P2 Workflow...from P2 to organization in project file

[ben7281]

OK, i have been using the camera for about 2 months now. I'm dialing in how i do my workflow. I'm curious what other people's workflow is, specifically their process from getting footage off the P2 card all the way to having all the footage organized in their project file. And people who have a lot of footage all in one project. I use Final Cut 5.1 on a G5 Quad.

Here is my workflow that i am doing now. On the road we have two 4GB P2 cards, one P2 Store, two portible 60GB usb drives, and a 300 GB firewire drive. We shoot kids action sports so we have many clips. I am the person who imports all the footage onto our 1.8 TB SATA Raid. OK, here are the steps i do starting from having all the MXF P2 cards that have been put on the 300 GB drive on the road, to having them all imported, sorted out, renamed, backed up, etc.

1. I first go through all the MXF P2 folders on the 300 GB drive and organize them in order of timecode.

2. I then import each P2 folder into final cut. Between each folder i import, i grab the clips i just imported and put them in a separate folder corresponding to whatever P2 card number that was.

3. After i have imported all the P2 folders into final cut, have them placed in different folders, (and made sure there were no errors importing), then i sieve through all the footage in final cut and delete all the clips i know im not going to use.

4. Then i reorganize all the footage in final cut by area we shot or day, and i separate each section by condensing all the p2 folders by specific categories of that day, example where we shot, who we shot, etc., and then I have to physically place the files by hand, outside of final cut, (in the finder) having it all placed within the corresponding P2 folder. (that's a bit confusing, i know). Im going to give some links to some screen grabs to show my project file and my folders on my desktop.

Timeout: let me explain that i don't like how the camera creates clips and calls them a random 6 digit name. It's really annoying and i want to rename the file (the physical file, not just in final cut) so i know where it came from. I like to rename clip files like this: 'P200001 b-roll 01.mov', or 'P200001 wakeboard 01.mov' This helps me know where it came from and what it is basically. In final cut i give a better discription in the log note area. We have a lot of footage all in one project file so we have to have it organized well, or when we go to start editing we'll never find what clips we want to use or where they are or who is in them etc. it will be a huge mess. Currently we already have about 750 GB of footage, and that is about 1100 clips of vari cam footage, and 1850 clips of hvx200 footage. So with that many clips in one project, we need organization. OK back to my process.

5. I rename all the clips by P2 card and number of clips. I then open all the clips that have audio in quicktime and delete the blank channels 3 & 4 so when i drag clips in the timeline i wont have to have 4 channels appear (2 of which are blank & pointless & taking up timeline space).

6. Then i put all the clips back into final cut into bins called P2 Card 001, P2 Card 002, P2 Card 003, etc. I then start the log note process & filling in scene, description, etc.

7. OK, now that i have all the clips i am going to use, i now can back up. We have decided to back up our QT clip footage on new 300GB SATA hd's that we will store in the static bags at another location. They will just sit there for backup reasons only. The hd's are cost effective and fast to reload back onto our main editing drives if we ever lost our footage. I do delete all the MXF P2 cards once i have all the quicktime files backed up. It would be ridiculous for us to back up the MXF folders because i go through all the clips and rename them all anyway, and i delete over one third of the clips that we wont even use.

I really haven't figured out a better and more organized way of handling this amount of footage. Shooting action sports definitely has a different workflow than if we were shooting a planned and scripted feature. I know some or a lot of you might think i am ridiculous, but i really can't think without have stuff organized. I know my writing skills aren't that great. OK, let's hear what you guys have to say or recommend.

here are the links to the screen grabs:
www.kidswhorip.com/workflow.png

Thanks,
Ben

[ben7281]

Is anyone going to post some of their workflows perhaps...

[albo]

I'm sure folks will, you're probably much more organized than most!

I found your post very useful, and I'm only researching the camera and how it will fit into my workplace shooting and editing situation. Having this detailed a description from you really allows me to see the direction our editors will need to take when working with P2 materials. Many thanks.

[leightonimages]

I have just been on the road three weeks shooting a documentary - this is a run and gun shoot with me on camera and a sound person - using the P2 cards (I have 5 4 gig cards) is quite a challenge. We are shooting in school classrooms so the first thing we have to do is find a place for our laptop (MAC Powerbook) and to plug in our hard drive (300 gigs) - when a card is finished I pull it from the camera and slide the record tab - then either the sound person or I have to get the card in the laptop - we import it through the card slot into FCP and a bin that has been prelabled with the location and day. We need to keep the cards flowing to the laptop because each one takes - 4-5 minutes to download (unless your drive is getting full - then it can take ten or more minutes) and each one only holds eight minutes (DVCPro 50) so if there is a glitch (and on a number of occasions the card does not mount on the desk top and you have to restart) you can find yourself out of cards. Since on the Mac you can only format back on the camera, you slip the record inhibit off when you are done downloading and then you stop shooting to format the new discs. If you get one back to the camera and the record inhibit is still on you know it has not been downloaded. (This whole process of five cards going back and forth to the laptop is a mistake waiting to happen.) I sometimes check to see if I missed a card by checking to see that the time code is continuous.
At the end of the day you need to go to each individual clip and give it a name and log it (which only names it in FCP so you have a string of files on your drive that have random numbers.) Then you need to backup everything to another drive (we were shooting around 75 gig a day - total at end of the trip about 750 gigs) so I transfer all the files with the FCP project to a new drive.
On the other hand if I was shooting tape I would shoot the tape all day (no laptop etc.) Capture the tape at the end of the shoot and archive the tape. I am not sure that having larger cards will help as if the cards are twice as large they will take twice as long to download (4 gig = 4 minutes 16 gigs =16 minutes so you are still spending a lot of time downloading.)
Hopefully this is helpful for someone - I would love to hear from someone who has other ideas.

[Bsmith]

ok so say I do what leigh does...in terms of shooting footage and then loading to laptop with an external harddrive.

Since I don't own a mac (so I'm not sure) but thinking of getting a workstation...can I save teh footage to the external harddrive...and then take that to a g5 with all my editing software by connecting my harddrive and jsut dragging files?

So I need FCP on the laptop to get footage from P2?

[leightonimages]

I use FCP so that the files have been converted to QT files - I think you can copy the MX files to the hard drive if you do not want to use FCP

[Bob Fagan]

Leigh,

You said:

Since on the Mac you can only format back on the camera, you slip the record inhibit off when you are done downloading and then you stop shooting to format the new discs.
I don't quite understand and maybe I'm not getting it. On the Mac you can delete the mounted P2 card contents and .txt file (after unlocking the .txt file) and it will be ready to go. I've been working with 4 P2 cards at a time and deleting the P2 cards on the Mac gives me better peace of mind because when I stick them back in the camera and see I have a blank P2, I know I copied it. Although I like your idea of slipping the record inhibit on after they fill up just so you don't mix them up until you've copied them to disk.

[Bob Fagan]

BSmith...

Since I don't own a mac (so I'm not sure) but thinking of getting a workstation...can I save teh footage to the external harddrive...and then take that to a g5 with all my editing software by connecting my harddrive and jsut dragging files?
Yes. You can dub it over to a powered firewire drive. You will need FCP 5.1 on your G5 to edit the copied P2 footage (make sure you copy both .txt and contents folder). And no, you don't need FCP to copy the contents of a P2 card, but you do need the driver which comes on a CD with the camera (or download it from the Panny website).

The main problem I've seen so far with copying from P2 to a firewire drive and then mounting the firewire drive on a G5, is the P2 cards you copied over are all named "No Name", so it's hard to distinguish which P2 footage is where. They all come up as volumes "No Name" so you could have about 10 "No Name" volumes mount on your G5 when you hook up your firewire drive. Hopefully Apple/Panny can fix this somehow...at least have a 1,2,3 etc. at the end.
-Bob

[Bob Fagan]

Leigh...


(This whole process of five cards going back and forth to the laptop is a mistake waiting to happen.)

I know exactly what you mean. With everything going on during a long shoot, worrying about what card has been copied is a real stress factor. Hopefully the card prices will keep going down so we can have either some large capacity cards or a few dozen lesser capacity cards that we can just record inhibit as we fill them up. I think assistant editor/production jobs will be a growing market. :-)

[Shane Ross]

Here is my workflow:

We start out with the cards in the camera. When they are full we take them out and put the protector on them. On the protector is words...one side says EMPTY the other side FULL. If the card is empty, the EMPTY side is face up, if it is full, the FULL side is face up. This way you can quickly tell if the card is full or empty. And yes, you need a full time person who offloads the footage and is paying close attention to what is happening.

1) Copy entire contents of P2 card onto pre-labelled folders on a bus powered firewire drive using a laptop. Or, use a P2 Store, and when it fills up, copy that over to the bus powered firewire drive. I have 4 on hand at the location. The folders will be labelled B-01, B-02, C-01 and C-02...etc thru C-25 (for example) and then put in a new folder with the location and date on it. This way I know what footage came from what camera, and what day it was shot on. If the footage has trouble or shows any signs of trouble, we can tell which camera they came from.

2) Take the drives back to the office. Copy the folders to another drive or set of drives. Those are the drives I store the footage on...archive. I will leave the footage on the bus powered drives until we need to use them again as an extra backup.

3) Hook up the new archive drives to my FCP system and then import all the footage to my media drives. I label my bins with the same name as each of the folders I used to store the footage, so that I know where they all came from. These are my DAILIES bins. Also, in the IMPORT window, I add the folder name to the SOURCE. It defaults to P2 IMPORT, so I label it "P2-Import A-01." After I import them, I name them, leaving the original number. So 0001FX.mov Cavalry riding thru woods, 0002D5.mov CU Cavalry soldier with sword, etc. And while I agree it would be nice to add a custom tag to the files created (C001FX for example) so that we can instantly know what camera they came from, I am not bothered by it. When I capture footage from tape there is no label...I have to provide everything.

I then go thru the dailies bins and organize the footage by scene and type or location. This is what I use when I edit. But if I am looking for footage and know that it was shot on a certain date or camera, I can then refer to the DAILIES bins. But I am hyper organized. The result of being an assistant editor for 3 years.

ARCHIVING. I store the drive I backed the footage onto on a shelf. When Blu-Ray comes out, I will archive to that format onto CARTRIDGES...not open disks. This way I am not physically touching the disk so I cannot harm it. Other options are HD DVD (when both formats come out) or Iomega REV Pro drives. But they are a bit cost prohibitive at $60 for 35GB. You could also use tape drives, but I have personally never liked that format. Just me.

[leightonimages]

Thanks for the info about deleting files on the Mac - I never tried that and it would be much better than formating on the camera.

[Jay Nemeth]

I got the G5 system from ProMax yesterday, hooked it up and have begun importing files. What a nightmare.

Someone please tell me there is an easier way. I have about 120 rolls I need to bring in, or about 480 gigs. In the field, a laptop loads P2 files onto an external drive. There is a folder for the day labeled "Prudential 4-21-06", then in that there is a folder that is labeled "Roll 60 -A" meaning 60th P2 card for camera A. Of course this started at roll 1 and is now at 120.

The way the workflow SHOULD work, is that I would drag my 300 gig drive and it's contents to FCP and it would simply install it's .mov wrapper and leave all of my organizational folders intact. Instead, I am making a bin with the date, then in that I'm making a bin with the roll number, then I have to set that as the logging bin, then I have to select "import", and then.......I CAN ONLY IMPORT ONE ROLL AT A TIME.

This is insanity. Highlighting several rolls does nothing, you can still only bring ONE in at a time. It's as if whoever set this up thought we were all going to bring in one test card and say "wow, look at that"

I'm working on a huge show with multiple cameras churning through many minutes. This is insanity. Do the people that design this stuff know anything about production?

Tell me there is an easier way.

[Shane Ross]

When you capture a tape, it is one at a time...and in real time. When you import from the P2, it is still one card at a time and is FASTER than real time. Me myself I prefer this one folder at a time method, as it then gives me time to go in an name my footage.

But I can see your point. And I have no doubt that this might happen down the road. But at this time this is VERY NEW technology, and they need to have it work this way. Later, when they figure more things out, that workflow might be an option. And it would be nice for it to do that.

But for now, this is how it works and you just need to get used to it. Capturing and organizing footage is never quick and easy. It is time consuming. Now you see why many places hire Assistant Editors. Cheaper labor to do all the tedious tasks. I was one for 3 years...

[Jay Nemeth]

I see your point, however, the conversion to .mov should be transparent. If FCP could handle the MXFs natively, you would plug in your drive, and everything would instantly be available to you to edit right away.

This is a tapeless environment, so the fact we used to digitize one tape at a time doesn't belong in this workflow.

My labeling and organizing was done in the field when we dumped the P2s to the drive, I don't need to repeat that whole process again.

P2 technology may be new, but the other edit options handle it well. As far as I'm concerned, FCP dropped the ball on this one.

[Bob Fagan]

I agree...the conversion process is a pain and when added to the somewhat random naming of files it seems so user unfriendly. I was using Firestores for DV and that worked great...it would seem the P2 technology could at least be as good from the user standpoint.

[Barry_Green]

FCP did drop the ball on this one, and the vibe I got from the show floor is that they never intend to pick the ball up. As far as they're concerned, it's quicktime and only quicktime, now and forever.

Edius on the PC would work tapelessly exactly the way you'd want -- the entire 300gb drive would be instantly editable. But Edius isn't nearly as prevalent in post-production facilities, so for the time being we have to work with this exceptionally annoying limitation.

I've been nagging Apple for native timeline MXF support, but I doubt we'll see Apple go MXF any sooner than we'll see Sony Vegas supporting DVCPRO-HD natively.

[Finn]

double damn

[Bob Fagan]

Well I guess I'll take a look at Edius. I've been on FCP since V1.5, but I am open to new/better ways...I just never cared for Microsoft products. (Fortunately the new Macs will boot XP so it doesn't mean I have to work all the time in windows.)

[Barry_Green]

Note: I'm not saying Edius is a better editor than FCP, as I believe the FCP Suite is a lot more powerful. But for tapeless integration and P2 integration, Edius smokes FCP about like Bob Marley smokes weed.

[Green Hornet]

Note: I'm not saying Edius is a better editor than FCP, as I believe the FCP Suite is a lot more powerful. But for tapeless integration and P2 integration, Edius smokes FCP about like Bob Marley smokes weed.


That being said, Edius is like a phillips screw driver, whereas FCP would be the swiss army knife of editing :)

[Bob Fagan]

I wonder how the Firestore 100 and Cineporter work with the MXF files?

This is what FOCUS says about the FS100:

No matter which nonlinear editing (NLE) system you have, the FireStore FS-100 has you covered. When in DVCPRO HD or DVCPRO 50 mode, files are recorded to disk in P2 MXF format. When in DVCPRO/DV mode, files are recorded as RawDV, AVI Type 1, AVI Type 2, AVI Type 2 24p, Matrox AVI, Canopus AVI, QuickTime, QuickTime 24p, Avid OMF, Pinnacle AVI, or P2 MXF file formats. Simply connect the FireStore FS-100 to your Mac or PC editing system like a normal FireWire hard disk drive and you are instantly ready to edit—no capturing, file transfer, or file conversion is required. Just shoot and edit.

I don't understand how they can make this claim "no file conversion" if it's MXF format.

[BenB]

Cineporter won't be out for awhile. I'm currently writing a review of the HVX200 along with the FS-100 for a national magazine. So as of today I'm actually using the HVX200 with the FS-100 and Final Cut Pro (I'm also a certified FCP and Aperture trainer) 5.1. We'll be reviewing the Cineporter and the Citidisk DVCPRO-HD recorder when they are ready to send us review units. But as of today, May 2nd, they are not ready to ship those two products, so don't hold your breath for them.

[Opcode]

Tell me there is an easier way.

That's what assistant editors are for and you should always have one :)

[Jay Nemeth]

That's what assistant editors are for and you should always have one :)

I think everyone is missing the point. If the clamp was broken on a magazine, I could have a PA stand there holding the lid on with his hands so the film doesn't fall out. That doesn't mean everything is working properly.

On this project I have an On-Line editor in the *fire suite, an Off-line editor, 2 graphics guys, and an audio sweetening engineer. There is no shortage of people, but I wouldn't expect any of them, including an assistant, to go through this ridiculous process. I prefer to do the rough cut myself, so I bought a system. FCP is great, they just blew it on the importing process, and having an Asst. Editor doesn't fix their poor design.

[Bob Fagan]

Cineporter won't be out for awhile. I'm currently writing a review of the HVX200 along with the FS-100 for a national magazine. So as of today I'm actually using the HVX200 with the FS-100 and Final Cut Pro (I'm also a certified FCP and Aperture trainer) 5.1. We'll be reviewing the Cineporter and the Citidisk DVCPRO-HD recorder when they are ready to send us review units. But as of today, May 2nd, they are not ready to ship those two products, so don't hold your breath for them.


All I want to know is if the claim of "no file conversion" on the FS-100 and FCP is at all possible. My gut tells me it's marketing fluff and we'll still have to do an "import P2" from the FS-100. So Ben, without doing a review, could you just say if it does that? (magically creates quicktime files?).

[Cut2muz]

I've searched the forums and may not be using the right words, but I'm having issues with the Firestore FS 100 and FCP. Still on 5.0.4.... Camera in 720/24p, Firestore DCProHD...all good here. Firestore mounts on Mac no problem. Either move files to another HD or import directly...get that.....Panasonic Frame Rate Converter first? Or Cinema Tools? Does FCP 5.1 solve this? I haven't hit the right combo yet. Shouldn't I use a 24p sequence and convert the Firestore 60fps files to 23.98 with the Frame Rate Converter software? Something still isn't right as I still get the Orange" need to render warning" so I'm not geting the Firestore footage converted properly. Directly from P2 cards is perfect.

This Firestore workflow has me a bit confused with FCP.

Many thanks,

Don Wilson
AmericanaMediaInc.com

[Jan_Crittenden]

All I want to know is if the claim of "no file conversion" on the FS-100 and FCP is at all possible. My gut tells me it's marketing fluff and we'll still have to do an "import P2" from the FS-100. So Ben, without doing a review, could you just say if it does that? (magically creates quicktime files?).


Well I am not Ben but at this point the FS-100 looks like a big P2 card with MXF files. I believe that they have on their docket a plan for making a choice for QUick Time and others but by delivering the MXF, it is universal against all the platforms.

Best,

Jan

[John Rivers]

I was interested in HD Log. That lasted about 30 seconds until I saw the price tag. Then I laughed. And then I cried.

Seriously, how can you charge $700 for a piece of software which I was able to download a trial of at 3 MB. I don't get it.

[Pixeldog]

I think that "no file conversion" refers to DVCPRO/DV mode. If you look at the marketing blurb and imagine a new paragraph starting at that point, it makes sense, unfortunately.

We've been using the FS-100 with the HVX for a little while now, and found that the conversion to 24p works very well in FCP 5.1, but it still has to be done, adding extra time to the import process. And yes, we can only import one CONTENTS+lastclip.txt pair at a time.

So far, we've been importing from the FS-100 to FCP, to a capture scratch drive we call "24P", then copy the MXF files from the FS to another drive we call "60i" as backup. Then we format the FS and shoot again.

Regarding the Frame Rate Converter (FRC), we only use it with slo-mo 60 fps footage. The 24p stuff can be done with a checkbox in 5.1's P2 import dialog. However, the FRC actually tries to convert a different clip, not the one that you select! To fool it, we've placed the correct 60 clip in the bin where the "wrong" clip is, and the FRC has found it. Stupid, but it works.

Hope that helps someone.

[hatchmo]

Regarding push-button import of video files: The blame falls not on the technology or even Panasonic; it falls on the people who program our computers.
All of us have written simple scripts to automate our lives -- in VBL, or AppleScript, or Perl, or Photoshop or a hundred other script languages. Even a Howard Stern fan could manage to record a simple script that says, “Take the folder I give you, and convert every image in that folder to a 720x640 JPG image with medium resolution.”
One of our problems is that Apple and Imagine have failed to make FCP and HD Log scriptable. At NAB, the FCP team said their biggest user request was to make Final Cut scriptable. I’m waiting.