be about 3.51GB?)

for one thing, david tames is on a mac, and the problems with usb and the mac o.s. have been discussed before:

"THE RESULTS:
1 straight 10 min clip shot at 720P 24pn recorded to 4 gig P2 card
Card copied to P2 store (approx. 4 min.)
P2 store connected to G5 USB 2.0.
P2 "no name" Imported straight into FCP. TIME 5 Min. 39 Sec.
THIS IS GREAT AND ACCEPTABLE
However, same P2 "no name" copied to a new folder on G5 24 Min.
SAME USB Cable, SAME EVERYTHING!"
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67592

what we need to see is the transfer speed of the p2 port on the panasonic toughbook... got any numbers on that?

Originally Posted by David Heath

Whilst the price differential between P2 and SD/CF cards of the same capacity is so huge, "potential" seems irrelevant, and I'd tend to agree with Kevins use of the word anachronism.

so we agree on some of the potential advantages of the p2 design over the single cf, but it's panasonic's pricing that's causing all the grief... i don't know that anachronism is the proper useage of the word when it comes to prices, but i'm with you on the cost of the p2 cards!

if i had a p2 camera i'd be using it with the firestore, i wouldn't buy any extra p2 cards at all.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

for one thing, david tames is on a mac, and the problems with usb and the mac o.s. have been discussed before:.

Dan, the figure I quoted has nothing to do with use of a Mac. "..... a P2 store here taking no less than 6min 24sec to transfer a full 4GB card....", according to post 4 of the thread I quoted refers to the time taken for a P2 store to download a P2 card to within itself - no other equipment, no Mac, involved. The download to Mac times he refers to are FASTER than that.

what we need to see is the transfer speed of the p2 port on the panasonic toughbook... got any numbers on that?.

Not for a Panasonic toughbook, but for a high specced laptop PC a little faster than that, but nothing to write home about. By and large, real time downloads for 100Mbs seem par for the course, maybe a bit faster, maybe a bit slower.

so we agree on some of the potential advantages of the p2 design over the single cf, but it's panasonic's pricing that's causing all the grief...

if i had a p2 camera i'd be using it with the firestore, i wouldn't buy any extra p2 cards at all.

I've a lot of experience with a Firestore with a 2/3" SD tape camera, and will be using it tomorrow and all week. Used like that it's fantastic, but I would always run it in parallel with the tape, when it is my primary means of import to the NLE and the tape is the backup and archive. It normally works well, but isn't 100% reliable - with the tape backup that doesn't normally matter, but I wouldn't use it as the only recording media.

It's obviously only useful at all for material I edit myself. When rushes have to be given away, tape takes a lot of beating.

Thats what so appeals to me about Infinity. A cheap archive medium and a more transient solid state "NLE medium" running in parallel - just like the Firestore and tape - but no extra boxes and cables. Fantastic.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

using one cf card will always require paying for 20 mbps write speed, but with p2 you can use the slowest sd cards on the market, which will save some $$ over that single cf card.

In theory perhaps, but we're not seeing that happen. P2 is a complex, proprietary product with limited volumes selling at high prices, while CF has already undercut it by a factor of 2 for an identical level of performance. That can't do anything but get worse as more and more CF manufacturers reach this level of performance at volume prices, while P2 continues to be a specialized low-volume product. Unlike our debate about H.264 cameras this matter is already settled, and it would make no sense for the use of P2 to spread given the current pricing situation. You don't have to look any further than the new Grass Valley HD cameras to see how this is going to play out in the marketplace.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Originally Posted by David Heath

I'm interested what kind of system Jeff Kilgroe is using if he is consistently achieving far faster times than this, especially if he is achieving 4x?

I'm ingesting my cards through the following system:

A MonarchComputer Hornet Pro SFF
AMD X2 4800+ Dual Core CPU
2GB RAM
nVidia 7800GTX 512MB
2 * WD Raptor 10Krpm HDDs in a RAID-0 stripe
Operating with WinXP Pro SP2 and all current updates
Spec-Comm PCI to PCMCIA adapter
Connected to our LAN via its primary gigabit ethernet port.

Speed is most definitely limited by the speed of the P2 card itself and by the gigabit ethernet port (which is theoretically 10X faster than DVCPROHD anyway). Our primary storage is a fiber backbone SAN, but that's a non-issue at ths point as I can ingest at 4x or so on this system to its local drives

[Kevin Shaw]

In re-reading this discussion it strikes me that the extra potential transfer speed of P2 can be relevant at the editing end even if it's not necessary at the recording end, so maybe P2 isn't rendered obsolete by advances in standard flash memory after all. I still think more people would be interested in an IT workflow using inexpensive media than P2, and it will be interesting to see what Panasonic (and others) do in the future using AVCHD discs and so on. These are interesting times in terms of equipment options, and hopefully we'll see even more new options in the future.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

In re-reading this discussion it strikes me that the extra potential transfer speed of P2 can be relevant at the editing end even if it's not necessary at the recording end, so maybe P2 isn't rendered obsolete .........after all. I still think more people would be interested in an IT workflow using inexpensive media than P2, ...........

That's true enough, but I've very carefully used the words "average user" throughout this thread, and I don't see P2 ever really offering enough advantages to such to make it viable to them if such as a CF solution was available. What will be available obviously depends upon how manufacturers respond, whether any one sees a business opportunity and a chance to undercut the opposition.

For the reasons given above, I feel P2 is more likely to carry on in expensive pro cameras than in the prosumer market such as for the HVX.

Theoretically, even higher end users could get speed benefits at download (if their systems are capable) by techniques such as downloading 4 CF/SD cards in parallel - so 4 8GB CF cards could be downloaded in the same time as 1 32GB P2 card. say.

Practically, I suspect the biggest threat to P2 comes from the architecture upon which it is centred currently being phased out. Increasingly, laptop computers may have inbuilt CF slots, but need an external reader for a P2 card.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by David Heath

Theoretically, even higher end users could get speed benefits at download (if their systems are capable) by techniques such as downloading 4 CF/SD cards in parallel - so 4 8GB CF cards could be downloaded in the same time as 1 32GB P2 card. say.

Ah, good point - will be interesting to see if such a solution develops. As far as 'average users' are concerned, it's a foregone conclusion that they'll take an affordable mainstream solution over a more expensive and obscure one - hence my earlier comment that P2 is becoming an anachronism. But P2 obviously works for some people for now, and until those people feel they have a better alternative it doesn't matter what happens in the future. If I was buying stocks I'd pick a company which makes CF over one which makes P2; if you're buying a camera pick the one which does what you need at a price you can afford. (HDV works for me, but I keep an eye out for something I'll like better.)