Transferring p2 footage directly to an external hard drive

[FilmBoy77]

i have a slow pc laptop that i'm trying to avoid using if possible and would like to dump my p2 footage directly to an external hard drive then import it into FCP once i get home (i have a mac desktop).

on the hvx dvd it says you are able to transfer p2 footage directly to an external hard drive without using a laptop. does this process take long? is it actually quicker to transfer to a laptop instead?

my p2 card(s) wont be delivered until this friday so i dont know what the screen on the camera looks like yet that does this. i see a lot of people mention they use their laptops in the field but haven't seen anyone mention just using an external hard drive - is there a reason why? or is it just preference?

:dankk2:

[Barry_Green]

Takes about the same amount of time as it would to transfer to a laptop. You'd need to use a firewire hard disk to do this.

As for why nobody talks about it: it works, it's just that the laptop is so much better for many reasons, not the least of which is: it lets you offload to a hard disk *and keep shooting* at the same time; if you use the camera to go directly to a hard disk you have to stop shooting while the camera's offloading. Plus you're limited to 60gb of offloading when using the camera as a hard disk controller; with the laptop you can offload to the full capacity of your drive; several hundreds of gigabytes per drive.

[ozduc]

Plus you're limited to 60gb of offloading when using the camera as a hard disk controller; with the laptop you can offload to the full capacity of your drive; several hundreds of gigabytes per drive.

Barry can you qualify that for me. I remember reading somewhere that it was limited to 15 offloads and at the time I read that a 4gb card was the largest available, hence the 60gb limit. Is it that you are limited to 60gb or is it 15 offloads?
i.e. If you had 8gb cards could you offload 15 times for a total of 120gb?

[Jim Carswell]

ozduc,
It's 15 offloads... but no more than 60 gigs total.
Jim

[Pierre Petit]

The other option is a usb on the go hard drive. You dont have any size limit, you could use a 100g hard drive in it .Its small, using a 2.5 inch drive and its battery powered.The best ones have an integrated lithium battery. The only draw back is its a bit time consuming,it takes longer then a firewire drive. I just bought my camera a few days ago and until now its been working flawlessly. You could get more info about usb to go with a forum search, its been discussed already in this forum.
For me its the best option, i do lots of off the beaten track image hunting. Its highly portable.means less stuff to carry around. Its the poormans p2 store :) . It all depends in what kind of environment you use the camera.
Just one thing i did not have time to check is if trying to transfer larger then 2 gigabites files. The usb to go is using a fat32 format.....if i remember correctely fat32 has a 2 gig file size limit. I'll test it and report back. Maybe some one else would know.....

[THoff]

Nope, FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB. And since the P2 media also uses FAT32, you will never encounter a file larger than that.

[esperman]

Filmboy,
we've done both...used the camera to control a FW drive and dump footage(also verify the data). This works great, however as Barry stated, it ties up your camera for 5 minutes (4 gig) or 10 minutes (8 gig) cards.
We also have used our powerbook to offload cards to a drive..it is faster than dumping directly off the camera.
It takes about 6 minutes to copy a 8gig P2 card on the laptop.

either way works...depends on your shoot and amount of gear you have with you.

[LIELD]

I have done some tests with the USB 2.0 OTG drive.
In general the offload speed from the camera is 0.5 GB pr.minute.

Having a drive larger than 32GB requires special PC based format utility like SwissKnife to make it into one large FAT32 partition.
The OTG standard only handles 1 partition.

Make certain the batterypack for the OTG drive can handle the offload capacity.

I have as a field backup in adition to a P2 store, an 80GB OTG drive with a rechargeable batterypack that lasts 2 Hours.

Gives extra peace of mind in the field.
Lorentz