Panasonic P2

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Storage medium
P2
Panasonic P2 card 16GB 20081214.jpg
A P2 card compared to an SD memory card .
General
Type Memory card
capacity 4-64 GB
use Video recording
origin
developer Panasonic

P2 is a type of memory card developed by Panasonic Corporation for recording with video cameras for tapeless recording . The dimensions of the P2 memory card correspond to a PCMCIA card in which four SD cards are interconnected like a RAID system. This enables a higher writing speed than with individual flash memories . P2 cards can be inserted into PCMCIA slots on laptops for data transfer and used like a drive .

Comparison with tape recording

The main difference from conventional professional video cameras is that a memory card is used as the recording medium, rather than tape. This has advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

  • Instantly view and / or delete any scene on the card
  • no time code jumps when rescheduling
  • Fast data transfer to non-linear editing systems (PC and Mac)
  • No moving parts required for the recording, d. H. almost wear-free and insensitive to vibrations
  • The cameras basically have several slots for the P2 cards to guarantee uninterrupted recording; full cards can be exchanged for empty cards during recording.
  • Depending on the recording codec used and the hardware of the editing system, editing can be performed directly on the P2 card, which makes additional data transfer into the editing system superfluous.
  • Each recording is stored on the card as an individual clip. Subsequent segmentation in the editing system is no longer necessary.

Disadvantage:

  • Much higher price compared to tape material.
  • Relatively small amounts of memory (cards with 4 to 64 GB are available); Depending on the recording format, 1 GB corresponds to around 1–4 minutes (DVCPROHD, AVC Intra-100: 1 GB = approx. 1 minute)
  • In the case of longer recordings with small memory cards, the data must be transferred to other storage media (e.g. hard drive) again and again; Another medium is required for long-term archiving because of the high price of the memory cards.

P2 overview

Panasonic offers a wide variety of cameras for recording on P2 cards. Card readers for USB , FireWire or PCI Express and a hard disk drive for direct transfer of the data are also offered.

The following video formats are currently supported:

  • AVC Intra-100 | 100 Mbps
  • AVC Intra-50 | 50 Mbps
  • DVCPRO HD | 100 Mbps
  • DVCPRO 50 | 50 Mbps
  • DVCPRO 25 | 25 Mbps
  • DV | 25 Mbps

With DVCPRO HD a quality unattainable for HDV is possible. The data rate of 100 Mbps with DVCPRO is significantly higher than 19 Mbps or 25 Mbps with HDV or 35 Mbps with XDCAM EX.