I’m excited about P2, or maybe not, yes I am, or I don’t know………

[Deleted User]

[Luis Caffesse] “… I think people are making WAY too much of this.
Since when do we get a “Qualified Person In Charge” to hand the precious, hard-won, expensive-to-reproduce, sometimes impossible-to-reproduce film on feature sets? …”

Hi Luis: Well, I don’t know about “people”; I think it’s mostly just nut cases like me who worry about such things. 🙂

As I’ve said before, IMHO the big difference between my example and the one you describe is that in a P2-style production workflow, the original recording on a P2 card is usually going to get destroyed (erased) soon after only one or two copies of it are made.

On a film set, and on most video sets, the original recording almost never gets destroyed/erased, and in the rare instances when it does, it’s usually well after at least one set of highly-qualified “eyes” have looked at & verified the copies.

I’m sorry, I know I’ve been over this before, and some folks here have tried to convince me otherwise, but I still believe that until P2 cards are “dirt cheap” (and therefore archived without being erased), the data they once held must be handled with more care than what is normally the case in most other production workflows. I apologize for repeating it here, but I guess I’ll continue to do so every time I see someone else say something like, essentilly, “Don’t worry, just let the PA deal with it.”

It doesn’t matter how many backup copies of the P2 card are made. IMHO, if at least two copies aren’t “eyeball verified” by a Qualified Person In Charge before the P2 card is erased, then whoever is in charge is putting far more trust in the Digital Media Industrial Complex than it deserves.

But everyone gets to choose.

Will it be: “All watched over by machines of loving grace” — and everything works out fine?

Or, will it be: “The slow (and carefull) tortise wins the race.”?

I sure as heck don’t know, but my tendency isn’t to bet the farm on the good graces of a lowly PA. No offense to underpaid & overworked PAs. 🙂

Just my $0.02 USD; I could be wrong.

All the best,

– Peter

Just a friendly reminder to all: Please consider filling-in your COW user profile information so we have a better idea who you are, where you’re from, and so forth. It’s the friendly thing to do. Thanks!

[Toke]

The new thing in p2 workflow is that acquisition includes copying.

Whenever one does copying, I think that there is a need for backup copy.
So people should consider that there is need to make “working” copy from p2 for viewing and editing
_and_ “backup” copy which is copied again if working copy’s data gets somehow corrupted.

At least I’m not going to erase p2 card before I havve both working and backup copies.

“Every hard disk has and will die sometime.”

[Charlie Hohenshilt]

Well Peter I’m going to make another bold assumption, as I did before.

This Camera is not for you.

You have positioned your self in your market very successfully. The clients you have rent the best equipment (Imax film) the best DP’s (A.S.C.) and the largest budgets>100,000,000. And of course, no lowly PA
would make eye contact with you, if they wanted to work 19 hours for 175.00 tomorrow as well.

Congratulations

Now, how do the rest of us deal with the high cost of the P2 cards? Considering we haven’t even seen the camera yet.

[Luis Caffesse]

[Peter DeCrescenzo] “the big difference between my example and the one you describe is that in a P2-style production workflow, the original recording on a P2 card is usually going to get destroyed (erased) soon after only one or two copies of it are made.”

I guess we’re discussing symantics at this point.
I don’t see it as “copying” the files, or “erasing” the card.
This is digital information, so the files put on the hard drive are identical to the ones on the P2 card, so I see it as simply moving the files from the P2 card to the hard drive.

Is there a danger that if they are moved incorrectly that you could lose all your files? Yes, of course there is. Just like if a camera loader removes the film from the mag incorrectly, there is a chance of losing all your film.

I think you’re running roughly the same risk in either case.

I apologize for repeating it here, but I guess I’ll continue to do so every time I see someone else say something like, essentilly, “Don’t worry, just let the PA deal with it.”

I’m not suggesting that we just look for a PA who doesn’t happen to be busy at that moment, but on the other hand I don’t think this is a job that requires a PhD and 20 years experience.

Like I mentioned before, it seems to be the equivalent job of a camera loader. Which, while a bit ‘higher’ position in general, is still the lowest position in the camera department. If Stanley Kubrick could trust a camera loader with changing out the film mags on the set of 2001…. I think I can find a competant person to move the files off my P2 cards without holding up production or going over budget.

But, I suppose in the end it all depends on how much risk (or perceived risk) each person is comfortable with.
As you said:

everyone gets to choose.

Can you believe this is the last day we won’t know every detail there is to know?
🙂

Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas

[Deleted User]

[Charlie Hohenshilt] “Well Peter I’m going to make another bold assumption, as I did before. This Camera is not for you.”

Hi Charlie: No worries. As I said in my previous message, you may be absolutely correct. And I don’t mean any offense by my disagreeing with you, nor am I convinced my being overly-cautious about handling P2-originated data is warranted.

I hope I’ve been clear that I don’t think I’m right and you’re wrong. I actually don’t know.

As for whether Panasonic’ new small P2 camera, the AG-HVX200, is the camera “for me”, I won’t know for sure until Sunday or Monday at the earliest. And depending on how much information Panasonic releases concerning this cam at that time — since there’s a chance they may not ship it for months — I may not know enough about it to make a purchase decision for a while yet.

There’s also a _chance_ that Panasonic may announce more than one P2-based camera tomorrow. So, one of them might be more appropriate for me than another.

Please understand I have nothing against solidstate recording media such as P2 video “memory/media” cards, or portable harddrive-based video recording media systems; nothing against them at all. Solidstate & HDD is the way to go, and for a while, I’ll hope to pursue that path. However, I’ll probably also use them somewhat in parallel with tape-based video recording, too.

[Charlie Hohenshilt] “… You have positioned your self in your market very successfully. The clients you have rent the best equipment (Imax film) the best DP’s (A.S.C.) and the largest budgets>100,000,000. And of course, no lowly PA
would make eye contact with you, if they wanted to work 19 hours for 175.00 tomorrow as well. Congratulations. …”

I’m not certain of your point above, but my recommendation concerning a P2-style production workflow — “Backup a P2 card at least twice, eyeball verify each backup, and secure at least one backup offsite, before erasing the P2 card.” — does not exclusively concern big-budget productions. Hardly. This level of care in data handling and security should be the goal in all productions. Now, whether it’s actually carried out in all or even most productions is quite another thing. I know it isn’t. But IMHO this doesn’t change its validity as a “standard” worth striving for.

[Charlie Hohenshilt] “… Now, how do the rest of us deal with the high cost of the P2 cards? Considering we haven’t even seen the camera yet.”

Again, sorry but I don’t follow you point here. Apologies for my being so dense.

Panasonic’s fullsize, shoulder-mount P2 camera system has been out for some time, so P2 is not new. We can extrapolate quite a bit about how P2 might be used in numerous new production environments compared to how it’s primarily been used so far in TV news production.

As I’ve said before, TV news production’s “erase & recycle — hurry!” economic model may or may not apply to non-TV news productions. It’s too soon to tell. We’re not likely to know all or most of the answers raised by the fact of the new, lower-cost P2 camera(s) by the end of next week.

Having said that, there’s nothing new under the sun concerning digital data security. Making a copy of digital data doesn’t auto-magically equal preserving the data.

These much-vaunted digital data backup systems, upon which some are quick to put so much faith in, rely on multiple pieces of software in multiple firmware chips embedded in multiple hardware devices managed or affected by multiple device driver software on top of multiple operating systems and used together with various application software running on infinite computer hardware platforms. It should be obvious that this allows ample opportunity for things to go wrong in unseen ways — unless of course one chooses to actually _look_ at the resulting video material _before_ erasing the P2 card or portable hardrive.

Luis is correct in that someone like me who is risk-adverse in certain ways will use P2 and portable harddrive video recorders differently than other, less risk-adverse folks. That’s OK with me. I certainly won’t think ill of someone who works differently than me. It’s great having new tools which allow us to work in new ways.

All the best,

– Peter

Just a friendly reminder to all: Please consider filling-in your COW user profile information so we have a better idea who you are, where you’re from, and so forth. It’s the friendly thing to do. Thanks!

[Toke]

I think that productions shot with $6k camera can’t afford camera loader.