Admin's Note: The thread you're about to read is FUD.

In short, FUD is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. As it relates to online communities, message boards and digital video technology, FUD is at its core nothing but a poorly disguised trolling attempt at creating a platform war. Platform wars, like personal flames, are strictly verboten here at DV Info Net, and that's fairly common knowledge among first-time vistors and new members. Knowing that, the FUD caster spreads misinformation and twists facts, and then makes an appeal based on these distortions. As an example, demonstrated below is what I like to call "The Myth of the Four-Minute Flash Card."

The FUD caster selects obsolete data -- in this case, last year's 4GB P2 card holds 4 min. 30 sec. of DVCPro HD -- and presents it as current data, implying not only that it's unusable but also that this is somehow the maximum recording capacity that you're stuck with for P2 memory. This FUD is of course completely false. The 4GB P2 card holds up to 18 minutes of DVCPro video, which a completely workable amount of recording time. More importantly, the 4GB card is the *lowest* P2 card for DVCPro HD recording, in other words, you can certainly get a larger capacity P2 card. An appropriate analogy here would be akin to pointing out the low-capacity memory card that's often bundled with a new digital still camera... it's the freebie card; the starter card. The FUD caster says, "four pictures! is this all the camera can do for $1000?" as if you're stuck with that limitation.

The FUD caster continues to select obsolete data -- outdated pricing -- and repeatedly hammers away at presenting it as current information: "who needs these 4 mins for thousands dollars?" Resisting all civilized suggestions of re-thinking these skewed arguments, the FUD caster finally goes overboard: "Because camcorders under $2000 shoots really bad." By that time, the DV Info Net FUD detector system has been triggered, and the thread is saved by a healthy dose of reality. So at least there's a happy ending.

For more information about FUD, be sure to read The Newbie's Guide to Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Thanks,

Chris Hurd
San Marcos, TX

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


David Valencic wrote...

Name ONE person who will PAY for a 16gb P2 card...besides CNN and other newsgathering sources. NO PROSUMER will buy them.

Give me a 2.5" 100gb 5400rpm hard drive ghetto-rigged to the back of a HDX100....I don't care how noisy it is or how much battery it uses...if I can just toss a regular laptop drive in there and record away, i'll be happy.

Maybe panasonic will be extra nice and give uncompressed editors the ability to record strait to a Discreet Stone disk array?

100% agree. That's really weird idea to use some 4-10 minutes cards which cost thousands of dollars in camcorder which will cost under $10000...

But that's the current price of cards. The memory will rapidly drop through the floor in pricing, just as it has done for computers and for digital cameras.

Graeme

If 4-10 minutes card costs $4000 now, I don't think it will cost $500 in a year...

Who needs these 4 mins for thousands dollars?

Hard drives are the best route to go.... 100gb is only $149 at CompUSA right now. Have a firewire port on the back and just have it mount like a normal drive.

I think it is very unlikey that the camera can just mount any Firewire drive. Although this would be sweet... imagine using the iPod to store the footage. BUT, there should be no need to tag a brick along outside the camera. A hard disk might be able to work in the P2 slot, which is really a PC-card interface. Right now hard disks housed in PC-cards are not as cheap as Firewire drives, but that's because they are just coming out. There is a 5GB Toshiba card already available at B&H for les than $200 that can probably handle the bandwidth: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=316612&is=REG

And there is a new one just in. At the time of this post it seems to be mislabeled at B&H as 40MB but of course the +$1000 price tag suggests it's actually 40GB: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=145689&is=REG. I have not been able to confirm this at the Fujifilm website.

"If 4-10 minutes card costs $4000 now, I don't think it will cost $500 in a year..."

Actually, a 4gb card, which will allow for roughly 20 minutes of DVCPro, 10 minutes of DVCPro 50, and 5 minutes of DVCPro HD, doesn't cost $4000. It costs around $2100.
The 2GB cards cost around $1000.


The cost of compact flash is dropping significantly.
SanDisk just announced a 1gb card for $100.


From a CNET News article:
"The 1GB mini SD card will cost roughly 10 cents per megabyte"

"the average selling price of flash memory is likely to fall to 5 cents per megabyte by the end of this year and continue to drop so that by 2009, it will be less than a penny"


This means that Panasonic could make a 4gb card using a little over $400 in parts by the end of the year. They could sell this for $800-$1000 easily.

By the end of next year, the prices could easily be half of that. It's safe to assume we'll see 1gb flash cards costing around $50 by the end of 2006 (according to the CNet article, we should see those prices by the end of 2005).

I wouldn't be surprised to see a 4gb P2 card at less than $500 by the end of 2006.

Now, this doesn't mean it's a great deal... but I wouldn't underestimate the price drops we might see.

Don't forget that P2 technology is tied to flash memory, and those prices are dropping like a free fall right now.

Oh, that's change everything. :)
I mean if I want to shoot 2 hours of video? I'll must but 40 cards for $80000? This cards is bad idea anyway.

I will not buy this camcorder if it will shoot only to these 4 mins cards. HDD is the best idea (or tapes).

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

<< Don't forget that P2 technology is tied to flash memory, and those prices are dropping like a free fall right now. >>

Thanks, Luis -- that's a very concise, accurate and intelligent way to describe it. The price of P2 media is directly related to the SD cards that make up the array, and SD card prices are going lower every day. P2 may not *yet* be ideal for event videography (although that time is coming quickly), it *is* ideal for news gathering, corporate & industrial, and filmmaking, where the takes are always short relative to event videography.

> we'll see 1gb flash cards costing around $50
> by the end of 2006

PC-card hard disks are already cheaper than that.

It just means that this P2 cam may not be ideal for documentary stuff. But for narrative it will be fine - people are used to having an 11 minute reel before a change...

I agree completely. P2 will suit some types of production right now, but not others until the SD media becomes fairly inexpensive.

The subject of P2 is being discussed in this other thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...5&goto=newpost

Ignacio has an excellent point; it seems we have drifted off-topic here. Please check the forum index for this board and let's all please make sure that we're posting under the appropriate subject. As new as this entire section is, it's very easy to get lost as we tend to stray around a bit in circles. I'm probably the most guilty of this as anyone else here.

<<<-- Originally posted by Alexey Morvin : If 4-10 minutes card costs $4000 now, I don't think it will cost $500 in a year...

Who needs these 4 mins for thousands dollars? -->>>

Not sure where you got the price quote , but you are way, way off. The 4 gig today costs what the 2 gig did last year. Memory is a sliding scale. Don't make up your minds on projection of inflated prices. I have two 32MB SD memory cards, one cost $129, the other cost $29.95. Try not to get weirded out on this. This is so minor to the pluses of the workflow.

Best,

jan