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The FUD caster continues to select obsolete data -- outdated pricing -- and repeatedly hammers away at presenting it as current information: "who needs these 4 mins for thousands dollars?"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

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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

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.

<<<-- 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

D'oh!!

My face is red.

"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?

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,

<<<-- 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

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

<<<-- 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.

<<<-- 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

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.

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...

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.

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

<< 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.

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.

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.

<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Hurd : << P2 is perfect for a filmmaking environment, -->>>

I also have to disagree, I don't own a laptop, I don't want to own a laptop.. period.. So what am I going to do on those long trips when I shoot documentaries for television? Use the extra tool they sell me, 60gig hdd? Well, let's see, I used about 7 tapes last time I went, what about 420min. That's 91 gig DV material (25mbps) So at 100mbps I'd need 315 gigabyte of space. I would need to buy 6 of them hardrives panasonic is about to offer. Not to mention I have to carry them around with me all the time.

Take this for an example,
You are alone and collecting footage for your documentary, You see something spectacular, like with most animal encounters or things of that nature. You have to be fast.. No time for that additional tripod, You start shooting, after 4 minutes your P2 cards is out, it starts recording on the other card, you need to pop the card out, pull out the hardrive from the backpack, put the card into the hardrive and dump the material, all of this without taking your focus of what's in your viewfinder or adding additional camera shake. I would say that's impossible..

They need to offer atleast 60-100gig P2 cards for this to be a good alternative to tape!

> 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.

I see your point Graeme. But don't you think it could be a good idea to skip solid state and go direct to the hard disk, which is almost as reliable and less expensive?

Also, have you read Sony's technical papers on XDCAM? They make a good point about going optical for both aquisition AND archiving.

> They need to offer atleast 60-100gig P2 cards for this to
> be a good alternative to tape!

Andreas, look around the 'net. Hitachi makes 80GB hard disks that can fit inside a PC-card, and 5GB PC-cards are already widely available. This is why I am hoping that Panasonic will open up the architecture of the P2 slot so we can pop hard disks in there.

Read back in this same thread or check this other thread for more details on the P2 issue: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...5&goto=newpost

Andreas,

<< You are alone and collecting footage... you need to pop the card out, pull out the hardrive from the backpack, put the card into the hardrive and dump the material, all of this without taking your focus of what's in your viewfinder or adding additional camera shake. I would say that's impossible. >>

Panasonic is also coming out with a P2 WLAN card, so you could download video wirelessly without ever touching the camera. Anything is possible these days!

This is great if you shoot at studio or something.
And what about beach (for example)? People must take notebook with camcorder? Notebook with just 80-100 Gb HDD is not better than tape or small 80-100 Gb HDD...

This is really bad idea too...

Oh, I don't believe all manufacturers make really bad first HDV camcorders. JVC made awful one-CCD camcorder which shoot to MPEG2. Sony made camcorder shooting to MPEG2 with interlace...

If Panasonic will make perfect camcorder (with good storage - tape or HDDs), I think it will be very popular. It has all I (and almost all other people) need:
progressive shooting, 3 CCDs, shooting NOT to MPEG2...

> Panasonic is also coming out with a P2 WLAN card, so you
> could download video wirelessly without ever touching the
> camera. Anything is possible these days!

Ahhhhh that is soooo sweet. I had actually mentioned some time ago that this might be possible but didn't expect Panasonic to offer it. Is there any link available, press release, anything with more info on that card?

This would mean we can carry around a laptop with a wireless card and a huge hard disk and thus have virtually infinite recording time! It's not as one-man-shoot as a hard disk for the P2 card, but it's the next best thing. Very promising!

I wonder what wireless technology is used. The 54Mbps version of 802.11 would not be enough for a full 100 Mbps DVCPROHD stream, and due to the inherent problems of wireless shared spectrum technology, it might not even be good enough for DVCPRO50. However, it might be just enough for DVCPROHD in 24p mode, if redundant information is not transmitted.

Alexey

<< And what about beach (for example)? People must take notebook with camcorder? >>

We're not talking about a consumer camcorder here. We're talking about professional shoots and serious independent filmmaking. Among all of the other various gear that requires, adding a laptop and an external storage drive to the equipment list is not going to be an issue for the majority of these types of applications.


<< Oh, I don't believe all manufacturers make really bad first HDV camcorders. >>

This isn't an HDV discussion. This is a DVCPro HD / P2 discussion. There's a significant difference.

<< Sony made camcorder shooting to MPEG2 with interlace... >>

And your point is? I'm not sure what you're trying to say. The forthcoming Panasonic camcorder that is being discussed in this forum is NOT the first camera in the P2 format, if that's what you're trying to get at.

Ignacio

<< I wonder what wireless technology is used. >>

I'm not sure. Saw it referenced at http://www.yenra.com/p2/.

Few questions:
1. Do you know how much time laptop can power from battery? 3-8 hours WITH POWER SAFE, not any more. Power safe will not allow you to use full speed of computer...

2. 100 Gb is maximum. Big 3.5'' external HDDs will not working from batteries. If it will, laptop will take much more power.

3. Do you think it's comfortable? I don't think so. I went to friends to shoot birthday and I must take camcorder, laptop and few HDDs...

PS: Wireless (and shooting directly to computer with cable) is only good if you shoot in video-studio.

If you make so serious films - you should buy Pro camcorders. $50000-$100000. :)

I'm trying to say that Panasonic can make ideal HD camcorder if they just use 100 Mbps tape or big HDDs. Not 4 mins flash cards and not "video-to-laptop" thing.

Alexey, I have been on so many film shoots --and even SD video shoots-- where there are lights, generators and all kinds of stuff being carried around... that I think an AC-powered laptop or even a minitower desktop, --which coul easily fit under the video-assist monitor-- is not much of a pain at all.

You can't have it all... I mean sure, Andreas would like to get a camera with 400GB of storage built-in., but that's just not going to happen yet. He is going to have to carry around a laptop or find a way to use FireStore-like or PC-card hard disks.