alternatives to P2 cards?

[Steve Freebairn]

I’ve heard that you can’t do variable frame rate with the Firestore. Can anyone verify that.

[David S.]

You cannot due 720PN with firestore; don’t know about variable frame rates.

David S.

[Barlow Elton]

Barry can say with authority, but I thought it was possible to ingest via firewire and have FCP remove the “over 60” redundant frames for under/overcrank effects. You lose the efficiency of 24N recording so that you don’t record unnecessary frames, but you gain the extra recording time that P2 simply doesn’t offer yet.

[Jeremy Garchow]

This 24 flagged frames in a 60p cadence is just how the Varicam works. The only thing is, is that when you are capturing from tape FCP or your particular brand of capture card will remove the redundant frames upon the capture leaving you with 23.98p media to edit with in a 23.98 timeline. If there is any other non standard offspeed material (12fps or 48fps or whatever) you then capture the varicam material with all 60 frames in tact and use the framrate converter from Panasonic to make your offspeed clips. With the tapeless firestore specific workflow, I’m not sure how the removing of the redundant frames will happen with 24p. Maybe there’ll be an update to Cinema tools, or perhaps cinema tools already supports this (although, I doubt it). What you could do is edit 720p60 and preserve the 24p look but you will actually be editing in a 720p60 timeline. I’m sure something will be worked out from Panasonic and most likely Apple. It’s in both their best interests, not to mention the interest of the firestore folks.

[Richard Sutcliffe]

Biggest minus I can see would be for solo shooters in the field like me. The battery life on these stores isn’t going to cut it for me. If shooting 4 hours of footage, the firestore is likely to be switched on for 6-7. current firestores have a bat life of 90mins that means three to four batteries for a days shoot. thats 4 more to charge every night. Same for the P2 reader. I need a device that is going to run all day or at the very least a half day because if you run out of battery power your shoot is over. No HDD, no shoot.

P2 reader writes to HDD which means it needs to be flat and stationary during write down? Panasonic inform me that dumping and verifying is in real time or thereabouts so 30mins? That means no repo or re locates for 30 mins.

Obviously not as relevant for studio work.

The other negative is being fixed to the camera by a firewire cable. If Im shooting on the mountain in winter, that firestore is going to be tucked away in my jacket. How many times will I forget Im fixed to the camera?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[pom_boarder] “P2 reader writes to HDD which means it needs to be flat and stationary during write down? Panasonic inform me that dumping and verifying is in real time or thereabouts so 30mins? That means no repo or re locates for 30 mins.”

Hmm, I’m not sure, but the firestore is a hard disk as well and I doubt the requirement is that you have to be totally still to shoot, but I don’t know, i’ve never used a firestore. The p2 store will run a good long time, at least all day or half the day and it runs on the same batts as the HVX. Good stuff there.

[Greg Lindgren]

I’ve been using a Firestore FS-4 for almost a year and I do sometimes shoot all day. I simply purchased a Bescor 12 volt battery belt, (with only one battery pack, not packs across the entire belt,) and went to radio Shack and purchased a cig lighter cable and adapted the correct plug and I can shoot all day with this set-up. The Firestore is clipped to my belt so I can monitor it. This set-up is far cheaper than using a number of Firestore batteries and it works flawlessly. As for being tethered to the camera with a firewire cable, all I can say is just get used to it. It really isn’t that bad! And the time I save by not having to digitize is worth its weight in gold!