Content processing and re-purposing business Refine is buying 30 Panasonic P2 memory cards that it will make available to production companies on a rental basis.

The deal is designed to give producers and crews a more affordable means for tapeless acquisition and remove ‘card ownership issues’ and both data management and pressurised data transfer time frame limitations.

64GB P2 cards can retail for anything between £600 and £800 each.

Refine director Anita O’Donnell said: “[It] allows us to provide content makers with storage and distribution options at every stage of the production cycle. The benefits of tapeless operation are clear for the broadcasting industry - over five years P2 systems can cut media costs by as much as 75%.”

Refine will provide sufficient  P2 cards to cover a specific part of a shoot and then manage the content back at its London base. 

After the shoot, footage can be delivered to Refine, still on the P2 cards, then stored with metadata and transferred onto a longer term storage medium such as hard drives, online servers, LTO data tapes or uploaded to a viewing portal or digitally delivered via SohoNet. Once completed, formatted cards can be returned to the shoot.

Refine also provides deliveries, both digital and physical, after programme creation and is also an approved supplier of Quality Assessment Reports for clients such as Discovery and BBC Worldwide.