P2 Card Swapping

[pacificstreet]

Apologies if this has been raised before but it was something that I mentioned in another post and not had a response (probably due to it being buried in the middle of one of my tedious drones about P2 pricing !)

Anyhow, what is the deal with swapping the P2 cards, specifically :

1) How much potential physical disturbance to the camera is there when swapping cards ?
2) Is one continuous take possible across more than 2 cards (ie if I have 3 can I continuously cycle them) ?
3) How is the indication of capacity handled, so that I will know which one I can remove in that scenario ?

I am presuming that there is metadata that allows takes that span cards to be reconstituted by an NLE or are they automatically sectioned down into card length files ?

If it can't span across mutliple (potentially infinite with 3 cards and an P2>HDD device) number of cards then I'm not completely deflated as that would be an unusually long, though not inconceivable, take for me.

I'm more concerned with disturbing the camera if I need to extract a card whilst recording on the other. Would there be a potential for the card slots to be brought out on extender cables, so that there could at least be some degree of ease of access mid-take ?

[PanasonicNZ]

1. In my personal opinion, with a bit of practice you can do a swap witout the slightest movement of the camera (especially if you are on a tripod, but it can be acheived handheld also).
2. You can shoot forever, the camera will span across cards until you stop recording.
3. Full card - solid yellow light; card in use flashing yellow light; empty/available card - green light.
Spanned clips contain data to link the parts together. At the same time the sections can be used as individual clips (fully contained/ properly closed files)
I don't think they will make peakock tails for this camera in form of dangling P2 slots. There are issues related to functionality and reliability regarding this. But who knows, someone might build an adapter...