NO p2 for me! Forget it!

[Graeme Nattress]

Varicam is $65l, Deck about $22k with options, and then you need a lens. I think you’ll be spending more than $87k before you shoot a single frame! But boy do those pictures look nice 🙂

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Luis Caffesse]

[Graeme Nattress] “Varicam is $65l, Deck about $22k with options, and then you need a lens. I think you’ll be spending more than $87k before you shoot a single frame! But boy do those pictures look nice 🙂 “

Alright, alright.
🙂
I was just throwing out a rough price, but you’re right, it would be over $85K.

The point is, this new camera will cost roughly 1/10th of the price of a current DVCProHD 24P setup, and I’m sure it will look better than 1/10th of the quality.

Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Hi Peter,

You said: The backups will be “eyeball-verified” in _realtime_ in addition to being electronically verified during the backup/transfer. The eyeball verification should be done by a Qualified Person In Charge to insure data integrity. Don’t entrust the quality of the only copies of your video to a computer system or a lowly production assistant. Since eyeballing the video is done in realtime, this task is somewhat time consuming but unavoidable.

I find this odd. It might be that you are just unfamiliar with the practice of managing data. If a computer can check sum and verify data, like it does at the World Bank and NY Stock Exchange, where data going bad would mean millions and millions of dollars going astray, why can’t you trust a computer to make a copy. You can even have it check sum and verify your data.

I mean every time you play your tape in DV you run the risk of introducing dropouts. This is a little less likely in DVCPRO but it is possible. I have seen guys tear their hair out because the copy they thought was good, really wasn’t. Do you watch all the copies after they have been recorded?

When I back up my computer to the internal server, and frankly there are some papers I have written that have taken me weeks to write and it would be really bad to lose them, I don’t check to see if every word was accurately copied. I check the data count and if it is the same I move on.

Anyhow, just a thought,

Jan

Jan M. Crittenden
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Ron Shook]

Serge,

[Serge Rodnunsky] “All this confidence in Hard Drives as an archive format is nutty too. Has anyone had a hard drive sitting on their shelf for ten years and then tried to boot it up again. I mean what was I using ten years ago SCSI, I don’t even have SCSI cards and connections anymore. I have a 3/4 inch tape from 1980 that I just put in a deck and it was fine. That tape is 25 years old. Getting over to optical makes sense but so little data on a DVD.”

I see where you are coming from, but you just aren’t keeping up with recent developments. Hard drives aren’t for archiving. They are for initial recording and short term storage. You can take it to the bank that there will be hard drive recording options for this camera either from Pana or 3rd parties that’ll take care of any long form recording issues. By the time this Camera delivers, or shortly thereafter, there will be holographic worm optical drives that can hold 200 gigs, transfer at 20MB/sec, cost $50 for the media ($.25/gigabyte,) that takes care of any long term archiving needs. There will be folks using this camera that don’t purchase a P2 card for a year or 2 until the prices drop considerably, but in the meantime, the stage is set. Check out the Maxell booth at NAB about Holographic Optical. Other than the fact that it’s not rewritable, it blows BlueRay or HDVD out of the water as a video post-pro workflow tool.

This is a brilliant move by Panasonic to get P2 moving and the prices for the media dropping and it’s aimed just as much, if not more, at XD-Cam as it is at 1/3″ palmcorder competitors.

Ron Shook

[Graeme Nattress]

You are indeed right that under $10k for a DV, DVCpro50 and DVCproHD camera is an absolutely awesome advance forwards, and it’s probably $10k less than it should be by dropping tape.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Deleted User]

Jan: First, an aside: We’re privelged to have you here; it’s great that you (on a personal level) and Panasonic (on a professional & business level) consider we COW folk worthy of your time & attention. Seriously. My hope is that more manufacturers (especially S*ny) would do the same! I mean, wouldn’t it be great if Jan’s S*ny counterpart joined in this discussion, and in others here on the COW? I know we could keep the dialog civil, and maybe even I’d learn a thing or two.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled program, “The Thread That Ate The New Jesrey Turnpike”, Chapter Two: The Doubters Have At It Again!, where our heroine (fashionably attired, gazing at her computer screen with a look of composure, but also with some disapproval) was saying:

[Jan Crittenden] “I find this odd. It might be that you are just unfamiliar with the practice of managing data. If a computer can check sum and verify data, like it does at the World Bank and NY Stock Exchange, where data going bad would mean millions and millions of dollars going astray, why can’t you trust a computer to make a copy. You can even have it check sum and verify your data. …”

I hear you, but of course in most cases there won’t be World Bank class data management — or anything close to it — on your typical low-to-medium budget video production set (which is where I currently live, so to speak). Serge and others can comment on the typical carry-on of a medium-to-high-end budget video production set, but I suspect even the “big boys” in video don’t have on-set data management staffs, equipment, policies and procedures anything like the World Bank, let alone the Bank of NY, or even how Bank of America handles (in the fullest sense of the word) the ATM at my local bank’s branch office.

As I said before, I don’t trust a computer any farther than I can throw it. Well, maybe a few feet further, but that’s my limit.

Sure, backup systems usually work wonderfully well most of the time. Let’s say they work correctly 99.99% of the time … actually, Panasonic might even publish a “9s” statistic for their new P2 hardware; if so, it would be interesting to see.

OK, so if the initial P2-based dataflow (transferring from a P2 card to another medium) is error-free 99.99% of the time, multiply that against about half of Panasonic’s projected use of P2 over the course of the next year or so, just to come up with a ballpark number.

Multiply that further by the sheer volume of footage likely to be shot worldwide using P2. I have no doubt P2 will wildly succeed in the marketplace, and as a result Jan will be able to retire early!

1 hour @ 24 fps = 86,400 frames per hour. Times how many hours per shoot? Times how many productions per day wordwide? The result is a very, very large number of frames. It might not be a “World Bank” kinda number, but it’s w-a-y big. And how many dollars worth of reasonably-priced P2 hardware — and how much worth of pro data management staff time — will be handling all that P2 data backup? Relatively speaking, not much, certainly not anything close to “World Bank” scope.

The result is potentially (yes: only potentially) a somewhat random scattering of a not insignificant number of irretrievably lost original recorded frames, all over the world. And that’s just what’s _automatically_ lost in the process of the _required_ step of backing-up the P2 cards. Further, after they’re backed up, virtually _all_ of the P2 cards will be completely erased, at least for quite some time, until the happy day when P2 cards are way “cheap”.

Whereas, if the original recording was done on videotape, all of the original frames — good frames as well as dropouts, creases, warped cassettes, and so forth — would be happily sitting on a shelf, waiting for an archivist to retrieve them. In practice, dropouts, etc. are fairly infrequent, so maybe videotape is 99.99% reliable? I don’t know. BUT MOST PRODUCTION WORKFLOWS DON’T REQUIRE ERASING THE ORIGINAL FOOTAGE. (Sorry for shouting, but that’s the main point.)

Sure, TV news organizations may erase videotapes willy-nilly, but most other video production workflows don’t. And although I’m sure Panasonic will continue to succeed selling P2 into TV news, the new, additional market push is elsewhere — everywhere else — where almost no one routinely erases original work on videotape and film.

I think there’s an order of magnitude difference between those two senarios, TV new vs. everything else.

[Jan Crittenden] “… When I back up my computer to the internal server, and frankly there are some papers I have written that have taken me weeks to write and it would be really bad to lose them, I don’t check to see if every word was accurately copied. I check the data count and if it is the same I move on. …”

Perhaps if we wrote 86,400 words per hour we might give it more thought. And care.

I’m not implying the Panasonic hasn’t given P2 enough thought or care, but rather perhaps it’s implications haven’t been well thought out by most non-TV news shooters.

P2-style media (including other frequently-erased media, such as hard drive-based acquisition) is long overdue. Managing the transition to it and reliably managing its dataflow will require a “World Bank”-level of effort if we’re to avoid losing irretrievable chunks of history and culture.

In any event, I’ve got my sunglasses and rubber boots ready, so bring on our P2 future! I’m looking forward to it. Really.

Thanks for being here, Jan!

All the best,

– Peter

[Graeme Nattress]

News people regularly re-use tapes. They don’t seem to have a problem with it.

As for erasing your original footage – wiping P2 memory after making a backup is no more dangerous than hitting “save” in your word processor, backing up what was in memory to hard drive, and regularly making CD backups. Everyone does this all the time.

With the current tape process there is NO BACKUP. At least with P2 you have to consciously make one. The weakest link in the current tape process is shooting onto tape. There’s no confidence record, you can’t just plug your data into a laptop to see if it’s all come out all-right. You don’t know if you had a head clog, or some dirt got in, or whatever.

You seem to be trying to make P2 meet higher standards of data security than everyone already applies to tape.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Derek Antonio serra]

I agree that something like P2 may well be the future – but in the here and now it’s going to be a hard sell with XDCAM already established and XDCAM-HD in the offing. These format wars are really exhausting. I remember attending a Panasonic pre-release promo on DV. They said that DV would be standard for all manufacturers – then they went and produced DVCPro! Wouldn’t it be great for consumers if manufacturers attempted to work together for a change to produce a format which suits the end-users needs? Year after year we have to endure the hype surrounding the next “amazing” format. Some of us buy in, with decks, camera’s, accessories. A year or so down the line the stuffs obsolete. Time to buy again…

[Luis Caffesse]

[Peter DeCrescenzo] “The result is potentially (yes: only potentially) a somewhat random scattering of a not insignificant number of irretrievably lost original recorded frames, all over the world.”[/i]

And as you mentioned, the same potential is there for videotape, in the form of dropped frames.

I don’t know about most people, but I copy files very often on my system. I move them from one computer to another over a netowork. I back them up to DVD and erase them from the hard drive, only to copy them back onto the drive months later.

I have NEVER had a file become corrupted or damaged upon copying it.
On the other hand, I have had many many dropped frames over the years from a bad tape. I have also had tape transports die on me. I have had head clogs in the middle of a shoot, only to find that the last few takes were ruined, and had to stop to clean the heads on the camera.

So, P2 seems no less reliable than tape to me.
You may be right in your mathematics, the potential is there.
But from my experience, and I think that’s what most people will judge by, I’ve had more problems with tape that I have ever had with digital files.

Just curious, how many times have you had a file corrupted by copying it?
And how many dropouts have you had over the years?

“Further, after they’re backed up, virtually _all_ of the P2 cards will be completely erased”

If it’s that big of a concern for you, check your files before you erase the card. There isn’t anything you can do to recover dropped frames from tape, but at least with P2 you have the opportunity to recopy the files before erasing.

“BUT MOST PRODUCTION WORKFLOWS DON’T REQUIRE ERASING THE ORIGINAL FOOTAGE. “

We’re talking about digital files here.
You’re moving the orignal footage to a new source, and deleting the copy.
You still have your original footage, just not in the same place.
I view it as removing film from a film magazine, and reloading.
The original ‘film’ is still there, just like the same bit for bit copy of your files will be there, every bit the same as the files that were on the P2 card.

Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas

[Graeme Nattress]

DVCpro is much more robust than DVCAM though. Codec is the same, and that’s all that really matters. As for format wars – XDCAM doesn’t fit in camcorders. It’s too big and bulky. If people are buying XDCAM, it’s because of one thing only, and that’s the name Sony on the front of it. You may as well shoot tape as XDCAM.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP