Field P2 workflow.... update/recap please?

[EditingFX]

About to buy a passle of stuff to go with the HPX500 I'm ordering, and want to check on the current "state of the art" when it comes to offloading P2 cards in the field. From what I've read, the optimal field workflow would be:
(assuming HPX500, MacBookPro)
1] shoot P2
2] if/when cards are full;
3] using DualAdapter on MBPro, copy MXF files across to external drives (preferably a RAID 0 array for mirrored protection). Is anyone doing this step? Does it add any time to the transfer? Anyone have a battery-powered RAID 0 array?)
3b] "automate" the above step using P2 Genie. (is this bulletproof? is there other/better software to facilitate field transfers & subsequent card erasing?)
4] use Raylight to directly access MXF files from Final Cut

Thanks for any info - this is the last bit of "how to" I need before biting the bullet!

[David Jimerson]

A RAID 0 isn't mirrored; a RAID 1 is.

Your workflow is as good as any, as long as it suits what you're doing.

[Vincent Pascoe]

for bigger projects like features I transfer from P2 card into 2 Esata drives at Raid 1...no theres no difference in time because..

(sorry My laptop is away so I remembering detials as best as posible..)

The Pcmia slot speed maxes out at 33/mb (avrg like 20) per sec the Esata drive throu my Esata raid card through my PCmia Express slot was when tested like 109/mb at Raid1 and 150/mb at raid0 I'm assuming somewhere in the pipeline theres a bottle neck...ether way plenty of room and I was getting transfer times of under 3 minutes with 4 gig cards and under 5min with 8Gig cards...and because of limitations in the PCmia I think this is as fast as we can expect for now...

VP

www.vincentpascoe.com

www.myspace.com/vincentpascoe

[Vincent Pascoe]

also look at the P2 log software..and P2 gennie never worked with my raid card. it worked great when striat to usb drives ...gennie also never worked with macdrive...so as great as it could be I hardly ever used it...

VP

[EditingFX]

Keep in mind I currently have **no** workflow, as I'm not yet into P2. This is so I can hit the ground running. (Oops on the RAID1 - I use RAID5 for FCP, so forgot.)
Is it an easy, logical copy to the ext. HD? That is, no need to create logical volumes on the destination or anything else weird? I've never seen the file structure on the P2 card.

[Barry_Green]

Do you have to go with a Macbook Pro? if not, I highly recommend ditching that and getting an affordable Windows laptop with the PCMCIA slot. Should run you no more than $500 - $600.

Of course, if you want a portable Mac for other reasons, go ahead. But if you're mainly looking for a P2 offload station, a WinXP laptop with a PCMCIA slot is a much, much, much, much better choice.

Now, with that said, how much shooting are you planning on doing in a day? We're currently shooting our next training DVD on an HPX500 with four 16GB cards, and I think the most we've gone through in a day is two 16GB cards, and we only ran through two of them because we were shooting full 720/24P mode (not 24pN) so we could use DV Rack. When using 24pN mode, one 16GB card is all we need to get through a full day of shooting, so there's no field offloading going on.

It all depends on the type of workflow you're going to employ, of course, and it's best to have a plan in place -- but what I'm saying is, the P2 workflow with four 16GB cards is not like the P2 workflow of last year (when we were all doing the "P2 Card Shuffle" with a couple of 4GB cards!)

[Noel Evans]

I'd have to agree with Barry, a cheap laptop with a big enough internal drive would be far easier to operate than to a mac. Throw the card in the PCMCIA slot and away you go. Let me tell you that a Dual Adapter to mac with an external drive recording longform can be a hassle (talking from experience here).

BTW Mac user here also. I rarely delete shots on the go from the camera. I usually get everything on to the mac and use log and transfer use the preview to see what I actually want to log and transfer. I find sometimes those shots which dont seem so great can have a small usable component and if tossed are gone for good. But that's just my opinion.

[EditingFX]

Thanks all! Yeah, I could go WinXP, but thought it'd be nice to use a shiny MBP, maybe even some FCP for "dailies". I agree on keeping most everything until editing, which is why I wanted this workflow in place.

Any comments re: Raylight, P2 Log, etc?

[raphavf]

I'm using a mac, but not MBP but the "old" Power Book, and its working fine.
2gb Ram with a internal HD.
I'm shooting in Ceara-Brazil a Doc about fishermen and religion, so in the middle of the occean in the little boats with 10 fishermen at least, the workflow have to be fast and safe.
I hope it helps

[raphavf]

Ah...I'm using FCP 5.1.4 to cut the final stuff...

To choose ...Log and transfer and import P2card

[Barry_Green]

Any comments re: Raylight, P2 Log, etc?

Raylight slays. Personally I wouldn't use the Mac workflow without it.

[EditingFX]

Thanks all for your help! Gracias.

[evans235]

Hey all; we're trying to hammer out our own workflow here as well. Our goal is to be able to acquire in the field and go back to the studio with fcp files all organized and ready for our editors. We're close, and when we go Raylight soon I think we'll be even closer.

We've been hauling one of our editing stations into the field, a Mac Pro tower, and recently borrowed one of our shooters' old powerbook laptops to do our transfers. The portability of a laptop is very nice, and now we're debating about whether to get our own.

Since P2 cards are listed as having a 640mbit/sec (80mbyte) transfer rate, it seems logical to me to get a storage solution that can at the least hit this number and ideally give me some headroom. I find that esata connections on external hard drives give me much better performance than their FW800 counterparts for one thing, but also I am interested in using a four drive RAID 10 to get both fast, mirrored, and, over time, cheap storage, and it seems that to do this you need to use an esata connection. I am also looking into NAS solutions since gigabit ethernet seems like it would be faster than Firewire800; does anyone know if this would be true or not?

The best of both world would be to be able to have a duel adapter and an esata port on one system, so I was wondering if anyone had any suggetions about how to do this on a macbook pro, or how to run an esata RAID into firewire800. I'd like to be able to use it on both our desktops and on a laptop if possible.

[RED Shooter]

We use a 17" PB and 100 gig Bus powered Firewire 800 drive.
Raylight for the MAC works very well. Copy the P2 cards to the drive
and you can start editing.....
We shot last week at a location that was 90 minutes away.
After the shoot my PA drove and I had all the rough
edits done by the time I got home....

[EditingFX]

Whew, think I'd have needed some Dramamine for that edit....