From a Mac user: Isn't a PC laptop just plain easier?

And although the P2 store has it's advantages in some sorts of shoots, the Laptop PC idea can offer zillions of other features. You can have DV Rack's wonderful assortment of tools, NLEs, istop motion (for Mac), for really great stopmotion or timelapses, photoshop, so you can instantly compare your greenscreen shots with the plates, text editor (are you kidding? Incredibly useful, for digitized bulletins) - or better yet, metadata editing, for cristal clear metadata for the editors... Well everything a PC does (wich is virtually anything!)!

So if you have the manpower and space, a Laptop is a lot more useful than a P2Store. For it to be truly useful, I'd have a person in charge of it at all times, a sort of video engeneer, operating DVRack mixed with assistant editor (editing metadata and renaming files). maybe a 3rd Camera assistant could do that work, instead of just operating a Combo VCR... Sure, in easy sets, we could have the 2nd AC doing all that, since it probably takes the same time to offload a P2 Card than it takes to reload a film magazine (considering some renaming and backups).

Of course there are times when something in the likes of the P2 store just reigns supreme, no doubt about that.

Well I compared laptops and P2 stores, but not apple and PCs...

Well, I agree with Barry. DV Rack is too good to pass up. However, intel macs do windows theese days, so why not have the best of both worlds?
 
Many more excellent thoughts.

I totally forgot about running BootCamp. Thanks for the reminder.

For it to be truly useful, I'd have a person in charge of it at all times, a sort of video engeneer, operating DVRack mixed with assistant editor (editing metadata and renaming files). maybe a 3rd Camera assistant could do that work, instead of just operating a Combo VCR... Sure, in easy sets, we could have the 2nd AC doing all that, since it probably takes the same time to offload a P2 Card than it takes to reload a film magazine (considering some renaming and backups).
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HERE is what my earlier rant was meant to be or should have been about...

Are any of you JUST SHOOTING???

How many here have had to become editors (field editors no less!) in order to have the P2 workflow work for you?

Who have you found is in charge of the portable drive array- the shooter or the field editor?

Are these P2 video projects for in-house productions where perhaps dragging a staff editor out into the field for a day is feasible? (Are there any staff editors left? That's kind of a joke... well sort of.)

Has anybody hired an actual freelance editor at his/her actual day rate to run a field edit session?

Perhaps the most important question is this: Are your clients demanding these types of crews? They are after all the ones footing the bill.

These, I believe, are real questions to answer.

Again, many thanks.
 
Sam,

Did you get to see my post? Sometimes those ones on the very bottom of the pages get glossed over. I had a dedicated P2 handler to work with it the whole time... definitely not interested in becoming an editor in the field. :)
 
SamG said:
Honestly, are folks bringing along assitant editors as part of the production crew?
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I would never try to use a laptop in the field without one.

If it's just me, then there is no way I can have time to realistically use a laptop to ANY degree of help in the field.

For one man band field work, the only way to do it is with the P2 store and at least 3 cards.

Barry is a genious for being able to work with just 2 cards.
I did it for awhile, and it was like swimming the english channel.
When I got my 3rd card, it was like someone picked me up in a speed boat.

The lag time on a laptop is too long to be functional working by yourself.

Of course this is just my opinion, yours may be different.

Slowly, I am slaying the dragon!



.....speaking of dragons, that was my suggestion for a name, when Panasonic was looking for a name for this camera.

I find it funny that the asians like to name their products after numbers, whereas americans tend to name their products names.
 
I'm not sure if anybody read my previous post but i did mention that a NTFS xp formatted hard drive can NOW be read by OSX 10.4.6, thus making the PC laptop a fantastic addition to mac work flow in the field.
 
There are definite benefits to either workflow. I started out using a PC based laptop [Toshiba] and was dumping footage into it, viewing the footage in the P2 viewer and then editing successfully in Avid XpressproHD.

Since that time, a G4 laptop with a PCMCIA slot was bequeathed to me, and I have been using that, to the same tune of efficiency and success. While the P2 viewer software is unusable in the Apple OS platform, the Viewer in FCP was fine.

I really like your approach Barry of partitioning the external drive and being able to navigate both planets. Since apple OS supports FAT32, why not do both, if you have both PC and MAC based alternatives? Then you can capture in the PC and edit in FCP. That is probably -- at this juncture -- a very practical and efficient workflow. But again, I don't care much about zooms and viewers and whatnot. Just learn the camera, all of its multifarious nuances, shoot good footage, and edit in your NLE of choice!
 
I found direct HD dumping from the Camera to work well. If you are shooting narative, the 5 mins it takes to dump, gives the director and crew time to stage or whatever.

The only down side is that if you are using a 4GB P2, you can only get 60GB on 1 hd even if its bigger than 60GB. But I have lots of old HD's some of them 60's that are now too small to be useful in my Mac. The cool thing is, I have a firewire case that runs off 12v, so I just plug it directly into my 12v belt and spin up the drive, connect it to the camera and dump. When it finishes I power down the Drive. I could probably dump 45 times before wearing down that battery belt.

Of course when our Mac Rack (working title) software hits the scene, I think the Mac laptop will be the way to go. I will post more as we get ready to launch.

Ben
 
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