I haven't seen this mentioned on any threads but this device is a "must-have" for any P2 production regardless of camera or budget. When the first version of this came out Panny referred to it as the "P2 Gear" and it was met with a lukewarm appeal. Now it's being called "P2 Portable", has nice upgrades from the original and it's been getting rave reviews from both indie and commercial users.

I liked the original and can't wait to use this one.

Enclosed with the product shot is the PDF from Panny on all the specs.

I'm not into this whole P2 thing, but check out this!

PANASONIC DEBUTS AJ-HRW10G RAPID WRITER P2 WORKFLOW TOOL (http://www.panasonic-broadcast.com/en/news/archive.php?we_objectID=3590)

Nice!

-Noah

I have the original P2 gear. Love it.

This looks great.

How do you guys use your P2 Gear/P2 Mobile? I know it has a lot of features, but the only one that I could see myself using regularly would be its ability to transfer P2 files to a hard drive in the field, without lugging a laptop around. And $4000-$5000 just seems a little expensive for that.
So what am I missing?

How do you guys use your P2 Gear/P2 Mobile? I know it has a lot of features, but the only one that I could see myself using regularly would be its ability to transfer P2 files to a hard drive in the field, without lugging a laptop around. And $4000-$5000 just seems a little expensive for that.
So what am I missing?

Well both P2 Gear and P2 Portable will allow you to update metadata after recording as well. It will allow for on set viewing to say a larger plasma without taking the camera out of position. You can use it to act as a transcoder from your laptop to an HD display so 1394 out to the P2 Gear in and out HD-SDI to the monitor, effectively becoming an Kona card for the laptop. And as you mentioned it is a nobrainer off load device in the field. And keep in mind that all of those partitions do not have to show up on the laptop as NONAME, because the Gear will allow you to give each partition a name. The P2 Gear will continue to stay in the product line because for some this is all that is needed.

But the P2 Portable, which is $5295 as compared to the $3995 of the P2 Gear, does a bit more. It is capable of recording AVC-Intra and it has an HD-SDI in. This could be the AVC-Intra Card for all those HPX500 customers out there, and frankly any camera that has an HD-SDI out put can become a master quality recorder. It still hosts a drive over USB, but won't do a 1394 host, however it will host a Fat32 drive in addition to its own formated Type S. This means that these new little USB memory sticks like the one from OCZ. OCZ Technology | Products | Flash Media | OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB 2.0 Flash Drive (http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_rally2_turbo_usb_2_0_flash_drive) can be used for the offload of individual clips. This would be huge in the News market. This is the reporter's offload tool. It also has some other little functional changes like being able to upload metadata from a card so that if you were going to attach it to a big camera, you don't have to give up the Metadata portion of the P2 workflow.

Hope this helps,

Jan

I remember seeing an HPG10 at Panasonic's NAB booth this last year mounted to an HDX900 via a special bracket that places the 10 securely behind the battery.
So theoretically this would work with the HPG20-- feed SDI and power from the camera and record AVC-Intra with a 900, 500, etc as a more or less integrated unit with the ability to shoot tape (with a 900 or Varicam), P2, or both as needed. Great for owner/operators...
If the camera's run switch could trigger record on the HPG20, that would be even better.

(is that bracket a Panasonic part or third party?)

--
Edit: The bracket is Panasonic's: http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ModelDetail?storeId=11201&catalogId=13051&itemId=327736&surfModel=P2-MOUNT

"RTFM," as they say....

But the P2 Portable, which is $5295 as compared to the $3995 of the P2 Gear, does a bit more. It is capable of recording AVC-Intra and it has an HD-SDI in. This could be the AVC-Intra Card for all those HPX500 customers out there, and frankly any camera that has an HD-SDI out put can become a master quality recorder.

Imagine an HPX500 with high-quality glass hooked up to a P2 Portable shooting AVC-I; you've got a poor-mans HPX3700!

I'm in.

Ok, I am getting all excited here but a while back I was asking if I would have much benefit of hooking my HPX500 to the AJ-HPM110 and gain the ability to record 10 bit AVC-Intra.

Barry responded saying that the HPX500's HD-SDI output is only 8 bit so we would only gain AVC-Intra's native recording resolution (which I'm assuming is an advantage over DVCPROHD's anamorphic resolution), and we would not see the benefit of 10 bit color (which to me would have been the most important reason to bother with an AVCIntra recording device).

He also mentioned that the only real resolution jump we'd see is at 720p, and would be fairly minimal at 1080p.

That said, unless there's some incorrect info here, it seems like it would be unrealistic to call this device an "AVC-Intra card for the HPX500" if we aren't seeing the main benefits of the codec.

Correct me if I'm wrong, please!

-Nick

I used the P2 Portable in Africa and it was pretty sweet.
It'll be on my list right after I can pick up a HPX-300

It seems to me that the only thing that this unit is missing is a HDMI output for connection to a monitor. I realize that there is HD/SDI output, but only a small number of expensive monitors will accept HD/SDI.

It seems to me that the only thing that this unit is missing is a HDMI output for connection to a monitor. I realize that there is HD/SDI output, but only a small number of expensive monitors will accept HD/SDI.

You may be misinterpreting this unit's mission: It's a field recorder/viewer with meta-data capabilities. It's not meant to be sending signals to home HDTV sets but instead to professional video capture/review devices as part of a production toolset. HDMI is a home-consumer connection type, not pro video.

The Portable was really nice to have. It's like a half-dozen P2 accessories all in one. It's a 2-slot reader for the computer, it's an AVC-Intra recording deck, it's an HD-SDI playout device for P2 equipment, it's an on-the-fly DVCPRO-HD-to-HD-SDI converter (sort of like using a Kona card to see your FCP timeline on an HD monitor), it's a super-ultra P2 Store (because not only can it offload to a hard disk, and verify, but you can also play the clips on the cards and play the clips from the hard disks too.) And you can use it to rename the volumes you've offloaded to a hard disk, so you won't see a bunch of "NO NAME" volumes popping up on your Mac desktop; instead it could say "Africa 1" and "Africa 2" or "Day 1 Card 3" or whatever. And it can bus-power external USB hard disks; we used it with a 500GB Seagate external USB drive; can't do that with a P2 Store! And it can also sub-clip clips, meaning that you can extract just a portion of a clip and export that as its own clip. I used that to edit down hours of Africa footage to just the salient bits that I wanted to keep. And it can attach or edit metadata. And the battery lasts for something like six hours. And you can put it in loop playback mode to use it for "digital signage" or trade show playback or whatever.

So, yeah, very cool. Way more attractive than the P2 Gear; I was always lukewarm about that product, but the P2 Portable offers a whole lot more. Not the least of which is that it can turn a tape-based camcorder into a tapeless P2 camera, so your old tape-based VariCam (which records 960x720 at 8-bit DVCPRO-HD) could now plug its SDI port into the Portable and record 1280x720 at 10-bit AVC-Intra. Now, you won't see that much improvement on HPX170 or HPX500 footage, but you would still have 10-bit color depth for working in post. It could also be used with an EX1, EX3, HD250, PDW700, F900, anything that you wanted to convert to tapeless AVC-Intra.

I liked it. I liked it a lot more than I expected to. It was good to have along.

Thanks for the answers, all. Sounds very versatile....still probably not for me, given the cost, but I can see the benefit. Now if only Panasonic made some little keyboard for it, or some other gizmo that let you enter in meta data quickly. Seems a natural for a product like this.

It has a software keyboard for entering metadata. A touchscreen software keyboard would probably be ideal.

Check out my HPG20 video review. It's a short and sweet overview of the new device.

“At the Bench” with the Panasonic HPG20 | CineTechnica (http://blog.abelcine.com/2009/03/24/at-the-bench-with-the-hpg20/)

Oh and we have a new blog. Check it out - CineTechnica (http://blog.abelcine.com)

Andy

Unfortunately, this device is not quite a smaller version of the HPM110. The lack of Native recording capability is a disappointment.

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video (http://www.ssv.com)

Now, you won't see that much improvement on HPX170 or HPX500 footage, but you would still have 10-bit color depth for working in post. It could also be used with an EX1, EX3, HD250, PDW700, F900, anything that you wanted to convert to tapeless AVC-Intra.



Barry, I don't understand this part. If the HD/SDI of HPX170 or HPX500 is sending out only 8 bits, plugging in this device to capture at 10 bits (using AVC-I) - the data is still only 8 bits. So, how can this be "better" than the native DVCProHD codec?

Well AVC-Intra, besides being 10bit, is also a full raster (1920x1080) codec vs. DVCPROHD which is sampled at 1280x1080 in 1080 or 960x720 in 720.

Understand the resolution part. But, I am asking about the 8 bits versus 10 bits part. Thanks.

Been shooting for a few years in P2 and never had a P2 store or P2 gear. Waste of money IMO...

Been shooting for a few years in P2 and never had a P2 store or P2 gear. Waste of money IMO...

With the HD-SDI recording feature of the HPG20 I think it adds function well beyond the P2 Gear or P2 Store. You may have thought those products were a waste of money but this new product has a lot more going for it.

Unfortunately, this device is not quite a smaller version of the HPM110. The lack of Native recording capability is a disappointment.
Shooting Star Video (http://www.ssv.com)

Hi Jeff, True it doesn't do native recording but it will record the flags on the frames so that the NLEs can strip them out. And DV Film is working on a plug in for MXFX to do that very thing in AVC-Intra. So it doesn't get the time advantage but you can still get to where you are going. Now the only camera that I am aware of that doesn't have the capacity to put 24P into a pulldown is the F900 and that one will just have to go with the P2 Mobile.

Best,

Jan

Andy - have you had a chance to compare the quality of the video played back from a P2 card recorded in DVCPRO HD to the video played back by this unit recording the same scene from the HD SDI output of the same camera to AVC-Intra 100 ? Is there a visual difference ?

This is a good test. I'll see what I can do.

Also I found a Switronix power adapter that will power the HPG20 off a D-Tap. Here is the item:
http://www.abelcine.com/store/product.php?productid=1000455

Andy

Hello All,

I have a new machine, straight out of the box and have followed all the relevant info in the 'how to' section.

All I'm trying to do is to drag all the files into FCP but with the USB connector in place (host), and the USB HOST light on (lower right), the system isn't showing up on my desktop. I'm using a 6GB iMac with Final Cut Studio.

Any thoughts from you more experienced users?

Thanks,

Stuart

You probably have to install P2 drivers into the Imac and also you want to use Log and Transfer to get the files into Final Cut. Not sure what the status of Snow Leopard is for these.