The benefits of P2 in the migration to HD production

The World of HD production has been dominated by tape based recording systems. Tapes will still be with us for some time and Panasonic is still a major provider of these systems.

In 2004 Panasonic saw an opportunity to offer the Production industry a new approach to acquisition with a file based, solid state workflow. P2 was born and has quickly become established as the most advanced IT acquisition system available.

For many years NLE manufactures workflows have been firmly placed in the IT domain and Panasonic have simply created a system that fits into this structure simply and effectively.

P2 needs no batch digitization or indeed any digitization. It is simply a matter of file transfers. Metadata takes care of shot details and NLEs simply read the files you wish to work on. Viewing is fast and overall costs for edits are drasti cally reduced using P2 workflows.

With most Broadcasters moving away from tape into the IT realm, P2 answers many of the difficult questions asked of a truly IT workflow. The simplicity of P2 is obvious to all other areas of Production and soon moving content around as files will be much more common than physically moving tapes.

By 2010, a single P2 card will contain around 128GB of storage, capable of recording 128 minutes of DVCPROHD content. As P2 memory cards double each year from the present 8GB by the end of 2005, so the take-up of tapeless acquisition solutions in the SD/HD production environment will grow rapidly.

The AG-HPX500 is Camera-Recorder that's built for professionals and offers 1080 recording. It can record onto a P2 card in HD, and it's compatible with the SD format currently used in TV broadcasting.