Jump to content

Panasonic P2


Jon Allen

Recommended Posts

P2 is just a storage format, it's not married to "1/3" sensors." I think you meant to say "after seeing the HVX," which does have a 1/3" CCD, but that's nothing new by any means.

 

You're absolutely correct. But I blame it on the seminar and even the Panasonic rep who kept calling the camera "the P2." I was referring to the HVX200 (I think that's the number) - and I was mostly meaning. If it was like a 1" sensor I'd be willing to pay 3 times more for it and be excited as I could be about some plastic and metal. :)

 

What ist he sensor on the current varicam?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 138
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

#1: I find it hard to think that Panasonic will release a camera into the prosumer market that is so hard to get files from.... Jan, can you please comment on this?

 

PS) Yes, I do run an entertainment company, called "Firestorm Entertainment", incase it has passed your eye in my signature (CEO of Firestorm Entertainment :-).... And no, we dont specialize in film production... We also produce stage plays, seasonal attractions (Halloween Haunted Houses, etc), and such... We have just recently ventured into the realm of interest in film production...

 

No, I don't expect you to belive me... and No, I'm not gonna argue with you about it... So dont start.

Edited by Landon D. Parks
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
#1: I find it hard to think that Panasonic will release a camera into the prosumer market that is so hard to get files from.... Jan, can you please comment on this?

 

No, I don't expect you to belive me... and No, I'm not gonna argue with you about it... So dont start.

 

 

Hi,

 

I am amazed that Jan has not commented. Her silence speaks volume!

 

No I don't believe you!

 

Stephen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
we dont specialize in film production... We also produce stage plays, seasonal attractions (Halloween Haunted Houses, etc), and such... We have just recently ventured into the realm of interest in film production...

 

Who is this "we", kemosabe?

Tell you what, show me where your haunted house is and I will come to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

 

The reason I have not commented is because I haven't had the time to check in. I have been traveling with the working protoype of the HVX200 and I am only here because someone on the forum asked me to stop in and take a read through all of this. Frankly I am a little surprised at the unbelieveable amount of mis-information in this thread.

 

First, there are a number of systems that support the P2 file structure, or unwrap the MXF and then use the files. No you don't have to use extremely expensive systems, you can use Final Cut Pro, Canopus Edius HD or Avid Express Pro HD and soon the Matrox Axio with Adobe Premier as the front end. In standard def the list is even longer.

 

That special viewer driver is supplied with every camera or is downloadable from a website. This would be similar to buying a new Printer and installing the drivers for it onto your laptop. This will allow you to play back on your PC the Footage. If you are working on the Mac, you would have to import the footage into FCP to see it on the computer. If using the P2 Viewer software you can rename the clip and manage the clips that way or you can rename them in the NLE as they are imported.

 

The MXF wrapper BTW is not of our invention or creation, we followed a standard that was recommended by the NLE folks. The reason that the individual pieces are separate is that it expedites the process of putting them on the timeline, it doesn't have to take the time separate the audio from the video before it goes onto the time line as the other MXF flavors do. Actually the Avid and the Canopus systems can edit directly from the card, the Apple cannot, the clips need to be imported first.

 

The data can transfer off the card very quickly, the slowest transfer is on the P2 Store which is about 1Gig a minute, in a computer it can be expected to transfer at least twice that speed if not faster. The P2 card actually can transfer at 640 Mbs, but nothing else in the chain is that fast, yet.

 

As far as the data rate on 24P for 720P it records on the card at 40Mbs because only the flagged frames are recorded. To compare this to DVCPRO50 and say that is is less than, is only in number but not in picture quality. DVCPRO HD is a High Def image and looks vastly different that DVCPRO50 which is standard def. The HVX200 will record either 720P or 1080i, and within the 1080i, it can do a 24P capture and with a pulldown similar to what we do in the DVCPRO50 camera, the SDX900, we can offer a 24P picture at 1080. This too will be supported by all of those systems above.

 

I have to sign off now as I have ayet another plane to catch, headed twoards Resfest in Chicago. Lastly, one should never assume that my silence means anything other than the fact that I have not seen the thread.

 

Best regards,

 

Jan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Hi,

 

> No you don't have to use extremely expensive systems

 

Yes. Fine. But why?

 

Why use this unnecessarily exotic flavour of an unnecessarily exotic format? Why not use something standard, so everything can read it without any drama whatsoever?

 

Why make it complicated?

 

> That special viewer driver is supplied with every camera or is downloadable from a website. This would be

> similar to buying a new Printer and installing the drivers for it onto your laptop.

 

No. That'd be like buying a printer and being told you couldn't print to it from Photoshop or any of your usual applications, you had to use the manufacturer's specialist application to talk to it, adding a time-consuming and fundamentally pointless step to the process. This example is taken from actual practice - it's very hard to get Epson printers to operate their CD printing functions outside Epson software, a flaw for which they have been quite rightly savaged.

 

> If using the P2 Viewer software you can rename the clip and manage the clips

 

What, you mean exactly like you can every other video format on earth, right in your operating system's file manager? I don't get this "manage the clips" thing. What d'you mean, move them about, copy them? Like you can every sensible file format anyway? All this is forcing you to do is to reinvent the wheel - badly. All of this "management" functionality has existed for decades - you just built your camera system in such as way as to completely break twenty years of OS development. Well done. Now you've got people whining about the way it works, and you deserve it.

 

If the system was competent you wouldn't need to rename the files anyway. I'd like to know the qualifications of the person in Osaka who decided that 0255E was a useful, informative filename. Which take is that, Jan? Which scene? Which card did it come off? What order was it shot in - before or after 0236F?

 

> The reason that the individual pieces are separate is that it expedites the process of putting them on the

> timeline

 

Well, I'll tell you what, I'll put up with whatever infinitesimal delay that process incurs in - oh, just every single NLE ever written - to avoid having to manually keep track of six files!

 

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Phil, Take a chill pill my man! I think your jumping over your head here Phil, Jan is an Official with Panasonic, your not... for some reason I feel she knows what she is talking about.

 

However, I still don't get the reason for recoring Video, Audio, Timecode, etc as seperate files, as MiniDV, HDV, HDCAM and other populare recoring formats do not require this... But I'm sure Panasonic has a reason, and I'm sure they will have the proper software and support to make it easier to use than you can imagine at this point. Panasonic is not gonna release a camera with a recoring format that is hard to use! It's just not in there nature!

Edited by Landon D. Parks
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
Phil, Take a chill pill my man! I think your jumping over your head here Phil, Jan is an Official with Panasonic, your not... for some reason I feel she knows what she is talking about.

 

Landon,

 

I am sure Jan will give Panasonic's view. That does not make Phil wrong!

 

Stephen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Landon,

 

I am sure Jan will give Panasonic's view. That does not make Phil wrong!

 

Stephen

Im not saying he is wrong, I'm just saying he needs to quit being so against the format..

 

Brian, We are not having a Haunted Attraction this year. Last year as New vision Entertainment we had an attraction named "Nightmare Woods", which was a 1 1/2 mile haunted trail through the woods... It went really well, 98% of the profits went to charities and everything was and dandy, but after it was over we relized that we didn't profit a whole lot from it, therefore we seen no reason to re-due it again this year... Maybe 2006!

 

and "We" is the team at firestorm Entertainment... Me, Jessee, Patty, Fakhar, Lucy, Breezy, Samantha, Levi and Jason. you can, however, come and see some of the plays we are producing, Imnlcuding a Musical Verson of theWizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and some of the other we look to release well into 2006... If you would like to stay up to date, and get E-mail Reminders of the Dates, time, prices and locations of the professionally produced plays, just tell me on here and I will put you on our mailing list.

Edited by Landon D. Parks
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
Phil, Take a chill pill my man! I think your jumping over your head here Phil, Jan is an Official with Panasonic, your not... for some reason I feel she knows what she is talking about.

 

However, I still don't get the reason for recoring Video, Audio, Timecode, etc as seperate files, as MiniDV, HDV, HDCAM and other populare recoring formats do not require this... But I'm sure Panasonic has a reason, and I'm sure they will have the proper software and support to make it easier to use than you can imagine at this point. Panasonic is not gonna release a camera with a recoring format that is hard to use! It's just not in there nature!

Classic. You tell Phil he's in over his head and then you lamely attempt to make the very same argument. Your last sentence is a howler! What could an 18 year old kid know about the "nature" of a Japanese electronics conglomerate, with-in the context of a global technology market, attempting to spoon-feed a new and proprietary recording format into the market-place that isn't necessarily in need of a new and proprietary recording format?

 

Here's a clue: It's better to learn about problems with highly expensive new gear BEFORE you push it onto the marketplace. If Panasonic is smart (and I suspect they are) they are listening closely to what people like Phil have to say when they report problems with a new technology. They want to work out as many bugs as possible before they launch a major new product line.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith

I've got to agree with Phil in that the organisation system of the camera is kinda useless. There's no logic to it.

 

If I was too suggest anything to Panasonic right now, release a free downloadable program which can sort it all out. Shouldn't be too hard, if the file names have ANY logic whatsoever.

 

I just find it silly putting 5 or so cards into a camera. It's like designing some form of cheap HD camera which has 5 VTR's and records onto 5 MiniDV tapes. It's just going over board.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If anyone from Panasonic is reading this, perhaps they'd do me the favour of explaining what 00018G means, so I can have some hope of sorting out this horrible mess.

 

This is just my guess, but if these are in fact real P2 file names:

 

00018G_02_18010201.avi

0001A1_02_18010201.avi

0001EK_02_18010201.avi

0001GH_02_18010201.avi

0001N3_02_18010201.avi

0001SH_02_18010201.avi

0001SS_02_18010201.avi

 

The first section "00018G" is probably a starting timecode value in easy-for-computers-to-read hexadecimal base62 values (thanks, Rodrigo!). Dropping a file like that onto a NLE timeline would be a wonderful thing, especially in a project where multiple cameras were rolling at the same time. Check it out: http://www.intuitor.com/hex/hexclock.html

 

The "02" might be a card ID (P2 Card #2)

 

The last chunk is likely the date in Unix serial format. In this case '18010201' = July 28 1970. Technically it's 18010201 seconds after January 1, 1970 (the Unix 'zero' date). Jan told me at NAB2005 that the P2 cams were running Linux, and I know this sounds weird, but perhaps this camera's OS has never had it's clock set properly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Hi,

 

You only get the first five digits on the raw MXF files. The rest of it is stuff that my conversion software pulled out from somewhere. I don't think it's come off the camera, because it's the same on 126 objects shot over 3 days.

 

But this is insane! Why do we have to attempt to decode alphabetti spaghetti to make sense of it?

 

There's an XML file that goes with each shot which defines the start timecode, date, and other variables, which is fine. Absolutely, provide that; it's pretty easy to read, even at the linux shell script level. But that's not an excuse to make the main file format so needlessly, pointlessly cryptic and unhandleable.

 

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why do we have to attempt to decode alphabetti spaghetti to make sense of it?

 

Kind of reminds me of the old Mac/Windows argument (which doesn't really stand these days).

 

Mac users really didn't care about filenames or what was going on behind the scenes, they just wanted to click an icon and have things work.

 

Windows (and DOS) users were always interested in understanding what was going on in the background so they could tweak the 'upper memory' and move files into different directories and stuff.

 

I have no experience with P2 yet, so I'm just giving Panasonic the benefit of the doubt here. In the last 20 years they have done a relatively good job of listening to customer's needs and in turn improving their products. Tapeless recording in the field is still in its infancy so i don't think anyone can justify saying that they're 'not doing it right'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Sounds like you want to rip AVI's from the P2, toss the metadata, and organize what's left using the itty-bitty thumbnails in Windows Explorer? I just don't get it. And, this is recommended for ingest into Avid NewsCutter?

 

Also, why do I need an SPX800 serial number to download the free viewer program?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

PhilRhodes wrote in response to my point:

>> No you don't have to use extremely expensive systems

 

>Yes. Fine. But why?

 

So you are saying that you want to use expensive systems? or not? First your complaint was that we could only use it with expensive systems and then I point out that that is not true, and now you want to know why? Why we work with inexpensive systems? Probably because they are the most popular ones out there. But we work with others that are more expensive and geared for news as well.

 

>Why use this unnecessarily exotic flavour of an unnecessarily exotic format? Why not use something standard, so everything can read it without any drama whatsoever?

Why make it complicated?

 

We were asked by several of our partners to please use this format so that it would make the handling of the files efficient and robust. And fast. As far as making it easy to use, the P2 Viewer is very easy to use. As easy as anything else that I have had to download and use to view video clips. And the thumbnails come up almost like it does on the LCD screen but then all of the data is there as well.

 

>No. That'd be like buying a printer and being told you couldn't print to it from Photoshop or any of your usual applications, you had to use the manufacturer's specialist application to talk to it, adding a time-consuming and fundamentally pointless step to the process. This example is taken from actual practice - it's very hard to get Epson printers to operate their CD printing functions outside Epson software, a flaw for which they have been quite rightly savaged.

 

Well I bought an HP printer, I had to load the HP driver. It works with Photoshop. If you are working with the P2 files and from within the NLE application that is not a problem to see the file. If you choose to not work there, you can work on your PC and enhance the MetaData or just view the files. I don't understand the huge deal here. I mean in order for me to view HDV files I have to download a very special piece of software that I don't use for anything else. It is no different, except that this one allows me to get in and change the file name, add more meat to the metadata and do some note taking while in the field.

 

>What, you mean exactly like you can every other video format on earth, right in your operating system's file manager? I don't get this "manage the clips" thing. What d'you mean, move them about, copy them? Like you can every sensible file format anyway? All this is forcing you to do is to reinvent the wheel - badly. All of this "management" functionality has existed for decades - you just built your camera system in such as way as to completely break twenty years of OS development. Well done. Now you've got people whining about the way it works, and you deserve it.

 

Obviously you didn't get the orientation to the product. I don't understand your hostilty. Frankly I think that you are the one that may be a smidge ill-informed. Please take a look at the Standards for OP-Atom and that is exactly what we followed. Apple does not look at the MXF which is why they unwrap and the XML directs traffic from there. These clips are not spearte, they only look that way to Window Explorer or the OS, It does not look that way to the NLE. The MXF wrapper as employed is supported by the PC side of the NLEs Avid, Pinnacle, Matrox and and in some like the Canopus, the metadata actually tracks through the edit software as well. Actually we don't have people whining about the way it works, except for you. But we do have customers that have been working with it and so far everybody is pretty happy.

 

And managing clips is about the long term for archive. The MXF wrapper holds the clips together, they are not separated uless you separate them.

 

>If the system was competent you wouldn't need to rename the files anyway. I'd like to know the qualifications of the person in Osaka who decided that 0255E was a useful, informative filename. Which take is that, Jan? Which scene? Which card did it come off? What order was it shot in - before or after 0236F?

 

Phil, the system is quite competant and very powerful, you just choose to look at on your terms and only your terms. Fortunately the major NLE players are not in concert with you. Actually if you had used the P2 viewer you would know exactly which card it came from as that is just one of the many pieces of data about the data. When you bring the clip into the NLE you can rename it to whichever take you want to, you can in the P2 viewer rename the User name, but the card/camera does give a unique number to the clip and so far most of the folks we have working with it, look at the thumbnails and the Marker info. And as far as the numbering that seems to be pretty immaterial when it comes to editing the stuff.

 

>Well, I'll tell you what, I'll put up with whatever infinitesimal delay that process incurs in - oh, just every single NLE ever written - to avoid having to manually keep track of six files!

 

And this is where you really do fail to understand the system. If you are managing the files as you would in a archive, it is no longer a tape on the shelf, it is an archive and yes you do need to organize and manage your files, much like I do on my laptop. If you keep the MXF wrapper intact, then you are managing one file and it has component parts within it.

 

Best regards,

 

Jan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Daniel J. Ashley-Smith: I've got to agree with Phil in that the organisation system of the camera is kinda useless. There's no logic to it.

 

So when you are logging the scenes from your tape, does it have a file name for each clip? No it doesn't, it does have a unique time code and little else to differentiate it from anything else. When you work with the clips either in the P2 Viewer you can see all of the unique information available and you can add a boat load more. If you work with the clips in the NLE you can rename them there just as you do now when you digitize them from your tape, but you don't have to digitize you only need to import.

 

>If I was too suggest anything to Panasonic right now, release a free downloadable program which can sort it all out. Shouldn't be too hard, if the file names have ANY logic whatsoever.

 

Tim's answer on the file naming structure is very close to the truth of how the camera makes sure that each clip has a unique name as the camera does not have a keyboard for entry of names. And the P2 Viewer is downloadable for free and it comes with every camera and deck with all the necessary drivers.

 

>I just find it silly putting 5 or so cards into a camera. It's like designing some form of cheap HD camera which has 5 VTR's and records onto 5 MiniDV tapes. It's just going over board.

 

Actually it is much different than that and it starts with the fact that the camera has no moving parts, there is inherited flexibility in being able to access your footage and review it non-linearly and never having to digitize and deal with time code breaks etc. It is following in the very same footpath that has been taken by the still camera industry, followed by the professional audio industry for field recording, all of the interviews I did with magazines and such at NAB were on flash memory. It is out of the tape box thinking that is revolutionary and because of it we are able to offer a small DVCPRO HD camera that is under $10,000. So that camera costs less that the record heads, tape drive and die-cast for the VariCam. It also allows for the SPX800 to make pictures like the SDX900 for $6000 less. Yes you need to buy the cards, but that amortizes to a lower and lower cost with each use.

 

We have lots of success stories with the P2, if you want to read them we have them posted on our website in the news area.

 

Best,

 

Jan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

sorry Phil, but I think Jan has explained this all pretty clear to me.. Phil, I think it is just that you dont fully understand the way the format works, and you want to take it out on Panasonic... you have stated on this forum yourself "How do I do this, how do I do that?"... It's like me commenting about how hard Premiere is to use even though I have only used it for 10 minutes.... Unless Jan is telling everyone an outright lie here (which I doubt), its not as hard as your making it out to be...

 

to tell you the truth, I find this whole subject not worth being talked about... New things take getting use to, thats understandable.. give a Windows Moviemaker a copy of Vegas 6 and watch what happends... Newer and more powerful technologies require getting use to, its human nature. And the sooner you face that, the sooner you will come to terms with the format and fully understand it.

 

I remember, When I first got Vegas, I was so mad, I wanted to shoot someone for making it so hard to understand, but after reading the manual and playing with it for a month, I'v finally got in down-pat.. And you know what? It's not hard now.

Edited by Landon D. Parks
Link to comment
Share on other sites

To tell you the truth, Im more happy than displeased with Panasonic... for there making a Vericam available to me for under $10,000.00! TRUE 720p, DVC-PRO HD Recording, No Tape Drop-outs, No having to "import" the footage from Tape into the system... If I'm not mistaken, its a Vericam with 1/3" CCD's and a Somewhat lower quality lense (depending of course on the lense you BUY for the Vericam) and its also much smaller than the Vericam, therefor, much more user friendly than the bulky Vericam...

 

Personally, I'm happy.... If the sacrifice I have to make is the file formats, then I am still happy.

 

PS) Phil, you talk about file names not have an meaning... When you import files from your DV camera via firewire into your computer NLE, what do you get? File names that mean nothing... Until you look at them, and rename them... Trust me... I have used Cameras with editing software before.. If yu properly log your footage on set, you should have no problem pairing scenes with file names... A practice I used when recording a new broadcast for CATS recently was to number the DV tapes 1 - 20, then printed out sheets with the number Tape #1 through Tape #20... On the sheet was a list of all the takes, scene #'s etc... This way In post, The editor had something to look at to find what he is looking for.

 

If you properly keep track of your footage on set, finding what you want should not take very long!

Edited by Landon D. Parks
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Hi,

 

> So you are saying that you want to use expensive systems?

 

No, I'm asking what the benefit is to all this stuff that I should suffer my choice of software being so severely curtailed. I mean, sure, support will come, but what's the point? Why not just use a standard format that everyone can already read?

 

> We were asked by several of our partners to please use this format

 

OK, now you're being asked by me to please not because I don't believe that the complexity overhead is worth it. As I say, I am willing to be persuaded. What DOES it gain me?

 

> And the thumbnails come up almost like it does on the LCD screen but then all of the data is there as well.

 

No, it doesn't. Most significantly, the SPX-800 doesn't save scene and take information, and doesn't offer any way to set or increment those fields even if it did.

 

> Well I bought an HP printer, I had to load the HP driver.

 

And then it worked with every piece of software that wants to print. P2 works with those applications that Panasonic have chosen to favour. Bad idea.

 

> If you choose to not work there, you can work on your PC and enhance the MetaData

 

Enhance the metadata. Is it me, or is that right off the sales briefing for the thing? What d'you mean, enhance the metadata?

 

> or just view the files.

 

No, that's exactly the problem, you can't just view the files. If it was raw DIF you could do that. If it was an AVI or a quicktime movie you could just do that. But it isn't. It's six files in a strange, largely unsupported format, even unsupported by software that claims to support it. OK, I could be wrong. Please, tell me what this gains anyone.

 

> I mean in order for me to view HDV files I have to download a very special piece of software that I don't

> use for anything else.

 

Yes! And this is... a bad thing! I think we're getting through here.

 

> Obviously you didn't get the orientation to the product.

 

No, obviously Marc let me take it out for review without doing that. Obviously.

 

I understand what it is and how it is intended to work. I think it's a superb idea and very forward-looking; I think it's probably the best thing since sliced bread if you're Bloomberg or CNN. I wouldn't be objecting this much if Panasonic were more willing to say "Sure, it's intended for big ENG organisations with huge offline storage who are willing to buy very specific software". It's no surprise that it's being supported (however badly) by news edit software first. Fine. Great. But you have to be willing to accept the limitations of the thing. It is not panacea, much as I appreciate that in the gumdrop-tree world of technology sales you have to believe it is.

 

I wouldn't be objecting this much if there was any good technical reason why it was a good idea to do it this way. Look, I'll forgive you any inconvenience so long as you can say why it's a good idea. So please. What exactly does this get me, or anyone, over a much more straightforward RIFF extension?

 

> Please take a look at the Standards for OP-Atom and that is exactly what we followed.

 

Yes, I know. So? That's not the problem. The problem is that there are so many subformats of MXF that you end up coding each implementation separately even if everyone does follow the rules. I understand the drive for convergence in file formats, but really MXF to me has always looked like nothing more than "call everything the same name so it looks pretty to the user, and sort it out behind the scenes." If I want to view a JPEG images, it's called JPG, and any JPEG reader can parse it. If I want to view an MXF, I first have to know if it's a Sony MXF, or a Panasonic MXF, or...

 

When I first heard that P2 was going to record MXF, I must admit that my head hit the desk in a rather paradise-lost moment of techno-disappointment. The problems with MXF aren't Panasonic's fault, but the decision to use it is.

 

> These clips are not spearte,

> It does not look that way to the NLE.

 

Hang on, I thought the whole point here was for the audio and video to be separate for the NLE?

 

> The MXF wrapper holds the clips together, they are not separated uless you separate them.

 

No, the MXF wrapper is designed to do that, it just doesn't in your implementation. For some reason. Again raising the question of why use it.

 

> Phil, the system is quite competant and very powerful,

 

You're not even bothering to respond to my queries anymore, are you?

 

Come on. What does 0255F mean? Why is it important for it to be 0255F and not 01143503, which would be just as unique within a timecode range and human-readable to boot? Why, in God's good name, should I have to rename the clips myself because you chose to put gibberish there? Seriously, why? And don't blow me off with "I'm a salesperson not an engineer", get on the phone to Osaka and find out.

 

> so far most of the folks we have working with it, look at the thumbnails and the Marker info.

 

That's because most of the folks you have working with it are CNN or Bloomberg-like organisations and are using it for ENG. You just released, in a very big noise, a camera clearly designed for filmmaking. Are you referring to those people?

 

How're they lining up dual system sound?

How're they ratifying it against timecode-logged production notes?

 

> If you keep the MXF wrapper intact, then you are managing one file and it has component parts within it.

 

No, it absolutely does not. Look, have you actually done this, or are you relying on Panasonic's internal briefing on the thing? Each MXF file has exactly one component in it. Audio, video, comments, metadata, proxies, etc.

 

To view a virtual card in the P2 viewer on an Avid Newscutter, you have to have the files in one place. To actually import them onto the timeline they have to be in another. And thank God it only actually needs two, not all five. The only way to import P2 material into an Avid Newscutter - that I could find, please correct me - is to manually go into the data on the card and pull out individual files. No help from the magic "MXF wrapper".

 

And of course, if you are using any of the myriad applications that doesn't support MXF, or rather Panasonic's very specific implementation of MXF, the import procedure is to unwrap from MXF, rewrap it to a more sensible format and mux in the audio.

 

Which takes hours and no small amount of computer ability.

 

Look, I like the system, I think it has great potential, I just think that the software side of it seems like it was implemented by the Ronald McDonald Department of Fashionability.

 

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Come on. What does 0255F mean? Why is it important for it to be 0255F and not 01143503, which would be just as unique within a timecode range and human-readable to boot? Why, in God's good name, should I have to rename the clips myself because you chose to put gibberish there? Seriously, why? And don't blow me off with "I'm a salesperson not an engineer", get on the phone to Osaka and find out.

When I import my DV footage from my camera to Vegas, you know what I get? Unreadable Jibber in the file name. I have to personally open the file, view it and then re-name it so that I even know what it is. What makes P2 so different in that front?

 

And second, Phil. Take a chill pill again.. You are (for some reason) being rude to Jan here, like as if she told them to impliment the P2 technology. She is just tryng to explain to you thre way the format that the company choose to use is to work.

 

Personally, I'm gonna without comment until I actually use the P2 cards, and understand how hard or easy they are to use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

Forum Sponsors

BOKEH RENTALS

Film Gears

Metropolis Post

New Pro Video - New and Used Equipment

Visual Products

Gamma Ray Digital Inc

Broadcast Solutions Inc

CineLab

CINELEASE

Cinematography Books and Gear



×
×
  • Create New...