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P2 Store AJ-PCS060 … the work flow answer?
I was flipping through one of the trade rags yesterday and came across a little blurb on the “Panasonic P2 Store”. It is basically a “ruggedized 2.5in 60 GB hard drive with a P2 card slot” and “can hold the contents of up to 15 – 4GB P2 cards.” It has USB 2.0 and claims 6.7 X real time transfer. Battery and AC powered, a start button and LED indicators for copy status, drive capacity and batt life. Available Q3. Looks like you just plug in your P2 cards in the field, dump the footage onto this drive, scrub the card and continue shooting.
The DVX100a & Varicam have transformed me into a huge Panasonic fan and I’ve had to strap on a drool bucket to contain my anticipation of the AG-HVX200. However, the prospect of a “P2 only” workflow has somewhat curbed my enthusiasm. Since Panasonic isn’t stupid, they’ve got to see the glaring hole in the P2-HD workflow. Without investing in tens of thousands of dollars of P2 cards how do you get your footage from field to edit suite? Many of us shoot 4+ hours of footage in shoot day and investing in 240GB worth of P2 cards (assuming we’re shooting HD) would negate any potential cost savings of the HVX200. We obviously need a way to dump footage off the cards in the field. This product seems like the answer to that issue. My big question is why just 60GB? I seem to recall DVCPROHD taking about a Gig a min so shooting HD to the P2 card will fill that drive up pretty rapidly. Judging by the thee digits (“060”) on the end of the product name they may be planning larger sizes but given the cost of storage why even mess with a drive as small as 60G.
As much as I love the idea of the P2 cards/data based workflow, the idea of trusting a hard disk drive as the only storage for my field footage makes me very nervous. Anyone else share my trepidation?
– Nick
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8 Replies
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Yes 60gb does seem silly in this day of cheap 250gb and higher. It seems like Pana need to get more up to speed with current technology to make this P2 stuff more inviting.
Cheers,
JS -
[js33] “It seems like Pana need to get more up to speed with current technology to make this P2 stuff more inviting. “
While 60GB may not seem like enough, I think it’s a bit ironic to say they need to get up to speed with current technology given that they are offering up the first solid state HD camera for under 10,000.
Also, while we still haven’t gotten confirmation on the ‘frame tagging’ issue. If the new cam only records the ‘active frames’ (and I see no reason why is won’t) then 60GB would actually hold about roughly 3 hours and 24 minutes of DVCProHD 720P/24 (5MB/s datarate). At 100mb/s you should be able to store roughly an hour and 20 minutes of footage.
Also, Jan has repeatedly reminded us to ‘wait for NAB,’ as it seems there are other options that we don’t yet know about.
I think Panasonic defintely knows what they’re doing here.
And, considering Jan’s willingness to interact on the boards, they are at the very least aware of people’s concerns with recording times. I think it’s fair to say that these issues will be addressed at NAB.Now all we have to do is find a way to pass the time until then….
Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas -
Hi Luis,
Yes I agree Panasonic is pushing the boundries with the new camera but they seem behind in the data department. I realize the P2 technology will come down in price and capacities will go up in time. Eventually all cameras will record this way. But why only a 60gb hd when a 250gb hd is only about $100 these days? I just hope they don’t deliver a cutting edge camera only to cut us with high priced low capacity P2 and small high priced hard drives that if they didn’t have the Panasonic name on them would be less than 1/4 the price.
I like everyone else is eagerly awaiting more news at NAB. I’m only commenting on what we know right now.Cheers,
JS -
Hello,
At this time as a battery powered unit then the largest 2.5 portable hard drive is 60 GB for a 7200 rpm model. For a slower rotational speed the largest 2.5″ portable drive is 100 GB. Available drives of larger capacity are 3.5″ and usually need A/C power.
Bob Cetti
Audio Video Services -
Hi Bob,
Fair enough. I guess we could have a bigger hd if we could perhaps run it off the camera’s battery or maybe just a bigger hd encloser with a bigger battery.
Cheers,
JS -
Hello JS,
Well assuming you have A/C power on location you could bring a laptop with a large capacity FW or USB hard drive. Then you could transfer the data from the P2 card inserted into the PMCIA slot on your laptop to the large capacity FW drive connected to the laptop or to the internal drive of the laptop if you have the space. This should work I would think.
Bob Cetti
Audio Video Services -
Where did you get that 6.7x realtime?
I read that it takes 4 minutes to transfer 4 GB and compared to realtime,
well it depends what you have recorded.If you have recorded 100Mbps dvcproHD, then transferring will be less
than realtime. Which makes sense in a way, that if 2.5″ disks would be
fast enough for higher than realtime, they could be used without p2’s.For faster on the field transferring there’s at least 4 possibilities:
1) 3.5″ disk, which eats batterys very fast.
2) 2×2.5″ in raid-0, increases chances of hd breakup
3) dropping the dupe frames in transfer (if it hasn’t been done in-camera)
4) 4×1.8″ in raid-5, this would be safe, power saving and large capacity
(180GB with todays disks), getting close to Kinetta…
Looking at iPod prices this might be in $2k area, but of course much
smaller volumes. -
[js33] “I guess we could have a bigger hd if we could perhaps run it off the camera’s battery or maybe just a bigger hd encloser with a bigger battery.”
JS: 3.5″ and larger hard drives typically have _much_ lower “operating shock” ratings compared to 2.5″ and smaller hard drives. The smaller drives are designed for operation while in laptops and other portable devices.
Most hard drive manufacturers list a operating shock rating for each model they make. Note that a hard drive’s operating shock rating is different than a hard drive’s “non-operating shock” rating. The non-operating shock rating is typically fairly high, but only the operating shock rating is an indication of a hard drive’s resistance to shock damage while in use.
Large drives, with their relatively low resistance to in-operation shock & vibration, are typically only appropriate for “desktop” (stationary) use.
So, sure, for use where it won’t be hand-held or moved when running, a P2-to-hard-drive storage device might be designed with a “big” hard drive, and that would be cool. But for in-operation hand-held use, only small form-factor drives are appropriate.
All the best,
– Peter
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