Panasonic commitment to P2?

[Matthew Romanis]

There is always an upper limit to storage before the hardware itself needs to altered to accommadate the new storage parameters. Some times these changes to hardware result in new reader/writers having to be used, eg DVD-R to DVD+r and DVD rw, then dual layer.
64g out of current cards may be improbable.
I guess the question that needs to be asked of the Camera manufacturers is that now they are making devices along the same lines as the IT industry, are they going to make it as simple to embrace new technology by making the current drives and devices swappable? Will I be able at some future date tale the P2 drive out of the camera and replace it with a P3 unit ? (???doesn’t exist, but for example).
My guess, through 20 years of experience with broadcast manufacturers and how they engineer products, is no.
To their credit the products don’t crash, and rarely have bugs.

[Kyle S]

I have no doubt Panassonic is fully commited to the P2 format. They have stepped out on a limb with what they believe the future to be. A faliure of P2 I am sure would not only have a substantial financial downside would but would create a huge embarrasment for the company that would last years.

Oh yeah, they are commited.

Kyle

[Ron Shook]

Matthew,

[matthew Romanis] “I guess the question that needs to be asked of the Camera manufacturers is that now they are making devices along the same lines as the IT industry, are they going to make it as simple to embrace new technology by making the current drives and devices swappable? Will I be able at some future date tale the P2 drive out of the camera and replace it with a P3 unit ? (???doesn’t exist, but for example).
My guess, through 20 years of experience with broadcast manufacturers and how they engineer products, is no.”

Your post is astute, and at first kinda scared me. But…, then I realized that as long as any camcorder has an IT I/O interface like 1394 or gig ethernet it is pretty future proofed as far as file recording is concerned. Even if Panasonic had to move from P2 to the fictional P3 in 2 years to get higher memory densities, they or a 3rd party could easily supply a two slot, very small form factor, relatively inexpensive P3 writer device to attach to the camera via 1394. I don’t think that’ll happen as those P2 cards seem to have a lot of room for expansion. Look at how big they are in comparison to the same capacity compact flash cards. It ain’t all armor.

Ron Shook

[Randall3]

P2 is cool. Not quite for HD yet, but very cool. I hope Panasonic provides HD-SDI out on their new camera. That would solve a great deal of problems in the interim. It would also sell a LOT of 1200a decks. Panny, are you listening?

[Ivan Kacer]

I think Panasonic schould push hard to have P2 HD camcorder within half year or so.
There is Thomson coming with interesting gear and who knows what Sony will announcce beside upcoming XDCAM HD. There is already couple of P2 SD camcorders out and with HVX 200 out soon it schould be priority to have big brother. One think for shure,
pricing also got to be right.

[Matthew Romanis]

I agree that external expansion is a good option, but I have just come back from a 6hr shoot reality Tv style where I was using my 709 D’Beta on my shoulderfor almost all that time, it sure hurts now. Just thinking about using the HVX with an additional device on it without a shoulder mount, well my wrist and elbow have just left the room!!! The camera is already rather large in comparison to Z-1 and such, though I believe Canon HD XL will big too.
Re the CF card comparison, data rate is going to be the factor that dictates size. The fact that the P2 card is 8G and has the data rate to handle HD100 already makes it 6 times the 4g CF card for data transfer rates. You’re right though, it’s not all about armour, it’s about making the data pipe bigger.
With all this doubt around though, I am still extremely keen to get my hands on the HVX and explore all the possible options for archiving, file transferring, and transport for rental customers.

[Nick B]

It is all about return on capital invested, if you have made a fortune with this camera you wont have a problem replacing it with a ‘P3’ or whatever in the future.

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

[Randall3] “P2 is cool. Not quite for HD yet, but very cool. I hope Panasonic provides HD-SDI out on their new camera. That would solve a great deal of problems in the interim. It would also sell a LOT of 1200a decks. Panny, are you listening?”

Hi Randall,

To get the footage into a HD1200A, use the 1394, no need for HD-SDI. There is no difference between the compression at the HVX200 or in the HD1200A, none whatsoever. HD-SDI would only be useful if you had a RAID that would handle 1.2GBps of data.

Best regards,

Jan

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

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

[ShawnMitchL] “I am wondering what anyone might think/know about Panasonic’s commitment to P2 will be and when is a realistic time frame for 64GB media?”

Hi,

First off we are totally committed to P2, I mean we are introducing something, putting all of our efforts into a product line that will decimate our most profitable business if we are successful. That is we make VTRs and we make more VTRs than any other manufacturer in the video business and if we are successful with P2 and memory based recording, then the VTR business goes away. Think about it. Gutsy move.

The Memory based P2 is based on the SD memory card which is based on memory chips. San Disk is now delivering 4 gig SD, they tend to lead on SD memory introductions, which will get us 16 GB P2s. We do make our own SDs as we can skim the cream of the crop and other manufacturers wouldn’t put up with such nonsense. By this I mean only the Defect Free cards which is 1% or less are defect free and those with transfer rates of 20MBps are the ones we put into the P2s. So with the rate of introduction we are looking at 16 GB next year, 32 the year after and the 64 would be the year after. So under normal timetable the 64GB is about 3 years out.

However, I saw an article the other day where Samsung was working on a 32GB memory chip, the article did not say whether it was small enough for the SD, but if it were, that would leap-frog and all would have to follow to remain competitive.

And yes, the cameras are being designed to either be firmware upgradeable, that is, once it passes a certain number of GB on the P2, it can be upgraded to accept the larger ones or they are are open to accept any size of P2. Our map on the SD has the memory doubling every year, so yes these are exciting times.

Hope this helps,

Jan

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

[Brian Deviteri]

[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “To get the footage into a HD1200A, use the 1394, no need for HD-SDI. There is no difference between the compression at the HVX200 or in the HD1200A, none whatsoever. HD-SDI would only be useful if you had a RAID that would handle 1.2GBps of data.”

Jan,

If that is really the case, then why can’t we take the firewire out from the HVX200 to any hard drive based recorder that can handle the Firewire date rate? Shouldn’t that function the same as an HD1200A deck without the tape? Or do we HAVE to use a Firestore device for this style of deck-based recording with the HVX200?

Brian