Formatting on "The Fly"

[docrock]

I'm not sure how to make this happen or if I can....but I have 4 cards...2 16/2 32 and am shooting this weekend. Not sure where start stop points will be but I'm curious as to whether or not it is possible to format the P2 card correctly on my Mac (G4 for offload) with the P2 software before returning to the camera (so it's ready to record as soon as it is mounted again without going through the cameras formatting process).

IE, I am going to be recording non stop and not sure if I will have the time to reformat while filming. We DO have 2 of the 200a's....so if worse comes to worse, we can shut down one camera for the few seconds it takes to reformat.

I'm sure this has been addressed but I wasn't able to find it on searching. Maybe I used crappy search criteria, but I've never filmed an event that my 90 minutes wasn't able to take care of before stopping down, at least briefly.

J

[Benjamin18]

Here's my method when I'm shooting continuously via hot-swapping (I only have 2 8gb cards, and I use a Macbook Pro w/ Duel Adapter.):

I hook up the card, and dump (I personally just transfer the files into a dedicated folder on an EXT HDD). Then, when I'm sure the card is copied, I simply delete (drag to the trash) everything on the card. This, of course, includes both the contents folder and the lastclip.txt. The only annoying thing here is that the lastclip.txt is locked, and you have to unlock it first, which I do by going to "Get Info" (Apple+I), and unchecking "Locked". By simply deleting the card's contents, it's now ready to record again.

Now, I'm sure there are additional benefits to actually formatting, rather than simply deleting the files, but this is the best method I've found, and it hasn't let me down yet.

My $0.02

Thanks,
Benjamin Tubb

[Nick Walters]

I've used a Mac before for non-stop.....as in like over a week of pretty intense filming of a documentary...we used log and transfer and after the data transferred we just deleted the clips from there, ejected the card, and went from there....no need to format the cards each time...the only time we ever formatted is when a clip just ended up not wanting to be deleted, which happened now and then.