Panasonic's P2 Format Explained

At Panasonic's press conference today, Panasonic announced a major price drop in P2 cards down to $1,700 for an 8 GB card. Panasonic P2 (professional plug-in) cards are a solid state memory format which Panasonic introduced in 2003 as their next step up in non-tape based format for video, particularly for high definition video. Panasonic P2 records a DVCPRO50/DVCPRO/DV signal to a PCMICA sized card. The PCMICA card is actually an array of secure digital cards designed to work swiftly and in harmony to record large amounts of data. Previously, a 4 GB P2 card, capable of recording 4 minutes of HD video, cost about $1,700.

The advantage of the P2 card system is that they can be mounted on virtually any PC with a PCMICA slot and mounted as a regular drive. This makes it incredibly easy to access the files for non-linear editing. Because the P2 card includes no moving parts, it can function in a greater variety of operating conditions than competing tape-based and disc-based solutions. The P2 card is less susceptable to physical damage as well.

The biggest complaint of P2 cards thus far has been their cost and small size. While 4 minutes of video per $1,700 card may work for film projects, it presents a problem for event videography and filming news footage. However, Panasonic has outlined a timeline of the P2-sized cards they will be announcing over the next few years:

Including today's announcement, the currently available or soon to be available P2 cards are in the following table:

P2 has been on the market for around a year; however, the AG-HVX200 is the first prosumer camcorder to support the format. Panasonic has multiple accessories that support P2 including both a P2 deck and a P2 drive. The format is supported for editing by Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid, and Adobe Premiere.