went to HVX200 demo....
 

First impressions...

I'ts a great camera, but I still see problems with the P2 workflow.

Let's say you buy a package with 2 P2 cards. Your recording time is limited. What if you have to shoot all day? You'll have to hire someone to keep transferring the footage to a hard drive while you're shooting, so you'll have to buy a P2 card reader, and bring along a laptop, this makes production more expensive, and may be unaffordable for shoestring-budget independent documentaries. (Hiring a PA or AC to do the transfer, etc.)

Okay, so let's say a producer brings a bunch of P2 cards, maybe that'll work, but are they really going to be able to afford 20 or more P2 cards?

Panasonic made a bad move by not allowing the tape mechanism to record in DVCProHD as well as Mini-DV.

What if you don't do a tranfer, and hand the shot cards you bought for the project to the producer, who's flying back to New York, and you'll never see them again? I guess you could include a bill for 5 P2 cards in your invoice? This would make the day rate for a freelancer like me astronomical. And you know how budget minded television production is these days. A lot of us have had to lower our rates to stay in business.

Just some thoughts...

Jacques,
Besides a reiteration of some concerns about P2 workflow, what about the camera itself? Anything new? Any surprises? Did you get to shoot or see footage? What were your impressions about the camera?

It's apparant from your post that there are many concepts regarding P2 that you're not understanding very well. When and where was this demo? In Dallas? If so, where was it and who was the presenter?

If you have to shoot all day, what you do depends on what format you're recording in. If you're shooting standard def DVCPRO in 16:9, then you've got a couple of hours of recording time on four 8GB P2 cards (most HVX200 shooters will probably use three or four P2 cards, not two). This also gives you more than an hour of DVCPRO 50 or DVCPRO HD at 24fps. Seems to me like an hour of recording time works out to about half a day of shooting (if you're working fast, that is, and if it's not a long-form event)... clear these cards once during lunch and you're ready for the rest of the day. If you're constantly rolling tape *all* the time, most likely that's not going to need to be DVCPRO HD, right? But assuming it is, then most likely you wouldn't record long-form events to P2 at all. Instead you'd record to a FireStore FS-100, which holds 100 minutes of DVCPRO HD. Right tool for the right job, remember?

With four P2 cards I don't think you'll need an assistant, as I said depending on what kind of work you're doing, you'll probably have to download those cards one time throughout the day. Take care of it during lunch. If you have a PC laptop then you don't need a separate "P2 card reader" because the laptop *is* the P2 card reader. Remember all you need in terms of hardware to download P2 cards is a standard PCMCIA slot, and most all laptop PCs today come with two of those built right in. In fact I've never seen a laptop that didn't have at least one PC card slot.

Shoe-string budget independant documentaries probably have no need for DVCPRO HD, but it's important to realize that this camera certainly isn't intended to be the right solution for everybody. Remember, choose the right tool for the right job. Shoe-string budget? Shoot standard definition 16:9. After all, content is king and nobody will care whether or not it's HD as long as the content is compelling. Which it should be.

Dude, you're not getting it. Nobody needs twenty P2 cards. Maybe a TV news station will have that many, but not some producer. The cards stay with the camera. If you think you'll use more than what three or four P2 cards will hold, then what you need isn't more P2 cards. What you need is a FireStore FS-100.

It's clear to me that you haven't been following the discussions in this forum, but it's okay because this really is worth repeating yet one more time: if it recorded DVCPRO HD on tape, then it wouldn't be a $6,000 camera. It would be a $22,000 camera. As we have explained here before, a DVCPRO HD tape transport by itself is a $16,000 item. How many HVX200 camcorders do you think Panasonic would sell if each one cost $22,000? Not very many. Or let me put it this way, would you prefer to shoot with the HVX200 and a couple of P2 cards for less than $10,000 or would you rather shoot on DVCPRO HD tape for $22,000? Realize that the whole idea behind the HVX200 is to make the DVCPRO HD format much more affordable for a broader range of users. They can do this with P2. They certainly can't do it with DVCPRO HD tape. This is a fundamental concept to understand. Panasonic made a good move here.

No, the cards stay with the camera. You never hand the P2 cards to anybody to take away. At the end of the shoot, you transfer the P2 card contents to an inexpensive portable hard drive via USB and bill for the drive (like $200). That's what they take away. Your P2 cards always stay with the camera.

I'd really like to know some more details about this demo you attended... everything we've discussed here should have been covered in their P2 workflow explanation as this is all pretty much standard stuff. It was worth repeating again so no big deal. I suppose I should add all of this to my P2 F.A.Q. page:

http://www.p2info.net/p2faq.php

I hear they have one at NAB Post Plus, but I haven't had a chance to go by. Nice FAQ, Chris.

heath

Thanks, Heath, it will be when I update it with all the stuff from this thread.

P2
 

Chris,

Okay, now I understand the workflow ideas going on here.

I also shoot a lot of news, usually on BetaSP. However, shooting on a P2 camera would have it's advantages, especially having the need to cut news packages in the field. I could do this all on a laptop, and I wouldn't need a deck.

This demo was at the "It's an HDV World" seminar at ECI video in Dallas.

All the rep had was a mock-up of the P2 camera. It's a little fatter (wider) than a DVX100. Overall, it's very similar, and weighs about the same, I think.

One good thing is the rep said that P2 cards will larger in storage capacity as time progresses.

I might be interested in one of these camera, now. Or, I might just wait untill the P2 version of the Varicam comes out. Depends, this might be a way to build up P2 HD clientele so that I could eventually move up to a larger camera due to demand.

But, of course the bottom line is, will it make money. The bulk of my income is still from my D-35 and PVV3 Betacam SP camera, followed by my DVCam back-end.

Oh yeah, I've been to ECI. Great bunch of guys down there. Weird how they'd show P2 at an HDV event.

With P2 you wouldn't need a deck. All you need is a laptop which can crunch DVCPRO HD. Probably means a new laptop, at least for me it does.

See my P2 card capacity chart for an idea of where it's all heading:
http://www.p2info.net/articles/misc/p2cardcaps.php

Panasonic did a tickle at NAB about a full-size camera shooting DVCPRO HD on P2 but it's still a ways out yet. More info next April probably.

I was one originally concerned with P2 Cards,
But now I think "the closest thing to Uncompressed HD, already Digitized" for me
Though I am shooting more standard narrative, I even think,
2 P2 cards are enough - one is constantly downloading to a laptop or when you have a break, you plug in and clear the Camera.
if I am shooting 720 24p I get abot 20 minutes an 8 G card.

Yeah, I know it's not ideal but this will tide me over until a Firestore or the cards get larger and less expensive -
Price is a bit high, but...
think the closest thing to Uncompressed HD, already Digitized
or is it even
Uncompressed HD, already Digitized
either way, It's insane really

I know how you feel, I reacted like that at first
but
Read Kaku Ito's thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=54482
He said it took a 4G card one minute to download to a G4 powerbook
It's insane I tell you

Been to NAB Plus in New York, no sign of the HVX200 camera anywhere...

Hope I didn't miss it... :-)

Mike,

I am teaching classes here and someone informed me that they were showing it. I'll see about making a trip around the Javitz and try and track it down.

heath

Heath,

Where are you teaching? If I may ask.

Mike

You hit on THE number one issue for a tapeless workflow... freelance shooters. Many of my jobs are shooting ONLY, I show up, shoot, hand them the tapes and they send me a check. Until solid state storage is HUGE and CHEAP, tape will rule. Tape may be dying but it is a SLOW SLOW death.


ash =o)

I know this is a bit ambitious, but the new paradigm could be "I show up, shoot, transfer the footage to their portable hard drive, and they send me a check."

They aren't listed:
http://www.nabpostplus.com/exhibitors/exhibitors.asp

Are you writing about transferring from camera/p2 to hard drive on location?

Is that only with USB or can it be done with FW too?

Do they make portable drives that run on battery power?

How do you know that the file actually made it to the portable hard drive before you wipe the p2 cards for more filming?

Can we play clips from the hard drive to see if there on the drive ounce you have transfered them from p2?

http://www.nabpostplus.com/sessions.asp

One light, no crew today. Will be fun and reminds me of the days of shooting news with one light and no reporter to help.

heath

All these concerns seems moot since I haven't been a shoot yet that at least 1 laptop wasn't in use and I can think of only 1 shoot I've been on (remote location on a mountain top in Mexico on a STUDENT film) where there was no power... even then, there was a "ranger" station a mile or so away that we could use power to transfer the footage on our way down the mountain. Also I have seen portable drive enclosures that instead of having a power supply, have two usb cables... one for power and one for data.

Actually, transferring from P2 to Hard disk without a laptop ONLY works with Firewire hard disks, not USB2 at all. USB2 is for plugging in the HVX to a PC so it shows up as an external drive on the desktop.

Yep. Here's one enclosure:

http://www.dvvideo.com/shop/storage/...rePortable.htm

I'm guessing here, but I'd think you'd need to plug the drive into a computer to check it's contents. If it's a Firestore, then it'll probably let you see it on the LCD as individual clips, like the P2 cards.

I don't think that's right - only a firewire drive like the Firestore with a built in mini-computer can capture directly from the cards/camera, while someone may be able to modify the OTG firmware in some USB drives to transfer the data from the P2 cards without a computer using the USB host protocol, although at the moment it is only designed for JPEG's etc



I think the point Michael was trying to make in his inimitable style was that how can we trust computers the way we trust tape? Only time will tell in the field. It is a salient point that hard drives, especially exposed to the rigours of the field are hardly an "archival" format.

I see a lot of trust and faith being placed in the Firestore here as the "remedy" to P2 hurdles, but I don't think the record of any portable DV hard drive solution is too "flash"... sound and heat problems and software/firmware bugs seem to be commonplace. I personally hope Focus do get it right.

We weren't talking about recording directly to an off-the-shelf Firewire Hard Disk. For that, you do need the Firestore. What we're talking about is recording to P2 cards, and THEN transferring the footage from P2 cards to an external off-the-shelf Firewire Hard disk WITHOUT the use of a laptop. Simply plug the drive into the HVX and dump the footage. This was confirmed by Jan, and is one of the coolest features of the HVX.

Uh, no.

I do tons of freelance shooting as you describe. Not that I want to keep beating a dead horse, but once again as others have said, the cards stay with the camera. With the HVX, you will show up, shoot and hand over the data files to them on a compact USB HDD or DVD media.

In your current freelance approach, do you not keep copies of what you shoot? I *NEVER* (almost never, anyway) give away my master tape. The client must wait the extra hour or so for me to dupe them a copy. If it's a serious time crunch I charge them extra to take the tapes and this extra is refundable once they return them to me (in the same condition I gave them) and then I will give them their COPIES. In my freelance agreement, it's rare that I ever give full or exclusive rights to anything I shoot (photos, video, whatever) and on the rare occasion I do, it costs them.

To confirm, offloading of P2 cards is done to firewire drives, not USB drives. The camera has the capability to control an external firewire disk drive, but not a USB drive.

As far as "how do you know it got there", I would assume (there's that word again) that you can copy with verification, just like you burn DVDs with verification.

For freelance shooting, the dub-to-hard-disk solution is pretty much the only workable arrangement I can think of right now, unless the producer has the foresight to rent an ample supply of P2 cards (and banking on producers having that foresight is not necessarily a wise move!) Handing over a hard disk is an affordable option (hard disks cost less per hour than HD tape) and should put the producer in a very happy mood (no digitizing? no deck rental? instant access to the footage? happy happy)

If dubbing to a hard disk is too inconvenient, then the stark truth is that the HVX may not be the camera for you, for those purposes. No one tool can serve all purposes equally well; the very notion is impossible. If you can adapt your style to work within its workflow, it may be suitable. But it'll never be quite as simple as shoot-to-a-$5-tape, hand-that-tape-over. Then again, with the tape situation in as much flux as it is, and with there being at least eight potential "affordable" high-def formats on the market in the next year (HDV1, HDV2, CanonHDV, HVX, Infinity, XDCAM-HD, JVC GY-HD7000U 1080i, Panasonic HD-D5), all basically incompatible -- well, nothing will ever be as simple as shoot-to-a-$5-tape, hand-that-tape-over again. I think regular DV will be with us for years to come.

Definitely. And, honestly, who wants their nephew's 7th birthday pool party in HD?

Jeff, I don't know who your clients are, but I never a) have the time to dub the tapes at the end of a long day or b) have the authority to say I own the masters. This would never fly with VH1, Discovery, Paramount or any other client. They wouldn't hire you again if you claimed to have "full & exclusive rights." Matter of fact, they wouldn't hire you in the first place.

That said, it's a bit silly to keep arguing about what the P2 workflow WON'T work for. Nothing ever works for every scenario. The HVX will be an excellent camera for many things. Probably not for me, because like I mentioned above, I'll need to hand tapes over at the end of the day. Oh and by the way...so far I haven't had a single request for HD anyways. I know it's coming...but nothing yet. We could only wish that things moved as fast as we do here on the boards...

Kevin

Well, regardless of the who owns rights argument... I think dumping off to an affordable hard drive is a solution that would work for a freelance camera op such as yourself. As you said, no has asked for HD yet, but when they do, the comparative costs of a HDD versus a DVCPRO HD tape, makes the HDD a very attractive offer. Heck, I just bought a 250 GB LaCie hardrive for $100... That will easily hold a days worth of footage (provided it's not long form event recording...). Plus, as has also been mentioned, what producer wouldn't want to have the footage already "digitized" with no deck necessary. Heck, he/she can watch the footage as they fly back to New York with just their laptop...

The irony here is that one of the big purported advantages of P2 recording is the durability of the solid state memory cards, but the first thing most people are going to do with P2 data is dump it off to hard drives of one type or another. Given that, it follows that a lot of people will simply record directly to the Firestore drives once they become available, bypassing P2 cards altogether. It's a wonder they didn't build this camera with a slot for a removable 2.5" hard drive -- the base is just about exactly the right size to do this.

For me, I aim to take advantage of the massive speed superiority of P2 over hard drives. PreRecord, Clip Deletion, Clip Review in the Camera, instant recording potential, and fast file transfer into my edit station is a huge appeal of P2 to me. It doesn't sound like hard drives will have this kind of performance. For fine tuned shooting sessions that are focused on quality of multiple short takes, rather than event capturing, I may get by with P2 without hard drive transfer, no problem.

Conversely, if I know the shoot is going to be a lot of long duration event based recording, as you said, it's time to use a FireStore, or capture to hard disk via FCP to hard disk.

The final thing that helped me make my purchase decision was realizing, after all, there's still shooting to "good ole" miniDV tape in DV25.

You hit the nail on the head. It does seem a little bit of a waste to have P2 cards and just dump the data off immediately and trust your critical footage to a HD. I have never used any of the firestore devices but I have read enough on internet forums of problems and reliabilty issues that it concerns me. I hope it is robust.

If I can somehow afford a couple P2 cards I will be offloading them immedately to HDD and wiping the P2 card clean. I am concerned about corrupt data ending up on the HD and then having no "original" to go back to recover the shot. This "tapless" workflow has some pitfalls that really need to be worked around!

I think it works if you're in a studio setting and have time and equipment to transfer the files and back them up, then reuse the P2 cards. In most any studio shoot I've been on, there usually would be time to do that.

Where the idea doesn't work is for the guys who may go on the road for a couple of weeks and come back with several hours of documentary footage. Even dumping the stuff to those 60 gig portable hard drives would be expensive, since 10 hours of DVCPRO HD would take 10 drives, plus another 10 for backup.

So, obviously the camera is designed for certain applications, and that's cool. It would be excellent for TV news too. I wonder how many stations are using the professional P2 camera for TV news, as opposed to the XDCAM and DVCPRO tape cameras. Seems a good match to me.

And, if capacities of the P2 cards go up significantly and prices down, then you've really got something.

If one had the ability to transfer to higher capacity drives like a 500GB, you could conceivably get something like 20 hours of 720p @ 24fps Native on a single drive. So then you can imagine instant editing (or one drag and drop and wait), instead of capturing 20 hours of tape. One could even do nightly mirroring of the drive on a 2nd 500GB drive for data redundancy protection.

I agree that remote shoots in challenging conditions probably require conventional tape. But it will be interesting to see what lengths people go to maximize and utilize the HVX200 and P2.

Well, I've shot a small bit of video for one of the studio clients you just mentioned on more than one occasion. And the tapes were delivered the following day for both instances and I still retained partial rights to them. I suppose it depends on what you are shooting and for what purpose and we're getting way off topic on this one. I wasn't intending to start an argument or anything but I obviously wasn't looking at it from the same point of view of others... When I freelance, I'm not usually just a cameraman for hire. Just about everything I shoot or produce is a value-added production and rarely do I ever just deliver raw video or video alone. I'm usually contracted to do at least some editing or post work, primarily animation or effects. So while the shoot and deliver freelance approach may not be something I do, I suppose I overlooked the fact that many others probably do.

Yep.

And it seems thta most people claim the very same thing... And I was saying that until about 2 years ago, I decided to move all my animation work over to HD. I snagged a couple small contracts with some HD broadcasters and I have been renting HD cameras and trying different ones over the past year. Now all I get is requests for HD. Our local NBC affiliate is really beating the HD drum and they're all over independent HD sources. HD.Net is owned/operated local to me as well and they're starved for content. You mentioned Discovery above... They're pushing HD like crazy and you're a lot more interesting to them if you can deliver HD material. So many people on here are doing weddings and corporate video or local news and documentary projects. HD hasn't hit home yet for those markets, but it will in the not too distant future. I know the HVX200 isn't for everyone and the limited capacity of current P2 offerings will make a lot of tasks difficult. I do a lot of shooting outdoors and often in extreme conditions. I may not be able to shoot HD all the time with the HVX until larger P2 cards become available, but I think this camera will be a nice addition to my DVX and will allow me to do more HD level work without renting a camera and so much of what I want to do I just can't do with a rented unit.

Sorry still catching up on the HVX - very cool.

Hey I'm not 100% up on the HVX200 or the P2 technology. Been busy with HDV lately.

heath

WHen I am shooting only, I generally have to sign a WFH agreement and hand the tapes over on the spot. If you retain rights you are the very rare exception and a lot of the stuff I do, it is unheard of. I shot 4 days at a NASCAR event a couple weeks ago for a nice fat check but had I asked for any rights... I would have never got the job. It is worth noting that most places WANT tape, not DVD/HDD/etc.


ash =o)

Point taken... Others have already called me on this to. :)

Yeah, I don't do much direct work for hire type stuff. But then again, shooting video is only a small portion of what I do and what I deliver.

I'm rathered tired of people complaining all the time about the cost of p2 here and elsewhere. In two or three years when the dust settles people will be wondering what all the fuss was about. I remember a huge fuss about the reliability of the dvx100 when it came out more than 2 years ago because it looked "plasticky" and toylike. Where's the dvx now? Some see it as a conspiracy for panasonic to force us to buy expensive recording media but that is so silly. It is the cheapest way to go hd as a tape mechanism would cost a fortune.
Panasonic is giving smaller people like us( lets be frank most of us are "small" when you see the kind of money that gets splashed around the film business) access to what really is revolutionary technology at a relatively affordable price. It will be future proof because the cards will only get bigger and cheaper. It is tapeless for crying out loud. If it doesnt work for some applications than the firestore should work. All bases covered. Make a copy once the shoot is finished and there's your backup. I for one would be glad to see tape die.

I couldn't agree more Tung.

One day we will look back and say " remember back in the day when we used tape"....... Yes P2 and an IT way of moving footage around will not be easy at first. Every great advancement has a slow start up, but once it gets up to speed and takes over.. "" watch Out ""

P2 and flash memory Hidef recording is the future and the future is beginning today.....


I welcome it with open arms........

Pappas

I know. Panny must be scratching their heads. Take a DVCPro-HD deck that costs as much as a new car. Shrink it down to 1/100th of the size and cut the cost by 90%. Run screaming into the street --

"Revolution, stop the presses!!!...er, no forget it.."
"whaddya mean, forget it"
"they say it still costs too much - they want for 1/50th of the price"
"sigh..."

Sure, it would be great if P2 cards cost $50...and if the HVX cost $500. But, life is after all, real, so I guess not.

However, Chris should lockdown camerafantasy.com (it's still available Mr. Hurd). Oh the website ecstacy he could showcase for only $29.95 a month...sexy 1 TB P2 camcorders with two huge prime lenses for under $500...

I'm sorry...I need to log off :)

Remember we used to use tape for audio recording?

Tape for audio recording has long since been exterminated, just like tape in most applications...

Computer programs -- remember loading Apple II or Commodore 64 programs off of tape?

Answering machines -- those little tape cassettes have been almost entirely replaced by solid-state now.

Video editing -- we used to edit tape-to-tape. Not anymore, hard disks revolutionized that arena.

Music playing -- don't see too many cassette-tape-based walkman devices around anymore; the CD and the hard-disk ipod and now the solid-state Nano pretty much took care of that.

Professional audio recording -- the reel-to-reel and 4-track and Nagra and DAT have gone the way of the dodo, yielding to hard-disk and solid-state recording.

Video distribution -- VHS is pretty much extinct for rental or movie sales.

Home video recording -- does anyone still record TV on VHS tape anymore, or has everyone migrated to hard-disk-based DVR/Tivo and DVD-recorders yet?

Voice memo recorders -- remember they used to have those little cassette tapes, same as answering machines? Long since extinct, replaced by solid state recording now.

Hey, tape was first, and in most technologies it always is the first recording technology. And it's familiar. But tape is on its way out. It is an obsolete technology. Dropouts, crinkling, fast-forwarding and rewinding, searching for footage, taping over something you didn't mean to tape over, format incompatibilities, timecode breaks, linear access, head wear, head clogs, cleaning heads -- that's all just so... so... "primitive", I guess is the word. Why put up with it if you don't have to? And as soon as viable tapeless technologies are introduced, people will flock to them. Already we're seeing the FireStore, DV Rack, XDCAM, Ikegami's EditCam, Panasonic's P2 & consumer SD recorders, the Wafian recorder, JVC's Everio and their new hard-disk-based GY-HD7000U, the Viper Filmstream, DVD camcorders, the Infinity which records on Rev drives or CF cards... all tapeless systems...

Tape is like those ghosts in The Sixth Sense -- they're all dead, they just don't know it yet! ;)