Panasonic corporation releases new memory card “P2 Card F Series” supporting AVC-INTRA Class 200*¹

Osaka, Japan (June 4th, 2012) -- Panasonic Corporation will begin to release its new memory card P2 F Series (64 GB, 32 GB, 16 GB) from June 2012.

The P2 card is a memory card for broadcasting and professional video production use. It withstands impacts up to 1,500 G and vibrations up to 15 G, operates in temperatures from -20°C to 60°C (-4°F to 140°F), and can be stored in temperatures from -40°C to 80°C (-40°F to 176°F). The rugged specifications of the P2 (Professional Plug-in) card ensure reliable recordings under harsh conditions and enhance newsgathering mobility. Because solid-state memory requires no transport mechanism, it eliminates the possibility of clogging that occurs with tapes. It also can be used for repeated recording and formatting over long periods.*²

The P2 card contains a flash memory error correction system*³ which is equivalent to RAID system, to greatly strengthen the data retention reliability. Because the P2 card complies with the PC card standard (Card Bus Type-II), it can mount directly to the PC card slot of a laptop PC to read or write recording data.*⁴ Its connector cleared the mount and unmount test at 30,000 time repetitions to ensure the much more rugged than an ordinary PC card. When used with the P2 Drive (AJ-PCD30 / AJ-PCD35), the recording data on the P2 cards F series can be transferred up to 1.2 Gbps.*⁵

The new F Series supports writing up to AVC-Intra Class 200 of the AVC-ULTRA family*¹ as well as the currently available codecs with the existing P2 devices.

The new memory card P2 F series AJ-P2E064F (64GB) will be available in June with suggested list price of ¥69,300 (including tax), and AJ-P2E032F (32GB) and AJ-P2E016F (16GB) will be available in July with suggested list prices of ¥51,450 (including tax) and ¥39,900 (including tax) respectively.

*1: H.264 based video compression codec for broadcasting and video production professional use. It achieves high picture quality for mastering due to 10 bit 4:2:2 sampling. Its video recording rate is approx. 200 Mbps (at 1080/59.94i, 1080/50i). P2 card F series don’t support all formats supported by AVC-Intra 200.
*2: The card replacement interval is about five years when entire (100%) data of E series or F series P2 card is rewritten once a day.
*3: It has been adopted from the P2 card E Series (released in 2009).
*4: A PC must be installed P2 card driver.
*5: When using AJ-PCD35 or AJ-PCD30 with E Series or F Series P2 cards. However, 1.2 Gbps is the maximum transfer speed and the actual transfer speed is subject to be changed depending on system configuration such as bus , OS, software and network.