24pN

[G-Man]

Hey guys,

I'm sure this topic has been covered, but I couldn't find the thread if it was.

I was watching the HVX Bootcamp dvd last night (bought the hvx last week) and had a couple of questions about something Barry said. He said you can't record natively (ie 24pN) to anything but the p2 card.

Does this mean you can't import the footage to your computer for editing unless you have a p2 slot in your computer?

If you record 24pN footage on the p2 card and you dumped the footage to a p2 store or laptop, how would you then get it to a desktop computer for editing (especially if you can't use firewire)? Is this even possible? My NLE system will probably be a Mac (I'll probably be editing on FCP).

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Also, a little off-topic, but would do you guys recommend for storing footage in the field if you have a mac desktop at home, would you dump your footage to a p2 store or a laptop? How much difficulty would you run into if you dump p2 footage to a PC laptop and then tried to put it into a mac desktop?

Anyways, I know that's a lot of questions, but I would appreciate any advice/recommendations.

Thanks.

[THoff]

In PN mode, the camera doesn't send any data out to the DV port, that's why you can't record it to anything but P2 cards. You can still import the video into your computer/NLE by connecting the camera via USB or Firewire after installing the drivers Panasonic provides. The P2 card(s) in the camera's slots will appear as separate drives that mount on the desktop and can be accessed like any other removable volume. Something similar applies to the P2 Store, it mounts each of the cards that were dumped to the P2 Store as separate drives on the desktop.

Moving files between PCs and Macs is painless, they are just data. If you want to use an external drive, the preferred method is to format it using FAT32, which the camera, PC, and Mac can all read/write.

[Ted Spencer]

Using a Mac and FCP, if you set the camera to 720/24pa you can capture directly via firewire and FCP will automatically ignore the extra frames, in effect gving you 24pN. Count the frames once you've captured - you'll see exactly 24 per second.

[G-Man]

Thanks for the replies guys.


"Moving files between PCs and Macs is painless, they are just data. If you want to use an external drive, the preferred method is to format it using FAT32, which the camera, PC, and Mac can all read/write."

That's a great idea THoff. So what you're saying is to save the P2 data to a portable external hard drive while shooting on my PC laptop and then connect that external drive to my mac desktop. If the external drive is is formatted using FAT32 then all the systems should be able to read the data. Is that right?

Also, what is FAT32, and how do I format the external drive using it?

[DC]

Yes, that is correct, G-Man.

Once the video is recorded, it simply becomes a data file. "BlahBlahBlah.mxf" Then it's just a matter of file transferring. How you accomplish this is varied and entirely up to you (the equipment you have and/or will get).

File Allocation Table (FAT) is a partially patented file system developed by Microsoft for MS-DOS and is the primary file system for consumer versions of Microsoft Windows up to and including Windows ME.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me)
The FAT file system is relatively uncomplicated, and is supported by virtually all existing operating systems for personal computers. This ubiquity makes it an ideal format for floppy disks and solid-state memory cards. It's also a convenient way of sharing data between disparate operating systems installed on the same computer.

The most common implementations have a serious drawback in that when files are deleted and new files written to the media, their fragments tend to become scattered over the entire media, making reading and writing a slow process. Defragmentation is one solution to this, but is often a lengthy process in itself and has to be performed regularly to keep the FAT file system clean.

In order to overcome the volume size limit of the previous version of FAT, while still allowing DOS real-mode code to handle the format without unnecessarily reducing the available conventional memory, Microsoft decided to implement a newer generation of FAT, known as FAT32, with cluster counts held in a 32-bit field, of which 28 bits are currently used. FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 OSR2.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 filesystems of any size, but the format program on these platforms can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32 GB. Third party utilities (such as "Partition Magic") are available which can format larger FAT32 filesystems.

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is approximately equal to 4 GB. For most users, this has become the most nagging limit of FAT32 as of 2005, since video capture and editing applications and some other software can easily exceed this limit. Most new windows machines now ship with NTFS and thus avoid these problems, but those who run dual boot systems or who move external data drives between computers with different operating systems have little choice but to stick with FAT32.

[G-Man]

Thanks for the reply D-C. Nice icon.

I'm new to all this so please bear with me.

So what your saying is that I'd be limited to 4GB files and a 32GB filesystem? How does this affect a 100gb or 320gb external harddrive? Would I have multiple 32gb filesystems or am I only able to create one filesystem with 32gb regardless of the size of the external harddrive?

Any other alternatives/suggestions? I'm trying to see if there is a simple pc laptop to mac desktop workflow for P2 offloading.

[DC]

. . . I'd be limited to 4GB files and a 32GB filesystem? How does this affect a 100gb or 320gb external harddrive? Would I have multiple 32gb filesystems or am I only able to create one filesystem with 32gb regardless of the size of the external harddrive? Any other alternatives/suggestions? I'm trying to see if there is a simple pc laptop to mac desktop workflow for P2 offloading.
Well, I'll give you my theoretical answers based on my understanding of things. I use a PC(Windows) workflow with the NTFS format and 4GB P2 Cards. (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=57697 ) Anyone else feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

You would be limited to 4GB file sizes on your FAT32-formatted hard drive. So, would that mean you would want to avoid recording a 720PN clip more than 10 minutes long (that's about half of your 8GB P2 Card)? Since the P2 Cards are FAT32, I would assume that clips beyond 4GB in size are automatically split and spanned across multiple files.

The OS (Windows 2000 and XP) format programs can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32 GB. Third party utilities (such as "Partition Magic" - http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=sp&pvid=pm80 ) are available which can format larger FAT32 filesystems. So use something like this with hard drives larger than 32GB. Otherwise, I would think you could only create multiple 32GB partitions that would fill up the capacity of a particular hard drive.

So, the bottom line is:

With a little bit of careful planning, you should be able to adhere to your aforementioned workflow without too much trouble.

[Abaddon]

What drivers are needed to run the camera directly into FCP?

And what FCP settings need to be adjusted?

[Kromem]

For FAT32, if I recall correctly you can create an extended partition table that esentially creates multiple FAT partitions and links them together so that anything interacting with the drive considers it to all be one single drive.

I think I did this when I was running a dual boot system, but really can't recall the steps I took. I'd say google it, and then hope the HVX supports that sort of partition scheme (different systems can handle different partitioning schemes, and some don't like certain arrangements).