P2 transfer speeds into laptop

[ckarcher]

I just filled a 4 gig card and copied the contents of the card to my laptop HD...results:


computer: 17" apple powerbook 1.67 GHz / 0S 10.4.4/ 1.5 gb RAM/ 100gig hitachi internal HD



transfer time of full 4 gig card: 3 1/2 minutes

[Mr. Blonde]

Awesome. =)

[thefilmaddict]

Is that really that good? How many minutes of footage was on the P2 card? What type of footage was it (720 24p?)? After transferring everything from the card, is it ready to go back into the camera to shoot? Did you need to format the card before using it again? How long does that take? Did you transfer the card from the camera using firewire or did you stick that card directly into your computer (sorry if you already mentioned this -- I must have missed it)? If you use the camera to feed the laptop the P2 contents (via firewire), that prevents the camera from being able to shoot at that time, right?

How do you like the P2 work flow? Does it get along well with your equimpent (editing system, too)?

I just want to know the work flow with P2 and how long the steps take.
Thanks! Keep testing.

[ckarcher]

I shot roughly 20-25 clips in various formats: 720pn,24,36,48,60 and 1080p. Everything was transferred from the card being inserted directly into the mac's PCMCIA slot and using the option key to drag a copy of the P2 card to the internal HD. this is a lot faster than using FCP and it keeps the P2 contents raw.

next, I'l be testing how fast I can burn a 4gb DVD-R. My plan is to copy the files to the laptop and for redundancy make clones of the p2 cards to DVD-r during lunch breaks on location.

[thefilmaddict]

Thanks!

[for_mlove]

Glad to hear how quick that was!! I had similiar results copying from my desktop using the camera as a card reader.

Has anyone tried copying from the camera to a firewire drive directly? (host mode) I have a 3.5" enclosure with the oxford 911 chipset and a 7200 RPM drive, after hooking it up to my HVX it took like 15 minutes to copy a 4 gig card?!?! I switched out the drive for another and got the same result. Somethin ain't right there so I plan to test copying to the drive from a laptop with the card in the PCMIA slot and see how long that takes. Any thoughts??

[Barry_Green]

I've copied to an external enclosure through firewire; takes about 4.5 minutes, maybe 5 minutes to copy a 4gb card. With "verify" on, it takes about 7 minutes.

[Drew599]

Seems like the laptop is really the way to go.

[ullanta]

Except for the verification....

Anyway, these speeds still sound a little slow to me. Has anyone captured through a laptop to a FAST firewire drive?

[Barry_Green]

I've got a G-Raid coming; I'll try laptop capture to the RAID; it should do pretty well. It'll be a few days before it gets here though.

[Prairieboy]

I am completely loving the idea of solid state. P2 is a great idea, but what alarms me is that we are all very excited about not having to dig material, and yet to dump a 4 gig cart it takes almost four minutes, with translates to roughly realtime if you are shooting 1080, and if you verify (7:30) that is roughly realtime for 720.
Know this does not seem to be a P2 issue, more a transfer issue.
I am just thinking out loud. This is the way I want to go, but I was thinking that once we get to 16 and 32 gig cards, that is a long wait at the end of the day if one is to verify a file transfer. Any way to speed that up

[limo991]

You get about 17mb/sec which is ok. The disk is the limit.

DVCPROHD is 100mbit/sec/8=12.5mb/sec. I have tested disks for streaming and for a 60gb Hitachi 7200, about 38mb/sec at the start of the disk and 20mb/sec at the end of the disk is possible.

Something a friend recommended: Format the disk and set a "P2 partition" to be first on the disk. Then install OS and apps at a second partition after that. That will probably give you 80-100% more speed since you are using the best part of the disk. A larger disk will help of course. You get about 1/2 speed at the end of the disk, so pushing the end further helps if the disk is same rpm. Also, since the HDD write speeds are small, storing on external usb2 disks will be same speed with internal disk or even better.

[smelni]

Keep in mind that you should always have 2 cards - you are dumping one while using the other - so really no wait time on the camera side

you do need a loader though :)

[Prairieboy]

Keep in mind that you should always have 2 cards - you are dumping one while using the other - so really no wait time on the camera side

you do need a loader though :)


The whole point I am trying to make is that one of the lures of P2 was to save on dig time. But the transfer time seems to eliminate that benefit.

[smelni]

you do save time - while you are offloading you are using another card - that is no extra time spent - and then AFTER the shoot when you would be digitizing you will be editing instead

[Barry_Green]

The whole point I am trying to make is that one of the lures of P2 was to save on dig time. But the transfer time seems to eliminate that benefit.
Well, no, not really -- I mean, first of all with tape there's the whole logging and batch capture setup phase which is totally done away with. Then there's the idea of whether you're shooting 720/24p or 1080 -- in 1080 it's maybe a gig a minute, so maybe "realtime", but in 720 it can be 2.5 times faster than realtime.

Then there's the question of what you're transferring to. If it's a laptop hard disk then yes it'll be in the range of "realtime", but if you're transferring to a fast RAID it can be as little as 12 seconds per gigabyte, or 4x realtime for 1080, and 10x realtime for 720.

And, if you're editing on an MXF-aware system like Canopus or Avid, you don't have to transfer the footage *at all*, you can just edit from the card.

[ckarcher]

I just shot 3 more 4 gig cards and transferred to my powerbook. Transfer time for all of the 4 gig cards (when totally full) was from 2.75 - 3.25 minutes...this is fast!


It does take longer if you import the files into Final Cut. This is because FCP is converting the MXF's to quicktime files. However, copying the entire card (option drag) to the internal HD is much faster. This allows me to archive via DVD-R at lunch and still import the clips from the HD or from the DVD's later when returning to the studio.

[Tony Torn]

I just filled a 4 gig card and copied the contents of the card to my laptop HD...results:


computer: 17" apple powerbook 1.67 GHz / 0S 10.4.4/ 1.5 gb RAM/ 100gig hitachi internal HD



transfer time of full 4 gig card: 3 1/2 minutes

7200 rpm on that hitachi HD?

[xl70e3]

Same here, ckarcher

about 3 minutes per 4GB card on 15" 1,67GHz Powerbook with 2GB RAM and 80GB Hitachi HD

[ckarcher]

after a week of research and trials, I have found an os X application that will allow a P2 card to automatically be copied over the the mac HD when inserted, then eject the p2 card when complete. It will also verify the data integrity. I'm writing a few custom scripts that will insure that multiple P2 cards with the same name will always be backed up.

I'll be doing some further testing tonight, but it's looking like this is going to be the best and most"P2 store" like simplicity I'm looking for while working on a production:

I want to insert a p2 card into the laptop and walk away- then return a few minutes later and pop out the p2 and see a confirmation that the card has been copied and verified. I want it automatic, with no need to drag +drop, ect.

I'll keep you all posted.