The Notorious P2 F.U.D. Thread

[Chris Hurd]

Thanks Jan,

It's a bit of an education process to get some folks to think clearly regarding SD media costs and where they're going. And that is, down. Quickly.

[Jan Crittenden Livingston]

<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Hurd : Thanks Jan,

It's a bit of an education process to get some folks to think clearly regarding SD media costs and where they're going. And that is, down. Quickly. -->>>

And just one more pointer, it is not media, it is memory. ;-)

Huge, Huge difference.

Best,

Jan

[Chris Hurd]

D'oh!!

My face is red.

[Luis Caffesse]

"Wow, it's a whole minute of HD video! :)"

Actually, it's at least 100,000 minutes of HD video, just not all at once.
:)

Seriously,
Jan brings up an important point, we're talking about memory, not media. You have to keep in mind we are out of the world of tape.

How much are you willing to pay for a CD-R disc?
How much are you willing to pay for 512 MB flash card?

I'm guessing you're willing to pay more for the flash card, even though it might not hold as much information,
because you can use it over and over.

How much would you be willing to pay for a mini-dv tape if it meant you never had to buy another tape?

Our mindset must change here, comparing P2 to Tape just doesn't make sense. Each one must be viewed in their context.

(sorry if I took the thread off topic)

ps.
remember when people were upset because DV cameras could only shoot an hour's worth of footage, and they were used to 2 hour 8mm and Hi8 tapes?

[Chris Hurd]

And then remember how happy they became when they no longer had to sit through those two excrutiating hours?

;-)

Now we're way off topic! I think think this thread is just about through. There's no reason to lock it, but at the length it is now, it's getting pretty hard to follow. Please consider joining one of the other current topics going on in this board, or create a new one... thanks,

[Jan Crittenden Livingston]

<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Hurd : D'oh!!

My face is red. -->>>

It is the easiest thing to say, because it is the most familar thing to do. I only chimed in, not to embarrass you, but to make the point. You really fed me the one liner and I had to take it. Thank you.

Best,

Jan

[Alexey Morvin]

Seriously,
Jan brings up an important point, we're talking about memory, not media. You have to keep in mind we are out of the world of tape.

How much are you willing to pay for a CD-R disc?
How much are you willing to pay for 512 MB flash card?

I'm guessing you're willing to pay more for the flash card, even though it might not hold as much information,
because you can use it over and over.

It's not plus for me. I would like to have tape to keep RAW video for years... I never rewrite my miniDV tapes. :)

[Nikolai Vavilov]

<<<-- Originally posted by Alexey Morvin : It's not plus for me. I would like to have tape to keep RAW video for years... I never rewrite my miniDV tapes. :) -->>>

I'ts digital, man. You can copy P2 content thousand times and still have "RAW" quality. Keeping video on HDD or Blue-ray disc for years is more safe than on tape, which can lose data in time.

[Jan Crittenden Livingston]

<<<-- Originally posted by Alexey Morvin : It's not plus for me. I would like to have tape to keep RAW video for years... I never rewrite my miniDV tapes. :) -->>>

Alexey, it is not a question of whether you keep your footage for years, many people do that, it is a question of whther you keep all the bad shots too. If you save tape based recording you keep all the bad ones that you will never use along with the good ones, and when you are searching for the good ones you have to wade through the bad ones.

A Smart Archive is what comes out of a P2 workflow. The good ones saved in a domain that is easy to access. You could putit back to tape and save your self some tape, but that isn't ideal because if you wanted to reuse some of it, you have to redigitize. Save it on a Disk of DLT or some such thing and boom you are then, transfer data, and you are editing.

Not ever having to waste your time digitizing, this is part of the P2 workflow, mount the drive, edit.

Hope that helps,

Jan

[Alexey Morvin]

I'ts digital, man. You can copy P2 content thousand times and still have "RAW" quality. Keeping video on HDD or Blue-ray disc for years is more safe than on tape, which can lose data in time.

LOL
miniDV is very digital. ;)

Do you think you can keep RAW video on HDD? I'm not sure.
Largest HDD now is 400 Gb. It's not very much for HDV.

[Alexey Morvin]

Alexey, it is not a question of whether you keep your footage for years, many people do that, it is a question of whther you keep all the bad shots too. If you save tape based recording you keep all the bad ones that you will never use along with the good ones, and when you are searching for the good ones you have to wade through the bad ones.

A Smart Archive is what comes out of a P2 workflow. The good ones saved in a domain that is easy to access. You could putit back to tape and save your self some tape, but that isn't ideal because if you wanted to reuse some of it, you have to redigitize. Save it on a Disk of DLT or some such thing and boom you are then, transfer data, and you are editing.

Not ever having to waste your time digitizing, this is part of the P2 workflow, mount the drive, edit.

Ok. But I still think there is no better thing for HD recording than tape now.

I never had problems with editing miniDV tapes.

Small 100Gb HDDs are also good thing. But 4 mins flash cards... It's not for me. I will not buy this. I've already said why...

[Mark Grant]

Not ever having to waste your time digitizing, this is part of the P2 workflow

Yes. Instead you waste time swapping cards, copying to hard drives, swapping hard drives, backing up hard drives so you don't lose all your master footage on a head crash etc. Not really a win, IMHO.

I can see there being a real benefit for news shows where you can plug the P2 card directly into your edit machine and have near-instant access to all footage shot, but the extra hassle seems more than it's worth for drama and documentary work.

Personally, other than news shows, the whole P2 thing seems like a solution in search of a problem.

[Graeme Nattress]

I'm thinking optical disks will be still used for long term data storage, and you'll still have tape. This will no doubt all happen in the background while you're editing the footage copied from the P2 card to your hard drive. The P2 workflow is all about using the best device for the job. Tape is useless for modern editing. It's slow, clumbersome etc. Dropouts are a problem. Solid state memory would seem ideal for aquisition, as hard drives are for editing, and optical discs would seem great for long term storage, as is tape.

Graeme

[Chris Hurd]

<< the extra hassle seems more than it's worth for drama and documentary work. >>

I don't see it that way. No matter how fast your crew is, there's always going to be downtime between set-ups. In other words, a built-in block of time to do whatever you want with what you've just shot. P2 is perfect for a filmmaking environment, but then I've already said that.

[Mark Grant]

P2 is perfect for a filmmaking environment,

Well, we'll just have to disagree on that. Maybe that's true for George Lucas (AFAIR he records direct to RAID from his HD cams because it's the only way to handle uncompressed HD), but for the kind of movie-makers a $10k HD camera is aimed at, I think it's unlikely.

Tape is useless for modern editing. It's slow, clumbersome etc. Dropouts are a problem.

But it's also cheap, it's pretty robust (if a DV tape can survive falling from Mach 25 at 200,000 feet and still mostly be readable, it can survive most things that would happen in an editing room), and you can stick it on a shelf for years and probably still read the data off it. That's not true of hard disks, or Flash RAM.