Howdy from Texas,

Awhile back we were talking about the possibility of scanning and uploading some pages from a hardcopy Panasonic P2 format brochure. That wasn't possible obviously due to copyright reasons, but the nice folks at Panasonic have provided me with a newer version, current as of pre-NAB2005, and have given me the go-ahead to provide it to you guys. So feel free to download it from this link:

P2 Series Brochure (pre-NAB2005) (www.dvinfo.net/pdf/p2series.pdf) -- 2.75 MB

This is a chunky document at 26 pages and includes the entire P2 product line to date, plus an overview of the P2 technology. Most all of this info is available from Panasonic as separate PDF documents; it's nice to have 'em all packed into one file. Many thanks to Jim Wickizer of Panasonic for putting this together for us!

so they didnt let u publish the one i sent you??

oh well. this is better anyway ;)

Sorry, Peter, they looked at it and said "use this one instead." It's beefier, anyway!

Is the 'PC Card slot' they refer to the same as a PCMCIA card slot you find on most laptops?

According to the docs, it it type II compliant, which should mean yes it just plugs into the pcmcia card slot on a laptop.
If this is so, here may be some good news

http://www20.tomshardware.com/storage/20050323/index.html

If that Toshiba 30gig 1.8" drive can be used instead, oh my.

Yes a P2 card can be plugged into any laptop.

Regarding that 30gb drive -- *very* interesting. Last time I looked at microdrives they were at about 5gb capacity. This 30GB is getting up into the usable-size category -- that'd be half an hour of 100-mbs DVCPRO-HD recording, or about 75 minutes of 720/24P!

Not quite there for performance yet though -- they list the maximum write speed as 22mB/s at the start, but by the time the test was done, they were down to about 10mB/s... that's not fast enough for 100mb/s DVCPRO-HD data. Might be fast enough for 720/24p, but not reliable for 1080i or 720/60p at the full 100mb/s rate. I mean, it technically should be able to handle it, but I'd think you'd want a much bigger margin of error before trusting your footage to it.

Which means we may have to wait for the next generation of the drive.

Which means, give Toshiba about a month, right? ;)

Perhaps affordable fast decent-size CF-sized hard disks will be a reality... now let's hope that the camera can use them.

Yes, it's just the first gen of this type of drive. When they come out with 5400 rpm drives and slightly larger cache, it should be fast enough for 100mb, being able to put 2 of them on the camera would give one close to an hour of shooting.

Two of them would give you one hour at the full 720/60p (or 1080/60i) rate, yes... but if you're shooting 720/24p, two of those drives would give you about two and a half hours of shooting!

If they're affordable, this could be really cool!

Why do all the brochures related to P2 say only Windows XP and Windows 2000 compatible. No mac compatibility. Odd. Maybe it works any way like a mounted hard drive like CF cards etc on the mac. But you would think at-least they would change the brochures.

Michael Pappas
http://www.Pbase.com/arrfilms

Toshiba does have a 60gig version with 2 30gig platters. But it's 8mm thick. The P2 card and the 30gig HD are 5mm thick.
Something to think about.

"When they come out with 5400 rpm drives and slightly larger cache, it should be fast enough for 100mb,"

I realize Barry already pointed out that in terms of storage,
the difference between shooting 60P and 24P is pretty huge.

Don't forget that the difference in datarate is too.

These drives would only have to be able to sustain a 40mb/s speed to be able to shoot 720P24.

By the way, what would the price on one of those drives be?
And, don't think think they would take a massive drain on the battery?

I suppose you could buy more batteries with all the money you're saving by not using P2 cards.
:)

6.5 mega bytes per second should not be an issue at all for that drive. I would believe the head room would be much more as well. Hope so. It would be great to stick in a 30gig. If not there are going to be others that will offer PCMCIA hard drives.

Michael Pappas
http://www.pbase.com/ARRFIMS


<<<-- Originally posted by Luis Caffesse : "When they come out with 5400 rpm drives and slightly larger cache, it should be fast enough for 100mb,"

I realize Barry already pointed out that in terms of storage,
the difference between shooting 60P and 24P is pretty huge.

Don't forget that the difference in datarate is too.

These drives would only have to be able to sustain a 40mb/s speed to be able to shoot 720P24.

By the way, what would the price on one of those drives be?
And, don't think think they would take a massive drain on the battery?

I suppose you could buy more batteries with all the money you're saving by not using P2 cards.
:) -->>>

What workflow do you all see in regards to shooting on drives?
(taking into account that the drives are responsible for your original footage) No tape back up and not as reliable as P2 memory. Is disc fragmentation an issue? Safeguards?
Thanks

Frankly I'm not sure if you'd be able to do this anyway. The P2 card is PCMCIA compliant, but that doesn't mean you can stick any 'ol PC card into a P2 slot and expect to record to it. I think a P2 camera is only going to recognize P2 cards. I don't mean to rain on the parade here, but I highly doubt you'll be able to use anything other than a Panasonic P2 card in this camera. I'm just naturally grumpy, though, and I'd love to be proven wrong about this.

I don't think you could use any of these out of the box. But a third party company making a compatible setup could make itself a market here. None of these drives are available to the public anyway. Just hoping someone at some company notices and puts something out.