Panasonic AJ-HPM200 P2 Mobile

Panasonic HVX - HPX (P2) Review at Creative COW

Helmut Kobler www.losangelescameraman.com Los Angeles CA USA ©2010 CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.

Article Focus: Panasonic's P2 Mobile is many things, including a cutting-edge video recorder, a non-linear editor, a network storage device, and more. Curious to come to terms with its long list feature set, Creative COW leader Helmut Kobler took one home for two weeks and gave it a spin. Here are his impressions.

I wouldn't want to be the guy in charge of marketing Panasonic's AJ-HPM200, which is also known as the P2 Mobile ($16,000 list price, but $9,995 with a tape deck trade-in through the end of June). The problem isn't the P2 Mobile's capabilities. In fact, the Mobile can do a ton of useful things:

• It's a high-quality video recorder, taking video from HD/SD SDI and Composite sources, and recording it to P2 cards in high-quality formats like AVC-Intra.
• It's also a quality up/down/cross converter, letting you bring in video and output it simultaneously at any resolution or frame rate (for audio, there are in/outputs for four XLR connections, along with AES/EBU audio).
• It's also a surprisingly powerful cuts-only video editor.
• It's also a video transcoder, which lets you compress master-quality video to an SD card, using the AVCHD format to produce small file sizes that still look good.
• It's also an FTP client and server, letting you upload and download individual clips or edits through an Ethernet connection.
• It's also a P2 card offloader, able to offload up to six P2 cards to any USB or eSATA hard drive you've attached.
• It can also act as a small field monitor, thanks to its 9" LCD display and built-in waveform monitor.

See what I mean? The P2 Mobile does a lot, but it takes a while to explain it all. It's not something you can sum up in a pithy, memorable marketing blurb, which is why I managed to work with P2 products for years and still be only vaguely aware of the P2 Mobile or its predecessors (the HPM110 and 100).

But I recently had the chance to take home a loaner Mobile and play with it for a couple of weeks. And I came away with a real appreciation for all it can do. If you like the idea of having all of this functionality -- or even some of it -- condensed into a rugged 14-pound package that you can set up on any table or desk, run from AC/DC power, and boot in about 3 seconds, then read on.



Panasonic P2 Mobile. Please click here for larger image.

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