Jan Crittenden livingston
Forum Replies Created
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[Christopher Wright] “(Unless, of course, the P2 cards reach 64 GB capacity each and sell for around $500.00!)”
They probably will, but that is a few years away. 😉
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
[Stan Timek] ”
I didn’t know that P2 cards were made by hand – wouldn’t robotic construction provide for more consistency and accuracy? Especially in the areas of soldering, component placement, etc.?”Actually to make and train a machine to do it would cost in the neighborhood of 2-3 million dollars and then it could output about 5000peices a day. To not output what it can do would put the machine at rest too many hours and would be a loss of revenue. The world cannot support 5000 P2 cards a day. The SD memory world cannot give us enough memory to make that many P2 cards a day. It doe not make economic sense.
[Stan Timek] “The multiple check points for QC are laudable and I’m sure necessary for the MTBF Panasonic is shooting for… but I was always told that the robitic assembly lines were the way to create consistency and high quality.”
And they could be but to gear up to it and to keep feeding it is a necessary part of the implementaiton.
[Stan Timek] “Just trying to understand the rational behind the process (one that obviously works extremely well.) “
I understand and asked the very same question myself, and I didn’t come up with these answers, I am merely telling you what was told to me. Robotics are cool if you cna keep them busy and boy do they have the throughput. It is a hypnotic thing to watch if you have never seen circuit boards assembled by machine. Absolutely amazing. But expensive to set up and if there is not a need for thousands a day, way too costly.
Hope that helps,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
[HarryD] “Jan, sorry if I tweaked you with that comment. You may not realize it, but we know each other face-to-face and I have used and like Panasonic cameras for all my long career. “
I do know who you are Harry, as I recall I trained you on the AG-A800 SVHS Edit system you had in your office, oh so many years ago.
[HarryD] “I am now invested in P2. So, it concerns me about P2 obsolescence. “
There is no obsolescence. It is a connector to us. That would be like saying that we are no longer going to have RCA connectors. Or if you were Sony, that they were not going to make any XDCAM disc players, or us not making any DVCPRO studio machines. Silly right? The PCMCIA form factor was convenient for several reasons. The size is perfect for the Memory Chips and the LSI controller.
[HarryD] “And thanks for the info on the manufacturing process. It’s enlightening. I was only saying that as a given technology matures, the prices usually drop dramatically. We’ve only seen this with P2 very recently, I suspect in reaction to other things appearing in the market, not the manufacturing become more efficient. “
This statement too is about as wrong as it could be. The 8GB card when it was introduced was $2200 as was the 4GB card at its introduction. The 2GB card was around $1800. All of them have fallen in price over the last 4 years. We just dicsontinued the 4 GB card and on its way out the door it was at $550. As far as the competition, what competition? There are other manufacturers that say that they will have something to compete, but when? And do they have the reliability of P2? Frankly the reason the price came down is because we could offer the decrease.
It is one thing to manage the memory portion of the recording process and another to have outside manufacturers make your memory modules for you. As a matter of personal feeling I do not look forward to the Hoodman Memory card. It puts a unknown into the chain of what I know to be a fast and extremely reliable system. I know what a P2 card does, I do not know what a Hoodman card does. So competitively, to get back to that point, what they have to show the world is that they can without fail work with any memory device that is made by others. At least Sony understands the need to control their own fate on this one and they too will have to deliver and prove it.
[HarryD] “Hence, I still believe the onus to be on Panasonic. But allow me to be clear: it’s a good product; however, if made cheaper will get more people into “the tent.””
Harry, you need to do the math my friend. The cost of the card can get as low as 1 1/2 cents if you use my earlier example of 50,000 recordings with it, lower if you use till its last dying day which is 100,000 rewrites. So no, the onus on Panasonic is to make sure that the product that they manufacture will handle the 50,000 or the 100,000.
We have a lot of people that are swarming into the tent. It has been the record time that has kept more people away, and with the introduction of the 16GB card I didn’t find but an occasional objection to the length of recording at NAB and the occasional price question, but with the explanation I gave above, they moved on to more serious questions on the adoption of tapeless aquisition. Most discussions were more about how to work the workflow. This is significant.
[HarryD] “Barry: thanks for your comments. I’m not really arguing for a switch to ExpressCard (although I don’t understand why Panasonic didn’t use it in the first place – it was around 4 years ago). As I said, I’m concerned about P2 having “legs” into the future, especially given that we see laptop makers moving steadily away from PCMCIA. “
The first reason is that the Express card is not based on a Chip memory that over 700 manufacturers make or utilize; the SD memory. This in and of itself was the reason that the P2 card was based on the most popular memory card in the business. The second reason is that the Express card was not in every laptop 4 years ago, and the PCMCIA was. The Express card was a hobbyist cool thing and certainly not mainstream. And third, SD was a memory chip that there was a clear path to its doubling the memory size frequently. It seems a long time ago, but only in 2002 the state of the SD memory chip was on the crest of 256MB. I bought my last 64MB SD card for $29.95. (and I still use it with my digital still camera.)
As far as legs, we introduced 2 new cameras, the HPX500, and the HPX3000, at NAB this year and another Workflow product, the P2 Gear. That doesn’t sound like we are trying to find a way to bail out at least not to me. We are committed to continuing with the P2 slot in our cameras and other devices, keep in mind it is absoutely immaterial that the PCs do or do not have a P2 slot. For Panasonic to rely on just the computer industry to make our product work, well that would be foolhardy. That is why in our booth at NAB you would have seen 4 P2 player/transfer devices with our brand name on them, and one from Duel Systems and none of them were computers.
The Duel folks seem to feel that there is enough of a market for the P2 card they made their adapter for the Express Card slot compatible with the P2 card. If they had not done that, it would have been released 9 months ago. I think they get the size of the market for the P2 cards.
And lastly the PCMCIA Card to be included on a computer is the manufacturer’s choice, not the PCMCIA.org. My new laptop which is coming in next week, has two PCMCIA slots. And the PCMCIA.org says that there is no need for further development, as the slot on the computer has reached its maturity. So it doesn’t have to go away. It wasn’t until about 2 years ago that you could buy a laptop without a Floppy drive although I had not used one of those in years. In this way the computer industry can have its changes, but Panasonic does not have to depend on the computer industry for the success of the P2 card.
We have taken the form factor and made it fast, and anything that connects to it as what it is capable of doing, 640 Mbs, will have a real thrill ride in speed. The bus on the side of today’s computer is limited in its speed, other devices do not have to be. I await the day that all of the other ports are this fast.
[HarryD] “I like P2 a lot; not having to deal with a tape drive is like heaven! Of course, I haven’t lost a card or drive in field yet, either (but I have both lost and damaged tapes, so to me it’s the same thing). But I feel that P2 is generally more robust than a 1/4″ or 1/2″ piece of mylar. And I swear, I love not having to worry about having enough tape on the shoot anymore. It’s the little things… :-)”
That is the whole point. The guys in the audio world have been working in the Solid Styate Domain for years. LA studios are littered with 24 track audio tape machines that haven’t been turned on in years. It is all going direct to solid state or the HDD. SD memory has revolutionized the Newspaper industry. Solid State memory will revolutionize the video industry. By taking control over the memory form factor and making it consistant and reliable we have guaranteed the future of the format, this is something to be happy about and yes, the memory prices will always come down as that have from day one.
Best,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
[HarryD] “True enough, I know the P2 cards are raided, and I like the workflow. But this is all about datarate and memory price, and to go back to my original point – the PCMCIA bus at 132 MBps is almost half the speed of Expresscard, yet the Expresscard memory modules are about 1/4th the price.”
And the express card is unproven for what we do which is 100Mbs sustained along with ECC and other overhead. The Express card camera that Sony is introducing is only having to write 35Mbs at max. So the point is that when you start to make a family of products you have to find a standard that is stable and is not viable to market fluxes and keep in mind we started this 4 years ago.
As far as the price the cards are built in a clean room and there are 5 QC check points in the process. The cards we use are a level 7 card which is the most stringent card available. These are the most perfect cards, and they have a 20MB transfer speed. If we move the PCMCIA slot out of the computer and move to say the 1394 bus from a P2 device there is room for improved speed there. The PCMCIA is only a connector to us.
[HarryD] “With PCMCIA being about what – 12 years old? – and flash memory being cheaper than dirt (I just got a new 2GB 150X SD card for $20), I can’t get my mind around why P2 cards still remain high in price.”
Only because you have not seen them made. I have and so I can understand. They are not made by a machine. They are made by hand, and as I said there is a lot of testing that goes on with these cards all through the process. The good news is that there has been a price decrease with the 8 GB now at $700 and the upcoming 16GB at $900
[HarryD] “I just don’t get why, considering the prices of the hardware and the age of it all, that the P2 prices are so high. “
It is a guarantee of quality performance over the lifetime of the product. And if you count the number of times you will be able to reuse the P2 card, they are not very expensive at all. And while I am sure you will just say hey that is not the point, it is the point. The fact is that on your 50,000th use, it will be as reliable as the first.
[HarryD] “My Big Point: Sony’s coming on with memory card recording, which looks to be cheaper and promising. P2 prices are holding back P2 adoption, and that’s a shame. If Sony combines native 1920×1080 chips in a tapeless package at a low price, watch out.”
But it is still an HDV camera recording 18MBS, 25Mbs, or 35Mbs and it is still a 4:2:0 camera. And if the adpotion of P2 got any greater or faster our Back-orders would grow larger than they have as we are selling every single one we can make.
[HarryD] “But it’s about time for Panasonic to make a major mistake and lose market share. Isn’t that what all companies do nowadays? Be greedy and lose it all? Is Panasonic next? “
And you know this remark is the bait that made me write. In bringing memory recording to the market and into the production arena, we have wedded our customer to the IT industry and not to a machine centric domain.
By this I mean for $119 you can purchase a Duel Adapter for the PCMCIA slot to Express card slot and that my friend is your “deck” and that is only needed if you don’t happen to have a computer that has a PCMCIA slot. I will be recieving my new computer next week and it still has a P2 slot, and in fact 2 of them. Point is I do not need a fancy machine to make it work. And we did this starting 4 years ago. Sony is now going to deliver a memory option, and I repeat going to deliver, in as they have not delivered anything yet. These are the same folks that said Memory is not the way to go and if you want the really cool stuff, the 2/3″ camera, you have to go to their propriety disc. Hey with the P2 is is in the IT domain the minute it is recorded and the IT domain is one that is driven by Moore’s Law.
Point is that if we were greedy we would have continued trying to find a format/device that required other expensive Panasonic only machines to make it all work well. In reality we gave up the VTR business by doing P2. Do we have some machines that play P2 and act like VTRs, sure, but you don’t have to buy them. Heck you don’t have to buy anything more than the camera.
Best regards,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Hi,
First the cost of the 16GB card is $900 List. Second, should the Hoodman device work as well, that is performance wise it may impact pricing, but frankly they are talking about 640Mbs, which is what the P2 can offer. They may have some performance but not the same performance. This would be fine for the short haul, but we all know that systems get faster and faster and pretty soon a low transfer rate is the slowest thing in the system. The P2 Card right now is still the fastest piece in the system.The good news here is that the 16GB card is bein introduced at a price below that of the 8GB card’s introductory prices.
It is happening, the costs are coming down, and anyone that is usiing their P2 card knows, the price goes down every time they use it.
Best,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
HI,
Not sure who you asked at Panasonic, but the 640 would only play back the DV tapes. It wasn’t until the AJ-D455 that a DVCPRO machine would also record on the tape. So that machine cameinto the product linee around 2001, and today the AJ-SD255 and the SD755 also record on the DV format as well.
Hope that helps,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Something odd here, as I have dropped them, shipped them, stepped on them, carried them on an airplane in a canvas bag and trown into the overhead, stuffed them into over packed suitcases and not once had a problem.
Would you like to send me one of the ones you have and let me take a look? Please contact off line at crittendenj at us.panasonic.com
Best,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
Hi Jay,
The equivalent to the ECU data save is most easily accessed from the RC10. I recommend putting it on as soon as one powers up the remote. Hit the Function button on the controller and scroll through until you see the “RC data save” function and switch it from off to on.
Hope this helps,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
This is not a reliable place. Your warranty will be their warranty not a Panasonic warranty. Beware.
Do a resellerratings.com search of the vendor.
Best,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems -
[Peter Corbett] “I have a SDX900E PAL (It’s also for sale if anyone’s interested) The CCD is 600,000 pixels and it is this PAL chip that is being used in the new HPX500 with some mods. I’m not sure about the NTSC version of the SDX but I think it is 520,000 pixels.”
Hi Peter,
The SDX900E chip is 620,000 but it does not do 60 frames a second, thus the chip for the HPX500 is similar to the the SDX900E but not the same as it does do a 60 frame output. There is additional processing that happens to the signal as wellprior to capture that makes it a 1080P signal before it is captured and turned into the digital domain.
Hope this helps,
Jan
Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems