P2 to PC to FCP

[catawampus]

I have been using a powerbook to handle offloading p2 cards in the field and i want to switch to a PC. Better programs available on the PCs for in the field. But my editor is and always will be on a mac. How can I get the footage on my external drives formatted for PC over to a MAC drive that the editor can use and archive? Is anyone else doing it this way?

[Shane Ross]

Easy. The mac can read a PC formatted drive, no problem. But no program on the PC does the transfer, so I don't quite know what you mean by better...oh...duh, the P2 reader software that comes with the HVX is PC only. right.

yes, we use a Sony Viao to copy the footage onto a LaCie firewire drive (the entire contents folder and txt file) and then connect the drive to my Mac for import into FCP.

Pretty straightforward.

[Barry_Green]

As Shane said, it's effortless. You can use the P2 Viewer, you can use the PC to update firmware, all sorts of stuff like that. And of course you can use the slot, and it's glitch-free.

Just transfer to an external hard disk. Use P2 Genie, or just use Windows Explorer to grab and drag the whole contents of the card onto the external hard disk (which should be formatted FAT32). You can also use the PC to format the P2 cards before putting 'em back in the camera.

The only hitch in the process is that Microsoft, for some indecipherable reason, limited the size of a FAT32 partition to 32gb when formatting through Windows. So don't use Windows to format your external drives; download CompuApps free Swiss Knife program and you can format a 2TB (or is it 4TB?) external hard disk as FAT32.

So, the workflow is:
1. Format your external drive as FAT32 using Swiss Knife.

Then, for each card:
2. Insert card into PC, drag contents (or use P2 Genie) to external drive (preserving all directory structure, and not changing the name of the "contents" folder!)
3. Format the card by right-clicking its icon and choosing "format"

Finally, when all cards are shot:
4. Unplug drive from PC, plug it into Mac, and begin importing cards to FCP.

For redundancy there's an optional step 2(a), which is that you can also drag the contents to a second external drive at the same time. If the drives are on different busses (i.e., one is a firewire drive, and the other is a USB 2.0 drive) then you can actually copy the card over to both drives at the same time with very little (if any) slowdown; you can basically make two copies simultaneously. That gives you data redundancy for safety, or optionally a "client drive" and your own backup for protection.

[daybreak]

Barry can you use a mac to format the external HD to FAT32 ?

[THoff]

If all else fails, the HVX200 can format the drive for you if you want (see page 84 of the manual).

[daybreak]

thanks again Thoff

[Barry_Green]

No, you wouldn't want to do that. The HVX's formatting procedure doesn't create any partitions.

[tlorenzo]

But no program on the PC does the transfer

Wrong! P2 Genie is available for Windows too :-)

[Dick Campbell]

I've notice that most of the USB external drives available are coming already formatted as FAT32 (they will say compatible with both Mac and Windows). I use an XP laptop in the field to dump P2 to an external, then just plug it into the Mac. Don't need MacDrive or anything.