P2 Media Cards vs FIRESTORE 3 hour Value price test.

[Aaron Koolen]

OH NO! Too much spec...u....la..tion....Head ex...plo...ding!

August...Hmm that's a wee ways off yet. Longer than I thought, for sure...Please let's hope not. Will have to keep soldiering on with my XM2 for a while yet!

Aaron

[Jan Crittenden Livingston]

<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Dooley
Does this mean the HVX will also be available in August? -->>>

Sorry Kevin, the camera being available and the 8GB card being avilable are two different events, pretty much unrelated but other than the larger card will be available at the time of this camera's delivery.

Sorry to get hopes up there.

Jan

[K. Forman]

"These are approximate figures:
Mission to obtain 3 hours as Firestore would for around $800 dollars.
P2 Media 4gig $1,700 dollars"

For that same $1,700, I could buy a really nice laptop, and record more than even the Firestore... and buy a Starbucks latte. True, the laptop is a bit bulky, but you would need to have one anyways, to dump the P2 cards. So why the need for the cards? It would make *practical* sense to go straight to the laptop.

For that matter, laptop prices are coming down, and you can buy a nice laptop for a little less than the Firestore, and hold as much... and e mail, kill aliens, and surf DVInfo.net.

But, I still don't have the warm fuzzies without the footage safely on tape. Hard drives have lost too much of my footage, but I still have the master safely tucked away.

[Michael Pappas]

A palm size laptop would be nice. I guess Apple has to come up with a IPodG4 with fold out 6x9 high-res screen.




<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : "These are approximate figures:
Mission to obtain 3 hours as Firestore would for around $800 dollars.
P2 Media 4gig $1,700 dollars"

For that same $1,700, I could buy a really nice laptop, and record more than even the Firestore... and buy a Starbucks latte. True, the laptop is a bit bulky, but you would need to have one anyways, to dump the P2 cards. So why the need for the cards? It would make *practical* sense to go straight to the laptop.

For that matter, laptop prices are coming down, and you can buy a nice laptop for a little less than the Firestore, and hold as much... and e mail, kill aliens, and surf DVInfo.net.

But, I still don't have the warm fuzzies without the footage safely on tape. Hard drives have lost too much of my footage, but I still have the master safely tucked away. -->>>

[Jaime Valles]

I don't get what people are so worried about.

1) Buy 2 8GB P2 cards. Never have to buy tape again. Ever. Save lots of money in the long run.

2) Get a laptop. You have to edit the footage somewhere, might as well make it a laptop. 2 birds, 1 stone.

3) Shoot the scene. As soon as card #1 is full, repalce with card #2, lose about 25 seconds (this assumes there's only 1 card slot, so if there's more than one slot then you lose ZERO footage).

4) While card #2 is recording, insert card #1 in PCMCIA slot on laptop and transfer the contents to AN EXTERNAL USB2 OR FIREWIRE HARDDISK ($189 for 250GB LaCie HDD) connected to the laptop.

5) Rinse and repeat steps 3-4 as needed.

5a) If archival safety is a concern, then buy 2 or 3 250GB Hard Disks and back-up transfered footage from Disk #1 to Disks 2 & 3 in a matter of minutes. You get an instant clone of the original footage. How often are 3 hard disks going to fail at the same time? Exactly.

Heck, LaCie offers the 1TB Hard Disk for only $999. Exactly how much HD footage are you planning on shooting for a given project?

Tapeless aquisition is the best thing to happen to video since the invention of FireWire. I, for one, can't wait to never have to capture one more tape of footage. Instant editing, right on the set if needs be. Heaven.

[Aaron Koolen]

<<<-- Originally posted by Jaime Valles : I don't get what people are so worried about.

1) Buy 2 8GB P2 cards. Never have to buy tape again. Ever. Save lots of money in the long run.
-->>>

I agree and disagree - you won't *HAVE* to buy tape again, but you'll most certainly buy P2 cards again.

If you go and buy 2 8GB cards, at US$1500 each? And get what, 8 minutes of HD on each. In a year there will be 16GB or 32GB and then people will see that they can store more on it and go "Awesome, I'll get one of those".

It all comes down to how many $$ you earn, based on how much you spend per unit of storage. If you shoot so much, that you'd spend the same price in tape over a year as you would on cards, then why not go cards - money will no longer factor into it, you'll only be worried about convenience.

For the less regular shooters, an 8 GB might be all you can afford by selling your nana, and you have no choice but to put up with all the hassles that would be for anything longform. Then come next year when bigger cards come out, at the same price as the old ones (Say 16gb at 8gb price) you won't buy cause if you'd been using tape you might have shot a coupleof hundred bucks worth only in the year so it doesn't pay for itself.

Not saying Panasonic should cater to us poor buggers, the money earners are who they want, I just don't think people who buy P2 will not buy any other media gain. People will keep buying new P2's until they hit their "desired recording limit" Which could be 4 minutes for filmies, 8 or 16 for news guys and an hour or more for long form events.

Aaron

[Barry Green]

And, I've got to throw this out there again -- who says P2 will be the only recording medium? People are getting really hung up on the cost of P2 cards (which will plummet as demand increases), but who says there won't be hard disk storage? We already know Jan's said that FocusInfo (FireStore) is a P2 partner company. But it may be better than that -- someone may come up with a plug-in hard-disk controller that works in a P2 slot and lets you use off-the-shelf firewire hard disks (or USB2 hard disks). Or maybe the camera will allow that directly. We don't know.

All we know is a few things it will have. We don't yet know anything that it won't have. There may be a tape drive in there for DV25. There may be hard disk controllers. There may be an optical drive in there, for all we know.

I'm not saying there is, but I'm saying this: look at the philosophy Panasonic's using: "you want 1080? You want 720? You want 60i, or 60p, or 24p, or 30p? We'll give it ALL to you."

So who's to say they won't apply the same philosophy to recording? "You want tape? You want high-def on a memory card? You want hard disk? We'll give it ALL to you." (of course we know there won't be any HD recorded to tape, they've clarified that, but the rest of it could still be possible).

I'm not saying they did this, or implemented that. I'm just saying that until we do know what they did or didn't do, getting worked up over limitations seems kind of counterproductive, because we don't yet know what limitations there are (or will be). We know a few things the camera WILL do, but as far as I know, other than saying "no HD recorded on tape", I don't think they've spelled out anything that the camera WON'T do.

[Jaime Valles]

<<<-- Originally posted by Aaron Koolen : I agree and disagree - you won't *HAVE* to buy tape again, but you'll most certainly buy P2 cards again. If you go and buy 2 8GB cards, at US$1500 each? And get what, 8 minutes of HD on each. In a year there will be 16GB or 32GB and then people will see that they can store more on it and go "Awesome, I'll get one of those". -->>>

One word: EBAY

Dude #1: "Hey, That new 32GB card looks great! 2 of these would be perfect for my next wedding gig! Let me sell my 3 8GB cards online and already have some money toward the (much cheaper at this point) 32GB cards!"

Dude #2: "Hey, somebody put up 3 8GB cards on sale on eBay for about $300 total! That'd be great for my next indie flick!"

I just don't get what the hangup is. If you've got 2 8GB cards, you theoretically don't need any more, ever. Nobody's forcing you to buy the 700GB card for $15,000. Is it cool? Heck yeah. Is it an absolute necessity? Nope. Not at all. I have a 32MB CF card for my digital camera, and a 256MB CF card. I could buy a 2GB CF card right now, but I just don't need it. I can control myself.

[Shannon Rawls]

<<<-- Originally posted by Jaime Valles :
4) While card #2 is recording, insert card #1 in PCMCIA slot on laptop and transfer the contents to AN EXTERNAL USB2 OR FIREWIRE HARDDISK ($189 for 250GB LaCie HDD) connected to the laptop.

5) Rinse and repeat steps 3-4 as needed.

5a) If archival safety is a concern, then buy 2 or 3 250GB Hard Disks and back-up transfered footage from Disk #1 to Disks 2 & 3 in a matter of minutes.
-->>>

Can we play Dominos and sip Marguaritas between takes too??

I don't know what type of set you are describing, but FAST PACED is what I normally see, and swapping cards EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN' TAKE is absolutely NOT HAPPENING!

Just yesterday, my director was shooting 6 minute scenes!!! with dual camera coverage!!! 4 takes in a row!! And the shot called for it! As we were doing this, I was thinking in my head about DVINFO and the P2 discussion and how it will hold up on set.....i cracked a private smile and thanked the lord for MiniDV tape!

because P2 CARD SWAPPING WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HANDLE THAT....swapping out cards and all that, no way Jose! Well, maybe if we had $6,800.00 in P2 cards and paid an extra person to handle it and bought a laptop to do it, it would have.

I mean, it sounds easy in this message board....but take it to the real world of indie low budget filmmaking (which this camera is targeting by the way)and give it a try......not happening.

Now, I like what Barry is talkin' about.... "Who says P2 is the only way??" If I could snap a 80gb laptop hard drive in a FW case to this camera, then, ohhhhhhh boy! *smile*

- Shannon W. Rawls

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Well, Shannon ofcourse has a point. What if you want to do such a shot like the opening shot of Snake Eyes, or the Player? Shots that take 12 minutes?

But, there will be an answer, I'm sure, somebody will come eventually with another solution to have a longer recording time.

[Michael Pappas]

Hi Mathieu Ghekiere!

Since you are talking about a movie, in this case Snake eye's. Well that's a 24fps production. No problem....

There are at least two slots on the HVX200 and if your filming at 720p 24fps and you have 2 4gig P2's loaded, then that is going to give you around 13 minutes on each one. With two in the cam you have 26 minutes. Not a problem. And since you said 12 minutes, one P2 4gig will do.

That's great news isn't! Well for your example at least.


Michael Pappas
http://www.Pbase.com/ARRFILMS






<<<-- Originally posted by Mathieu Ghekiere : Well, Shannon ofcourse has a point. What if you want to do such a shot like the opening shot of Snake Eyes, or the Player? Shots that take 12 minutes?

But, there will be an answer, I'm sure, somebody will come eventually with another solution to have a longer recording time. -->>>

[Luis Caffesse]

While everything Shannon says is true...I would say that if you want to shoot on P2, then you would have to swap cards, that's the reality of it.

So, you're right, you wouldn't be able to shoot the way you were shooting....

Then again, you probably weren't shooting 1080/24 DVCProHD. So, there are compromises to be made on either side.


Then again, we still don't know what else Panasonic has in store for NAB.

[Jaime Valles]

<<<-- Originally posted by Shannon Rawls : I don't know what type of set you are describing, but FAST PACED is what I normally see, and swapping cards EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN' TAKE is absolutely NOT HAPPENING! ...because P2 CARD SWAPPING WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO HANDLE THAT....swapping out cards and all that, no way Jose! Well, maybe if we had $6,800.00 in P2 cards and paid an extra person to handle it and bought a laptop to do it, it would have.-->>>

It has already been confirmed that by the time the HVX comes out there will be 8GB P2 cards available. Assuming there's 2 P2 slots in the HVX, that gives you about 16 uninterrupted minutes of 1080p24 (if my math is correct.) Unless you're doing, as you said, a shot like in The Player, or Snake Eyes (which definitely would require a direct-to-disk-firestore-type-thing) then you should be fine with just P2.

Honestly, when I've been on a set, most of the time is not spent with the cameras rolling. Not by a long shot. What takes up time is setting up lights, blocking the actors, and framing the shot. Once everything is set, you start rolling, and 30 to 40 seconds later you cut. You do it a couple more times, and then you spend another 30 minutes setting up the next shot. Rarely does one shot take more than a few minutes of footage. Very rarely will it last over 3 or 4 minutes. Other than The Player, Snake Eyes, and maybe Strange Days (great opening scene!), few hollywood films ever attempt a big 12 minute shot. And that's with millions of dollars behind it.

I appreciate that we're all here trying to pull a Spielberg, and this camera will probably get us closer to that kind of visual quality than ever before. But please keep in mind that this is an "under $10,000" camera. Really, if you're at a point where you're making a feature film with an HVX, you've either a) got enough funding to buy 5 or 6 of the 8GB cards, or b) you're a struggling indie filmmaker with barely enough moolah for 2 of them, in which case you will put up with the process of swapping cards every few takes, because you know the quality of the footage you're recording is superb.

This, of course, applies mostly to people making narrative films, such as myself. Event videography is an entirely different animal with it's own set of rules and pitfalls, none of which I'm qualified to address.

[Giroud Francois]

the argument of moving data from P2 to a laptop is silly.
Why would you do that ? because the laptop has a hard disk with big capacity ! so put the hardisk in the camera.....
Afraid of lost data ? put two hard disk in the camera .
Since new hard disk come with a anti-bump system, they becomes very reliable even hard environment.
And after all if the HDD is supposed to assume some hard treatement while being in the camera, i think you will have to worry more for the camera than for the hardisk.
2.5 inches HDD comes with 100gig capacity these days, so no comment.
imagine 10 hours of HD in one shot.

[R Geoff Baker]

Maybe I'm not reading this graph properly, but it would seem to me that these 2.5" HDD are not able to sustain 100Mb/s transfer rates:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/9-25-hdd_5.html

GB