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Our P2 Workflow FAQ

In the last couple of years we have shot a lot of HD projects on the Panasonic HVX200 including commercials, corporate video, documentaries, and a feature film. Unlike most tape-based video workflows, the HVX200 records the HD video to Panasonic's solid state P2 memory cards. Because there is no video tape involved, the P2 workflow can seem confusing at first. Here are some notes to address concerns some producers have.

P2 allows uninterrupted recording for many hours. Our cameras each have two P2 card slots, and the cards can be hot-swapped without stopping. When one card is full, it is removed from the camera, copied to one or more hard disks, formatted, and then placed back in the camera. When recording in the 24pN or 30pN HD formats, it takes less time to copy the card to two drives than it does to fill up the card, so only two cards are necessary for long form recording.

Inventive Pictures currently has 48GB of P2 cards which provide about 120 minutes of 24pN recording before we need to copy the data. Copying cards requires either our notebook computer or Panasonic P2 Store device, so in a situation when neither can be accessed for some reason, we can still shoot two hours of content.

When we shoot interviews to P2, we'll setup our notebook computer behind the camera and quietly copy the P2 card data to disk while the interview's in progress.

Typically we will copy each card's data to our notebook computer's hard disk, and simultaneously to a portable USB drive connected to the computer. At the end of the day or shoot, we'll hand the USB drive to the producer who will deliver the drive to the editor. The editor will copy the contents to drives on the NLE system, check that everything is OK, and then return the drive tot the producer. Inventive Pictures will keep the data copy on our computer until we get confirmation from the producer that everything has been copied by the editor successfully.

All major nonlinear editing software can work easily with P2 including Avid, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, and Premiere Pro. Since the P2 data is already in a file format, no digitization is required. Although each NLE works differently, usually the P2 files can simply be imported into a project or even drag-n-dropped directly onto the time line.

Editing the DVCPRO-HD our cameras record is easier on your NLE than editing HDV. With HDV, your editing computer must work hard to decode the highly compressed video. HDV data is stored in GOP's (Groups Of Pictures) and must be decoded and "ungrouped" by your NLE. With DVCPRO-HD, each frame is stored as a frame (like film) and can be accessed by your NLE easily.

Our cameras can also shoot standard definition DV to P2 cards instead of DV tape. There are many advantages to shooting DV to P2, for example there's no required digitizing, no tape changes, no tape to buy, and no dropout or bad tape problems. Don't forget that we can shoot standard definition DVCPRO-50 to P2 too. DVCPRO-50 has twice the color information of DV so images are much more vibrant and color accurate than with DV. DV and DVCPRO-50 can be shot either 4:3 or 16:9 anamorphic, and your NLE won't have any problems importing the files.

Since there's no tape backup we recommend that your editor copy the files we provide to two separate drives. Edit from one drive and keep the other set of files tucked away in case of an emergency. If you'd like we can keep a backup copy of the data on our drives too.