Can anyone explain 720p30N to me?

Barry Green · July 24th, 2006, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

It seems the P2 Store is the best thing, but it's way overpiced, and B&H says they're not available yet

They've been available for years (were introduced for use with the SPX800 long before the HVX was on the market), but demand is outstripping supply right now. They're available but you have to call around to try to find one.

Quote:

Shooting 720pn would get about 20minutes, I understand, per 8-gig card.

20 minutes of 720/24pN per 8-gig card, yes. 40 minutes in-camera. 16-gig cards are due out at the end of this year.

Quote:

The 60 gig P2 Store, then, would only hold a bit over 140 minutes.

Correct. But again, if you offload through a laptop, you can take advantage of relatively unlimited hard disk storage. We typically use 300gb Seagate drives, which give about 13 hours of 720/24pN recording each.

Quote:

The faq about the P2 store implies it only works with Windows, doesn't mention Mac.

It works fine with the Mac. Panasonic's site is surprisingly PC-centric and doesn't really give the Mac users the full perspective. There's a "reboot" sequence you need to do to put the P2 Store in Mac-compatible mode, but once you do it works fine.

Quote:

But I can't see my way into the P2 workflow. Damn. For awhile there I thought I had something working.

There are lots of people in lots of circumstances working with it; describe what you would be doing and maybe somebody can offer suggestions? I mean, obviously it's not ideal for all shooting circumstances (like I'd have a hard time figuring out how to tell a wedding shooter to do his job on a 4gb card) but for many circumstances it's revolutionary. If you describe your projects, maybe someone will already have been down that path and will have thought of something that you & I haven't brought up yet?

And, keep in mind, what you're facing today is the worst it'll ever be. Every month that goes by the capacities grow, the prices come down, the equipment gets faster... by moving to the computer domain instead of the video domain a lot of options open up.

Don't forget the FireStore and the forthcoming CinePorter; the CinePorter promises up to 320gb of storage (again, 13 hours of 720/24pN). Both products will work with the larger cameras as well as the HVX, so it might be applicable to what you want to do.

Bill Pryor · July 26th, 2006, 09:20 AM

Some good points there, thanks. I'm still trying to get my head around how to make this work. There's a short term and a long term thing going on. If I decide to buy a new camera for a current project, then I want to move in the same direction with a bigger company camera and system in a year or so. When that 2000 (is that the number?) comes out next year, it could fit in here (I've been interestedin XDCAM HD, but I'm hesitant to go down to a 2/3" chip camera as the main camera). I'm also interested in 24p but for different reasons than the usual. The data management of XDCAM or P2 would work very well for us later on (assuming P2 can be dealt with the same way as XDCAM, the proxy file labeling and all that stuff).

I haven't seen anything yet about if the 2000 will be doing 24p. If it does, then that issue is probably solved. For our big company productions, the P2 thing isn't too bad. There's plenty of time and people available to handle the data transfers. And by then we'd have plenty of cards. The big bugaboo for P2 for me has been more archival than capacity. In other words, how do I file original tapes for years and be able to access them if I don't have any original tapes. The answer seems to be to put the files onto DVD, and eventually Blu-ray DVD. I assume the mxf files can be loaded to a hard drive and then transferred over to DVD with no problem. So that's probably a workable thing, though a bit time consuming. With XDCAM HD, you just file the discs like tape. I guess my issue in this area is if the benefits of the camera outweigh the hassle of the data.

The more immediate issue, the HVX200, is in the realm of capacity. There's a cost/benefit thing here too. A package with four 8 gig cards tops out at around $10K. I don't think I'd want to spend any more than that on that particular camera. The cost gets too high and I'm better off with an F-330. The 4 cards would give me about 80 min of time. Then I could transfer the stuff via laptop and firewire to a hard drive, and make the DVDs at my leisure. That's been difficult to consider because 80 minutes isn't all that much. However, Now that I think about it, on this current project, it would be very rare that I would do more than one interview in a day which would be that long. So, P2 isn't out of the question.

The thing that got me interested is not the P2 concept, but the HVX camera itself. The ability to do slow motion, specifically. That in itself is a big deal all of a sudden. Now I've got to investigate how FCP5 will handle DCVPRO HD files and what I'd need to do on that front.

July 26th, 2006, 09:20 AM	#17
Bill Pryor Contributor Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Kansas City, MO Posts: 4,449	Some good points there, thanks. I'm still trying to get my head around how to make this work. There's a short term and a long term thing going on. If I decide to buy a new camera for a current project, then I want to move in the same direction with a bigger company camera and system in a year or so. When that 2000 (is that the number?) comes out next year, it could fit in here (I've been interestedin XDCAM HD, but I'm hesitant to go down to a 2/3" chip camera as the main camera). I'm also interested in 24p but for different reasons than the usual. The data management of XDCAM or P2 would work very well for us later on (assuming P2 can be dealt with the same way as XDCAM, the proxy file labeling and all that stuff). I haven't seen anything yet about if the 2000 will be doing 24p. If it does, then that issue is probably solved. For our big company productions, the P2 thing isn't too bad. There's plenty of time and people available to handle the data transfers. And by then we'd have plenty of cards. The big bugaboo for P2 for me has been more archival than capacity. In other words, how do I file original tapes for years and be able to access them if I don't have any original tapes. The answer seems to be to put the files onto DVD, and eventually Blu-ray DVD. I assume the mxf files can be loaded to a hard drive and then transferred over to DVD with no problem. So that's probably a workable thing, though a bit time consuming. With XDCAM HD, you just file the discs like tape. I guess my issue in this area is if the benefits of the camera outweigh the hassle of the data. The more immediate issue, the HVX200, is in the realm of capacity. There's a cost/benefit thing here too. A package with four 8 gig cards tops out at around $10K. I don't think I'd want to spend any more than that on that particular camera. The cost gets too high and I'm better off with an F-330. The 4 cards would give me about 80 min of time. Then I could transfer the stuff via laptop and firewire to a hard drive, and make the DVDs at my leisure. That's been difficult to consider because 80 minutes isn't all that much. However, Now that I think about it, on this current project, it would be very rare that I would do more than one interview in a day which would be that long. So, P2 isn't out of the question. The thing that got me interested is not the P2 concept, but the HVX camera itself. The ability to do slow motion, specifically. That in itself is a big deal all of a sudden. Now I've got to investigate how FCP5 will handle DCVPRO HD files and what I'd need to do on that front.