This sucks. My heart goes out to this guy. Tommy D, a user on the DV Forums, really took a butt kicking on a recent shoot. It was his first with a HVX200 and P2 card workflow. In the end everything went all to Southern Hades and they had to resort to finishing the shoot with Panny SDX900’s. But I’m getting ahead of the story…which by the way, you really should read.

The bottom line is this; the HVX portion of the shoot did not fail specifically because of P2, it failed because of a multitude of unforseen P2-related workflow issues that cropped up, and required a workaround of some kind. And after so many workarounds, it was back to the rental house to cut the losses and finish the shoot with the SDX900, a workflow they had a good handle on.

At first glance it’s all too easy to demonize Tommy D, to chalk things up to inexperience, to simply say “bad planning,”. Right? Not necessarily. The dude is a professional, this isn’t his first rodeo. IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD, and based on his account, he planned the best he could under the circumstances (which were time-crunched, BTW). There simply wasn’t a lot of planning time, and the perceived best course of action (going with an HVX rig) ended up blowing up in their faces.

I feel that this personal account highlights some very critical issues with the P2 workflow. It’s not forgiving in many ways, and if you read the article, you see too that the tools to help deal with P2 media have obviously not matured (as one small example, Tommy makes mention of the P2 Store manual being all but useless).

Here’s an example:
“3. But what do you do when the director wants to look at something, oh, four cards ago… Oh, you just hook up the P2 Store to your Mac and view them, right? Not with the P2 Viewer, as it’s only a PC product (?) now. Guess you’ll have to import them into FCP on your Mac.

4. Better have FCP 5.0.4. because 4.5 doesn’t give you a P2 import option. Ok, so say you have FCP 5.0.4, transferring this footage (ie, translating it into a QT takes time. By this time it’s pushing into lunch. Director’s focus has changed from wanting to see something from 4 cards ago, to wanting to *know* that the footage resides somewhere in that little black box of a P2 Store. Can you blame him?”

Let me reiterate that neither I nor Tommy are bashing P2, or the HVX200, or anything. These experiences and issues caught a professional offguard, so they can just as easily snag you too.
Panasonic has every right (and responsibility) to market and promote their product in the best possible light, so the P2 workflow looks really smooth and simple when you talk to them. However, YOUR reality may be much different, so plan and test in advance before you put your butt on the line with an untested and unreliable workflow.

As always, there is no magic bullet, nor is there a camera or workflow that fits every need. Choose and use the tools that help YOU stay productive, creative, and profitable.