Red and P2 cards

[Markus Rave]

I just wonder if there is or will be an attempt to make a cardslot for P2 cards. Since TV work in my country clearly goes to tapeless workflows it would be very convenient to be able to use the same storage for TV and work with the Red.
Have not found a thread about this issue but maybe missed it.

[James T Mather]

why use p2 cards with all the expense - Cf strikes me as much better.

[Chris Gearhart]

If I'm not mistaken, P2 is a proprietary medium. It would probably be a good move on Panasonic's part to open it up and get P2 more industry-adopted, but . . .

No doubt it could be convenient for multi-platform productions or studios, but I find it hard to imagine Red going that direction. Too expensive for new users to adopt, and with CF et al. coming into its own, there's no need.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

P2 operates as a standard PCMCIA Cardbus storage device. However it has its own ROM mark or whatever so that official P2 devices can only record to properly marked (licensed) P2 devices.

P2 doesn't have the bandwidth necessary for use with RED. Or at least most current P2 products do not. Panasonic had the chance to own the market with P2, but their own short-sighted vision and terrible licensing and pricing structures kept that from happening. PCMCIA is a legacy format these days and has been replaced with the ExpressCard standard. RED announced a while back that they would have an ExpressCard module for the camera and I would think this form of media still makes a lot of sense if it can be made just as economical or easy to obtain as CF media.

[Markus Rave]

I was not aware P2 was proprietary. Since TV in my area goes in this direction and I have to invest anyway it would be nice. But listening to the information Jeff gave about ExpressCard makes me smile again. Thanks to you all.