NO p2 for me! Forget it!

[Noah Kadner]

No one’s putting a gun to your head my friend. Vote with you wallet. Tape’s not dead over at Sony and JVC just yet.

[Serge Rodnunsky]

No I understand that and I love the Panasonic Varicam as well.

I’m just being a voice of reason against the numerous posts convinced its time for tape to go.

I would love for the new Panasonic competitor to the Z1 to be a tape camcorder. I’m very disappointed that they are going this direction. I would like to buy the new Panasonic low end 24p camera but not if its P2. I’ll have to look at the Z1 and JVC.

[Noah Kadner]

If you think about it though the JVC and the Z1 are both a few notches below the HVX200 in terms of capability. They’re both shooting HDV which is 4x as compressed as DVCPROHD and with less color depth. If you think that level of MPEG-2 type compression is going to endure 30 years on a mini DV tape with no dropouts you could be in for an unpleasant surprise or two.

And neither shoots 24p at 1080 like the HVX. The Z1 only does 1080i with no 24p at all and the JVC maxes out its 24p at 720p again in the compressed space of HDV. The trade-off of course is you get the tape you’re accostumed to shooting with. You’ll have to figure out what’s more important. And P2’s prices can only go down while capacities go up. I think it’s an exciting choice to make.

Noah

[Gabriel]

Here’s someone who doesn’t understand a basic P2 workflow. Tape is not rock solid. Tape will not last for 30 years. Tape has dropouts. Tape can be chewed by the camera, deck or your dog. Tape is sensitive to all sorts of external conditions (weather, temperature, humidity etc). P2 is not. P2 is everything tape is not. The only thing you have to do is to think out of the square. Flash memory doesn’t get “zapped” by some sort of voodoo magic. And if you are worried about the reliability of your associated hardware, you should buy quality stuff. After all you will save a great deal of money by not being forced to buy a new deck. And service it. Or the camera. And buy tape. As for archiving, who talked about tape? That’s NOT the way of doing it. For more information you’ll have to wait for NAB, you’ll be very surprised. Anyway, we don’t live in a perfect world, you can’t make everyone happy, but if you plan to go to film, you should plan what direction you will take 5-10 years from now…

Gabriel Costache
Sales Engineer
Panasonic NZ Ltd

[Serge Rodnunsky]

I’m sure they’ll be plenty of tape around in 10years as I’m sure they’ll be cars and film.

I’ve never had a problem with a tape in almost 50 films.
None of the things you mentioned. That’s 100’s of hours of recording.
I usually rent new cameras so I’ve never seen one eat a tape.
I’ve had a few tapes eaten by decks. But thats usually way downstream in post and rarely at the source tape level and even and eaten tape is usually 99% salvagable.

Not answering the basic question.

How do I conveniently, safely, and cost effectively record four hours a day of material on a P2 system.

I’m all for getting rid of the need for expensive decks, but $1700 4gig flashcards that record only 5min. aren’t going to cut it. That’s 20 per hour, if I’m out remote I would need 80 cards to be safe that’s what $130k in p2 flashcards. Then I’ve got to get them back to the editor at the end of the day to be dumped over and then erase them all for the next days shoot?
This seems a very bizarre workflow to me.

[Serge Rodnunsky]

“Solid state is OK for short pieces, but what happens when it’s full and something big happens. It’s expensive, so you don’t carry lots of spares. And what about a documentary producer going abroad, and shooting 30 or 40 hours for an hour programme. What do they do with that material?,” asks Olivier Bovis, XDCAM product marketing manager, Sony Business Europe. Also, if something goes wrong, how do you recover the information from solid state. “With tape or disc you can usually recover something,” he maintains. “If you look at them from a business perspective, the difference is clear.” Until memory reaches the same price as tape, he believes it will be too expensive.

I’m not alone…. Panasonic should have made this system tape.

[Noah Kadner]

Well it’s not going to be tape so it’s sounds like it’s going to be the cam for you. To each his/her own. From the response I’ve seen on this board and others there’s hundreds if not thousands of folks who are planning to get an HVX and could not be happier about finally leaving tape behind. Choice is good thing.

[Noah Kadner]

Should have said, “not going to be the cam for you” though that’s pretty obvious at this point.

[Serge Rodnunsky]

I’m now curious about this so I’ve been reading that they’re planning to come out with a 128gig card that will record 90min in hd and 50hours or something in Dv. That makes more sense than 4gig /5min at $1700. But archiving issues still make me nervous.

I’ll wait and see…. meanwhile I’ll still shoot the Varicam with Tape.

[Noah Kadner]

P2 is right at the bleeding edge. Yes of course the current capacities are not as practical as they could be but that’s expected to shift radically as we get closer to the actual product launch. You can see the road map here:

And in the meantime we can expect a slew of third party products to help shoulder the burden. There will be alternatives to the actual P2 cards when shooting with this camera. Lots more info at NAB.

Noah