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P2 Media Cards vs FIRESTORE 3 hour Value price test.
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Sure.
Still I’m with Michael Pappas on this issue. 5-10 min recording time between “reloading” isn’t a big problem for me but I’m not buying any “paradigm shift” stuff here. A roll of 16 mm with processing and transfer to tape is how much? $400? If P2 beats this price real soon I’d say “Good job, Panasonic”
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[mishka] “A roll of 16 mm with processing and transfer to tape is how much? $400?”
What kind of tape are you transfering that film to?
SD or HD? I would imagine HD, so that you make as good a copy as possible.Are you sitting in on the telecine, to make sure you have an accurate transfer? I would assume you wouldn’t do a one light.
And, you’ll need a deck to be able to digitize that footage… an HD deck.
So, you’ve got to add the price on that (and just the rental on that would be more than the $400)So, I think that’s probably a bit too low of an estimate, and not really a fair comparison.
Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas -
Of course it was very rough estimate and there are many factors that affects the actual cost per roll. Still it doesn’t take an hour to transfer one roll. Several rolls of film will fit on a $100 HDCAM tape. For dailies one-light will do fine. Supervised transfer is expensive because grading is involved – I pay the guy not the machine. I still have to pay for grading at some point no matter what is the acquisition format. If you double my figure I’m sure you won’t have to shop around for a good deal.
The cost of deck is totally irrelevant. If you offer editing as a service you need some sort of deck to lay down the master. If you are a client I don’t think any facility would give you an additional discount because you brought P2 not tapes. You already cut a lot of hours of digitizing so don’t expect more favors.
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[Guy Barwood] “Sure it could if you wanted it to, but then no one would want to use P2 so its never going to happen, which is a shame as it is by far the most popular non tape ‘media’ around. “
Guy, that is really silly. Okay I want the Firestore to work. Does it? No. Why, the prcessor isn’t fast enough to capture more than 40Mbs. Hmm so how is my wanting it to work going to det it past that threshold?
Are we working with Focus Enhancements? Yes they are a P2 Partner.
Best regards,
Jan
Jan M. Crittenden
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
[mishka] “Of course it was very rough estimate and there are many factors that affects the actual cost per roll. Still it doesn’t take an hour to transfer one roll. Several rolls of film will fit on a $100 HDCAM tape.
Fair enough. I was only bringing up the additional costs because if we’re going to hammer P2 cards for being too expensive, I think it’s also important to point out the places where shooting with solid state will cut costs.
And, while every roll of 16mm will add additional costs, the cost of shooting on a P2 card becomes less and less the more you shoot. Yes, it’s an initial investment for both the cards, and whatever media you are backing them up to. But after that, there are no more costs.
How much 16mm would you be shooting in a day, and for how many days?
The more you shoot, the cheaper P2 gets.
The cost of 16mm is constant..and the more you shoot, the more expensive it gets.For dailies one-light will do fine.
So are you talking about finishing on film?
I was under the assumption we were talking about finishing on a video format. If so, you would eventually have to make a decent transfer of the film. That was why I mentioned the cost of a supervised transfer.The cost of deck is totally irrelevant. If you offer editing as a service you need some sort of deck to lay down the master.
I don’t think it’s totatlly irrelevant at all.
You’re right, you need a deck to lay down a master and that is one day’s worth of work. How long do you need that deck to log and capture?
It’s very different.If you are a client I don’t think any facility would give you an additional discount because you brought P2 not tapes. You already cut a lot of hours of digitizing so don’t expect more favors.”
You’re right, they won’t give you an additional discount. But you seem to be discounting the amount of money you have to spend in order to log and capture your tapes at a facility, versus walking in with a hard drive where the editor already has full nonlinear access to all of your footage.
Most jobs I do I spend a minimum of one full day logging and capturing.
And that’s on short runtime pieces. On some projects, I’ve spent as much as 1-2 weeks logging and capturing. I can only imagine how happy my clients would be not to have to pay for my time to do that (not that I’d be that happy about losing the income, but I do hate having to log and capture).You’re right, I may have overstated the benefits.
But if I did, it was only to point out that I felt you were understating them.This has sort of gotten off on a tangent. In the end we’ll just have to wait and see where the pricing lands. But I expect that the P2 workflow will be less expensive than shooting 16mm rolls.
Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas -
[Luis Caffesse] “If FireStore wants to offer an external drive which can record DVCProHD, then they very well may. “
Perhaps, but it is unlikely to have the integration level that Panasonic could provide if the made their own unit.I also don’t know what the digital data interface for this camera would be anyway. Does it use a firewire interface? How is DVCPRO HD normally ‘captured’ (ie pre P2).
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[Guy Barwood] “Perhaps, but it is unlikely to have the integration level that Panasonic could provide if the made their own unit.
I suppose you’re right, and they very well may have made their own, who knows. Although I doubt it, seeing as it has already been mentioned that FireStore is partnering with Panasonic.
Although, what sort of ‘integration’ level are you looking for?
People seem to be using third party hard drive solutions for many cameras, without too much trouble.I also don’t know what the digital data interface for this camera would be anyway. Does it use a firewire interface? How is DVCPRO HD normally ‘captured’ (ie pre P2). “
Well, it used to be component or HD-SDI.
Then Panasonic and Apple partnered up to bring us DVCProHD over firewire.
Avid is now supporting DVCProHD over firewire as well.As far as P2 goes, I believe the SPX800 (the current P2 camera on the market) uses a USB connection to transfer files.
Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas -
[Jan Crittenden] “so how is my wanting it to work going to det it past that threshold? “
Pretty simple really. Any DVCPROHD firestore product is going to need to be a new model anyway, so the new model simply uses a processor that can handle the data throughput.
We never mention a particular Firestore model, just the product in general.
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[Luis Caffesse] “Although, what sort of ‘integration’ level are you looking for? “
Look at the integration level of the JVC HDD unit on the GY-DV5000 and 5100. You get viewfinder status display etc It’s not just a dumb HDD recorder hanging off a 1394 port looking for start/stop messages.[Luis Caffesse] “Then Panasonic and Apple partnered up to bring us DVCProHD over firewire. Avid is now supporting DVCProHD over firewire as well. “
Thanks, always good to understand these things. -
[Luis Caffesse] “But I expect that the P2 workflow will be less expensive than shooting 16mm rolls. “
I brought up 16 mm because I feel when shooting P2 costs less than shooting 16 mm very important psychological barrier will be broken.
[Luis Caffesse] “And, while every roll of 16mm will add additional costs, the cost of shooting on a P2 card becomes less and less the more you shoot. Yes, it’s an initial investment for both the cards, and whatever media you are backing them up to. But after that, there are no more costs.”
Recycling P2 cards is a hot topic on many boards. The only part not covered extensively is how the client gonna feel about it. This could be non-issue or it could be a big deal for our clients. We can’t predict that at the moment and this is not going to be completely rational – FUD, gossip, hearsay will be factors too. So lets get mentally prepared for the worst case scenario.
[Luis Caffesse] “So are you talking about finishing on film?
I was under the assumption we were talking about finishing on a video format. If so, you would eventually have to make a decent transfer of the film. That was why I mentioned the cost of a supervised transfer. “It is going to be selected takes, not all the footage and again you are paying for colorist’s time not machine time. Tape to tape or smoke*/inferno session isn’t much cheaper than that.
[Luis Caffesse] “Most jobs I do I spend a minimum of one full day logging and capturing.
And that’s on short runtime pieces. On some projects, I’ve spent as much as 1-2 weeks logging and capturing. I can only imagine how happy my clients would be not to have to pay for my time to do that (not that I’d be that happy about losing the income, but I do hate having to log and capture).”Don’t worry. The whole job will take roughly the same amount of time. An editor has to be familiar with the material to work fast.
I like P2. I want it to take off fast. I feel for it to take off it doesn’t have to come down to tape price level. 16 mm price level would be enough. P2 is not there right now.
Also, are we going to see P2 Varicam at IBC? I’m seriously considering getting one.
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