New to HD, need some help

[I'm Ron Burgundy?]

I'm getting ready to purchase an HPX170, but I'm trying to figure out everything I'm going to need ahead of time, so I know exactly what I'm in for.

I'm used to having DV tapes, and so the storage is new to me. And since P2 cards need to be offloaded just about every night, I need some help understanding this. I'm going to be mostly on the road, and often times without a computer. What I was planning on was traveling around with an external hard drive with a RAID 1 configuration to create two copies of the footage. Specifically I was looking at this one.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/472826-REG/CalDigit_720405_1_5TB_FireWireVR_External_Hard.htm l

1) Am I correct that I'll be able to connect the HPX to this hard drive and offload the footage (I gues via Firewire 400)? then clear the card for use the next day? or is a computer needed?

2) The second issue, is that the footage will probably eventually be accessed in both Premiere on a PC, as well as FCP on a Mac. Can both computers connect to the hard drive and transfer the footage into the editor?

I appreciate the help, please explain it to me like I'm an idiot, because this is all new to me. I imagine the HPX book will help me a great deal, but obviously I don't have it yet.

Stay Classy dvxuser.

[Nexis]

Hi,

I don't know about your first question, although my gut feeling (which could very well be wrong) is that unless the HDD is a firestore, you will need a computer to get footage onto it.

As for your 2nd Q:

- if the drive is partitioned as NTFS, both computers will be able to read it, but only your PC will be able to write to it;

- if the drive has a FAT partition (I don't have my Mac here, so I can't tell you whether that includes FAT32), both computers will be able to read and write to the drive.

If you want more info on the P2 workflow, feel free to PM me.

Cheers.

[grimrebes]

1) Am I correct that I'll be able to connect the HPX to this hard drive and offload the footage (I gues via Firewire 400)? then clear the card for use the next day? or is a computer needed?

The issue with drive offloading is sort of complicated. First, as far as I know, you can dump footage two ways, via a USB to go drive (which is a specific kind of drive), or any ol' firewire 400 drive. Both options need to be powered by some way other than the camera, as the camera provides no power to external drives.

The USB to go drive is a nice option, except it does not verify the copying of your data... It merely puts it there, but does not check that its bit for bit correct...

Firewire 400 is a good way to dump directly to a drive, but you have two set backs with that. One, it is sloowwww... I don't know if its slower than USB, I'd imagine not, but I find it to be much slower than I'd prefer. And two, you can only do it 15 times on the firewire drive you dump it to. The drive becomes partitioned each time you dump the P2 card, and becomes like a carbon copy image of your p2 card, so when you plug the FW drive into your computer, it reads identical to the p2 card. However, lets say you only use 8 gigs of your 16 gig p2 card... well, the partition is still 16gb. And after 15 partitions, you are SOL, regardless of the size of your HDD. Now, for most folks this wouldn't be an issue, but as one who shoots on the road a lot, 15 card dumps isn't so much... I can suggest that if this is the route you choose, you purchase a drive that has a much better cost benefit ratio with your current plan.

2) The second issue, is that the footage will probably eventually be accessed in both Premiere on a PC, as well as FCP on a Mac. Can both computers connect to the hard drive and transfer the footage into the editor?

Both computers should be able to connect to the HDD. I use FCP and, when I have the chance, Avid, and NLE's tend to import and transcode the footage to an internal capture folder on another drive. I have heard that some NLE's can process the MXF file natively, but FCP cannot, so I transcode it all via Log & Transfer. This give you a nice way of archiving your footage in its original p2 form on those drives (if thats what you choose to do) since, on a rare (or for some not so rare) occasion, transcoding produces errors, and you need to do it again. The same is true of working with any tape media... Once in a long while, I would get funky stuff from the DVCProHD tapes from a 1400a deck, and I would have to recapture, and it would almost always be the codec in the machine, not the source footage. So its always good to have one or two solid originals to go back to incase something goes wrong or you need to rebuild the project.

Oh, and I believe, via the FW 400 dumping route, the camera partions it Fat32 like the p2 cards, so both machines should be able to read and write to the drives, though you really would only want to read from them.

The third option you have is bringing a machine, like a macbook pro on location, and archiving each night that way. Why? I don't know about you, but when I am on the road, my time is important. I don't get to sleep a lot, and usually, I have to put up with bad directions and never ever ever enough time to light. Dumping each card twice onto drives is tedious, especially if you want to dump the footage and review it and so on and so forth. And you want to back it up twice, which is the right way to do it... But more time consuming...
I suggest using a Macbook Pro and a program called ShotPut. http://www.imagineproducts.com/ShotPut.html
It can backup your p2 card to up to three locations (separate HDD's) simultaneously and (I think) verifying as well... giving you time to rest your eyes before a day of 6 interviews back to back. The only draw back to shotput is that odds are you would be formatting the drive, so you'd have to be sure to format it NTFS or Fat32 so both machines could access the folders of the cards (which is how ShotPut saves each card, as its own folder, not a separate partition).

Now this isn't my workflow, I use a Firestore, which is another way to go as well... But that is a whole other posting.

Anyways, feel free to ask any more questions, and enjoy the HPX170. Its a very solid camera IMHO.

[Andy Olson]

There is an option on the HVX200 that allows you to copy to an external harddrive. It doesn't have to be a Firestore. However, I would recommend getting a laptop because you can have the peace of mind knowing your footage is transferred over and working. Plus you can enter metadata to keep everything organized using P2CMS free from Panasonic.

The harddrive will read and write on both PC and Mac if formatted Fat32. P2 cards are Fat32 as well so it makes sense to have the harddrive that way.

To edit on a Mac you can use the footage as MXF's and import through log and transfer into FCP or save time and use a program like DVFilm Raylight (http://dvfilm.com/raylight/mac/index.htm) for Mac that quickly makes small references files that FCP can import immediately.

Premiere CS3 is MXF native capable though I believe you have to have an Adobe update to get it to work. Cs4 should be able to use MXFs natively.

Best,
Andy

[I'm Ron Burgundy?]

Thanks.

My current laptop, which is 3 years old (Toshiba Qosmio G25), has a PCMCIA slot, so what I think I'm going to do is buy a new laptop, and transfer Itunes, and everything from my current laptop, then only use the Toshiba for taking on the road and capturing. I like the peace of mind being able to monitor and verify the process. Only problem is the thing is kind of a beast, I'm going to have to get a bigger backpack. Oh well.

I'm going to offload all my files this week and then install the P2 reader and viewer,...and hopefully I should have the 170 before the end of the year, if not shortly after, and be all ready to go. If I have any problems I'll check back. Thanks for the help.