This week's subject will revolve around the journalism students that are looking at going into video production. The use of High Definition, HD, video in today's society has reached a point that allows producers to choose what type of format to use to store their video media. The conflict that I am discussing today involves the use of DV tape versus P2 storage cards. Digital Video, DV, tapes have been a standard digital format since the late 1990s and has been used within consumer and professional based camcorders. When transferring footage into editing software from a DV tape the transfer rate constitute a 1 to 1 ratio. This means that if a videographer has 35 minutes of tape to edit it will take the same amount of time to transfer the video into a non-linear editing source. The benefit of this format is price and availability to users. Standard defeinition tapes range anywhere from $2 a tape and the HD format start at prices of $20. The average record time of the HD tapes are about 60 minutes. SD on the other hand have the capability of longer runtimes considering the amount of information stored. P2 storage cards are used in professional grade HD camcorders and records the video as a MFX format. This format contains free running timecode and is stored as a computer data format called metadata. The P2 cards use solid state technology and therefore use less running parts within their media source. On average, P2 cards come in 8, 16, 32 and 64GB cards and can range in prices from $400 to over $2000. The average runtime on this format will depend on the camcorder being used. For instance, with a Panasonic DVCProHD the average runtime with a 64GB P2 card is about 128 minutes. The format is reusable and does not degrade like standard tape formats. In the long run, I feel that professional technology will move towards P2 cards in order to cut down editing times and overall easy of use. In contrast, the consumer-based camcorders that have the same transferable abilities will remain tape based until compression reaches a point of less degradation to be used for editing.
This week's subject will revolve around the journalism students that are looking at going into video production. The use of High Definition, HD, video in today's society has reached a point that allows producers to choose what type of format to use to store their video media. The conflict that I am discussing today involves the use of DV tape versus P2 storage cards. Digital Video, DV, tapes have been a standard digital format since the late 1990s and has been used within consumer and professional based camcorders. When transferring footage into editing software from a DV tape the transfer rate constitute a 1 to 1 ratio. This means that if a videographer has 35 minutes of tape to edit it will take the same amount of time to transfer the video into a non-linear editing source. The benefit of this format is price and availability to users. Standard defeinition tapes range anywhere from $2 a tape and the HD format start at prices of $20. The average record time of the HD tapes are about 60 minutes. SD on the other hand have the capability of longer runtimes considering the amount of information stored. P2 storage cards are used in professional grade HD camcorders and records the video as a MFX format. This format contains free running timecode and is stored as a computer data format called metadata. The P2 cards use solid state technology and therefore use less running parts within their media source. On average, P2 cards come in 8, 16, 32 and 64GB cards and can range in prices from $400 to over $2000. The average runtime on this format will depend on the camcorder being used. For instance, with a Panasonic DVCProHD the average runtime with a 64GB P2 card is about 128 minutes. The format is reusable and does not degrade like standard tape formats. In the long run, I feel that professional technology will move towards P2 cards in order to cut down editing times and overall easy of use. In contrast, the consumer-based camcorders that have the same transferable abilities will remain tape based until compression reaches a point of less degradation to be used for editing.
Posts
This is great very cool. I think you are right on the money. I think P2 storage capability and things like it will eventually become more affordable and smaller and eventaully become the standard for prosumer and consumer camcorder models. But that is just my opinion. The thing is we are always looking for ways to get things done faster and log and capture times are significantly reduced with the P2 technology. Cheers
ReplyDelete