Barry Green
Forum Replies Created
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[Sam Lesante Jr.] “Also, how do you set up the FS-100 FireStore hard disk recorder to record from the 500? Do you just set it as a DVCPROHD codec?”
Go to the Focus website and look for their quick-start guide, it tells you all the settings you have to set in order to get the FS-100 to work with an HVX200 or HPX500 (the settings are the same for 200 or 500).
[Sam Lesante Jr.] “If I wanted to record SD onto the Firestore do I choose DVCPRO50 or another type?”
You would set the same setting as you set the 500 to. If you chose DVCPRO50 on the 500, you’d set the FS-100 to DVCPRO50 as well. Actually, I don’t think you even need to do that, I think the FS-100 automatically switches to the appropriate recording mode (at least in versions 3 and 4 of the FS-100 software).
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[Sam Lesante Jr.] “1. Can you record right to the hard drive from the cam? If so, how do you set that up. I also have a firestore HD 100 that the manual says you could record to. So is that the only one that you could record too and not the Matrox?
You can copy the contents of a P2 card directly onto the external hard disk. But you can’t record live footage onto a hard disk instead of onto a P2 card, unless you’re doing one of two things:
1) using an FS-100 FireStore hard disk recorder, or
2) using a computer with an appropriate video capture application running.2. is the only way to view the files you transferred onto the Matrox drive is by connecting it to a computer or can I view the clips from the drive through the HPX500?”
The HPX500 cannot play back clips that are stored on a hard disk. You’d normally use a computer and use P2 Viewer or P2CMS to view those clips.
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Okay, here’s something new that you should keep in mind: Panasonic dealers now have a Minimum Advertised Price they have to comply with. (not sell at, but advertise at). That means that if you see any dealer advertising any price less than $5299, that dealer is *not* an authorized dealer!
(the exception for some reason is B&H, which is still advertising 5199).
Gray-market dealers will not have the free 16GB card or the free HVX Book in the box. Authorized dealers will. So if you see any advertised price for less than $5299, just forget it.
That doesn’t mean the dealers have to *charge* $5299, but it does mean that they can’t advertise less than $5299. Normally how they get around it is to say something like “price too low to advertise” or whatever.
I believe people were saying that Samy’s had HVX200s on the show floor at DV Expo for $4700. That would be a special show-type thing, but you might call ’em and see what their regular selling price is.
But if you see a price advertised for less than $5299, forget it — it’s not legit; no authorized dealer is allowed to *advertise* it at less than $5299. (again, B&H for some reason is, but I imagine that’ll be sorted out shortly.)
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[hallwaypd] “I think P2 has and will continue to dominate the small camera market for now because for that it makes sense. I continue to be very unsure about its future in the high end market”
But — what market? It’s doing fantastic in broadcast. Your market is rentals; that’s not “the” market, it’s “a” market. Of course it’s the one you’re most concerned with, obviously, but it doesn’t define the overall market.
P2 is not the most freelancer-friendly system. But then again, neither’s XDCAM. Everyone wishes we could go back to the days of format agnosticity where there was one format (BetaSP) and every camera, every deck, every rental house, every tape was all interchangeable. That made it easy on everyone. But those days are gone. Look at HD by itself, by my count Sony offers at least six different HD recording formats! There is no universal format. Even with XDCAM media, they’re using the same disc media but the standard-def deck can’t read the high-def discs and the high-def deck can’t read the standard-def discs, and neither deck can read the new 50mbps discs!
And the tape situation isn’t any better. If you look at HDV, you’ve got one “format” which is really made of three largely completely incompatible formats. Can’t put a Sony or Canon tape in a JVC deck, can’t use a Canon 24F/30F tape on a Sony deck, can’t play a JVC 24p tape in a Sony deck, can’t put a JVC tape in a Canon, etc.
The world that we had (where an Ampex deck could play a Fuji or Maxell or Sony BetaSP tape from an Ikegami camera, or any other combination) is gone.
Freelancers and stringers are going to have to get used to that idea. That old world doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s drifting further and further behind. Yes tape is still relevant for some purposes (your purpose is an ideal one, for example) and that’s why the F900 continues to rent and why the VariCam is still a current model and why they introduced the HDX900. But the overall production world is transitioning away.
The good thing about memory recording is that it’s computer-readable media, as opposed to the disc recording system that requires a dedicated deck. Computer-readable gives you immediate operability and interchangeability with any post house, etc. As cards get bigger and cheaper, you’ll see less and less resistance.
The gaping hole in the market right now for freelancers is the idea of a distributable media. Sony tries to fill that gap with their XDCAM disc system (which is, let’s face it, basically a tape workflow — a flat shiny tape instead of a long brown tape but the same basic workflow) but even then that’s screwed up because it requires dedicated decks that few people have, and they keep obsoleting equipment by releasing newer/incompatible decks. So the missing link is to get memory recordings onto some manner of cheap distributable media.
And that’s where the hard drive comes in, that’s what we’ve been using. It just should be more convenient to make such drive copies.
Memory recording is great for many purposes, but I break the tapeless acquisition system into two distinct groups: there are those who are shooting who want to work on their footage (and P2 flat-out rules for that market, such as news shooters or local commercials or any broadcast purpose) and then there’s people who want to shoot footage who want to file it away. A freelancer hired to turn over the footage to someone else would be a perfect example (and is probably largely your customer).
P2 adds an extra step for those people. There’s more work involved. But there are ways around it; if P2 becomes more widely adopted at NFL Films or such, is it unreasonable to expect that there may come a day when the hiring company supplies the cards? As in, “here, here’s a 128GB card, go shoot me five hours of footage and bring back my card”. Might happen.
Until then, many of us just make copies of the footage and hand it over on a hard disk. That’s the option that’s available to us.
It’d be great if Panasonic would come up with a P2 Store II, something that is a simple device that has a P2 slot on one end and a connected external USB drive on the other, some little $300 box that you press a button and it automatically offloads. Then the hard disk becomes your media that you hand over, and it’s *much less expensive* than high-def tape. Consider the cost of a DVCPRO-HD tape (about $1 per gigabyte) vs. a hard disk and you’ll see hard disks are already a lot cheaper today, and they’ll be even cheaper next month, etc. And as the idea becomes more entrenched I can’t imagine a producer who’d rather rent deck time to log and digitize hours of tapes, vs. getting a predigitized edit-ready hard disk.
Your points are noted. For your particular client it’s probably facing more resistance. But your particular segment of the market doesn’t necessarily reflect the overall market. I guess your question could be rephrased “Is P2 really going to make it IN THE CAMCORDER RENTAL MARKET?” In that market the future may be more unpredictable. But your original question was “is it really going to make it?” and I think the answer overall is a resounding “hell yes.”
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It’s pretty darn good for the price, isn’t it? I’m saying “halfway decent” in the context of $5,000 to $8,000 tripods. The Focus, to borrow a boxing term, “punches way above its weight.” But it’s not perfect, of course. Way infinitely better than a $500 tripod though.
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If you’re printing back to a DVCPRO-HD deck, why would you want to transcode away from the native format at all? Import the MXFs as DVCPRO-HD (instantly), edit multiple streams in realtime, and export via firewire the unmodified data.
The DNA145 issue may be the problem. I know in the “lesser” Avids, like XPress Pro, you can plug in a card, drag files right to the bin, edit immediately (no transcoding, no ingesting, no anything) and export via firewire (or HD-SDI if you want that option) back to a deck…
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What kind of tape are you printing to? Why wouldn’t you leave it in the native format?
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Er… I can understand why you have concerns, but I think you should check on what’s actually happening out there in the marketplace…
Is P2 going to “make it”? 80% of broadcast sales that are happening right now, are P2. There are over 60,000 units already installed. Major networks like Fox, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sky News @ BSkyB, Nexstar, Cox, Media General, Raycom, etc. have all committed to use *exclusively* P2. There are over 610 broadcasters committed to the P2 format already. Overseas groups like Channel One Russia, Spain’s Canal4 and CNN+, Italy’s Teleacras, Germany’s public broadcaster Euskal Telebista and their national broadcaster ZDF, Belgium’s national public broadcaster ARD… the list goes on and on.
The BBC looked at available tapeless systems at the launch of their Starwinder project (to research which way they’d go; the BBC has committed to going tapeless by 2010). They looked at the optical disc XDCAM system, the Infinity, and the P2 system. They immediately ruled out XDCAM, wouldn’t even look at it; they instead put P2 and Infinity through a yearlong trial. They haven’t announced the “winner” yet, but there are two big clues: one, they’ve standardized all production at Factual Studios to be DVCPRO-HD, and two, they’re using Premiere Pro CS3 and Adobe rushed in P2 support to Premiere Pro so… handwriting’s all over the wall on that one, the BBC is going P2.
Consider that a lot of the hesitancy about P2 was based on card price (and rightly so; it was introduced at about $800 per gigabyte!) but that has now fallen to about $50/gigabyte and the 64GB card is due in about six months…
As far as whether P2 will “make it”, P2 is dominating, thoroughly dominating. Sony was the top dog in broadcast for years with BetaSP, but they lost that position when DVCPRO took about 75% of the news market. Right now P2’s taking 80% of the broadcast market.
Will it be such a hit with independent producers, freelancers etc? Well, there’s more room for competition there. But among broadcasters? The game’s not necessarily over, but it’s looking pretty sewn up.
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Shouldn’t have been slow… a Mac Pro can handle multiple streams of HD in realtime even off the internal hard disk. Don’t know why the Avid would have been slow… ?
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[Noah Kadner] “Have you spoken with any distributors yet and gotten their take on the talent’s marketability?”
This is the single best piece of advice given here yet. CALL SOME DISTRIBUTORS and tell them what you’re planning on. They will take your call, and they’ll answer straight up. If you say “quick question — I’ve got a romantic comedy starring Patrick Stewart and Amarosa from “The Apprentice”, they’ll say “forget it, that does nothing for you, I wouldn’t buy it.”
Wouldn’t you want to know that before you spend that $300,000 you’re talking about?
On the other hand, if you call ’em and say “I’ve got a Die Hard 4 script with Will Smith in the lead”, I think you’ll get a very different reaction.
Point being — if you’re making decisions about how you’re going to spend your money to make the product the most marketable, the people you should be asking is the buyers (the distributors). Get a copy of the Hollywood Distributor’s Directory, you can probably call 10 of ’em in an hour and you’ll have far more valuable information and a much better grasp of how to proceed.
As Noah said, it can be shot on a PD150 (“SuperSize Me”), PD170 (“Open Water”) or XL1 (“28 Days Later”) and still get distribution — it all depends on what you shot, not what you shot it on!