Watching dailies.

[Ernie Kovacs]

What's the best way to watch your footage at the end of the day when you've got a harddrive full of offloaded P2 cards and you want to watch them? I use a Mac Laptop. and will have an HD monitor

Is there a better way than waiting to import it all into Final Cut pro. Can I play the clips on the external harddrive through the camera somehow??

Any ideas out there? I really want field producers to feel like this camera is easy to work with. Imagine they are behind me tapping their foot while the 80 Gigs of footage I just shot is transfering to Final cut......

Also in the room is a coat hanger, a pack of rubberbands, and a pencil sharpener.

Thanks,

Ernie

[aravance]

This is the workflow I used at a music video shoot I directed.

All you need is a Mac Laptop, a field monitor, and a "gopher" (extra hand).
We set the laptop and monitor up on a table during the shoot. Whenever I filled a p2 card, my "gopher" came and exchanged it for an empty one and then proceeded to dump/import the p2 card directly into Final Cut. Once that was done, he just waited until I filled the other one and then we just did the same thing over and over again.

This is the best way that I've found. It's a continuous workflow, and you can even review the footage right then and there and even make notes about certain takes, timecode, rename clips, etc.

So I would say bring the laptop and field monitor on the shoot with you if you can, and dump the p2 cards directly into Final Cut while you are there using the PCMCIA card slot.

This will solve your problem of waiting to review the footage at the end of the day.

[RichardVClark]

Great idea aravance, I will defiantly try that.

[Shane Ross]

There is a program which will allow you to view the footage in it's raw state. Actually, a couple. If you have a PC laptop, Panasonic makes a P2 Viewer (Windows only) that allows you to look at the footage. View only.

On the Mac side, if you don't want to have to use FCP to convert the footage and import it, then you have HD LOG by imagineproducts.com. This is a more robust program that is basically a full blow assistant editor station. You can view the footage, name the footage, manage the footage and convert it to QT for FCP Very handy, expecially if you want to view dailies right away.

Being a fully blown out logging software, it will cost some money. $699 for the Gold version, which can read the MXF files that the HVX generates. Don't think of it as simply a viewer...it is logging software. And it can read pretty much any format of footage you throw at it. Very handy.

[Mark Smith]

I am curious about HD log and am seriously considering a purchase. My question is to people who have used it what exactly does it allow you to do with MXF files and is it worth the money?

[Shane Ross]

I have it but have yet to look it over. I might have time this weekend to play with it and see what it does, so when I do I will report my findings.

[Mark Smith]

Thanks Shane... I would love to hear about it. I'm about to start a project with about 12 shooting days so there will be a deecent amount of footage to manage. If HD is helpful with that task I wouldn't mind springing for it.

[AtlantaFilms]

Is it possible to record in HD format to the P2 cards while at the same time recording in DVCAM format to a DVCAM tape? Then just watch the DVCAM tape as your dallies.

[Mark Smith]

I just wanted to give this a bump... Shane have you hada chance to unpack HD log yet. I am really curious if it can be used to view p2 files on a laptop. Say for instance you had a FW drive that you had copied P2 cards to in the field, would you then be able to cable up to that drive and browse/ those files?

I downloaded the demo but can't quite tell if this capability is there...

[DC]

Is it possible to record in HD format to the P2 cards while at the same time recording in DVCAM format to a DVCAM tape? Then just watch the DVCAM tape as your dallies.

No, not an option.