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Some Mathmatics on P2 Cards
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G,
I’ve never heard that one before. Explain a little more about the Z1U’s companion deck, if you don’t mind.
jeremiah black
dual 2 gig G5
2.5 gigs of RAM
Decklink Extreme capture card -
I had a post lower in this subject (P2) tree which cleared up some skepticisms I had on the new Pan Camera. As far as P2, love the idea hate the cost. I was told below that an external HD record option was a reality so I am sold, on the new camera. The HD option gives me the same end result. If I want to just plug the thing in an cut right away, its right there for me.
Archiving is a different issue, with an external HD at a reasonable cost its a no brainier, and I got one of them!!
I looked at the Sony Z1 and at first it looked just too fantastic, then after a few times playing with it it became obvious to me that the long GOP HDV thing was a MAJOR problem for me. MAJOR. Its kind of tragic but I have to look out for the best option at a price and if the new camera stays away from long GOP MPEG, which I think the DVCPro HD does stay away from, I smell killer camera.
Now all I have to do is drop 25 years and the world would seem to be open to all my imagination, at a reasonable price no less!
Chris
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You wrote:
“Heh, heh. No matter how you look at it, if you’re used to uninterrupted filming of an hour or so at a time, then P2 is unsuitable at present. Buy a Sony Z1.”
The P2/HD aspect of this camera is clearly being marketed to people interested in the BIG SCREEN but can’t afford a Varicam or F900. Perhaps independent filmmakers and others who need a fairly high quality image that can be blown up without falling to pieces.
As far as having to offload media from the P2 cards every few minute… WHO CARES !!! When shooting film you’ve got to reload mags every few minutes as well. This new camera is giving you an amazing image with much less compression than an “HDV” camera. Not to mention 24 FPS.
The Z1 is officially an “HDV” camera. The HVX is NOT. Panasonic isn’t even part of the “HDV crew”, they’re doing their own thing… and as far as I’m concerned it’s the ONLY thing going on right now. BRAVO Panasonic!!!!
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(jeremiah black)………………This was, I think, Panasonic’s only mistake. They should’ve priced the camera at $8000 and included an 8 gig P2 cards, because otherwise everybody will just cry and complain about buying a P2 card, immediatly forgetting what a great deal the camera itself was in the first place.
I agree. The 1st published interview with Panasonic the price was mentioned at $10,000.00 and we all were swallowing the bitter pill. Had we learned it would include 2 – 8GB P2 cards it would have been a bonus.
I remember when I bought my 1st digital still camera 4 or 5 years ago and paid $450.00 for a 96mb compact flash card. They currently sell for less than $10.00 on ebay now. A 2.2 magicstor was $76.85 yesterday. These prices will come down fast and it looks like we will have other options before the camera is released.
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This is absolutely correct. The only thing I’d say is that it’s probably not the best solution solution for documentaries- the look of which isn’t heavily stylized in post (so HDV doesn’t fall apart), and where it probably helps to be able to shoot all day without interruption. Though bear in mind that people used to shoot documentaries on film, so I don’t know what all the whining is about. I guess back then poeple had to be smarter, and couldn’t just mindlessly leave the camera on all day and then dump the 600 hours of footage on some poor editor.
Geez, listening to the people on this board, it’s obvious that so many of these tough talking “big shots” didn’t pick up a camera until mini-DV, and now they have no concept of workflows others than the typical mini dv route. If film had never been invented, and shooting negetive was just brought out at NAB this week, everyone would be on the boards going “you mean to tell me that I have to get this stuff developed? And I can’t move it over firewire? And it costs how much? and I can only shoot 10 minutes at a time? And I have to change the reels in a darkroom? What if the negetive gets scratched? And it doesn’t record sound? What if the film gets exposed before I shoot it? I don’t have time to thread film on set! How do I make a backup? Boo hoo hoo. I’m a serious artist, and I don’t have time for this! Now where’d I put my VX1000?”
Guys, all the griping about how P2 doesn’t suit your “professional needs” doesn’t look impressive. It just makes you look like a guy who learned on mini-DV, and then ignorantly thought that the workflow for all shooting formats worked that way.
Sorry to be rude, but there’s just way too many trolls who come on this board and start spouting off. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Find whatever technology works for you, and do your thing.
jeremiah black
dual 2 gig G5
2.5 gigs of RAM
Decklink Extreme capture card -
(rennie) “I agree. The 1st published interview with Panasonic the price was mentioned at $10,000.00 and we all were swallowing the bitter pill. Had we learned it would include 2 – 8GB P2 cards it would have been a bonus. ”
Boy, this is true. Just two weeks ago, I was talking with Luis, and I was saying, “hey 10,000 is a decent price- it’s a varicam with 1/3 inch chips- maybe half the camera at 1/6 the price. Even with several P2 cards, it’s still a good deal- especially when you throw in the fact that you don’t need to pay for renting a deck.” Now ONE DAY AFTER finding out the camera will be 6000 instead of 10,000, everyone’s freaking out and forgotten their earlier expectations. Human nature is so spolied and greedy.
Luis has said that the camera will be available in a 10,000 package that will include 2x 8 gig P2 cards. but, still…. Giving people the option will only enrage their spolied sides instead of appreciation for the option.
(rennie) “I remember when I bought my 1st digital still camera 4 or 5 years ago and paid $450.00 for a 96mb compact flash card. They currently sell for less than $10.00 on ebay now. A 2.2 magicstor was $76.85 yesterday. These prices will come down fast and it looks like we will have other options before the camera is released.”
True again. The future looks pretty sweet, and the meantime doesn’t look so bad either.
jeremiah black
dual 2 gig G5
2.5 gigs of RAM
Decklink Extreme capture card -
[Rennie] “I remember when I bought my 1st digital still camera 4 or 5 years ago and paid $450.00 for a 96mb compact flash card. They currently sell for less than $10.00 on ebay now.”
Yep, buy the camera this year, put it in a closet for five years and after that buy p2’s.
IF p2 as a format have become popular, then you might get one hour less than $2k.I’m very happy if the camera comes to stores with cheaper price and without p2’s.
If direct to disk is possible, I’m going to buy zero p2’s and if it’s not, I’m going to buy
just one. -
[toke lahti] “Yep, buy the camera this year, put it in a closet for five years and after that buy p2’s.
IF p2 as a format have become popular, then you might get one hour less than $2k.”Back then I didn’t put the camera in the closet for 5 years, I paid the price and a month later added a 256mb card and another 382mb card a year or so later. I’ve never looked back and the cards paid for themseves with what I saved on film. I agree with you though, don’t buy more than you absolutely need because we should be able to practically watch the price fall. Compact flash cards got bigger and cheaper but they also got faster load and unload times by 25X from the first ones. A 6mb file (1 frame) took over 2 minutes to write to a slow card. We don’t need this for video acquisition as the speed is already there, we just need more capacity.
If you only plan to buy one at first you can probably buy 2 4GB cards for less than an 8GB as pricing works like ram in a computer. You pay a premium for the biggest ones. However you can’t hot swap ram like you can these cards so if you can save $300.00 or $400.00 or so this way, what the heck, you will always be able to use them. The bigger companies with the budgets will always buy the big ones so when the 16Gb’s come out the 8GB cards should fall in price and so on. -
[Rennie] “I agree with you though, don’t buy more than you absolutely need because we should be able to practically watch the price fall.”
Maybe it does, or maybe something else comes and p2 is left in niche and prices are never gonna fall.
1995 I was also told that price of these new broadcast quality dv cameras are practically going to fall.
Since then I’ve been waiting for 1/3″ 3ccd 16:9 camera and it came out late 2004…I wouldn’t be very surprised that we could get in a very near future external solid state memory to these new cameras. One model to all cameras -> volumes are big -> prices drop much more than with p2.
We have already seen this uneven development with some memorycards to still cameras.
(Sony’s memory sticks have surprisingly double price.) -
One thing more,
in one of these forums, there was said that Panny will be bundling the camera with 2 8GB cards for $10k.
That leads to over $2k price for separately sold cards.
Now where does this price come from?
When 8GB card will be out, sd chips for it will cost $600 for it in retail.
Of course Panny will get them a whole lot cheaper with big orders.
So memory price quadruples when they are put together by Panny.So is Panny just trying to make money with p2 cards?
And does that prevent p2 cameras to become popular and kill both the cards and the cameras?Rough calc for expenses:
Panny wants to produce 1M cards/year = 3000/day = 3 cards/minute (with maintenance breaks etc.)
So one production line is enough.
Lets say that costs $1M and R&D costs $10M and process costs $1M (salaries & other expenses)
Lets assume that card’s shell & one chip to handle dataflow costs $20.
So the expenses per card in addition of the sd memory is $32 per card.
If Panny gets $1800, even if you take all imaginable expenses out, profit will be 50x (5000%)!
Not a bad bisnes, and not a really rare if we keep in mind that HP is doing most of their
profits out of ink and Sony sells a lot of tape.
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