NO p2 for me! Forget it!

[Christopher Deangelus]

Working for a company with four employees, I don’t consider this a large corporation, and I use tape to back up. I know other small companies that use tape to back up as well. It is not just limited to large corporations.

As for P2 eliminating tape clogs: as with most technology, it is not eliminating a problem, it is replacing a problem with other problems. You use an example of head clogs, which is specific to the tape mechanism. Going to solid state may eliminate head clogs, but now you’ve added, say, static shock of the P2 card (which can kill the card and/or erase the contents) as a potential hazard, something I’m sure we in the northeast get quite a bit with our cold, dry winters. You’ve also added failure to the solid state memory inside as another problem. Where a clogged head can be repaired, try to repair a fused/shorted/physically damaged memory chip. The effect of that is the same as a clogged head: downtime.

Both systems have weaknesses. Neither is perfect. P2 is an interesting solution, but thinking it will eliminate all your problems is shortsighted. You are simply trading one set of advantages/disadvantages for another. As of right now, with the cost/size what it is, I can’t see it being an answer.

[Graeme Nattress]

I would think that any danger to memory cards is a couple of orders magnitude less than with tape. I’ve used the same kind of chips that are in P2 with my digital camera, and never had the slightest bit bother with them. They’re a much more reliable technology than tape will ever be. So yes, you are trading one set of problems for another, but in that trade the new problems are over 100 times less likely to happen – fair trade it would seem!

Graeme

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

[Simon Wyndham]

Gabriel, you are very misinformed.

You can delete no-good takes from the disc just after they have been recorded, although you cannot delete a clip halfway through the disc. But in reality you would normally delete a no-good take right away anyway.

Also, the XDCAM disc CAN be accessed and copied to just like a hard drive. XDCAM saves as MXF files which are handled like any other file on the computer. XDCAM uses FAM file transfer and behaves in exactly the same way as P2 does when it is hooked up to the computer. I can copy the mxf files to the PC hard drive in exactly the same way as P2. In fact once the camera is hooked up to the computer there is NO difference between the P2 workflow and the xdcam workflow. XDCAM has slower access times, but that is offset by the fact that I can hold much more data on an XDCAM disc.

This is a case of horses for courses. I have the choice between swapping cards and dumping footage to a laptop often, but having very fast access times with P2, or I can record much longer with hardly any need to dump footage, but have slightly longer access times with XDCAM. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

Lastly I do not need a deck, I can just use the camera.

I use xdcam every day as I own a PDW510. I have to say it gets old real fast when people spread misinformation about the xdcam format. I like the idea of P2, and I think the two formats can exist side by side giving people the choice depending on their market.

Please get your facts straight.