Yes, you can freely intermix any mode, any frame rate, any resolution, all on the same card. You can shoot SD 4:3, SD 16:9, HD 720, HD 1080, PAL or NTSC, 24p or 30p or 60i, 25p or 50i, slow-mo or fast-mo or normal, all on the same card.

Thanks!

ULi

That is the beauty of P2, I experienced some cumbersome management when I had to record different frame formats on a same tape (which I don't usually do, but sometimes I didn't have time to change the tape).

Only thing with P2 is that I have to change the correspondent frame/format mode to playback various frame/format clips on the camera. Changing the frame/fomat requires the camera to blink (not totally shut down?), so I guess that can't be helped I guess... But I love P2 when I once transfer to Mac, I can bring various formats all at once if I wanted to.

Barry, does Rayligt provide more information with clips on P2 while browsing (that means before you bring them in to Mac) like frame/formats?
FCP6's Log and Transfer (not sure if the naming is right because I run Japanese version) P2 window does not give you much informaiton with clips on P2 card or P2 volumes. I was wondering fi Raylight give me a lot more information before I bring them in to FCP.

Raylight gives you all, or nearly all, the metadata in quicktime annotations (readable in quicktime pro) and also in a one-frame "slate" that is readable in the Quicktime player or the FCP viewer. It will also automatically name the clips according to the "UserClipName" so you can have clip names like "Scene 23 Take 0001" etc. that are generated by the camera, and organize them into folders based on the "Program Name" metadata item.

Also there is a new revision 1.06 coming soon (next week) that has somewhat more refined slate and naming features based on feedback from some of our customers that are using it for television news work.

The main advantage of Raylight for Mac is that you can edit straight off the P2 Card if you want, taking the backup process out of the critical time path and eliminating the P2 Import / Log and Transfer step.

There is a free demo at http://dvfilm.com/raylight/mac

If you can wait until the end of this year to buy a camera, check out the Sony XDCAM EX. This will have a larger sensor than other low-cost HD cameras and record in XDCAM HD format at bit rates higher than HDV but less than DVCProHD on reasonably priced flash memory cards. This looks like the camera to answer the limitations of both HDV cameras and Panasonic options without being too terribly expensive (expected to be under $8K).

By the way, regarding HDV editing that can be improved significantly by capturing the footage to an intermediate codec like Cineform Aspect HD, Canopus HQ or the new Apple ProRes. This increases the file size but reduces processor requirements to be similar to I-frame recording codecs like DVCProHD.