View Full Version : when a same shot splits in two P2 cards..?
When a SHOT ( cut to cut ) stays across in Two P2 cards ( which pana can do ) how they are getting joined when moved to harddrive for cutting . is there anything to be done or any other precaution . TIA.
Barry_Green
02-02-2006, 06:32 PM
The metadata includes pointers to link the clips back together. Any properly MXF-aware application should know how to join them back up.
ullanta
02-02-2006, 06:41 PM
It's an interesting question... I know earlier there was some discussion of the proper way to copy the contents of a P2 card to a hard-drive (I think at the level of the "CONTENTS" folder). But once one has, say, 20 CONTENTS folders on the hard drive, will the MXF-aware apps know where to look, and which are which? I wonder what cues are used to uniquely identify clip segments, and how they are searched for... it may be important to how one handles time code generation. Or it may just use time-of-day... or some combination for safety. However, what if one has clips from 2 time-synched cameras, etc.? Perhaps there's a unique identifier generated somewhere...
I guess I'll hunt down the white paper and try to check this out... in the meantime, if anyone knows, let us know!
ullanta
02-02-2006, 07:01 PM
Well, the P2 whitepaper says that there is indeed a unique identifier that can be used when directory-structure relations are lost by transfer to other media... I would guess the actual search'n'mix process is application-dependent...
It would be nice if there was a standard structure like a "bunch of cards" folder that would hold (or refer to) a bunch of CONTENT folders, so that it would be clear where applications should look for related clips... I didn't see mention of anything like this, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist...
Can anyone with experience doing this give us any additional information? I imagine the P2 store is organized sorta like this. But has anyone downloaded a bunch of clips, including some double-card clips, to a laptop and had them linked up? How'd you specify to your app where the clips were?
Barry_Green
02-02-2006, 07:01 PM
Each clip has an XML file that identifies all sorts of things about it, including a unique clip identifier as well as its unique filename. And in addition to the "contents" folder on the card there's another file called LASTCLIP.TXT, which contains a unique identifying number for the card. The XML file for each clip references that and tells the MXF importer that it needs to find a card with that same LASTCLIP.TXT identifier.
ullanta
02-02-2006, 07:09 PM
Interesting, I didn't see the lastclip.txt info; I imagine it might be incorporated into the unique clip identifier, too? Otherwise, we'd want to copy data at a higher level than CONTENT to include it, no?
I guess what I mean is that most of what I've seen seems geared to having all the associated CARDS on line at the same time... I sense there must be a little bit of glue to handle the clip location process if a lot of cards have been field-transferred to a large drive. Of course, OS's are all about search these days, I guess...
Also, any idea what happens when one doesn't have an associated partial clip? I guess it's also app-dependent, but doe they generally consider the clip broken, or do they gracefully degrade to what is available?