My Situation w/ P2 Cards

[DreamTime]

I just finished working as the loader for a feature length horror film shot entirely on P2 cards. I am now being asked to edit the film. This was my first time working with HD and I have had some issues along the way that could be better perhaps with some advice from the pros here.

In total we shot nearly 1,200 minutes of footage, which roughly translates to 1.2 terabytes of space (now nearly all on one Maxtor external HD). Our Director was a coverage monster. To save space and because I didn't know any better I deleted the Lastclip.txt and only copied the Contents folder from each P2 card to a little Toshiba laptop with a PCIMCIA slot. Once each Contests folder had been copied I renamed the folder to represent that particular scene that was currently being filmed.

Now here I am with LOADS of footage that I now have to edit on Avid because I had no idea the .txt file that was created was so necessary for FCP (which I would love to be using instead of Avid right now).

My questions are:

What are the steps to import .mxf into Final Cut Pro (and if there is a post with just these type of instructions could I get a link? I tried flip4mac for direct import into FCP and no luck. Got an error probably because of the lack of the lastclip file.)

Is there any way to increase the organization (naming) of my files prior to post production other than changing the name of the contents folder?

Are any other files necessary for work in post production besides the Audio Folder and Video Folder files?

Cheers,
-DreamTime

[sponester]

You can make the txt file yourself and import as P2 into FCP.

I had the same problem about a month ago. The guy capturing for me didn't know that the lastclip txt was that important. He is an editor and ended up writing a txt file himself. There is a thread on here explaining how to do it. I'll try to contact him but here is an example of the file

0003HJ
1.0
4

the way I think it works is: go into the contents folder>open video folder> look at last clip> take that #(in this example 0003hj)> add 1.0> I believe for firmware and I'm not sure what the 4 is for but you should play around with it until it works.

Good luck

[sponester]

Also you need to make sure the folder says contents, you can't rename it. you can put the contents folder and lastclip.txt file in another folder for organization, but don't change the name of the contents folder, FCP won't recognize it

[DreamTime]

I think that is the biggest issue I've faced is keeping everything organized and at the same time keeping it editable. It has taken me forever to go the avid route of dropping all the files I have with the audio into (Avid MediaFiles > MXF > 1) every time i want to edit a new scene. I've run into problems where my media goes offline for no reason and it's just not safe imo to transfer these masses of files repeatedly.

So now with your info I think I will have a ton of folders. Here's a for instance for you sponster... say we're shooting scene 23 and have 40 mins of footage (that's about 10 P2 card dumps) should I leave EACH AND EVERY contents folder and last clip in its own unique folder for the same Scene 23?

Im just curious if I will have to import each folder and label it Scene 23 Dump1 or something like that. If this is the best bet for editing with FCP in post then I might have to get with the script supervisor so that they label each dump. Not sure if this will help or hinder the production itself or maybe I'm just confusing the issue. Anyway thanks for the help.

Cheers,
-DreamTime

[sponester]

In My dealings with organization, It doesn't matter what you name these original folders that have the contents and lastclip txt, because fcp is going to unwrap them and put qtfiles in your capture scratch folder. If you have slated then you can organize bins accordingly inside fcp (rename clips) and your capture scratch will be one folder full of qt files with the random file naming that the hvx gives them.
Your mxf files should be put on the shelf as a master. (so you will need two externals.)

I hope this makes sense.

[Shane Ross]

Yes, what Sponester is saying is right. Put your CONTENTS folder and LASTCLIP.TXT file into separate folders. These folders you can name. I name them by the camera they were used on, and the load the represent. A-01, B-01, A-02...and so on. Then I put THOSE into a folder that is labelled by the date.

[sassafas]

I've just run into the same problem as you dreamtime. I just received 8 dvds each related to a P2 dump, but no lastclip.txt file. Did you find a solution?