Is the P2 going to become a dinosaur?
 

I'd better duck, but there are a number of things that make me wonder if the P2 won't soon be falling out of favor. Here's why:

Looking at the quality of AVCHD, particularly the Panny HMC150, which uses SDHC, P2 card cameras seem to offer little in the way of advantages. And the HMC150 is just a first generation AVCHD camera at its level. Future versions will no doubt be even better.

Also, the Sony EX1, which used to require SxS cards that were nearly as expensive as P2 cards, can now also use relatively cheap SDHC media.

I'm also seeing a marked increase in the number of HVX200's for sale here, in other similar forums, and on Ebay. Prices seem to be falling too.

Looking at all of these factors together, and I think that either the P2 format will soon be far less popular, or we'll see a huge drop in price on P2 media.

What do you think?

You can count on the cost of the media continually dropping.

Class 6 SDHC is too slow to compete with P2 directly. Good enough for consumer AVCHD with its 24Mbs max bitrate when P2 was designed for professional formats like DVCProHD at 100 meg per second.
When Class 10 will become available then we can talk P2 vs SDHC.
P2 price drop forced by SDHC is a good thing though.

Has anyone actually done a side by side image quality comparison of 24mbps AVCHD compression vs DVCPRO HD compression? I'd be mildly surprised if AVCHD images didn't look better, for most purposes (aside from very high motion sequences, where everything looks like a blur perceptibly when played at real time speed anyway, and chroma key).

Sorry, but you are comparing apples and oranges. P2 is MPEG2, long GOP and AVCHD is MPEG4. Therefor you can't compare the two the way you did. Also XDCAM is 35Mb/sec max bite rate, but the codec is way more efficient then DVCPROHD.
BTW I don't think it's 100meg per second. Since it is possible to record it to Firestore over firewire it's more like 17Mb/sec, but please correct me if I am wrong.

We compare two types of media, P2 vs SDHC, all we need to know is what their maximum read/write speeds are. For P2 theoretical maximum access speed, if I'm not mistaken, is 640Mbs when a Class6 SDHC can handle only 48Mbs which is more the 10 times slower, and that's it, this is the limitation of this type of memory cards no matter what codec you use, weather it's MPEG2, h.264 or uncompressed.

DVCPro HD can be 50 or 100 mb/sec. The new AVC Intra is 100 mb/sec but with more efficient coding.
Steve

Part of what the OP was talking about is AVCHD eroding the demand for P2. It has to be. The HMC150 is being purchased by a lot of folks that otherwise would have purchased an HVX (and P2 cards). He's right, that for a lot of people, there just isn't any reason for owning a camera that uses P2 cards anymore, now that the HMC150 is out.

Frankly, even if P2 cards were cheaper than SDHC cards, I'd still rather shoot AVCHD than DVCPRO HD. I'd much rather shoot 1920x1080 at 4:2:0, and convert to an intermediate for editing, than shoot 1280x1080 at 4:2:2. Way less storage space needed for archiving original footage too.

"Sorry, but you are comparing apples and oranges. P2 is MPEG2, long GOP"

What? since when P2 is mpeg2, long GOP...??

P2 is a solid state memory format, so theoretically it could record whatever format is thrown at it. Practically, it's used in Panasonic cameras, so can be associated with Panasonics preferred formats - DVCPro and DVCPro50 for SD, DVCProHD and AVC-Intra for HD. None of which are long-GOP.
DVCProHD is 100Mbs (MegaBITS/sec), I suspect you're confusing bits and bytes, since it could also be said to be about 13MBs (MegaBYTES/sec). The only caveat is that it always codes the same data per frame, so the 24fps version of 720 (720p/24) is only 40Mbs.

In terms of the wider question, then yes, I see it disappearing from cameras in the price range of the HVX200, 171 etc. True pro cameras are a different matter, and for the next generation only AVC-Intra 100 and XDCAM-HD422 50Mbs are fully broadcast approved. You should be able to get the latter on to a current SDHC card (just), but I doubt the latter.

I know the HMC150 is selling faster than Panny can make them. Does anybody know if HVX sales are doing well? My guess is that HVX sales maybe pretty weak, given the competition from all sides.

HVX is more expensive and it's been around for quite some time now (4-5 years?). There is also a short version of it - HPX170. So, these cameras are still popular, I guess.

If a camera is selling fast it's great. The question is, who's buying. Has anyone heard of HMC150 used in broadcast?

Are HVX200s or HPX170s being used in broadcast much? (I really don't know.)

Why wouldnt they?

DVCProHD is an intra-frame easy-to-edit codec developed specifically high-end post-production. HVX200 inherited all good features of DVX100 which was and still widely spread among low budget studios and local tv stations.

I was actually surprised to know that after so many years these two cameras are still selling, and B&H is asking almost 6 grand for HVX200 today!

Direct competitors to HVX could probably be Sony's EX1/3.

HMC150 is not a bad camera at all, a high end consumer one. Will AVCHD be ever adopted in broadcast, who knows, it was originaly developed to make HD cameras popular among housewives but everything changes quickly.

Calling the HMC150 a consumer camera destroys your credibility. You wouldn't have an HVX200 you're trying to sell, would you?

OK, I have to correct myself - it's a prosumer camera utilizing consumer format. A deadend combination in my opinion. We'll see what its future will be. With class 10 and AVC-intra coming soon, HMC150 could be first and last generation of its kind.
Just my thoughts, I may be wrong though.

Okay Sta, you've redeemed yourself, at least a little. :) I think at 24MPS, the format becomes more than consumer level. In fact there are people here who own both the HVX200 and the HMC150 and I believe they are reporting the PQ from the 150 is better. I could be wrong on this and PQ is certainly subjective. We can agree to dsiagree.

As for first and last, I don't think so. and certainly hope not. Sales of the 150 are pretty hot, so I think we'lll see a migration to it and away from P2, but that just my opinion.

I have no experience with the HMC150, but I have been shooting 720p in DVCPRO HD with both the HVX-200 and the HPX-170 for several years. The quality of the overall picture, especially the incredible color rendition, keeps me as a very satisfied user. I will give you that other cameras, including the $600-!0,000 dollar Canon and JVC cameras (and perhaps the HMC150) may give a higher resolution picture, but resolution is ony a part of the overall quality. Sports at 720p 60 FPS in DVCPRO HD is outstanding, and frame-by-frame examination of the video is remarkably sharp and detailed. It all depends on what you are doing with the video, and where the product is going to go. P2 is tough and holds up very well under punishing conditions. I doubt that it will be fading away any time soon.

Would you say the same thing about the Sony Z5?

I would say that HDV will die out before AVCHD does.

The EX1, EX3, HM100 and the HM700 all uses something better than HDV.

HDV was a controversial format too, but post-production workflow was established pretty quick (can't see same enthusiasm from NLE software developers about AVCHD).
Each HDV camcorder is capable of recording in DV which makes them popular among videographers.
AVCHD was to challenge HDV and these two formats are in direct competition. Which one will die first I dont know. DVCProHD, XDCAM HD, AVC-Intra will stand by and watch.

XDCAM-HD and AVC-Intra, yes, but DVCProHD is on it's way out, AVC-Intra should be seen as it's effective successor, though no doubt DVCProHD will continue to be used for quite a while.

But I feel it's wrong to solely talk about codecs in terms of picture quality, without consideration of other factors, most notably power required for editing, and that's where AVC-HD is at a disadvantage. MPEG2 may not offer such good quality *at the same bitrate*, but up the bitrate and get comparable quality with much easier editing.

OK, you never get something for nothing, and the tradeoff here is for filesize, but is a 40% bigger file really that big a problem? Given the editing benefits? Which is why I do tend to put AVC-HD in the consumer camp - less a quality issue, more that it suits what low end consumers want, shoot and put on the shelf.

On the other hand, if you use a digital intermediate like Cineform, it doesn't really matter whether or not the original codec is easy to edit. Under those circumstances, it may make more sense to look at things like media cost, length of recording, and ability to handle motion.

Anybody put an HMC150 next to an HVX200 and compared the images? Wouldn't surprise me a bit if the image coming out of the HMC150 generally looked better over-all, under most conditions. DVCPRO HD made a lot of sense at one time, but I've got to think 1280x1080 luminance resolution just isn't going to cut it for broadcast a whole lot longer. 4:2:2 color is wonderful, but if you stop and consider, 1280x1080 at 4:2:2 doesn't give you many more chroma samples in a frame than 1920x1080 at 4:2:0.

Under those circumstances, it may make more sense to look at things like media cost, length of recording, and ability to handle motion.[/QUOTE]
To an extent - and that may certainly be true if the choice was AVC-HD meant SDHC usage, a different codec meant P2 or SxS. Cost differences of many times over. But with XDCAM-HD now being recordable to SDHC, natively in the case of the JVC cameras, the cost differences just aren't that great. Nowhere near enough to justify the transcoding/editing hassles IMO. And whilst AVC-HD may handle motion better than HDV, it doesn't seem to do it as well as 35Mbs XDCAM.

But the limiting factor here is not the codec resolution, but the resolution of the front end of the camera - lens, chips etc. Think about it - the chips are 960x540, and pixel shifting gives a resolution of about 1.5x overall, or sq rt 1.5x (about 1.2x) on each axis. Hence you can expect somewhere around 1200x650 resolution after processing. The HMC150 may indeed produce a recording with 1920 horizontal resolution, but the front end won't be able to do it justice, any more than 8mm film blown up to 35mm will be able to be as sharp as 35mm original.

If you're not convinced, try comparing the difference between an HMC150 in 1080 and 720 modes, and you won't find any more (luminance) detail in the 1080 picture. Obviously, the comparison needs to be with a 1920x1080 monitor, and don't be fooled by differences in detail enhancement level - the HMC150 seems to have a higher default enhancement level in 1080 mode cf 720.

It's also worth noting that in 720 mode the AVC-HD spec will record full 720 raster - 1280x720 - whilst in 720 mode the DVCPro-HD of the HVX200 will subsample to 960x720. In other words, for 720p recording, the HMC150 will record nicely just what the chips are producing, the HVX200 will lose resolution horizontally. And my experience is that with the HMC150, AVC-HD compression works well at 720p, but shows some significant artifacting at 1080p. If you have a 150, you're better using it in 720p mode.
It's even more complicated than that. Pixel shifting only gives an enhancement in LUMINANCE resolution, but doesn't do anything for chrominance. That's limited by the per chip pixel dimensions, so 540 vertically for the case in question. In 1080 mode, that can be resolved in the 4:2:0 mode as well as the 4:2:2 mode, certainly for progressive video.

I think you just explained things pretty well there David.

The point I was alluding to (indirectly), is that it just doesn't make much sense to accept footage from an HPX170 or HVX200 (especially the original HVX200), while rejecting footage from an HMC150 (from an image quality standpoint). Indeed, these cameras shoot a soft enough picture that the difference in quality between recording formats is considerably minimized. Realistically, for broadcasting 1920x1080 images, the recorded image quality difference between the cameras has got to be pretty close to a wash.

I would think that transcoding to a visually lossless intermediate, for editing purposes, wouldn't be tough for most broadcasters.

Has anyone tried to compare AVCHD codec efficiency at different bitrates? I was wondering if 24Mbs of HMC150 is enough to make its image free from compression artifacts at, let say, 18dB gain.

I'm an owner of Canon HF100 myself and I can always see those nasty macroblocks when shooting in low light at maximum gain. That makes me think that 17Mbs of HF100 doesnt give us enough bit per pixel ratio in Full HD mode.

Just curious what other people's low light experience in 24Mbs AVCHD is.

I have no idea if 24mbps AVCHD with the HMC150 can capture the "detail" of footage shot with that much gain, without visible artifacts. I have shot HDV at 18dB gain (not something I make a habit of, to be sure), which I'm sure doesn't produce any less compression artifacting than 24mbps AVCHD out of an HMC150, and compression artifacts weren't even close to the biggest quality issue with the footage. It's sort of difficult to imagine using 18dB gain and somehow getting broadcast quality footage, no matter what the codec.

Yes, OK, but things can get complicated from a broadcasters viewpoint due to the cascading of codecs in a broadcast chain. At first generation there may be little difference between pictures from camera A and camera B, but it can happen that issues can build up along the chain to make a big difference to what the viewer sees at home. The whole subject is extremely complicated with a huge number of variables, but for now it's just worth bearing in mind that what seems obvious isn't necessarily so.
It would depend on use. For some tasks it may just be an irritation, for news it could be a make or break decision. Imagine two rivals have just shot the biggest breaking story you've ever come across, and their material arrives back at the edit suites at exactly the same time. Company A has material that's 35Mbs MPEG2, company B has 21Mbs AVC-HD.

Company B manages to ingest the smaller amount of data fastest (assuming all else equal), but then has to sit back and watch the transcode happen - and watch company A start editing first.

And from a broadcasters viewpoint, why give yourself that disadvantage? At the moment it may mean the difference in cost between an HMC150 and an EX1. Significant maybe to an individual with a really tight budget, but peanuts to even a small scale broadcaster, especially when the EX1 offers other substantial benefits - higher resolution, true manual control etc.
What I have seen is the difference at max bitrate between the 1080 and 720 modes, and the difference is clear, even at 0dB gain. The 720 mode I thought pretty good. Even on an area of high movement, (rippling water) then whilst artifacts were present on a frame by frame basis, at normal viewing they just didn't register.

In 1080 mode it was a different story, and artifacts were clearly present even on fairly static scenes. At quite a low level, but it's the character rather than the level that makes them objectionable, taking the form of what I can best describe as a noise pattern that only changes quite slowly - maybe every 1/2 second.

Whether this was a function of the HMC150 in particular, or AVC-HD at that bitrate I don't know. Since there seems no appreciable resolution difference with the camera between 1080 and 720 operation, I do know I'd always use it as a 720 camera.

HMC150 has the same chip as in new HPX170.
The whole discussion is kind of pointless, since I haven't seen ANY electronic equipment that did not become extinct; even beta cams.

Exactly, the point being that for resolution it's the chip that's the limiting factor in both these cameras - not the codec subsampling of DVCProHD.
But some purchases become obsolescent far quicker than others, and the advantage is with those who can predict what is likely to have the longer life.

I can make a sound case for the HMC150 (it's cheap), and a different sound case for the EX cameras and more latterly the HPX300 (much better quality, better feature set, even if more expensive). But the HPX170? In terms of quality and feature set it offers little more than the HMC150, whilst being far more expensive when you take P2 costs into consideration. In terms of cost, it compares roughly with the EX, whilst not giving anywhere near the performance of the latter.

Yes, all electronic equipment becomes obsolete in time, but it seems that the HPX170 became obsolete almost as soon as it was launched. Maybe it may be a sensible choice as "B" camera to a 2/3" P2 camera, but surely for most people either the HMC150, an EX or an HPX300 are better for most people, depending on how much they have to spend?

The topic was P2 vs SDHC. I think P2 will stay for a while, but the vast majority of new systems within 2 years will be switching to SDHC. I also don't understand why CF cards are not used as a recording media, since they are more stable then SDHC imo. At this point I would not get anything with P2; it would be simply way too co$tly.
I bet there is going to be a split. Consumer and prosumer gear will pursue solid media in a form of card (most likely some sort of SDHC). Pro units (more $$$) will cut down on compressions and will incorporate something simmilat to Aja Ki Pro on board.

Sony's HVR-MRC1 uses CF cards.

I'm a little surprised somebody didn't come out with a device like the HVR-MRC1 a long time ago. We're just not talking about anything very complicated here, from an engineering standpoint, nor something that would cost much to produce once designed. This isn't anything akin to a nanoFlash or the like. The video encoding is done entirely in-camera. All this device does is take the data stream coming out of the firewire port, wrap it in an MPEG transport stream container (not even close to complex software, nor requiring much processing power), and save to a flash memory card. Really basic stuff. With anything like a reasonable scale of mass production of the units, these things could be produced for chump change in China.

Okay, I'm done ranting now. :)

Exactly so. The Firestore has been around for quite a while now - why didn't they bring out a version with CF cards in place of the harddrive?

Think about it - a lot of the Firestore issues centred around power consumption, so battery issues and the need for cooling, so fan noise, and the need for vent holes, so rain could get in...... A move to solid state would have solved the lot at a stroke. And having removable media would have been far more user friendly in many other ways.

I believe some folks have modded Firestores, replacing the HDD with a CF card with IDE adapter.

If you look at the pricing on Firestores, they (further) price gouge for models with higher storage capacity. They wouldn't be able to do that if they used removable CF, or any other removable media - no reason those devices couldn't easily have been designed to use removable HDDs either.

Well being that HDCAM-SR, by far the most popular mastering codec, is what AVCHD spawned from, I think the technology has proved itself to some pretty capable women wearing dusters.

HDCAM-SR, as I understand, uses lossless MPEG4 Part2 Studio Profile intra-frame/intra-field codec which what DVCProHD and AVC-intra are similar to.
It doesnt look to me that a long GOP AVCHD has very much in common with HDCAM-SR whatsoever.