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FireStore DTE Solutuon for HVX200
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Well written I agree the p2 cards are a silly price and the biggest rip off this side of the moon!
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[donatello] “maybe what we have here is a McDonalds crowd ( hand size DV camera $$ 2000-3500) and now somebody is offerring a better burger for more $$ ( 2x-3x $$ ) …”
Personally, that’s not my mentality on the situation. I just want to get FAIR value for what I am paying for and a FAIR price. For P2 cards, maybe the price is fair right now, but for the storage capacity available right now, I think it’s overpriced for a storage to dollar ratio. Yes, in a few years that will change, but I’m seriously working on the facts and how I can implement this solution into my workflow. That is why I was looking to a Firestore or similar hard drive based “P2 card” replacement or device.
I can either pay $2000 for an 8gb P2 card or $2000 for a 100gb hard drive… the “economics” here are simple yes, you are getting more out of your dollar with the hard drive, but doesn’t $2000 for a 100gb hard drive seem a little much in price to anyone? I’d pay $500-1000 for a small interface device WITHOUT a hard drive attached to it so I can use my own external drives (about a dollar per gig of storage space), but having a FS-4 style device still means I will be “dumping” the drive when it’s full, something I was looking to avoid by just plugging in a new hard drive to an interface unit.
BTW – I’ve been told by Firestore’s reps that Panasonic is having a say in the set price on this one… I’m hoping that after the camera is out for a few months, either SanDisk will start to make P2 card-like devices, or we can find a more reasonably priced Firestore-like device… or when the Firestore unit for the HVX200 is really released, the price will drop quite a bit from this $2000 mark.
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I agree as well. Also, it seems it isnt even coming out for a few months at least AFTER the camera comes out…..ouch….still not a very great workflow option….next….
Paul
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Actually PCMCIA/Cardbus is faster than firewire. Remember that Media100 used to have a mobile system that plugged into the cardbus slot and it went to an external box that had a SCSI interface and the M100 card inside of it.
If Panasonic is indeed using a standard computer based Cardbus slot then I see no reason why someone could not make a cardbus adapter that plugs into a external hard drive that is fast enough to record the 100Mbit/sec stream.
-mark
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Mark,
If Cardbus is truly faster then Firewire (which I originally thought as well), can you please explain to my why I am getting this chart for speed comparisons when using an external hard drive enclosure device that has cables for both Firewire and Cardbus?
https://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/images/throughput_comparison.jpg
this speed comparsion chart is available on this page:
https://www.addonics.com/products/Saturn/aesed.aspWhat I’m trying to accomplish is a simple concept in theory… plug an external hard drive directly into the P2 slot (using a PCMCIA / Cardbus hard drive adapter) and make that hard drive into a really big pseudo P2 card. Since this camera is operating system based (again, I believe Linux), something like this should not be a problem to accomplish UNLESS Panasonic has blocked any function that would be similar to this internally or if they require a “smart chip” in the external media to “talk” to the camera (like almost all Sony products do).
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Hi Brian,
If the P2 card was just memory this theory has a chance of working, but since it is not, then it is probably missing some major components like the LSI that identifies to the camera what has been inserted into the camera. A “conversation” takes place between the P2 card and the camera that makes it a “system.”
Hope that helps,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Jan,
If you don’t mind my asking, why even bother with LSI? Does it have a function that is more beneficial than just preventing users from using only “Panasonic approved” products in the camera?
To me, without knowing more about what LSI does right now, it seems like it’s just a limiting factor that is making it harder for end-users to use this camera to it’s fullest potential. It is entirely possible to make a direct to hard drive adapter cable for use with an external hard drive, but if we need a “smart chip” installed on the adapter or hard drive for the camera to talk to the hard drive (which seems like what LSI is), then Panasonic is really blocking this ability of the users. (Sounds like bad Macrovision protection on a camera we will all be using to make our own movies and videos.)
Please understand that I’m not knocking the P2 technology or this camera… I think it has a lot of potential. Right now I’m looking for cost effective alternatives to get more “recording” time onto my own external hard drives – this where all of my P2 data will end up anyway when all shooting is complete… at least for the next few years until P2 prices drop drastically.
If the proposed Firestore solution was more cost effective and allowed the use of your own external hard drives (just an interface device), then maybe it would be a more attractive option. But as it is right now, the camera can already do DTE recording. We do not need an “FS-4” device to do this… miniDV users went to Firestore because they did not have DTE abilities. With the HVX200, we are getting DTE built into the camera… we should not have to shell out $2000 for, what in the end for all of us is just a hard drive.
The camera has its own operating system and the ability to do DTE without a “FS-4” style device when using P2 cards… it should be able to record directly to a hard drive with a P2 “adapter”, but my impression is that Panasonic is blocking this ability (like Sony seems to do time and again) so we are forced to either buy a 3rd party “partner” product (like a Firestore device) or more Panasonic devices (P2 cards and P2 store drives). Is my understanding wrong?
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[Brian SaenzDeViteri] “If you don’t mind my asking, why even bother with LSI? Does it have a function that is more beneficial than just preventing users from using only “Panasonic approved” products in the camera?
It really depends on perspective Brian. When working at a broadcast level the camera needs feedback from the device it is recording to so that it “knows” that all is well. The LSI not only initiates the conversation but also directs trafic across a fault free SD raid array. It keeps track of all of the Time Code and Meta Data ans well as making sure that the clip spans the cards and nothing is lost.
>To me, without knowing more about what LSI does right now, it seems like it’s just a limiting factor that is making it harder for end-users to use this camera to it’s fullest potential. It is entirely possible to make a direct to hard drive adapter cable for use with an external hard drive, but if we need a “smart chip” installed on the adapter or hard drive for the camera to talk to the hard drive (which seems like what LSI is), then Panasonic is really blocking this ability of the users. (Sounds like bad Macrovision protection on a camera we will all be using to make our own movies and videos.)
You do need to have a “smart” chip” installed and to say it is because we are “blocking” is one interptretation; rather my interpretaion is that we guarantee results, not “sort of guaranteed” based on your choice of hard drive and such. This is more simply a case of your not being a part of our engineering team and not having a full understanding of what is required. If you wish to contact me off-line and give me your full party credentials as that is what Japan will want to see; as to who you are and what you are proposing to do, I will put you in touch with the Partner Liasion. crittendenj@us.panasonic.com. We are not blocking, we welcome partners, it is just that if you make something that is supposed to work with the product, we need to know that it does indeed work.
>Please understand that I’m not knocking the P2 technology or this camera… I think it has a lot of potential. Right now I’m looking for cost effective alternatives to get more “recording” time onto my own external hard drives – this where all of my P2 data will end up anyway when all shooting is complete… at least for the next few years until P2 prices drop drastically.
I understand that but to accuse us of protectionism is a little off-putting, frankly. Perhaps you didn’t mean it so harshly but that is the way it comes across. Point is, when all is done at the end of the day all of the data has to be there not just enough to be semi-convinced, and find later that a frame was dropped here and there.
>If the proposed Firestore solution was more cost effective and allowed the use of your own external hard drives (just an interface device), then maybe it would be a more attractive option. But as it is right now, the camera can already do DTE recording. We do not need an “FS-4” device to do this… miniDV users went to Firestore because they did not have DTE abilities. With the HVX200, we are getting DTE built into the camera… we should not have to shell out $2000 for, what in the end for all of us is just a hard drive.
You can record to the P2 cards and then file transfer over 1394, but at this time there is a parity conversation between the HD the camera under file transfer. And frankly without this I would be very leary of simple hard drives. 1394 does not parity check; the sending device just sends, the recieving device, if it chokes, it chokes, but the sending device is still sending, not much caring about whether the recieving device is choking, dropping frames or whatever.
Best regards,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Execellent and enlightening answer Jan!
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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If that chart is true, then the P2 cards in the camera would not even have the bandwidth to record the 100Mbit/sec stream.
Also, any cardbus USB2, FW400, or FW800 adapter you buy would only give you about ~ 1/5 the speed of FW400 according to that chart. I’m calling bullshit since AJA supports running the IoLA off the internal FW adapter on a PowerBook and then using a cardbus FW800 card to run the media drives, all of this supporting 10bit uncompressed SD 4:2:2 video which BTW is a hell of lot more data per second than DVCPRO HD.
-mark
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